According to Meta, Wilson's Heart was the: "Winner of the Best Virtual Reality Game Award at gamescom 2016, Wilson’s Heart is one of the most highly anticipated Touch titles. [...]
A strong example of VR’s immersive narrative complexity, Wilson’s Heart taps into the look and feel of classic monster movies for atmospheric effect. Add in award-worthy performances from Rosario Dawson (Sin City, Top Five), Alfred Molina (Spider-Man 2, Raiders of the Lost Ark), and Peter Weller (RoboCop, Star Trek Into Darkness)—plus even more high-caliber performances to share at launch—and Wilson’s Heart is destined to raise the psychological thriller genre to terrifying new heights.
You wake up as Robert Wilson, a patient in a creepy 1940s hospital that initially seems abandoned. Moving through a blood-streaked corridor, you face your startling new reflection and start to unravel a disturbing mystery. Suspending disbelief has never been easier or more compelling than living this mind-bending scenario firsthand in VR.
Step into the world of Wilson’s Heart’s black and white, neo-noir aesthetic with perception-altering reveals around every corner. Dramatic lighting and sound design ratchet up the suspense, hinting at what lurks in the shadows. With natural movements and intuitive controls, Touch lets you navigate the world around you with your own hands and solve puzzles under pressure. And just wait until you experience its ghoulish combat."
https://www.meta.com/blog/quest/wilsons-heart-brings-cinematic-horror-to-vr-april-25/
The game arrived April 25 2017 - so more than 7 years ago, here are the original trailers:
Wilson's Heart is special - devs used very high-res textures, which were way ahead of what the gpus were able to truly display using the GTX 1080 (Ti) flagships back then:
"Technically, the absence of color also allowed the studio to use larger texture sizes which makes the carefully crafted characters and environments look more striking than most fully-colored VR experiences."
https://www.uploadvr.com/wilsons-heart-review/
Today these textures make the game shine. Also the game has a very high poly count, real-time lighting and very detailed dynamic shadows. Here are some impressions:
(Click on an image to see its full size and more details)
Looking in this mirror never looked so good before 😉 This is you in the game
High-res dynamic shadows - see both hands and head/hair
Gotta just love those dynamic high-res shadows!
This simply looks real - great fun to read the comic books in the game
Amazing and highly decorated rooms
These look like real lamps to me - check the textures and high-poly models (=lamps look perfectly round)
Wilson's Heart uses black & white graphics also to reduce texture storage sizes, and to be able to provide higher textures res than seen before Alyx and Boneworks arrived
Your heart - and a nice metal surface
Strange choice in hospital art, but if it keeps the kids happy ...
Mirror reflections - kinda disturbing watching yourself in that mirror
Alyx-class textures - no problems reading the text
Great drawing - and Wilson's Heart is a horror adventure game, but not really that scary
Close-up on a bad day
Just an example of shadows and lights
Ultramersion textures on common objects - like in Alyx
Looks like a real drawing when you're inside the game
Handwritings maybe not that far from being photo-realistic...
Inventory easily accessible/grab-able in the game
Example of high-poly environments with impressive high-res textures
This is an adventure game. Sure there are some horror moments, but you can easily find much more scary games. Don't let the horror aspects keep you from trying this gem, especially if you love adventure games. The attention to details on npcs might not be the same as Olivia in Lone Echo, but it's close. And the story is amazing - which also supports immersion. In short, do not miss out on this game - it's one of the finest VR games ever made. Find the game here:
Btw, I got back to Wilson's Heart last night, have to be in the mood for these games. Wilson's Heart does have some simple and repetitive action sequences, but these do not last long - and haven't played the game for some months it felt fresh. Wilson's Heart works perfectly with Quest hmds - and the Rifts - and using Revive. This is Rift CV1 ss 2.5 (27 mill pixels per frame) in perfect 90 fps thanks to the RTX 3090:
Npcs look stunning - and beautiful - in Wilson's Heart
I did mention that Wilson's Heart is not very scary - and it really is not - but there are a few places where this game just might not be your first choice to entertain kids 😅 🙂 Here we found a corpse:
The corpse didn't talk nor see much 😉
- it was kinda disturbing having to cut open the corpse's mouth with my knife:
No spoilers here, if you want to know what was inside the corpse's mouth, you need to play the game yourself 🙂
Btw, fun to see all the newbies, also on PSVR2, go bananas over a game like Red Matter 2, because they love the high-res textures. Wilson's Heart blows games like Red Matter 2 totally out of the water - because Wilson's Heart has many npcs (Red Matter 2 is a dead world, the game was made for very weak mobile gpus) and the graphics and gameplay (story content) in Wilson's Heart is still way beyond nearly all current VR games.
