Payday 2 VR Review and Setup Guide

Payday 2 is part stealth game and part horde shooter, centered around letting you live a life of crime by executing various heists and robberies.

It’s a very unique premise for a horde shooter, and one that has made Payday 2 a popular game, coupled with its excellent and varied mechanics, wide ranging choice of equipment loadouts, and massive replayability.

Of course, if you’re here then you’ve probably heard that Payday 2 has released a free DLC that allows anyone who owns the game to play it in Virtual Reality. Very exciting stuff, this isn’t another VR mod that may or may not function or convert all of the features of the game to Virtual Reality.

Nope, Payday 2 VR is actually a very well realized conversion of the flatscreen Payday 2 experience into Virtual Reality that unlike some other official VR ports has clearly been seen through to completion. However, that doesn’t mean this is a perfect conversion.

So if you want to know more then keep reading this Payday 2 VR Review, and a brief bit at the end where I’ll give you a little guidance on running Payday 2 VR for yourself.

What You Do In Payday 2 VR

Payday 2 has a lot of shootouts

First, let’s get caught up on what this game is about. If you’re already a Payday 2 veteran on the flatscreen and are familiar with the game, feel free to skip to the next section where I get more specific on how well this game works in Virtual Reality.

So what do you do in Payday 2 VR? Well, it’s a heisting game, where you and three other players or AI bots form a team of criminals that undertake missions in a variety of urban locations ranging from night clubs to banks to jewelry stores.

The first thing you can do is case the joint. Walk around, avoid the notice of security guards, and if you can do it use stealth to steal what you’re there to steal and bring it back to your van without being noticed.

The stealthy approach often won’t work out, so you’ll have to put your mask on and “go loud.” This means a gunfight with whatever security is on the premises and waves of police that show up on the scene to stop you.

The action of Payday 2 is very in your face in Virtual Reality

Going loud is what makes the real meat of Payday 2. You’ll have to use whatever weapons and equipment are in your loadout to outsmart the cops and bring the loot to your getaway vehicle.

You’ve got a very impressive amount of health, but if you still take enough bullets to be brought down your teammates can help you back up, at least a few times. So a lot of the gameplay of Payday 2 VR comes down to shooting.

There are so many police after you in this game that they definitely qualify as a horde, and working together as a team (or solo with bots) to hold them off for long enough to get out with the goods is the core of the game unless you pull off a stealthy robbery.

How Payday 2 Translates To Virtual Reality

So now that you know what Payday 2 is all about, how well does it translate to VR?

Surprisingly well. The developers did a very good job in adding VR hand tracked touch controls to the game, and making all of the controls necessary to play Payday 2 easily navigatable and useful in Virtual Reality.

Payday 2 VR’s controls are very smooth and well put together

Your VR hands are exactly as you would expect them to be, the gloved hands of your chosen criminal, and your hands closely and smoothly track the physical location of your VR touch controllers with no lag.

Your left hand is for interacting with the world by doing things like picking up objectives, using items, and activating objectives. Meanwhile, your right hand is centered around weaponry. It holds your weapon, and pressing the trigger on that hand fires it. Luckily for left handed VR gamers, you can also reverse these hands in the settings menu, or by simply taking your weapon off of your belt with your left hand instead of your right.

That’s right you have a belt of sorts, though it’s made up of icons instead of the actual items you’d pick up, and on it you can switch between your primary and secondary weapons, select equipment to use, and basically access all of the items you normally would need to access in a game of Payday 2.

The belt that holds your items is very convenient in VR Payday 2

This utility belt might not be the most immersive but it definitely gets the job done and lets you access your items cleanly and easily by just grabbing them out of the air in front of your waist, and it can even be adjusted for comfort.

Speaking of comfort, the default movement style used by Payday 2 VR is teleportation movement, likely because this is the type of movement least likely to cause motion sickness in VR. Your off (default left) hand will have a cursor coming out of it that ends in a blue circle on the ground. Then you hold your right thumbstick forward to teleport to the circle.

Teleportation movement is very antiquated, though if you want to use that it is perfectly serviceable in Payday 2 VR, though most will probably want to switch the movement mode to the usual slide movement in the VR options menu (called “direct” there).

Using slide movement is recommended unless you get very bad motion sickness, and you can still do some limited teleporting as a “dash” move using the same cursor, though constantly seeing that cursor and circle coming out of your left hand does add some clutter to the world.

