Job Simulator’s enduring popularity is no coincidence: it is, after all, the quintessential virtual reality game. Spread across four impressively interactive occupations, you’ll turn your comically exaggerated hands to all kinds of amusing tasks, like cooking the books as an office worker and dealing with a robbery as a convenience store clerk. As with the original PSVR version, the gameplay feels chunky and responsive, and it’s made even more tactile thanks to the accuracy of the PSVR2 Sense Controllers.
The ongoing gag is that said “simulations” are being conducted by robots (depicted as 90s CRT monitors with expressive faces on their screens) in attempt to help them better understand the lives of humans. Of course, they haven’t quite grasped the concept of “work”, so while many of the activities will feel familiar, they’re pointed and chaotic, underlining the stupidity and tedium of it all. The title’s laugh out loud funny from beginning to end, and is a rare example of interactive comedy that’s genuinely funny.
The silliness of the premise is only enhanced by the slapstick nature of the gameplay; while the game is outrageously polished, it embraces some of the inherent scrappiness of virtual reality, and thus encourages you to make a bit of a mess. Each environment acts a small sandbox, and you can interact with pretty much everything you see – even when you’re not supposed to. While the PSVR original was quite claustrophobic, owing to the limitations of the hardware, full room-scale is used in this PSVR2 port to allow you a little more space to operate.
But while this greatly improves each activity, and the visuals are razor-sharp throughout, it’s worth pointing out that this is the same game you’ll likely already have played; a free upgrade and the Infinite Overtime update – which offers a never-ending checklist of randomly generated tasks – makes clocking-in for a second shift a lot more palatable, but there’s nothing new to see in this version if you’ve done it all before.
Of course, if you’re new to PSVR2, then this is pretty much essential: it’s not only an easy-going introduction into the world of virtual reality, but it’s also a hilarious game that executes on its ideas flawlessly.
Comments ( 3 )
I picked up Vacation Simulator last week. The resolution bump, and 110d FOV make quite the difference compared to the PSVR1 version, but you'll definitely want to reduce the VR brightness slider to it's lowest setting to cream all of the motion blur. It's a shame, because the game springs to life, looks beautiful and is super vibrant when the brightness slider is nearly maxed, but then you're smacked in the face with horrendous motion blur which for me personally, makes it totally unplayable.
Anyways, the beach section's ocean floor was such a stand out moment back on the PSVR1, and on PSVR2, the 2000x2040 resolution, FOV bump and deeper blacks make it look that much better.
Great review, looks like a lot of fun, but I might have to hold off until I can relocate to a bigger flat. Am I correct in assuming that this title isn't particularly well suited for seated only play?
This game is a lot of fun and being able to play it with room space was a much bigger deal than I thought it would be, finally I could walk out of the office cubicle and look into those next to me.
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