Sports bars can be great places as long as you get there before the floors get too sticky from drink and the drunks start barging in to you. Unfortunately, that’s more or less impossible so you’ll spend most of your time in a sports bar having to deal with all of that and not getting to enjoy any of the games on offer. SportsBarVR looks to change that by, at the very least, removing the sticky floors. A social experience, SportsBarVR sees you in a bar where you can play various games, talk to friends and… Throw bottles on the floor in dramatic fashion.
There’s plenty of tomfoolery to be had if you fancy it. It may annoy other gamers in the same room as you, but the option of setting up private rooms, or playing against AI, means you don’t have to be the annoying idiot in places you won’t be appreciated. Outside of the messing about there are actual games to play too. You move around the bar by pointing one of the Move controllers to where you want to go and pressing a button to teleport there. This is also a great way to easily set up a different angle on the game you are playing. Some of the games are impossible to play without moving around, such as pool.
Pool works very much as you’d imagine it to. There are variations to mix things up a bit more, but for the most part it is mainly hitting coloured balls in to a pocket using a wooden stick and a white ball. It will take a while to teach your mind not to try and lean on the tables and as such you will have to teach yourself how to play virtual reality pool. You can lock a shot using a simple button press on your controller to try and angle it better, but the Move controllers are a touch too sensitive, making it an awkward experience a lot of the time.
As well as pool there is Darts and Skee Ball, which both have the same issues of feeling slightly similar to the real thing yet also very different. In darts you hold them using one Move controller and pick them up with the other to throw. The thing is the flight arc seems to be fairly temperamental. Much like in pool you can lock the shot with a button press, which can make things easier, but it’s far from a strong recreation of the game. Skee Ball should be simple to do. All you have to do is roll a ball down a lane in to some holes. Annoyingly you yet again have to find a knack of rolling them down the lane in a way which doesn’t feel completely natural. It is fun though and is the easiest of the three mentioned so far to get the knack of. It’s also currently the best game to play by yourself.
The final game currently available is Air Hockey. You simply hold a button to pick up your paddle and hit the puck back and forth. It’s executed well and, much like the rest of the game, the physics feel realistic enough. Unlike the other modes though there’s far less of a likelihood of them glitching out, which makes it the strongest of what’s on offer.
Overall, SportsBarVR is a fun social experience. Graphically it’s far from the strongest and some of the things available may be lacking, but it’s not without its positives. Sound design of the games seems fairly spot on and all are strangely addictive even if they do feel unnatural at times. The real shining beacon though is the social opportunities it brings. It’s a fun hang out spot for you and your friends in VR. You may decide you don’t like any of the games within it, but you’ll find ways to entertain yourselves. Even if it is just throwing bottles around whilst watching your friends fail to hit a ball in to the pocket for the 11th time.