Moss: Book 2 review – VR gaming at its heart-warming best

metro.co.uk:

One of the best VR games ever finally gets a sequel, as Quill the mouse returns in a new adventure that’s twice the size of the original.

Almost unbelievably, virtual reality has been around since the 1970s. Naturally, in those days it was clumsy, catastrophically expensive, and only really suited for high end industrial applications. In the intervening 50 years prices have come way down and the resolution of head mounted displays has improved almost out of all recognition, but it’s still a medium that stubbornly refuses to become mainstream, despite the ongoing efforts of both Meta and Sony.

And that’s a pity because the experience of using VR for the first time is revelatory. Like the transition from SNES and Mega Drive to the original PlayStation, it feels like something completely different, quite unlike the incremental improvements of normal console generations. When you give it a try, the first thing you notice is its ability to make you feel as though you’re somewhere else entirely.

That’s something the original Moss did to impressive effect. Although you spend your time in the game controlling a tiny mouse, you’re very much a part of her world. She looks up at you, literally, gets startled if you leant in too close, or reaches up for a miniature high five when she’d completed a tough battle. Combined with the wonderful subtlety and expressiveness of its animation, playing the original game felt uniquely personal.

At the end of the first game your mouse heroine, Quill killed a giant snake and when you regain control of her in the sequel, you start next to its inert corpse, exactly where you left off. Although you do control Quill via the joypad, technically you’re playing as an unnamed, mask wearing creature