Mario And Zelda's New VR Modes Are Not Good

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All images in this post are captured from games running in VR mode. That requires the hardware to render two images, one for each eye, hence the split view.
All images in this post are captured from games running in VR mode. That requires the hardware to render two images, one for each eye, hence the split view.

Nintendo just added free updates to Nintendo Switch blockbusters Super Mario Odyssey and The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild that you have to do, but you'll be fine if you skip them.

Mario Odyssey'S new VR mode is one of the most important things in the world.

Breath of the Wild'S VR mode lets you play the whole game in a basic 3D world.

Neither is much of an advertisement for virtual reality gaming in general and may serve as an indictment of the limits of VR on the relatively low-powered Switch. To play or game in VR, users need to slide the system into the cardboard and plastic goggles that are packaged with the new Nintendo VR Lab Kit. The goggles are mostly fine, but do not seem powerful enough to generate VR experience for the game.

Nintendo Switch VR requires the Nintendo Lab VR goggles. While the goggles are mostly cardboard and therefore very light, the set-up necessitates that a person wears the system to their face. There is no headstrap, and the act of manipulating game controls from your face can be awkward. It is awkward for the Mario and Zelda VR modes.
Nintendo Switch VR requires the Nintendo Lab VR goggles. While the goggles are mostly cardboard and therefore very light, the set-up necessitates that a person wears the system to their face. There is no headstrap, and the act of manipulating game controls from your face can be awkward. It is awkward for the Mario and Zelda VR modes.

VR gaming requires hardware to send split images, one to the left eye and one to the right. That's why it's all in this post, I'm playing VR, show a left-eye view and a right-eye view. This product is only available in the context of a graphics system. Screenshots in this post look better, albeit flatter, than what I saw in VR. The Switch version of VR is not a place where the player is in a space, so it can only create the sensation of a virtual world of a fixed location. inside a virtual space as you move your head or body.

Tea Mario Odyssey VR mode is separate from the main game. It is spread across three playable levels and a bonus interactive concert. The levels are set in the game of Kingdom Hat, Seaside Kingdom and Luncheon Kingdom. Each is a custom version of the Kingdom that is set up to feel like the small virtual spaces surround the player. To experience this, the user puts the switch into the VR goggles, sits or stands while holding the goggles to their face, and then enters the Kingdom.

Illustration for article titled Mario And Zelda's New VR Modes Are Not Good

If you turn your head, you'll find that the Mario Kingdoms appear to be rendered all around you. Your perspective is fixed in the center of the world, as if you are watching Mario in this special world. All VR gaming inherently presents game worlds in 3D, which adds depth to what you can see. That said, being fixed in one location while having to run Mario all around the camera, often straying pretty far from it, does not look good and is not fun.

Challenges like this could look cool in VR if they did not seem so far away. Unfortunately, Switch VR for Mario Odyssey works with fixed camera positions. The sense of scale afforded by more advanced VR set-ups that allow for movement within VR world, is limited here.
Challenges like this could look cool in VR if they did not seem so far away. Unfortunately, Switch VR for Mario Odyssey works with fixed camera positions. The sense of scale afforded by more advanced VR set-ups that allow for movement within VR world, is limited here.

The Kingdoms are sprinkled with some simple challenges in which Mario collects musical notes, triggers the appearance of musical instruments and then hands the instruments to the appropriate musicians.

It takes just a few minutes to reunite the musicians in each Kingdom with their instruments. The reward is a New Donk City concert, in which Pauline belts out Mario Odyssey'S theme while players can make Mario hop through the crowd or jump on stage with the singer and her band.

Look straight ahead and you'll see the concert's performers ...
Look straight ahead and you'll see the concert's performers …
... turn around and see the concert's audience.
… turn around and see the concert's audience.

