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Oculus Quest 2 Review: A Lot of Whoa with Some Hmm
Tuesday, October 13th, marked a big event for many Apple fans around the world. At the same time, it marked a pretty fun event for me: the Oculus Quest 2 arrived at my doorstep, and I was ready to take my first dive into the deep end of virtual reality. The experience was, as the kids put it, “all that and a bag of chips” (disclaimer: not sure if kids really put it that way).
Before getting the Quest, I had experimented with VR, but it had been a while. I played with the first version of the Oculus Rift, which didn’t have controllers back then. The experience was cool, but it simply felt gimmicky. There wasn’t enough interaction, and the field-of-view constrained me to tunnel vision. Since then, I gave up on VR, disappointed by my expectation of what it could have been and what I actually experienced.
Fast forward to 2020, and Oculus came out with the Oculus Quest 2. It is an untethered device that has two to three hours of battery life. It seemed like enough power — how much time could I actually spend playing VR games, anyway? More importantly, the price dropped by $100 since the first version. As a curious person, I wanted to see how far VR had come since its inception. So I pulled the trigger and purchased it.
Overall, the experience has been great, and I’m still playing with the Quest 2 between drafts of this review. There are some limitations, but those are more reflective of the state of VR in general, rather than specific to just this newly released device.
What’s Great About the Quest 2
All the Things You Can Touch, Hit, Poke, Press, Stab, Throw, Juggle, Bounce…
Oculus anticipated many new adopters for the Quest 2 and pre-empted it with the app, First Steps for Quest 2. Within the first fifteen minutes, I threw things, bounced things, hit things, launched things, danced with things, shot things, dual-wielded and continued to shoot things, and much more. I’ve never experienced such a fun, immersive tutorial. It really got me excited about VR.
