I think I need to learn to stop making plans. I’m never good at keeping them. Although this time it was less my doing, and more things happening to me that changed my plans.
I had planned on spending a lot more time in the WoW Classic Beta over the past few weeks. Instead, I’ve been experiencing the amazing world of Virtual Reality. You see, my amazing partner, Thor, surprised me for my birthday by getting me a new Oculus Rift S. He surprised me further by wrapping the thing in balloons!
Up until this point in time, I’d never tried VR. My biggest concern was how ill it might make me. I get really bad motion sickness at the best of times – I struggle to play Overwatch and many other first person shooters because I just want to hurl the whole time. We also have an extremely small apartment with little to no room to move. However, Thor went around measuring our spaces and figured with a bit of creative moving around, there would be plenty of space to use the Rift.
There are already some amazing games to play in VR, and even some incredible experiences. But what I’ve wanted to do since the very day I saw it, was play Beat Saber. The premise is simple – the controllers in your hands become light sabers. You use those light sabers to slice boxes to the beat of the music playing. It is SO addictive. Ridiculously addictive.
There are multiple levels of difficulty – Easy, Normal, Hard, Expert, Expert+. You get scored on your combos (how many blocks you hit correctly in a row) and another score on your performance – how you hit the blocks, how close it was to the centre, correct wrist flicks and follow-through etc. The completionist in me wants 100% combos on everything, with at least a rank A on everything (though an S would be better!!)
If you’ve never seen or heard of Beat Saber before, check out this video of an absolute pro, OtterWorldly, playing a custom Expert+ map of Lindsey Stirling’s Shatter Me. It is absolutely unreal, especially given it’s the first time she’s seen it! (I am nowhere near this level!)
**WARNING this video has flashing lights**
I have played Beat Saber almost every single day since Thor gave me the Rift. It is genuinely a workout when you do it – especially as you get to more difficult levels. I love it. And best of all, it doesn’t even make me a little bit nauseous! (Skyrim VR on the other hand – ooof). Right now I’m somewhere between a Hard and Expert level, depending on the map.
One of the other things that makes Beat Saber so great is the community around it. These amazing people create mods for the game which can let you change the colour of your sabers and the lighting of the room and all sorts of other things that make the game a unique experience for you. But best of all, you can make custom maps for any song you like. The game itself comes with about 10 songs I think, and there are a couple of expansion packs (an Imagine Dragons pack released earlier this week!!). But you can burn through them all pretty quickly. There is a huge community around making songs and maps at a bunch of difficulty levels, making the game last just that much longer.
Despite me feeling like an uncoordinated noodle, and having zero dancing skills, I’m actually able to do alright in this game. It’s extremely satisfying, too. It’s great for those bad days at work. Normally I’d blow things up in WoW – now I’m smashing blocks with a light saber. The hardest part for me is being on my feet for so long in bad shoes. I’m getting some pretty gnarly knee and lower back pain, so I need to sort out getting a proper, decent pair of sneakers to wear when I play, because really the only thing stopping my from playing longer is the pain, not any exhaustion. Stupid limited body!
Other than that, I’m still raiding in WoW. We got Cutting Edge on mythic Jaina a little while ago. I’m so proud of our little team! I put together a pretty full on kill video for it, too…
Our raid lead got the first mount, then us officers rolled off for the order of the following mounts – I got mine third. It’s such a beautiful mount!
At the moment we’re not stepping in to Mythic Crucible of Storms. It’s such a rough raid. So each week we’re just going back in to Battle for Dazar’alor for a mythic reclear, and to give out as many mounts as we can.
Otherwise, it’s mostly same old around here. We’re all hanging out for 8.2 to drop in WoW… there are some really awesome things coming there! The small peeks I’ve had of Nazjatar are amazing. Mechagon is going to be fantastic, too! I think my screenshots folder is headed for an influx of pics… 🙂
I hope everyone is keeping well!
xo
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