Driveclub isn’t quite a lifelike racer—it occupies an accessible space between arcade and sim—but its lifelike visuals are second-to-none. Given that developer Evolution Studios threw the technological kitchen sink at their gorgeous, flagship PS4 racer, it’s not surprising that the studio would try taking immersion to the next level with PlayStation VR. And with the storied Gran Turismo fairly absent from the PS4 conversation in recent years, Driveclub feels like the natural way to sell virtual-reality racing to the PlayStation nation.
When I quite literally sat down behind the wheel for my demo with Driveclub VR (which utilized a haptic feedback racing seat and the official Thrustmaster wheels and pedals), I thought back to my review of the original Driveclub. I loved the way Driveclub introduced me to simulation-lite racing in a fun, approachable way. In Driveclub, you need to be cognizant of real-world racing factors like the degree of terrain, the transition between asphalt and dirt, entering turns from the outside, and the strategic value of braking, coasting, or drifting. But grasping even a few of these is all you need to be competitive and fit into your racing gloves. From there, you can let the game’s content, challenges, and leaderboards propel you to mastery.
I was concerned that, grappling with the need to be even more accessible for first-time virtual reality users, Driveclub VR would suffer some complexity and lose the appeal of the main game. Thankfully, my demo was not only exhilarating, but approachably challenging in the truest Driveclub fashion.
My race began with strapping on the PlayStation VR headset. The game’s producer set PlayStation VR onto my head and encouraged me to find the right fit. For PS VR users, “the right fit” means a combination of two things. The headband portion of PS VR should be correctly positioned vertically (not too low on your forehead, and not too high), while the lens itself needs to be a certain distance from your eyes. In practice, this isn’t complicated; the idea is to move the headband and lens until the picture you see is clearest. It took about 30 seconds for me to find the sweet spot, but it still wasn’t perfectly clear in the way we’ve grown accustomed to on 1080p displays.
My demo began inside a staging area—standing alongside the track, I could look around, across the track at barns and houses or down to the asphalt at my feet. I signaled that I was ready to begin, and I was suddenly dropped into the driver’s seat of my car. I looked around the cockpit. Its walls came nearly up to eye level and my seat was low, like a Formula racer. Looking down, I saw my body and legs adorned in a black racing suit.
Suddenly, the countdown began. I panicked, trying to remember how Driveclub handled the start of a race. Should I step on the pedal to get revved up for a start? I look around—to my right, at the racer next to me, and to the sky, astonished that I’ve entered another world. Before I know it, we’re off.
For all my fret, it didn’t take long before I was neck-and-neck with my competition in the back of the pack. As we coasted into the first turns, the magic of racing in virtual reality hit me like a sidewall. It wasn’t video game experience that kicked in at the moment I needed to turn; it was driving experience. I started to brake in preparation for the first turn. I coasted to the outside to give myself room to bank inward. As the turn came upon me, I turned the wheel lightly at first, then harder, to hug the inside corner. It wasn’t the prettiest turn, but it was exhilarating—a rush of accomplishment like few I’ve felt in video games, fueled by how I tapped into my real-world instincts and physical experience to make it happen.
In the micro-moments of that turn, I went through the same subconscious thought process as when I make a turn in my real car. The speed and intensity are incomparable, of course. But this wasn’t playing, it was driving.
An “accessible” video game is, typically, one that makes compromises. Driveclub 1.0 was accessible because it didn’t demand perfection; it merely asked for a loose grasp of what real-world cars are capable of and some gaming acumen. Driveclub VR is accessible because it asks for instincts, reflexes, and a sensory understanding of being in a car, throttling toward a turn. With those things, I could step into Driveclub VR and feel like I’d “played” it before. Despite the breathtaking sensation of being in this race and swapping places right down to the bitter end, and despite the novelty of looking at the car whizzing by on my right before being snapped back to the dangers of the road in front of me, it was familiar and right to be “playing” Driveclub VR.
Imagine my joy at winning my first race. Down to the wire, coming up over the last hill to see the finish line a hundred yards off, sensing the car to my back-right, closing my eyes in the last few meters as I silently prayed to stay ahead of the opponent creeping behind me.
To me, the promise of PlayStation VR is now apparent. We’re in the earliest days of the technology and the input devices we’ll use to make it come alive, but Driveclub VR was evocative in a tangible way. It didn’t need to tell me how to play or what buttons to press. I didn’t need to spend 10 hours clearing a learning curve before the game’s satisfying action could come alive. Every moment of my race was exciting, new, and natural.
It didn’t hurt that Driveclub VR is the most realistic-looking PS VR game in the mix right now. I imagine the art direction and visual fidelity of a game will matter a good deal when it comes to evoking a certain response from gamers. I’m not sure I would have so quickly tapped into my driving instincts in a cel-shaded kart racer, for instance. In action, Driveclub VR looks a fair bit like the real thing. I was moving too fast to see that the ground and cars have less texture detail than in the main game, and some aliasing is the price we pay for rendering the game twice, for two eyes. I got a better sense of these things back at the post-race staging area, where I could look at the finer details around me. But in the heat of the race, it was the density and scale of the environment and the way light reflected off realistic car models that really struck me.
I was enraptured by Driveclub VR and momentarily lost all sense of time and place. An intense focus on the race replaced my thoughts. Outside the world in my headset, it was 1 o’clock in the afternoon in the media booth at PlayStation Experience. But I wasn’t there. I was experiencing the future that PlayStation VR is promising. Right now, Driveclub VR is the strongest case that the promise is real and PlayStation fans should care.