Also, you can’t set your movement direction to follow the direction your headset is facing. Instead, you must slide move in the direction that your offhand is facing, which is a very odd choice to not have in a modern VR game.

Changing the movement mode to slide (aka direct) movement in Payday 2 VR

The controls and interface are generally great for a VR mode integrated into a flatscreen game, but there are a few downsides. For instance, a lot of interactions are mapped to your weapon hand’s thumbstick, like throwing throwables (such as grenades) or changing the fire mode on your weapon.

It’s a lot of clutter to have on a single thumbstick, so using it in the heat of combat is confusing and often frustrating when you select the wrong option. Also, some interactions, such as climbing ladders, are a little strange. When climbing a ladder you get on the ladder not by hovering over it with your left hand and pressing grip as you would to interact with any other object, but by pushing in the left thumbstick. Then to climb up you keep pushing the left thumbstick.

Also, you can only snap turn your character by pressing the A or X buttons. So this Virtual Reality port does show its age in some ways, but also tries to fit a lot of inputs in the small number of buttons provided by a VR controller.

Luckily most objects in Payday 2 VR are more straightforward, and once you learn how to use them the few that are strange, like ladders, are easy to get used to.

Otherwise, the only difficulties that VR adds to the game are the occasional clipping issues, which will make your screen go black until you get back into a valid position, for instance when you walk into a wall at an add angle or inside of an NPC or player. These are sometimes quite annoying, but are generally avoidable.

After some time playing the game, I did experience one crash, but they were not common.

The Fun of Virtual Reality Payday 2

So VR Payday 2 controls well, and despite a few issues is generally easy to learn and use. So does Virtual Reality make the experience of pulling off the ultimate heist better?

Of course it does! Payday 2 is a first person shooter at heart, and boy do first person shooters translate well to VR. The action is all the more in your face in Virtual Reality, and the ability to freely turn and look using your actual body and head serves to put you into the shoes of your character so much more than just moving a mouse to look around.

Check out the carnage!

The same goes for the hand controls that I’ve already told you are pretty well implemented and smooth.

Aiming by looking down the actual sights of your weapon and shooting with your actual hands is a ton more fun in VR than just clicking on a screen, though as I’ve mentioned the implementation is not perfect.

There are no manual reloads in Payday 2 VR, you reload automatically by just clicking a button, and while you can grip a weapon in both hands in this game the hands don’t have special positions for grabbing each individual weapon, so they just sort of hover near the grab point.

The biggest downside to the action in Virtual Reality Payday 2 is that the weapons lack punch and feel a bit weak.

You’re actually just as well off aiming a two handed weapon like a rifle, or even a pistol, with just a single hand. The weapons don’t feel very impactful while you’re firing them and sort of come across more as airsoft guns than actual weapons.

Still the automatic reloads and lack of recoil on the weapons probably serve to not make playing Payday 2 in VR significantly easier or harder than playing it on a flat screen. That’s because there is crossplay when playing Payday 2 VR, you can play with other VR gamers, or with players on the flat screen. This is great because it makes it easy to find a match, and the pool of players to play the game with is not restricted.

The action is more in your face, and if you’d rather aim with your real hands than with a mouse, you’ll find a lot to love in the action of Payday 2 VR. Compared to the original game, and compared to other VR games, it is a fantastic heist inspired VR shooter.

Anyway now that I’ve told you that Payday 2 VR is a ton of fun in this review, despite a few setbacks, let’s talk about how to play it if you’re interseted.

How To Play Payday 2 VR

Just like the base game of Payday 2, the VR DLC can be found on Steam.

It is a completely free DLC for the base game, and it should be automatically added to your account if you own a copy of Payday 2. Just to make sure though, visit the page and make sure the DLC is added to your account.

The Payday 2 VR DLC store page.

Now you can launch and play Payday 2 VR just like any other Virtual Reality game that you would play through Steam. There are a number of ways to do this. If you’re accustomed to playing Steam VR games on your VR headset then it’s as easy as plugging your headset in and launching Payday 2 from your Steam VR library as you would any other game.

If you’re using a Meta Quest 2 or Meta Quest 3 headset then you might be wondering how to play Steam VR games on your headset. The easiest way is with Steam Link. Though as always you’ll have the smoothest experience if you are running the game on a PC that is connected to a 5 GHz network and wired to your router with an ethernet cable.

