Written by Ian Hong

As someone who produces my own music, I really enjoy the first-person VR rhythm game Beat Saber. It allows players to visually and physically immerse themselves in the music. bsaber.com crudely describes the excitement of slashing along to songs akin to “shoot[ing] the maps you want straight into your bloodstream.” The player is given 2 sabers and they slice blocks to the rhythm. Players can play along with friends, challenge other online players, or strive to break their personal best scores for their songs. After reading the reviews by my classmates LimJunxue and DevATeo, I will take their posts into account and offer my own analysis of the game. Do note that I do not own a VR headset and will be judging the experience solely based on watching gameplay from YouTube.

Why Beat Saber is an Outstanding VR Experience

1. Immersive, focused gameplay

The first thing a new player will notice is that the game makes them feel like they are ‘in’ the song. Like what Junxue mentioned, Beat Saber draws the player in and lets them forget about their environment.

The player finds themself in a dark tunnel, and then notices red and blue blocks flying towards them. The simple and non-distracting background does not burden the player’s cognitive load, and lets them focus on slicing those blocks. Slashing the blocks makes the background light up, but it fades away quickly, giving the player satisfying feedback but also not being too distracting.

Additionally, the simple colour scheme (namely blues, reds and black) is used consistently throughout the game, giving it a polished look.

2. Easy to learn, rewarding to master

Next, Beat Saber speaks the player’s language when it comes to interaction. New players immediately know what to do with their sabers. The blocks resemble juicy fruit to be cut, which is similar to fruit ninja, a popular mobile game. The player’s instinct to duck occurs when they see a large wall flying towards their head. By applying the players’ existing mental models to the game, Beat Saber delivers an intuitive user experience without the need for much explaining.

The starting tutorial features bass-heavy electronic music with blocks being in sync with the strong beats. After slashing through these blocks, the player quickly feels badass, and also learns the rules of the game, eg. blue is right, red is left. This new power makes the player feel good about themselves and encourages them to keep playing.

After playing for a while, players seeking personal glory try to beat their best scores, or even training to obtain the highest score in the global leaderboards. This social element is a great way to encourage replayability.

However, the finesse doesn’t stop there. Content creators such as Artemisblue have honed their skills to the point that they are able to dance expressively, while slicing boxes to the beat. Please watch the 1-min video above.

By allowing experts to accomplish such impressive feats, while at the same time remaining easy and enjoyable for beginners makes Beat Saber a truly fantastic VR experience.

Nevertheless, there are still some aspects which can be worked on.

Areas in which Beat Saber can Improve

1. Legalising user-made content

Across all game review platforms, the most common complaint about the base game was the limited selection of songs and genres. Players got bored of the songs and maps quickly.

In response to this, a highly enthusiastic modding community has sprung up around the game, making mods which let users customise every aspect of the game, from loading custom songs with custom environments, to using custom avatars. It is relatively easy to mod the game, given the numerous guides and tutorials produced by this community. This has resulted in a cornucopia of user-generated content, richly enhancing the gameplay.

Although these mods bring the game (and its revenue) to the next level, the CEO of Beat Saber cannot support them because the producers of the new songs in the mods do not get paid for their work. The situation has reached a stalemate, with the dev team neither supporting nor hindering the modding community.

One possible solution Beat Saber can adopt is to partner with music distribution services such as CD Baby or Distrokid to give royalties to artists whenever their songs are played. These services already do so when their music is streamed on Spotify, YouTube, or even Tiktok. Surely something can be worked out with Beat Saber.

2. Menu selection method

If you’re like me and find it hard to keep still after an intense workout, then you may find this point relatable. To navigate the menus between songs, users have to point a ray from their controller to select small buttons on the menu in the distance. This fiddly job requires concentration and precision, both of which the player may not possess after a physically demanding song. It would be better if other selection methods were used, such as slicing a block placed near each option in the menu. That would be much easier to do while catching my breath.

