My Quest 2 is pretty much just a thing I play Beat Saber on at this point, but it’s always nice to see a flat game ported to VR. I’ve played headset implementations of Quake 2 and various other ’90s shooters, and it’s always felt right. The 1990s was peak VR mania, and seeing the first-person games of that era through goggles that get foggy if I put them on my hot face on a cold day seems like exactly where they belong. I did not expect to see Street Fighter in VR, however.
The VR implementation of Street Fighter 6 comes to us via Praydog in the latest version of REFramework, which adds VR support to all RE Engine games. That means it supports the modern Resident Evils 2 through 4, 7, and Village, but also Devil May Cry 5 and Monster Hunter Rise. And, yes, now it supports Street Fighter 6.
It’s not an obvious choice for VR, because who wants to see E. Honda slam them down in first-person? OK, somebody out there absolutely does want to see that, but it’s not what REFramework delivers. Instead it’s implemented as if you’re in the front row of the crowd cheering on your favorite fighters of the street variety. The camera isn’t always 100% under your control, zooming in varying amounts for special moves and certain counters in a way I imagine might be a bit disorienting, but it still looks pretty neat.
Most of the footage shows it being played without a HUD, but it’s clearly there as an option, and you can see what it looks like with health bars in the Juri versus Cammy match around the one-minute mark. You can also see some animation oddities, presumably due to your increased freedom to view things from angles of your choosing, like Cammy’s head fully leaving her body like a bloodless Mortal Kombat fatality.
Praydog has also taken over work on a universal VR injector for games made in the Unreal Engine, which could eventually mean seeing any game made in Unreal available in VR, with demo footage showing Stray, Ghostrunner, Back For Blood, Satisfactory, The Quarry, and even Life is Strange: True Colors all turned virtual. Maybe I should try playing something other than Beat Saber after all.