I have long been a staunch enemy of the so-called VR "experience". Early ones were terrible. Little more than Unity environmental mesh flythroughs for upwards of $5. This soured me so intensely on the very concept that I did everything I could to turn others away from paying for VR experiences.
Senza Peso and Aartal opened my eyes to how wrong I was. Read my review of Aartal here and my review of Senza Peso here. Having gotten my feet wet, I became willing to give this genre another try. After all, what is a VR experience but a kind of scene demo, an artform which I have a longstanding appreciation for?
Old Friend is a VR experience by Tyler Hurd, maker of the much celebrated Butts. If you've seen that one before, you probably recognized his style at work in Old Friend. It's equally ridiculous and charming, but longer. Just long enough that I don't feel ripped off at $3, but close. $1.99 would've been easier to stomach. My rule of thumb is that a VR experience should never get anywhere close to $5.
This experience is bombastic and cheerful, naturally set to the track "Old Friend" by the band Future Islands. All of these experiences seem to be animated according to a song that they're built around, which is sort of a shame since they would have more replayability if they reacted in different ways to different songs you could supply from your own collection.
Fantasynth is an absolutely jaw dropping experience built, like Old Friend, around a song. "Chez Nous" by N'to, this time. It resembles late 1990s, early 2000s conceptions of Cyberspace, and the sort of imagery you probably had on your Trapper Keeper. I really dig this abstract geometric "Cyber" style and will never say no to it.
The shaders are the real star of the show here, as objects have luminous bands flowing over their surface, reflective and refractive surfaces, all in all an absolute feast for the eyes. It starts very slow, but give it a chance. This one's free after all, you have nothing to lose by giving it a shot and seeing everything it has to offer.
Remembering is an odd one. Made by Monobanda, it's meant to me a symbolic representation of birth. I can see that. it's just so damned colorful that it hurt my eyes, which weed makes more sensitive for some reason.
Your mileage may vary. My taste is not going to mesh with everybody elses. It is $1.99 however so you ought to be pretty sure that extremely simple, colorful imagery is what you want before you plunk it down.
By contrast, Sunmachine VR is one I immediately fell in love with. More "Odyssey Into the Mind's Eye" style imagery, but of course real time and stereoscopic. What a joy to behold. This is the kind of thing I'd like to buy more of. It's no Senza Peso, but that's a tough act to follow.
You will fly through various scenes, some of them dark and mysterious, others resembling alien planets. Still others resemble the grid from Tron draped over a mountain range. There's a lot to like here.
The one upside of crafting experiences inextricably around a specific song is that the imagery can react to it in spot-on, predetermined ways that no procedural algorithm could possibly match the effect of. This one was also two bucks, but they were well spent.
Carry Me, based on the song by electronic musician Kygo, is also available on the PSVR. Unsurprisingly since it is produced by Sony Music Entertainment. The production values are accordingly stellar. The environments are mostly natural but decked out in neon accents, like bioluminescence.
The scene with the northern lights over the fields of glowing flowers took my breath away, and it was very elegant how it all returned to where it started by the end. This one was also $2 IIRC but again, I can recommend it for that price with no hesitation. $2 is about right for experiences of this length, providing their production values are good.
Conclusion: VR experiences have come a long way and really stepped up their game. Many of them are now actually worth the asking price, and some of the best ones (like Senza Peso, Fantasynth and Aartal) are actually free.
What are experiences good for? I didn't know either until I tried them while blasted. It turns out, in that headspace, they are the perfect thing. Not a game so you don't need to worry about figuring anything out or finding your way, just recline in your comfy seat and be absorbed by the unfolding spectacle of light, color and sound.