It was just as the robotic bartender placed my Winterberry Margarita in front of me that I heard the sound of male shrieks. Three or four lads, squealing in terror.
A wall separated us, but I didn’t need to see them to know exactly what was going on. Their choice of profanity alone gave it away.
They were playing Deadwood Phobia, Sandbox Virtual Reality Birmingham’s brand-spanking-new zombie game. “We get a lot of screams with this one,” our host at the Grand Central experience told me and my two pals.
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“It’s also quite jumpy,” he added, just moments after we signed a waiver which, I’ll be honest, I did not read fully. Is it possible I signed my entire life away? Unlikely, but, it’s possible.
I stirred in my maggie in a vain attempt to make the tequila slightly less potent, knowing we were next to put on the VR headsets and shoot up some zombie dudes. “It’s a fun little gimmick, really,” our host said in reference to the two robotic arms which had served us our cocktails.
As I looked over his shoulder, one of them was doing what I can only describe as a sort of, jig, while Dua Lipa’s New Rules played in the background. Its ‘personality’ is closer to C-3PO, than Terminator, and I’m cool with that.
The robot bartender hard at work
(Image: Harry Leach)
After we strapped on our gear, which included motion sensors on our arms and feet, we moved into one of Sandbox’s VR rooms. Our room, like the others, was wide and bright with plain white walls.
It also had a window looking out to shoppers in Grand Central. “Do you reckon they can see us?” I asked my mates Ben and Will. It was hard to tell if they were checking out their reflections, or slightly mind-boggled at how ridiculous the three of us looked.
Soon our headsets were on, the game had started, and we were ready to kill. For anyone who hasn’t experienced VR before, it’s quite hard to explain simply how brilliant it can be.
In Deadwood Phobia, which takes place in a derelict medical facility, where ugly dead things crawl up walls and over furniture, we transformed into soldiers with builds not too dissimilar to Master Chief in the Halo series. Jacked, basically. Shredded.
I’ve done VR before, but the feeling of extending your hand, or moving your feet, or turning your gun to the side with one hand, and noticing your in-game character follows your movements exactly, never gets old. At one point, I lay down on the floor in a David Brent-style pose while zombies ate away at me. The staff here must see some strange behaviour.
And the amount of times we bumped into each other, in actual, real life, while trying to move out the way of huge troll zombies was far too often. About midway through I realised exactly why there’s waivers. Maybe I should have read it after all.
But, once we got into the rhythm of things, and remembered our gaming roots, we essentially kicked ass, taking out wave after wave of horrible creatures. I use ‘we’ lightly, because I finished with a total score roughly 10,000 below everyone else.
Our group found the game quite funny, rather than scary, but that’s because it’s simply just great, great fun and a laugh with your friends. But we’re also fairly unserious people. So there’s that too.
If you’re jumpy though, and have doubts over if you’ll be able to handle it, Sandbox has plenty of other games on offer. And I can’t wait to get back there and try them myself.