3. Safety

Finally, Beat Saber doesn’t have its own safety system. Players have reported hitting tables with their hands and toppling furniture. Though the game does warn the player before the enter, a warning in a literal wall of text is likely to be overlooked. Guardian on the Oculus Quest 2 is a great example in terms of ensuring user safety.

Overall, Beat Saber is a VR experience that is easy to learn, fun to play, and rewarding to master. It sets the standard for VR experiences to come, and I can’t wait to try it out for myself.

Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted is a VR game that I enjoy recommending to first-time VR players. It consists of a collection of mini-games that pertain to a novel theme that could be described as Survival Horror Puzzle.

On PC, these mini-games were interesting at best, the animatronics were stuck on a flat-screen. I felt safe controlling the mouse to interact with the various UI elements. In VR, however, the experience was astonishingly brought to the next level. I was right there in that enclosed, darkroom. Alone. I couldn’t see the people around me. No matter where I looked it was just dark creepy aesthetics. There was no way out. It was truly immersive. I can’t help but be engaged within the game.

In the PC version, there was a UI button to click which will bring the user to a screen that shows the CCTV footage of the animatronics (who are out to kill you) at various locations.

In the VR version, the developers made a fantastic choice of embedding all UI components within the virtual environment.

This time, the buttons were right in front of you, as if you were right there in front of a working CCTV system. You have to physically “press” the buttons within the game with your virtual hands as you would have done intuitively in real life. There were no distracting UI elements or HUD to break the immersion in this 3D environment. This particular design choice deepens the immersion I felt in the game.

Another interesting thing to note is that the jumpscares here were noticeably more terrifying. Look at this moment where the player runs out of battery. The doors are now left wide open for the animatronics to attack. The game doesn’t just end here. The audio-visual experience provided by this moment is simply beautiful. The lights turn off. You hear the distinct sound of the power running out. A pair of eyes blink open to stare at you. Then an oddly friendly and creepy tune of “Toreador March” plays in the background. You are left to dread your impending doom while still leaving you with a slight chance of surviving the night. You never know for sure. And most importantly, your senses had no way out of this virtual environment. You can close your eyes, but you won’t fully avoid the light. This particular experience can be truly terrifying for the player (and also fun to watch as a bystander). This moment is simply one of many ways the player gets jump-scared in the game, but it is my favorite one that encapsulates all the various techniques needed to engineer a scare.

There were some features in particular that I believe could be improved.

Firstly, the replayability value is quite low in multiple game modes. There are certain techniques that you will pick up to deal with the game’s various puzzles. For several game modes, once you master a few simple techniques, the game becomes repetitive and slightly boring. This could be owed to the fact that this game is a collection of mini-games. There was great breadth but little depth in some places.

Secondly, on certain modes, as seen in the video clipped above, the environment’s color scheme was altered. In the above example, the environment becomes desaturated. In my opinion, this particular mode drains both the game’s life and creepiness factor. As a player, I felt less appealed and less engaged with the environment.

Thirdly, while the precursors to the jumpscare were well done, as discussed above. I believe more work could have been done by the developer to make the actual jumpscare more terrifying. The environment blacks out immediately prior to the scare and breaks to an animatronic screaming to your face. This seems to lack a little polish. I felt that the scares could integrate a little more to the user’s surrounding 3D environment to completely seal in the immersion of the scare.

Finally, there were limited interactions with prizes in the game. The player can only hold the prizes around or put it near the face to “consume” it. I understand this is merely a fun gimmick for the player to fool around in a VR environment. But it is albeit too repetitive and predictable. I don’t actually look forward to winning these “prizes” upon completing a level. Several simple ways this can be improved are by giving the prizes more interactive components such as buttons to perform actions/generate sounds or movable limbs instead of just existing as a static prop.

Overall I enjoyed this game immensely, not only as a player but also as a bystander. 🙂