You can also run Payday 2 VR like any other Steam PCVR game by using Oculus Airlink. This method is a little more difficult to set up but can be used when connected to your PC with a link cable if your WiFi setup isn’t sufficient for streaming the game wirelessly.

So that’s how to play Payday 2 in VR! Once you start the game the intro video should start playing in front of you on the projector in the main menu room.

The intro movie you see when starting up VR Payday 2.

However you choose to play Payday 2 in Virtual Reality, enjoy!

Keep Your VR Headset Lenses Clean And Away From The Sun - A Public Service Announcement

If there’s one thing that can ruin a Virtual Reality headset it is dirty lenses. So in this Public Service Announcement, I’m going to tell you why you should keep your lenses clean and some tips for how to do it.

This advice goes for any pair of VR goggles out there. The Meta Quest 1, 2, 3, and Pro. Both PSVR headsets. The Pico 4. The Valve Index, and any of the other wide range of PCVR only HMDs.

Virtual Reality Is Worse With Dirty Lenses

Do you really want your VR headset lenses to be dirty? Isn’t it obvious that playing VR games, or doing anything in VR would be worse if your VR headset lenses are dirty?

Dirty lenses will make things harder to see in VR because you’ll be looking through a film of grease and dust before you see what your headset is trying to show you and immerse you in. It’s sort of like if someone forced you to wear glasses that were dirty in real life.

Greasy Virtual Reality headset lenses will reduce your immersion, make you squint to see things, and overall make your time in VR less enjoyable.

So let’s talk about some ways to fix this.

Please Clean Your VR Lenses Regularly

Seriously, it just takes a second, and it’s easy! About to put your headset on? Then just pick up a microfiber cloth and give your lenses a quick swabbing.

You don’t have to scrub them or put any elbow grease into it. Actually, you shouldn’t. Be gentle and wipe once or twice for each lens. Fast, easy, clean, and now you will be able to see.

Don’t have a microfiber cloth? Well, I didn’t either when I got my first VR HMD. They’re really cheap on Amazon, a good set meant for cleaning lenses costs about ten dollars before tax and shipping.

Microfiber cloths are a great way to clean your Virtual Reality lenses

Make sure your cleaning cloth isn’t dirty by the way, if there are bits of dirt in the cloth then you’re just going to rub them into the lenses of your VR goggles and scratch them up. The only thing worse than dirty lenses is scratched lenses. You can’t just wipe scratches off.

Maybe you’re concerned that this easy method won’t be good enough, or you just haven’t been able to get the grease off of your lenses. Well then give a lens pen a try. These are meant to clean cameras and other delicate lenses for professional work.

While I don’t use a lens pen some people swear by them and say that if a microfiber cloth won’t get grease or grit off of lenses then a lens pen will.

If microfiber just isn’t cutting it a lens pen could be the answer

What NOT To Do With Your Headset

Here are a lot of common issues I’ve seen on various social media platforms, and I’m just going to address all of them here. Hopefully, this saves a few people’s headsets.

Seriously, they’re at least several hundred dollars apiece and I’d hate to lose mine just because I didn’t know how to take care of it. I’m not trying to be a know-it-all or a jerk here, just trying to help everyone have fun with functioning VR headsets instead of broken ones.

So here are a few quick things never to do.

1. Never leave your headset in natural sunlight. If the sun hits the lenses it will burn holes into them that will cause permanent spots and basically ruin the entire VR experience if you try and use it. Seriously, sun damaged lenses look really bad. You can take your VR headset outside, but don’t take it off. Really it’s better to never expose your goggles to sunlight at all and keep them indoors. You can also put lens caps on your headset while storing them so they can’t get hit by sunlight or scratched when you’re not using them.

2. Don’t use liquid cleaning products on your lenses. It’s not going to clean them better and you can easily damage your headset this way. Seriously, it’s not worth even trying.

3. Don’t leave your headset somewhere that it can be chewed by pets or mishandled by kids. VR headsets are actually kind of fragile, and once your controller doesn’t turn on you’ve got to either get a new pair or send them back to the manufacturer, which will take a long time, a long time that you won’t be able to enjoy VR. A broken headset is even worse, so be gentle with it and don’t let it get chewed or thrown around.

Well, that about covers it for this PSA. Hopefully, this helped you out and your VR headset will remain functional until you want to upgrade it to a better one.

