Just under eight months after it first launched on the Oculus Rift, CCP Games’ EVE: Valkyrie [Review: 9/10] is finally available on the HTC Vive from today, though it’s lacking some features we’d really hoped to see.
Valkyrie on Vive does not support the kit’s position-tracked wands, which are sold with the unit itself. Instead, players have to use a gamepad, as with the Rift and PlayStation VR versions. Though this is hardly surprising, it’s still a shame; back at EVE Fanfest in April the developer told us that it was looking into motion controls for the Vive version. In an announcement blog Lead Game Designer, Andrew Willans, stated that the developer couldn’t find a button mapping combination that was as intuitive as a gamepad.
Still, Willans did state that the team wasn’t “ruling out” motion controls in the future, but had decided to play to the game’s strengths for launch. Perhaps once Oculus Touch is available and motion controls are a standard across all of EVE‘s platforms we’ll see some integration.
Other than that this is the same EVE: Valkyrie you know and love. It’s still one of VR’s most expensive games at $59.99 with several premium DLC packs, but CCP is sweetening the deal with a free copy of its sci-fi gallery shooter, Gunjack, for anyone that buys the game before November 24th. There’s also a double XP weekend running until November 21st so early adopters can get a head start. It looks like anyone that buys the game from Steam will be able to play it on the Rift as well as the Vive, too.
Not only that but Vive owners will be able to go head-to-head with PlayStation VR and Oculus Rift players thanks to a free update that launched earlier in the year. As far as we know, Valkyrie is currently the only game to offer cross-play across all three major VR headsets.
