As much as I love Star Wars and as much as I love virtual reality, I’ve always been slightly disappointed by Disney’s official Star Wars VR offerings.
It’s not that they’re bad, mind. I’ve had a lot of fun with them, especially EA’s Star Wars: Squadrons. My problem is that they always feel like they do the bare minimum when it comes to immersion or run time.
I think Disney’s episodic VR games like the Vader Immortal trilogy are a good example of this. The pitch for that series in particular is great. Use the Force! Shoot blasters! Fight Vader! But, it all comes at the cost of a very slow and plodding adventure that has the pacing speed of a Bantha. When they work, they work. But most of the time they feel like bite sized adventures that were built to pass the time in a queue for a ride at Galaxy’s Edge, rather than be an epic space adventure in their own right.
And that’s where this week’s episode of VR Corner comes in. While this fan-made VR remaster of Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast has a run time of meer minutes, as you’ll see in the video above, it shows us the seeds of what a really immersive, Jedi combat VR game could look like. If only Disney allowed the player to be let off the leash a bit, that is.