Blood & Truth for PSVR hands-on — VR shooting gallery is getting better

When I tried out Sony’s Blood & Truth virtual reality shooter last fall, it was pretty rough. I couldn’t hit much when I was aiming at enemies a few yards away in the action crime VR game.

But I tried it out again this week, and the game looks better than it did before. Sony’s London studio has been working on improving the shooting gallery title, which began as a PlayStation VR demo.

It still makes shooting more visceral. When you have to load your gun, you reach down to your belt, squeeze a button on the PlayStation Move controller, and move it to your other hand in a gesture that shows you are jamming a clip into your handgun.

The game also has simpler movement. Now, you just push a button and move to a nearby location, where you can duck and get into cover. Once you are there, you can shoot at all of the enemies that are surrounding you. You can empty a whole clip at the enemies and then reload your gun. Fortunately, you don’t have to worry about not having enough clips. They appeared to be plentiful in my demo.

The same kind of loading and shooting applies to any kind of gun, from the handgun to the shotgun or the machine gun. You can also toss grenades at enemies. This demo had enemies hiding behind boxes or barriers, and enemies on upper or lower floors of buildings, shooting at you from different angles. I mowed down a lot of enemies, and I was a reasonably good shot. The targeting was a lot more forgiving than it was the previous time, and the tutorial was helpful too.