Beat Saber Oculus Quest Review

When people think of Virtual Reality games, there are a few thoughts that come immediately to mind: Job Simulator, Pavlov, Superhot, Half Life: Alyx, Boneworks, and of course: Beat Saber. If you have a Virtual Reality headset, Beat Saber is considered by many to be a staple: If you have a headset that can play it, you must have Beat Saber.

For those of you unfamiliar with it, Beat Saber is a Virtual Reality Rhythm game. Players wield two colored sabers, and must cut through the correctly colored blocks while avoiding bombs and ducking around walls, all to the beat of various songs. The game has seen partnerships with big name groups such as Monster Cat, Panic! At The Disco, Imagine Dragons, and even Green Day. On top of this, players on PC and Oculus Quest (Sorry PlayStation VR fans!) have modded the game so they can play custom maps and songs, opening up the roster to the infinite world of music.

Beat Saber itself, with no mods or changes or DLC packs, is already stellar. There might not be the largest roster of songs within the base game, but each song has a unique level for every difficulty, and as the game has been out, additions like the 90 degrees and 360 degrees modes have added even more exciting challenges. These are on top of the already available one-handed levels, which are a fun challenge in themselves, but not very mechanically different from the base game. Of course, if you want more official content, you can buy the DLC packs to add a slew of new songs.

But those are comments anyone could say about Beat Saber. What makes the Oculus Quest version so different? Well, the answer is simple: The System. Unlike every other system out there, the Oculus Quest is totally wireless, charging with a USB-C port and using AA batteries for the two controllers. Without the constraints of wires, motion can be so much more fluid. When I played Beat Saber with PSVR, I was always worried about getting tangled up in wires or accidentally unplugging something while trying to deftly dodge virtual walls flying at me.

As for actual gameplay, compared to playing the game on PC and playing the game on PSVR, the game feels perfectly average. On PC, the game is clearly the smoothest, using the power of a VR-Ready Graphics Card to run buttery smooth. However, playing Beat Saber on PS4 using PSVR, the game could feel sluggish at times. On the Oculus Quest, both of these statements are somehow true and false. There’s nothing that makes me say the game is overly sluggish, but the smoothness of VR on PC isn’t quite there, either.

One place where the Oculus Quest outshines both PC and PSVR is 360 degrees mode. While you can play 360 on PC, you cannot play it on PSVR, and I wouldn’t recommend playing it either anyway. The entire premise of this variant mode is simple: Instead of blocks coming at you straight on, like in standard, or from anywhere on a 90 degree axis like in 90 degrees mode, blocks come at you from all sides. These levels are uniquely challenging, and require an open playspace, something you really can’t get easily on any system other than the Oculus Quest.

Alternatively, a place where I have to deduct some points from the Oculus Quest version is its modding potential. The system itself is not terribly difficult to mod or change, but currently the systems that have been designed for the Oculus Quest are not the cleanest. To add custom songs to this version of Beat Saber, most people will point you to BMBF. This is a fine service, but it has a penchant to run a little slow sometimes. When syncing up my bookmarks to load up new songs, I sometimes had to hit the button four or five times until it actually went through. Of course I can’t really hold this against Beat Saber itself, although I will take this opportunity to say that fans are still eagerly awaiting for Beat Games to introduce custom levels, and I will go as far as to say it would take this game from nearly flawless to absolutely perfect.

If you own a virtual reality headset, be it a Valve Index, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, PSVR, or Oculus Quest, you have the ability to own this game. With that in mind, why haven’t you bought it yet? Beat Saber may look like a simple rhythm game to many; it may look like the kind of game you could play a bit with friends at parties. It is so much more. Beat Saber is an exercise routine, it is a community of fans trying to help each other and boost each other up, it is probably one of the few ideal games to use as an introduction to VR.
 

Tyler Krasnai
Editor, NoobFeed
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