All Enemies And Bosses In Battle Talent And Tips For Fighting Them

Battle Talent has quite a few enemies in it that I’ll put into a few broad categories. These are fantasy creatures, the Undead, and Humans. Here I’m going to go through all of them and give a tip or two on how to fight them.

So here’s every Battle Talent enemy and Battle Talent boss that you’ll fight in this VR game.

As you’re reading this keep in mind that a lot of these enemies have elite variants that are tougher than usual. If you see one (you can tell by the glowing red eyes and heavily armored body) just assume they’ll be stronger, tougher, and faster than the usual enemy but they will generally follow the same behavior as well as use heavy attacks that must be deflected to be blocked. (Deflecting is when you hit an incoming enemy blow with your weapon, hard, like attacking their weapon with your weapon.)

Fantasy Creatures - Goblins

The first enemies you’ll come across in the dungeon or adventure modes of Battle Talent are going to be goblins.

They’re decent starting enemies. Outside of the amped up elite variants they will go down pretty easily with a few solid hits, and most don’t attack extremely often. Though when goblins do attack they have a tendency to go around and behind you to attack your back.

Goblins come in two variants, little guys and big guys. Let’s talk about the little guys first.

Lil’ Goblins

Little Goblins

Little goblins are short, fragile, and not too bright. While they might have a little club or blade to hit you with most variants prefer to fight from far away with ranged weapons.

Their ranged weapons are daggers or bombs. The daggers can be swatted out of the air and don’t deal much damage if they hit you. The bombs have a very limited blast radius and hurt your enemies just like they hurt you, but they do deal a ton of damage, so be wary of them.

Little goblins love to try and duck and dive out of your way to avoid being hit, but they’re really not much trouble as long as you don’t completely ignore them. Take them out in a strike or two quickly so that they can’t sneak up on you. Little goblins are hopeless in a straight up fight.

Big Goblins

A big goblin

Big goblins are quite a bit more dangerous than their smaller cousins. They use more crude goblin weaponry like swords and clubs, and while they will actually sometimes block incoming blows by holding their blades in front of them their defense is very poor and they aren’t hard to take down. They will also throw daggers when given the chance just like little goblins, but not bombs.

The basic big goblin with a single weapon isn’t much of a threat, but they can quickly strike you if you’re not careful, and all big goblins will try to walk close to you to attack you. Goblins with two weapons and some armor are more elite and tend to be harder to take down and also very fast.

The big goblins’ favorite move is to dash around you and attack you from the sides or rear. The more armed and armored the goblin then the more likely they are to dash and attack you. Stay mobile and don’t let them get behind you. In frontal confrontations, they’re not the most dangerous enemies, but a group of them attacking at once can confuse you and attack from all directions. They love getting behind you.

A goblin shaman

Goblins also have shamans with a wand that lets them summon rocks from the ground and fling them at you. They’re mostly harmless as long as you see their spells coming and don’t stand in the path of the rocks.

They will mostly just try to back away from you in melee range. So get close to the shamans and chop them up. Just like little goblins, they’re only a threat if you completely ignore them.

White Goblins

A white goblin boss in Battle Talent

White goblins are basically just boss versions of big goblins. They’re bigger, tougher, stronger, have glowing red eyes, and are easily recognizable for their tallness and pale skin.

They wield dual blades and will dash around quickly to attack. They will also chain attacks into big combos of sweeping strikes, often ending with a strong attack that must be deflected to be blocked.

The good thing about the white goblins’ huge and consistent attacks is that deflecting them is fairly easy because not only do they attack quickly and often, but they swing their weapons in a wide arc. So just generally swinging your own weapon towards them while they are attacking will generally net you enough deflections to stun them and then quickly deal a lot of damage while they are stunned and defenseless.

Fantasy Creatures - Orcs

An orc boss in Battle Talent VR

Orcs in Battle Talent VR aren’t common enemies that you’ll see sprinkled into most fights, rather they’re boss monsters that will have their own arena dedicated to them.

You can tell an orc by their pale skin and huge stature. Not to mention their gigantic muscles and square heads.

Both orc variants carry large two handed weapons, a sword or a hammer, and they have similar movesets. Generally, the orc will lumber towards you, and when they get close will charge up a huge swing and release a combination attack on you. These massive swings are hard to deflect and hard to dodge.

