Over the weekend I received early access to Rec Room’s first major update since the launch of Oculus Quest on May 21. I gathered in the living room with my family for a three-person adventure in Rec Room’s Quest For The Golden Trophy and the time we spent together ranks as some of the most fun I’ve ever had in VR.
Quest For The Golden Trophy opens up a whole new genre of co-op experience on the standalone Oculus Quest VR console. We still see people confused by this, so we have to remind folks that Oculus Quest is a VR headset with a pair of controllers that starts at around $400 all-in. No separate PC, game console, phone, or box is needed to run VR. There are dozens of high quality apps to buy on the headset, like Superhot and Beat Saber, that can provide hours of fun. It is simply magic to walk from an AR view of your room into a completely virtual space with the Insight tracking system. Facebook sent me two of the headsets (one for early review and another for attending F8) and I bought a third Quest too. We’ve now purchased Beat Saber across multiple devices so that we can compete for high scores.
Rec Room is the other staple across all of our headsets.
Quest For The Golden Trophy
Rec Room is a free-to-play social VR service out now on Quest, PSVR, and PC VR headsets made by Seattle-based Against Gravity. It is available in flat screen non-VR mode on some devices (such as PC and PS4) with full cross-platform multiplayer on everything — and it’s coming soon to iOS as well.
Rec Room is a little like Fortnite and Minecraft but, where those are centered on a single game, Rec Room meshes together creative tools with shared activities like paintball and dodgeball similar to Roblox. Not all of Rec Room’s activities are supported yet on the Oculus Quest, like the popular Rec Royale mode. Questing, though, is a major addition and puts you and up to three others on an adventure together down long hallways in search of this fabled Golden Trophy as you battle pop-up minions along the way. There are swords, bows, shields, and crossbows to use in fighting off the enemies. The bow, in particular, I found to be a joy to use with unlimited ammo and a solid demonstration of Quest’s tracking quality.
Quest For The Golden Trophy is a challenging, punishing cooperative adventure. You’ll surely encounter enemies coming at you from unexpected directions to send you all the way back to the beginning of the journey. This is challenging, even frustrating, in the best possible way. We had only our teamwork and our poor aim to blame for our failures. Even though my family and I haven’t yet succeeded in completing the adventure together, we battled hard all the way to Act V and the moments we shared along the way — from accidental friendly fire or a just-in-time fist bump revive — were some of the most memorable I’ve had in any headset.
Quest For The Golden Trophy is now available free on Oculus Quest in Rec Room including cross-play with players on all other platforms.
