My gift for Christmas is sore arms from playing Beat Saber. It’s a serious workout playing high-difficulty maps.

That map shown in the head video is:

I consider Beat Saber to be one part of the essentials pack of modern VR gaming. As a rhythm game fan, it’s what got me hooked on VR, having played it at a VR arcade back when the HTC Vive was considered new. I visited that arcade multiple times and would spend my entire time slot playing Beat Saber. A few years later, I got a Valve Index and it’s still one of my go-to games when I use it, alongside Half-Life: Alyx.

Both sabers slashing down hard as mines approach

Water breaks!

Beat Saber is obviously a physically intense game, so I make sure to stretch beforehand. I also take water breaks every few songs or I’ll get too exhausted to play well. To help reduce fatigue, I move the rest of my body around with the beat so I’m not just standing still like a scarecrow.

Modding!

One great benefit of PC-powered VR is easy access to modding, and with Beat Saber, modding enables the ability to play community-made beatmaps, which are all I play. Interestingly, my preferences for music in rhythm games tends to be slightly different from my personal tastes. As a result, my collection of maps is very EDM-heavy since the strong beats feel fun to hit in-game.

I also use a camera mod that shows a view on my monitor that’s nicer for spectators and screen captures, which is why I have clips of my gameplay. I record with camera settings that roughly approximate what I see and my experience in the headset.

So many maps!

Over the past few years, I’ve collected a whole lot of maps. I’ve noticed that the maps I like to download and play fall into four categories:

  1. Really fun movement and patterns
  2. Music from another rhythm game (mainly osu!)
  3. Music I own
  4. Novelty (maps of stuff like “half life 1 medkit type beat”)

Here’s an example of movement that I find particularly fun, on a map that I like to play a lot as a warmup. Both hands move independently while having a matching rhythm.

Finally, here’s a “Bandcamp special”, a map I found just today by plugging in names from my music collection into search. Getting to play music I personally listen to is a treat. I think this would count as extremely active listening.

  • @Zahille7English
    3•3 days ago

    This, Blade & Sorcery, and HL: Alyx are gonna be the first games I get when I get a VR setup.

    • SilverchaseOPEnglish
      2•3 days ago

      I recommend you avoid games with continuous movement early on. Moving with joystick feels very bad until you get your VR legs. Also get the Lab, Valve’s free VR minigame collection.

      • @[email protected]English
        1•2 days ago

        One of the first VR games I played was No Man’s Sky, on base PS4. Very low res and frame rate, teleport movement possible on foot but obviously not while flying spaceships. And I may have tried spinning a bit (that’s a good trick).

        Got very sick, very fast.

        Nowadays I’m mostly fine playing continuous movement, even relatively fast-paced one. Tunnel effect helps, when it’s available.

        The only problems are on badly designed games (like those with forced, unpredictable “cinematic” camera movement, don’t do that in VR for fuck’s sake).