It was looking like a pretty quiet week for PlayStation VR releases. As it turns out, one of fall’s most anticipated VR experiences launches on the platform tomorrow for free.
Activision and Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare Jackal Assault VR Experience is hitting the PlayStation Store on November 4th. Previously it was thought that the experience would be free to anyone that bought a PlayStation 4 copy of the main Infinite Warfare game, which arrives on the same date. However, an Activision blog post this week confirmed that it would now be free to all PS4 owners.
Kevin Kelly, Editorial Manager at Activision wrote: “We’re also excited to announce that the Jackal Assault VR Experience will be available to all PS4 owners, not just for players who have purchased the game, as a free, added bonus on November 4.” Of course, you’ll need to actually own a PlayStation VR yourself to access the content. A possible release on the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift was not mentioned.
Jackal Assault puts you in the cockpit of the titular spacecraft, which stars in this year’s iteration of the first-person shooter juggernaut. You’ll be shot into space in a battle similar to the ones you’ll see in the full game, which does not support PS VR. It’s only a brief experience and not a full game, much like the upcoming Star Wars Battlefront: Rogue One X-Wing VR Mission that will be released soon for Battlefront owners. An FAQ for the experience reveals that it was developed with the help of Paper Crane Games, an indie developer formed in 2015 to specialize in VR.
We tried the experience for ourselves back in September. We thought it was a great deal of fun, but ultimately too short for its own good.
It’s not the full Call of Duty experience inside your PS VR headset, but it’s better than nothing. In the past series developer Treyarch has suggested it would like to implement VR into one of its games, but the tech will need to improve some more before that happens.
