A little taste of extended family holiday gaming | The DeanBeat

29.12.2023 - 18:17 / venturebeat.com

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When I asked my extended family what they wanted to play on the Meta Quest 3 during the holidays, they asked me what I had to show them. To simplify things, I said I have a “meditation game” and a “shooting game.”

To my surprise, most of them said they wanted to play the shooting game. And perhaps not so surprising: The Meta Quest 3 was the gaming platform that they came back to over and over again. I gave them a choice between the meditation game of Tripp, where you can experience a kind of interactive psychedelic experience and Pistol Whip, the shooting game in virtual reality. Only a couple chose the meditation game, while they came back over and over to play Pistol Whip.

We had a wide ranger of people at the family gathering, equally split between men and women. We had a 10-year-old girl and a 90-year-old matriarch. I had to simplify things because we didn’t have a lot of time for each game demo, and certainly not enough time for anyone to learn something complicated. On that front, the newer and more popular Gorilla Tag lost out because it was a bit tough to figure out at the outset. These players needed something that they could learn in a few seconds. Of course, shooting won.

With Pistol Whip, the gameplay is pretty intuitive. You put two controllers in your hand and can shoot with one of them. You point at the Start button, squeeze the trigger, and it starts, after I set it up and get them ready with the headset. Then the enemies come at them in a game on rails, and the player has to shoot them. After six bullets, you reload by pointing the controller down and back up. It’s a fast-moving game, and you have to dodge the bullets coming at you and bend to the side or duck to avoid obstacles.

We inevitably laughed as one of our family members started moving and dodging while wearing the headset as the rest of us chuckled. And with the mixed reality imagery, the family member wearing the headset could often see the rest of us while they were prepping to get into a game. That probably added to the comfort of wearing something that could block their vision of the rest of us.

They always came out sweaty, though some who were better at the game got much better workouts. Pistol Whip is great for workouts, and it proved more popular than Beat Saber, which only a couple of family members tried. Beat Saber isn’t quite as accessible, I guess, as you have to learn how to move and slice things with a bit more accuracy. If I had my own choice for a game to show off with unlimited time, I would have chosen Asgard’s Wrath 2 on the Meta Quest 3.

Only one family member reported getting a