Dead Secret is still one of the best VR games out there on the Gear VR. It’s been out on the Samsung and Oculus branded mobile VR headset for almost a year at this point and it remains as one of the most fully-developed and immersive experiences on the device. When developer Robot Invader ported the experience over to the Oculus Rift, the upgraded visuals and positional tracking alone were enough reason to revisit the now VR classic.Today, Robot Invader is expanding the game’s audience once again.
'With hints of influence from the likes of Seishi Yokomizo, Kon Ichikawa, and Nobuhiko Obayashi, this game feels like a lot of research went into it. I am looking.
Across all three VR versions — and the desktop version as well — Dead Secret is a point-and-click adventure game with murder mystery investigation elements. You don’t move around the environment using a keyboard or gamepad and you won’t be able to freely explore rooms.Instead, you use your gaze to interact with objects and find clues to figure out what happened in the mysterious murder of Harris Bullard. By bringing the experience over to the HTC Vive, Robot Invader has added Vive motion controller support. You won’t see your hands tracked and interacting with objects like in though, but can instead point at things and control the cursor with the controller.Motion controller support is a good addition, as it decouples the cursor from your head movement, enabling you to more freely look around without having to carefully aim your face when you want to inspect an object. In this way, it feels similar to using a traditional mouse interface.What HTC Vive players may be disappointed to learn, however, is that this new version of the game does not include roomscale support — it’s an either sitting or standing experience only. What that means is you are more than welcome to stand up while playing, as is customary when using the Vive, but you’re not required. If you move around your room, the game will not animate your character model to follow your head movement.A developer from Robot Invader to explain the decision in detail:To understand why we made this decision, it’s important to know a little bit about the design of Dead Secret.
Dead Secret predates the Vive by several years. The first version of it running in VR was shown at Oculus Connect in 2014, and by then it had already been in development for a year. By the time Vive was announced the game design was well baked. Dead Secret shipped for VR long before Vive even came out, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that we spent years on the locomotion and interaction design for this game.Dead Secret does not support free movement on any platform, VR or otherwise. It’s part of the game design.
Whether you play with a wand or a controller or whatever, the movement system never behaves like a first-person shooter. You look in the direction you want to go, click a button, and move there. It’s a scheme designed specifically for VR (vection is reduced by moving only at linear velocity, etc), but it’s also key to making the tension of the game feel correct.The reasoning makes sense from a development perspective and not every Vive game supports roomscale, regardless of genre. Part of the apprehension is due to the evolution of adventure games — the likes of and all provide free movement and they’re based in the same general genre — but there is room for different control schemes. Just because some games offer roomscale doesn’t mean every game should or needs to.Dead Secret is, still, one of the best stories told in VR.
Another recent example of a similar game is the wonderful, which is out now on Gear VR with a similar movement system. If you’re a fan of suspenseful, intellectually-stimulating thrillers, then Dead Secret is right up your alley. Just don’t go in expecting roomscale movement support.—Dead Secret is with support for HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and non-VR desktop play. You can also. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website.
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HBO’s excellent “Big Little Lies,” based on the book by, plays off how uncertainty and low self-worth can make for a toxic combination. It is filled with mysteries—a new girl in town with a mysterious past, a murder mystery in which we don’t know the victim or killer, a mystery incident in a 1 st-grade class—but it is more about how these secrets work to break the already-thin ice on which these characters live than their traditional resolutions. With all seven episodes written by and directed by (“,” “”), it is also a distinctly consistent vision, working more as a seven-part film than a traditional television series. It can sometimes reflect the soapier aspects of its source material, but there’s so much to like here, particularly in the talented ensemble, that you probably will be enjoying it too much to care. Madeline Martha Mackenzie is one of those arguably hyperactive women who means well but has trouble minding her own business.
Perhaps it’s because her home life is stressful. Her husband Ed is a nice guy, but their marriage lacks a little passion, and Ed’s convinced he’s Martha’s second-best to her first husband Nathan , now remarried to the younger Bonnie.
It’s bad enough that Bonnie looks amazing, but she’s getting closer now to Madeline & Nathan’s daughter Abigail. Madeline takes on projects to try and keep herself happy, her latest being a controversial production of the play “Avenue Q” and a woman she meets on the way to the first day of school.Said woman is Jane , the new girl in town who pulls over and helps Madeline after she sees her trip. They form an instant friendship that’s intensified after an incident on that first day of school creates divisions in the community. Jane’s son is accused of something horrible by the daughter of a Monterey power player, Renata Klein. Madeline comes to Jane’s defense, deepening the rifts in the circle of first-grader mothers.Also on Madeline/Jane’s side is the gorgeous Celeste , the envy of everybody in town.
She seems to have it all—looks, money, beautiful children, and a handsome husband who brings the passion into their relationship. Of course, she hides a secret from everyone she knows. As does Madeline. As does Jane. And so on Did I mention somebody’s dead? “Big Little Lies” opens with a series of interrogations from supporting players in this Monterey Melodrama, all being asked questions about the key players and the roles they may have played in the death of someone on Trivia Night. We don’t know who’s dead.
We don’t know who’s going to jail. But someone was brutally murdered during a high-profile charity event, and one of the brilliant aspects of Kelley’s approach is that we start to think the killer and victim could be absolutely anyone. The show seems to be suggesting that we are all a misunderstanding or moral error or two away from being killed by our neighbors. The first episode of “Big Little Lies” is a heady mix of style, beauty, and mystery. Vallee and his regular cinematographer shoot Monterey like it’s the French Riviera.
They love sunsets and gorgeous architecture and expensive fashion and kitchens that cost more than your entire house. It is a series dripping with opulence; the premiere in particular is intoxicating.
And yet they waste no time to highlight the insidious dissatisfaction of this world. Almost every person in this series is what I like to call a “Grass is Greener Person.” Even in these lives that would make most people jealous, they’re itching for something else, trying to find that elusive thing that will truly make them happy—always talking about moving, changing jobs, cheating, finding a new school, etc. And they’re often pinning their happiness on the success of their children—so the drama at school, even though it’s just first-grade, becomes an amplified vision of their own insecurities. Their self-worth hinges so much on how other people see them that even a drama involving their children sends them spiraling.Of course, gender roles also play a major part in “Big Little Lies,” from the controlling husband to the relatively useless one to the insecure one. These are men often in constant need of attention, as childish as the first-graders (arguably more so given how mature these kids are presented). They can also be violent and horrible. And the show sometimes feels like it’s pushing against a trivialization of domestic violence, but that’s from the source material, and something the cast here does everything they can to avoid, bringing truth to melodrama.About that cast—it’s hard to know where to begin in terms of singling people out because everyone here is so remarkably good.
Belanger’s spectacular cinematography—few people have ever used California sunlight this well—is the element of the show that will be underrated, and Kelley’s gift for dialogue has rarely been this sharp, but it’s the ensemble that makes “Big Little Lies” an event. In smaller roles, Dern, Kravitz, and Scott are fantastic, but it’s the trio at the front of the show that keep it fascinating, particularly Nicole Kidman. She finds something heartbreakingly real about a woman who everyone thinks is perfect to a degree that she feels she has no one with which to share her pain. It’s one of Kidman’s best performances (and I could say the same about Witherspoon and Woodley). Moral superiority often hides personal insecurity. It’s not a new theme or even a particularly daring one, but “Big Little Lies” offers a modern take that is consistently engaging and artistically rewarding.
Narratively, it could have been one or two episodes shorter than its seven-episode length (the plot doubles back and spins its wheels a few times). But this world has been so fully-realized and perfectly calibrated by the cast and crew that you’ll probably wish it was one or two episodes longer.