If you want to find the very best VR games today, do not look forward, but look backward - games like Arktika.1, Asgard's Wrath, Lone Echo 1-2, Brass Tactics, Chronos, Robo Recall, Mage's Tale, The Climb, Edge of Nowhere and more shine brighter than ever today on high-end gaming PCs.
To get Wilson's Heart to truly shine you need to use very high res - I'd recommend a RTX 3070 or better for this game. Enjoy!
Wilson's Heart also has a nice-ish teddy bear - it kept trying to hug me, so here I've dropped a knife into its head 😇 🤗
- then made a small barbecue 😋
- and I hope that Mr. Teddy has learnt something from this and will behave better in the future!
This looked very real - this is Index res 400% (36 million pixels per frame combining both eyes) in solid 90 fps:
With lcd hmds extreme res is needed to get rid of jaggies. I still prefer CV1 ss 2.5 due to oled and lack of jaggies.
Finally a last touch - see how used this book looks with folded and wrinkled pages?
An unprecedented amount of quality work went into Wilson's Heart.
Thanks - I can see that the old Oculus exclusives aren't growing in the number of ratings in the Store - indicating new Quest users do not buy these games and probably have no idea what they are missing out on.
I have been considering repeating old posts on Reddit, and maybe in here. Many may not know that although Valve did Alyx, Meta/Oculus did a lot more. Valve made just one, even if incredible, content contribution to VR, while Meta made numerous.
Some of the very best VR games in existence are these Meta exclusives:
Lone Echo 1 and 2
https://www.meta.com/experiences/pcvr/1368187813209608/
https://www.meta.com/experiences/pcvr/1711938725528735/
Asgard's Wrath
https://www.meta.com/experiences/pcvr/1180401875303371/
Brass Tactics (from the makers of Age of Empires II)
https://www.meta.com/experiences/pcvr/1101975213197949/
Arktika.1 (use extreme res if blurry)
https://www.meta.com/experiences/pcvr/682000918570174/
- and never understood why many criticized this giant gem:
https://www.meta.com/experiences/pcvr/3002462869834439/
Medal of Honor was made for Rift CV1 with oled and external tracking - using inside out tracking could result in blocking the view of a controllers when holding the sniper rifle with its scope close to the hmd. But I think devs got that patched.
Meta recommended gpus much more powerful for Lone Echo 2, Asgard's Wrath and Medal of Honor VR than what Valve recommended for Alyx. And Meta's recommendations were just for running Rift CV1 in its default and very low/blurry res (ss 1.0). You really needed gpus at least twice as powerful as the GTX 1080 to run these Meta/Oculus exclusives in proper res - and that was not possible before the RTX 3080 arrived. Meta's highest-end PCVR exclusives, including Wilson's Heart, profit immensely from modern gpus. Try Lone Echo with extreme res 🙂 These games are not old, they are shining like never before - and finally we have the hardware and hmds to truly enjoy them.
October 29 2017 I bought Wilson's Heart - and I completed the game last night. So in less than 7 years 😁
I never got any help from walkthroughs and did get stuck a few places - but got back a few years later, no need to rush things 🤗 😇 😅
It was saddening to finish the game, it was like a farewell as I rarely go back to completed games - my backlog is way too long with more than 500 VR games.
A few more details - the nice npc shadows;
See how her right hand casts a shadow on herself - and she also casts a shadow on the floor. These are shadows in a VR game from 2017, few games are better today
Some nice environments:
More npcs:
That brainy dude is really big!
Sadly, Wilson's Heart ended in way where you can see the devs were prepared to make a sequel - and I'd love to see that sequel, but the game probably never sold enough for that.
The ending was also quite moving - and seeing the end credits showed that a lot of people worked to created this gem. Wilson's Heart was a gigantic project, and I'm thankful for Oculus for providing this great experience.
The game does have some very repetitive filler action sequences, but it's no big deal and does provide variation. My final verdict of the game would be 9.0/10. The game has a 4.4/5 rating in the Meta PCVR Store.
https://www.oculus.com/wilsons-heart/
Btw, I have to admit that lcd with tons of super-sampling does win and looks better than CV1 - but not much 🙂 So there's every reason to try this game using latest hmds. Unlike other games (like Hellblade VR with the blind level) made for oled, I did not find any location in Wilson's Heart where the darkness was so profound you really need oled.
For those having completed the game - or wanting to see what the sequel would be like - I've attached a final image from the game - DO NOT see this image if you do not want any spoilers!