VR can often at least convey the magical feeling that, wow, we're inside this virtual place. That feeling is not very strong Mario OdysseyVR modes, simply because there is a show around the player. The graphics are grainy. Mario is alternately too close and hard to control or too far away and too tiny to enjoy seeing. The scale of the levels stands out in the Seaside Kingdom, where the camera is low and the height of a beanstalk that grows and of an umbrella-jumping challenge of some sense of scale.

Breath of the Wild'S VR is also deflating. In theory, you could play through the whole of this all-time-great game in the new VR mode. It's a game from the game's main menu. But to do so would appear to be folly. The VR mode for this game does not really help you. In the default VR setting, there's no turning of your head to a virtual world around you. Instead, Breath of the Wild'S default VR offering amounts to show the game-through the goggles-with stereoscopic 3D depth in a perspective that stays fixed in front of you. You'll feel like you're a little closer to Link's world, but it does not make you feel like you're here. Instead, it's more like you're in the mood for a movie.

If you turn on the option to "drive with motion controls" you can change the camera by turning your head. This is better but still not great. Ideally, this would mean that you could look forward to seeing you, then turning your head around you. In this mode, however, the turn of your head instead of the game orbit around Link. By turning your head 180 degrees, you're basically just moving the camera so that it's now on the other side of him. He's always in frame. If you look up, you do not leave him behind and see the sky above. Rather than moving the camera closer to the sky above, replicating what would have happened by tilting the in-game camera up in non-VR move. Looking down does not just show the ground. Instead, it moves the camera over. All of this feels more like a traditional orbital movement of a video game's camera and functions very similarly to the game's non-VR camera is controlled by an analog stick. This alternate VR mode does not have the least impact on you, but it does not make you feel much better. If you do try Breath of the Wild VR, try it with this setting on. It's the best option, even if it's not great.

Correction – 1:20 am: I had been here in Breath of the Wild VR was fixed. That's only in the default mode. I have added a description of the better but still limited

Illustration for article titled Mario And Zelda's New VR Modes Are Not Good

like Odyssey, Breath of the Wild is much grainier in VR. It also has a small interface that makes the game's mini-map and makes it easier to use it.

Breath of the Wild's VR can bring you closer to the action, but that is offset by grainy graphics and a stripped-down user interface.
Breath of the Wild'S VR can bring you closer to the action, but that is offset by grainy graphics and a stripped-down user interface.
For comparison, Breath of the Wild not in VR.
For comparison, a similar moment in Breath of the Wild not in VR.

Compounding the limitations I've never been able to say that VR for the Nintendo Switch is a huge arm workout. The Labo's VR goggles have no head strap. To use them, remember, are cardboard but contain a Nintendo Switch, up to your face.

It's no wonder that Mario OdysseyVR mode often encourages the user to take breaks. That's probably for arm health, but, phew, it's up to five, while running around in some Mario world. How would someone play the entire Zelda game this way? Well, Breath of the Wild'S default fixed camera angle-the fact that turning your head does not change the angle at which you see the game world-means you can at least lay on your back and play while holding the goggles to your face. If you opt for the "get along with motion control" setting instead, then you need to play the game upright, holding the system up to your face. Note that because of the lack of a head strap for the goggles, the switch is necessary to be affixed to the system, so you're playing with your controllers. It's weird and not at all a good way to play on Switch. You can detach the controllers, but then you need a strap to hold the goggles to your face.

If there's one thing Nintendo's Mario VR is great at, it's warning the user to take breaks.
If there's one thing Nintendo's Mario VR is great at, it's warning the user to take breaks.

VR game design is still a young format. Top developers struggle to provide gamers with great experiences in this ostensibly magical tech that lets us get inside a virtual world. It was exciting that Nintendo was going to try, first with its custom Lab VR games but also with VR for its two flagship franchises. Sadly, even the brilliant minds of Nintendo have been able to deal with Mario and Zelda games.

Seeing these game worlds in the kind of VR that the Switch can render just is not exciting. Nintendo has gotten this before, but given the lackluster results of VR for these Nintendo titles, can I humbly suggest they try something else? Perhaps, VR Pokémon Snap?

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