Reykjavík, Iceland—It took three long years, but CCP’s space dogfighter EVE Valkyrie finally released alongside the Oculus Rift last month, and it’s coming to the HTC Vive later this year (with cross-platform multiplayer, to boot). It’s one of the most polished built-for-VR games, and still one of my favorites even after all this time.
But it’s just the beginning for Valkyrie. CCP referred to it as an “Early Access” game during EVE: Fanfest 2016 on Thursday, which I think is a bit of a stretch—it’s not being sold as an Early Access game on the Oculus Store, as far as I know.
There’s quite a bit of content coming, nevertheless. First up is a new map, “Crossroads,” which we got a look at during Fanfest. It’s full of your usual collection of asteroids and a massive, spire-shaped space station. It’s gorgeous, but not too dissimilar from existing Valkyrie maps.
The bigger addition is a new “Carrier Assault” game mode. Unfortunately there was no hands-on with Carrier Assault at Fanfest, but CCP did show off a short trailer.
Think: Death Star. Carriers, which in normal matches just sort of hang out looking scary, are central to the new mode. Teams need to capture control points in order to bring down the opposing Carrier’s shields. Next up, strafing runs to destroy surface turrets.
And then the coup de grace: Flying into the central corridor of the Carrier to blow up the ship’s core from the inside, at which point the entire ship explodes.
As I said, I have no idea how it plays yet, but it looks damn cool, giving me those Millennium-Falcon-barely-escaping-the-exhaust-vent chills.
CCP says to expect the content update sometime this summer—hopefully early summer, as I do think Valkyrie could use a better objective-based mode. Then again, it’s probably more important for Oculus to figure out the Rift shipment snafu first so people can actually play.
[Disclosure: Until recently, my roommate worked at Lewis PR as part of CCP’s external PR team. He no longer does, but due to the timing of his departure we’re making a note of it during Fanfest 2016 anyway.]