As with many enemies that have attacks that are difficult to dodge, and many boss enemies, your best options are to either play keep away and quickly get away as they try to attack, strike once or twice, and then run away again, or use a charge attack deflect during one of their swings to stun them. (A charge deflect is when you hold your weapon over your shoulder until it vibrates to charge it, and then swing your weapon into the enemy’s swinging weapon to deflect it as usual.)

If you’re standing in the path of an Orc’s attack combination you’re probably going to take massive damage, except possibly with a shield held in front of you. So either don’t be there, hide behind a shield (which isn’t always effective), or deflect the attack.

Fantasy Creatures - Dark Elves

A dark elf enemy

Dark Elves are basically big goblins that don’t throw daggers, and attack you from the front more than dashing around you. They favor big sweeping sword attacks that leave their heads exposed. So go for the head.

The Undead - Basic Skeletons

A basic skeleton Battle Talent enemy with some armor

Skeletons are the most basic undead enemy, and you’ll start to see them once you’ve gotten tired of just fighting goblins for a while.

Skeletons tend to come in large packs, and they’ll march straight toward you without pausing to reposition or throw ranged attacks. They’re very mindless, and once a skeleton gets close they’ll just swing their weapon wildly at you. If you try to back away they’ll just keep walking towards you and swinging their weapon if you’re in range.

So skeletons are always predictable in a fight, and despite the array of medieval armor and weapons they use, are mostly fragile. While they can be chopped, blunt weapons like maces seem to be the most effective against them. Knocking their heads off is an easy way to take them out, and even deflecting one of their blows can turn them into a pile of bones.

Magic like the fireball spell is especially effective against skeletons and can destroy a whole pack of them in an instant. Though some skeletons are magical, which you can usually tell by them keeping their distance from you and not carrying a weapon. These skeletons will summon dark balls of energy that will track and follow you but can be neutralized by swatting them in the air with a weapon.

Some magical skeletons can even summon a stream of fire from their palm that they’ll point toward you like a flamethrower. Stay far away from the fire as it does a lot of damage quickly. Get behind the skeleton and bash them to pieces.

Just like goblin shamans the magical skeletons are very weak in melee range and will mostly just try to back away from you. So get close and knock them to pieces.

The Undead - Big Skeletons

A big skeleton

Big skeletons operate a lot like Skeletons, but a little smarter, a lot tougher, and much more dangerous.

Big Skeletons are not only taller than you but always have armor and most likely a shield. They also won’t fall apart in a single strike to the head. Big skeletons also have charged attacks that can only be deflected rather than blocked, so they function as the elite version of basic skeletons.

Instead of just taking them down quickly with a blunt weapon or magic, try deflecting their attacks to stun them or hit them quickly before running away from their attacks. Hit and run is very effective on big skeletons. Though their sweeping strikes are usually pretty easy to deflect, though their charge attacks are less so, especially when they bash you with their shield.

One of the elite Skeleton boss enemies. Recognizable because of his big cape

However, there are some fully armored Big Skeletons with capes (aka “vampires”) that are very fast and will attack you pretty quickly.

The caped skeletons also can instantly summon a ton of those dark energy balls that hone in on you. Just like when fighting most bosses it’s usually easiest to just deflect their attacks until they are stunned, and then deal massive damage to them.

The Undead - Wraiths

A Wraith

There are three varieties of wraith in Battle Talent, and I suggest you use the same tactic against all of them.

You can always tell a wraith by the fact that they’re the only enemies that float instead of walk with legs and that they’re pretty ugly and scary-looking like Halloween decorations. Their primary attack is a charge. They’ll psyche themselves up, and then fly in a straight line towards you while swinging their weapon wildly. Just run out of the way if one is coming at you and you’ll be fine. They don’t change course mid-attack and just go in a straight line.

Luckily wraiths aren’t as dangerous as they look. No matter which kind you come across they are basically hopeless at short ranges. Just strafe around them so you’re not in front of them and whack them in the head. They’ll go down easily.

A robed wraith

All wraiths also have magical attacks. The robed wraiths will summon ice to hit you, and the unrobed wraiths can call a stream of fire from their palms, which does a lot of damage.

When a wraith uses magic just get behind them and hit them until they fall or stop.

One of the white robed wraith Battle Talent bosses

The White Wraith is just a boss version of the other two sorts of wraiths. They’ll attack more often and have access to a variety of magical attacks.

