If I had to describe the Serious Sam franchise to someone, I’d probably tell them it’s like Duke Nukem, but actually good still. When Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope was announced during E3 this year, it came as a bit of surprise to everyone, fans of the franchise included, seeing as how it’s most definitely not Serious Sam 4, which is still in development supposedly.
At the annual gaming expo, we went hands-on with Croteam’s latest and came away very impressed. While it is, on its face, another wave shooter for VR — a genre that people are already starting to grow tired of — the over-the-top action, humor, and bombastic gore equal a valid excuse to dive into the genre once more.
Early last month, we saw the news that Croteam had actually created a working minigun prototype accessory for Serious Sam VR:
.@Croteam has been creating some fun prototype accessories to test with Serious Sam VR. pic.twitter.com/bp5Lu5WuiL
— HTC Vive (@htcvive) August 12, 2016
In a follow-up tweet, HTC Vive’s Twitter account elaborated that it was “just for fun” but that the barrel does spin when you’re using it, which sounds awesome. We’d imagine fans of the franchise that own an HTC Vive would happily drop some cash to get their hands on one of these, seeing as how gun accessories for VR are anything but unheard of at this point.
Alas, that’s relatively unlikely. UploadVR reached out to Croteam in regard to the minigun, and Damjan Mravunac, Creative Director at the company, responded.
“The gun you saw serves as a VR controller and it won’t be produced in too many copies (so far we built 3), as it’s expensive and needs heavy customization of levels and gameplay,” Mravunac said. “We are first and foremost game developers, this is something we did just for fun and promotion. Okay, okay, I’ll admit that most of us wanted to play with minigun for years!”
In addition to spinning when you use it, they’ve actually designed it in such a way that makes it fully functional for playing the game as well.
“It has embedded HTC Vive wand inside left chamber which is used for tracking, fire trigger which both activates spinning of barrels and Vive main trigger button, and players can dual-wield it in real life and see the virtual representation in-game,” Mravunac said. “We could have simply used two dumbbells but that would have looked… well, let’s just say an actual minigun looks way better.”
You might be asking yourself at this point, “Why does it matter what it looks like if you can’t see it while you’re inside VR?” To that I I would respond by asking you to shut your face. You can still feel it even if you can’t see it while playing and you do see it before putting the headset on, which reinforces the immersion. Also it looks badass. Just look at it:
Maybe if demand is high enough, they’ll consider a limited run of units to give away or sell to fans? When I asked how long it took to make, Mravunac said, “One month from initial meeting with the guy who built this for us till we had functional prototype. The minigun is assembled from parts that are easily obtainable everywhere (PVC pipes, cordless drill, etc) and it’s easy to repair it if something goes wrong. We can’t wait to test it at the next show we go to, hahaha.”
Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope is currently slated for an Early Access Summer 2016 release date, which must mean this month, otherwise you may want to plan for a delay.
