Anyone who has spent time in a battle royale game has found themselves in a situation where you run into a player who's managed to find a weapon before you have one yourself. You can run for it, you can try to punch them before they shoot you, or you can accept your fate and curse the loot spawn gods.
Stand Out: VR Battle Royale gives you a new option: you can reach out with your virtual hands and snatch their gun away. And it's fucking hilarious.
This exact scenario happened to me today when I was trying Stand Out for the first time, only I was the guy with the gun. I heard another player nearby and was searching the building for him, and found him hiding on all fours under a table. This being VR, this means he was quite literally on all fours on his real floor. Cute.
I crouched down next to the table and pointed my gun at him, but before I could shoot he grabbed it out of my hands. What resulted was a ridiculous VR tussle over the gun as we both grabbed it out of each other's hands a few times. I even pulled the magazine out at one point, which gave us something new to struggle over. And, as this is battle royale, the "gun fight" concluded in the traditional battle royale fashion.
Here's the video of the encounter, but please note there is profanity if your speakers are on. (I didn't have my mic enabled, but other players did):
Stand Out is in Early Access at the moment, and there's more than a few rough edges. The controls aren't great, it's definitely not a good looking game at this point, and it provides the most basic of battle royale experiences. Jump from a plane (which you're not inside of, you're just hovering next to), land on a bland-looking island, search some ugly buildings for a gun and some ammo, and shoot people when you see them.
But I can see the potential for battle royale in VR. It's fun to pick up a weapon in one hand, pick up a mag in the other, and slap it into place. You can stick extra mags right to your body (though you can't see your body) which makes for a better inventory system than opening up a menu. Need a fresh clip? Just look down and grab it off your chest.
It's fun to literally lean your head and shoulders out of a window, and to aim by physically holding the virtual weapon up and peer through the scope. And, despite there being relatively few people out there with a headset and a copy of the game (the peak player count today was 136), I never had to wait for more than a couple of minutes for a match (which has about 30 players in it). The island is pretty small, and the circle closes quickly, so matches don't typically take more than 15 minutes.
Stand Out is definitely very rough and not much to look at at the moment, and it's already priced pretty steeply at $25 for what you get, even if wrestling with someone over a gun makes you laugh so hard you can barely breathe. But, if you own a VR headset and want some battle royale action, it's one of your only options right now—Pavlov, another VR shooter, plans to add battle royale this year as well.