Get close to them to hit them quickly, and then back away when they start attacking. Deflections are hard to pull off against this boss so hit and run attacks are more effective.

Humans

A human warrior enemy

Humans look, well, human. They’re generally very muscular and wear some light armor, though none come as heavily armored as goblins or the undead do. Human opponents come in a lot of varieties. In fact, that’s the most notable thing about them.

Out of all Battle Talent enemies, none of them have the variety of weapon types that the human opponents bring to the table, and that’s what makes it hard to give precise advice on how to combat them. Different weapon types come with different movesets. Humans with swords will slash, though not as wildly or widely as goblins do.

Humans with maces tend to do longer ranged dashing attacks, and human enemies of all kinds will slowly walk around in front of you until they see an opening, but not jump around wildly and try to get behind you as goblins do. On the other hand, they don’t just march straight for you and attack like skeletons, humans function like a mix of the stubbornness of skeletons and the tricky nature of the goblins.

Female human enemies using magic

There are some female human enemies, the most common of which are the ranged magical casters. Each carries an ice wand and will use it constantly to try to hit you with ice at range. Like other casters, they are hopeless in close combat. Just get close and take them down. The same goes for the female archer enemies. Just don’t let them hit you at range, and get close.

There are also bigger humans like there are of other enemies, and just like with those they are just generally tougher and faster, though most function a lot like their smaller counterparts. Though for humans specifically there is a Samurai sort of version wearing a canonical hat and wielding a katana that does a lot of charged attacks and will even attack you at range with magical wind strikes.

A samurai enemy

They’re also very tough, but as long as you aren’t directly in front of them when they attack you should be alright. Their blows are fast and hard to deflect, so just try to stay to their sides or rear so they don’t hit you.

Finally, there are the pale skinned boss humans. The same strategy that works on the white goblins works on them. Try to keep them in front of you and deflect their attacks to get an opening. They attack constantly and quickly.

The Final Boss

The Final Boss in Battle Talent

The final boss is, unsurprisingly, the most dangerous enemy in Battle Talent by a long shot. He wields a giant sword, is armored almost everywhere, and is only vulnerable to the same thing all bosses are vulnerable to, deflections. Except for the final boss, you’ll have to deflect more than ever to stun him.

He hits hard, he’s fast, and he summons lighting. The final boss will try to dash around to get behind you and strike with his sword. He will also charge up attacks that can only be deflected, and is generally fast and hard-hitting, though not the fastest. If you’re really on the ball his attacks are dodgeable, but they will keep coming.

The lightning that the final boss summons does a ton of damage, but you can tell when he’s summoning it because he will pause for a moment and raise his hand up slowly. Don’t be near him when he does this.

Otherwise do some great deflections, be fast on your feet, and get your hits in while you can. The final boss of Battle Talent can strike back at you even directly after completing another attack, so move quickly.

There you go, all of the Battle Talent VR enemies and Battle Talent VR bosses, hopefully this helps you out in your fights. Good luck and enjoy!

Complete Battle Talent VR Controls Guide And A Few Tips

Want to know the controls in the awesome VR Fighting Game Battle Talent VR?

Well, look no further because here they are, and a couple of tips for Battle Talent.

This guide assumes that you are using the default controls setup, and your controls can be changed in the settings menu that you can open by pressing the yellow button on your left wrist in the game, or when starting the game.

These controls also assume you are playing the game using a Meta Quest headset and therefore use the Oculus touch controller button layout. Different VR controller types will still have similar buttons that will work in the same fashion.

The Battle Talent Controls

Left Joystick - Move in the direction that you point the joystick in. Pump your arms up and down (as though you’re running) to increase your movement speed and run in the game (this can be changed in the settings menu). Pressing in on the left joystick also dodges backward if you have the dodge talent unlocked.

Right Joystick - Turn by pointing it left or right, either snap or smooth depending on your options. Pulling the right joystick backward also dodges if you have the dodge talent. Pressing the right joystick forward kicks if you have the Kick talent.

Grip buttons - Holds an item with your hand, and also distance grabs an item if you see the circle around its grip while you hover your hand over that item to get its description. Grip a holster to take the item out of it. You can also grab enemies and tear them apart with the appropriate talent, or just grab them without the talent, though this won’t work on tougher or larger opponents. There is even a special holster on your chest for potions.

Trigger - Activate the special ability of a weapon held in your hand. Opens or closes a potion bottle if the hand is holding a potion. If you have a spell gem in that hand and aren’t holding a weapon holding down the trigger will cast the spell in the gem. Pressing the trigger also selects things in in-game menus.

B - Jump, also skips dialog.

Y - Slow motion if you have the slow motion talent.

Oculus Button - Open the Oculus/Meta menu as in any Quest game.

Battle Talent Tips

As you can see in the controls above you’ll need to pump your arms to run, unless you change the arm swing options in the settings.

I recommend that you keep the arm swinging option on because it makes the movement in this game much more immersive and interesting during combat. Having to pump your arms to run keeps you from accidentally running too close to enemies before fighting them, which is a very common problem in VR Fighting Games.

However, it can be a little annoying when you’re holding a two handed weapon using both of your hands.

You might naturally think that the best option here is to let go of your two handed weapon with one of your hands so that both can move independently, but you don’t have to do this to run in Battle Talent while holding a two handed weapon.

Instead, you can move your arms up and down while still holding the weapon, which lets you run while maintaining your grip. Just keep holding on and move one hand up while moving the other downwards.

Just like you can swing your arms to run faster, if you swing your arms while jumping you will jump higher! This is especially useful for parkour challenges or jumping over gaps in dungeons.

Running by swinging your arms in Battle Talent VR

One final note, pay attention to how you’re blocking your opponents’ attacks. Some attacks will also cause the enemy’s weapon to have red particles dance along it.

Those red attacks can only be blocked by “deflecting” it. Deflecting an attack is done by swinging at your opponent’s weapon while they are swinging. This will not only block any attack but also stun most enemies. This also works on normal attacks! Deflecting attacks makes fighting bosses in Battle Talent much easier.

That’s it for the Battle Talent Controls and also a few tips about the game. If you have any more tips to share feel free to post them in the comments. Enjoy!

Easily Install CitraVR To Play VR 3DS Games on Meta Quest

If you’ve ever wanted to play VR 3DS games on your Meta Quest 3 or 2 then you might have heard of the app CitraVR. It’s a version of the popular emulation application Citra built specifically to run on Oculus Quest devices.

Once you have CitraVR installed on your Quest then you can play Nintendo 3DS games on your Quest headset without having to keep it connected to a PC. All for free!

Citra VR even has special settings that make 3DS games even more immersive in VR by wrapping the view of the game around your Virtual Reality 3D perspective. Essentially putting you inside of your favorite 3DS games using the magic of Virtual Reality.

So in this article, we’ll get into how to set up and install CitraVR so that you can play 3DS games on your Oculus Quest 2 or 3 device. Here’s how.

How To Install CitraVR On Your Meta Quest Device - Prerequisites

Before we get into the installation process here are a few things that you will need before you get started. There’s no point wasting your time attempting to install CitraVR before you meet these prerequisites:

• A PC.

• A cable that can connect your PC to your Quest, aka a “Link cable”: If you don’t have one there are official Oculus LInk Cables. Though if you don’t want to spend as much money there are third party cables available from amazon.

• Emulation game files for the games you want to play in VR on your PC. CitraVR will only work with these filetypes: .rom, .cci, .3ds (.cia files did not work with this method). Some games may not work well and unfortunately, there is no reliable compatability list to check before you try.

• Enough storage space on your Oculus Quest device to fit all of the game files you will be moving to it.

• SideQuest, the popular sideloading application for the Quest. Installing it is very straightforward, but will not be covered in this article. Luckily there is a complete guide already.

If you have all of these things then you have everything that you need to install CitraVR on your Oculus Quest 3 or 2. Here’s how to download and install CitraVR.

How To Install Citra VR On Your Oculus Quest Device - Add Your 3DS Game Files

You’ve got all of the prerequisites and are ready to install CitraVR, so let’s get started.

First, you’ll need to connect your headset to your PC with your link cable. Once one end of the cable is connected to your computer then put the other into the charging port on the side of your headset.

Make sure you have your headset on, or put it on quickly, after you connect the cable. There may be some popups asking you to allow USB debugging, but most importantly a little prompt that asks you whether you want to allow access to files on the newly connected device.

This prompt will appear just above your home menu bar, so make sure that you are looking at your home menu and click it in time.

Unfortunately the popup text did not show up in recording, but it will appear here.

If you miss this popup then you’ll have to disconnect the cable from your headset and reconnect it again so that it will appear once more.

When you click it successfully a new file explorer window will appear on your PC. It contains all of the files in your Quest. Open in up and you’ll see every folder inside of your Meta Quest.

Create a new folder on your PC. Name it whatever you like. In the example, it’s named “ROMs.” Move all of your 3DS game files into the ROMs folder.

Add a folder to here, like the “ROMs” folder you see here.

This is the folder where Citra VR will both be set up and access your game files. Once all of your 3DS games are moved over to your Quest disconnect the cable. You won’t need it or your PC for the rest of this guide.

How To Install CitraVR On Your Oculus Quest Device - Installing Citra VR

Put your Oculus Quest on and go to the “Unknown Sources” section of your app library.

To do this open your app library like you normally would to play a game on your Quest and then click on the “Applications” button in the top left to open your applications page. Once this menu is open click the dropdown button in the top right that is set to “All” by default. A dropdown menu will appear, click on it and then click on “Unknown Sources”.

SideQuest will download and install CitraVR for you, easy peasy.

From thee “Unknown Sources” menu launch SideQuest. As mentioned in the prerequisites you’ll need SideQuest installed to follow this guide.

Once SideQuest loads go to the search bar and search for “citra” or “citravr” and the CitraVR application will pop right up. Click on it to open the CitraVR SideQuest page and press the download button.

Just as with downloading any other SideQuest app you’ll soon see a popup in the bottom right of the SideQuest window stating that CitraVR has been installed successfully. Exit SideQuest once Citra VR is installed.

How To Install CitraVR On Your Meta Quest Device - Setting Up CitraVR

Go back to the “Unknown Sources” page in your app library and launch new the CitraVR app.

Click the dropdown in the top right to go to the Unknown Sources menu.

When you first launch CitraVR you’ll get a menu asking you to set up the application. When you see this hit the big green “Get Started” button.

Then it will prompt you to grant Citra VR permission to use your microphone and camera. Give CitraVR every permission that it asks for and once each step is completed hit the “Next” button in the bottom right corner of the app.

After granting permissions, you’ll get a new prompt asking you to select your User folder. Luckily you already have a folder ready to go, the one you created in the first step of this guide.

Just hit the big green “Select” button and in the following menu select the folder you created earlier. After selecting the folder hit the blue “Use This Folder” button at the bottom of the page, hit “Allow” when asked to confirm, and hit “OK” on the final popup.

Use the folder you created earlier as the User and Game folders.

Next, you will be prompted to select your Games folder, which is done in exactly the same way as selecting your User folder. We’ll also be using the exact same folder, so just repeat what you just did for the User folder.

Once that’s done you have successfully installed, configured, and run CitraVR! Congratulations.

Using Citra VR

Once you’re presented with the Citra VR main menu you’ll get a few popups telling you that games may experience stutters and that all games may not work well. Keep this in mind. Not all VR 3DS games will work as well as you might hope, but many do.

CitraVR will run with some stutters at first, but they get better.

Once you’re done with these popups you’ll be presented with your games folder, which should have all of the games that you previously moved over to your CitraVR folder.

If some or all of your 3DS games do NOT appear:

• Check the file types of the game files. These are the compatible filetypes: .rom, .cci, .3ds (.cia files did not work with this method)

• Go to the Settings menu by pressing the gear icon in the top left and check that your Game folder directory is set correctly to the folder containing your game files

• Restart CitraVR

• Restart your Quest headset

Keep in mind that not all 3DS games will work well, or at all, with Citra VR. This is third party software and so they can’t guarantee full compatibility with all 3DS Nintendo games.

Once you launch a 3DS game in VR successfully it will appear in front of you as two large mixed reality screens, one for the top screen and one for the bottom. You can interact with the bottom 3DS screen by clicking it with one of your controller pointers, and the top screen by using your touch controller’s buttons and joysticks.

In the settings menu, you’ll also find an “Immersive Mode” which will wrap the upper screen around your view when you play a game. It might not look fantastic on all 3DS games but it is definitely worth a try to get the most out of Virtual Reality 3DS gaming. There are also a ton of options to increase the graphical fidelity of your Virtual Reality 3DS games, but these may cause performance issues.

Well, hopefully, this guide helped you to get started in the wonderful world of 3DS VR games with the CitraVR emulator. Enjoy!