Hands on with The Inpatient for the PlayStation VR

During Sony?s E3 2017 Media showcase they debuted a new PlayStation VR game from Supermassive Studios — the same developers responsible for Until Dawn.  The Inpatient is actually set in the Until Dawn universe but takes places about 60 years before the events of that game, and I had the opportunity to sit down with it and experience first hand just how creepy this game is/will be.

The Inpatient E3 demo starts you out in a medical facility (Blackwood Sanatorium), in which you are strapped to a wheelchair being questioned by a doctor who you are not too sure about. As the doctor speaks to you, he will ask you questions (which you can either answer by speaking it out loud, or just pressing the corresponding button) about where you are, who you are and what you may or may not remember. Each response that you can give is paired off with an emotion (i.e.. Confused, Compliant, Concerned, Angry, etc.). As you answer questions, you?ll either progress the story or the doctor will become more agitated with you responses and ask you the questions over again.

Eventually you answer enough questions and he asks you to try and remember how you got to where you are, and so you are treated to a flashback in which you are hiding in a closet and you seem to be dressed as a doctor. When the flashback is over he?ll ask you what you remembered and you can either answer honestly or answer him with condescending undertones, in which case he?ll make you repeat the flashback questioning until he is satisfied with your answers.

The next part of the demo has you back in your room talking to the orderly who brought you back there, and he?ll eventually show you how to move around the environment using the DualShock 4. Using the left stick to move forward and the right stick to turn around or look around in 15 degree shifts (if you press left on the right stick, your field of vision will jump 15 degrees in that direction). As you move around your room you are able to interact with the environment and will eventually be asked to lay in bed, and it is at this point that you experience a flashback so creepy that it actually made me jump. After this, the demo is over and you are brought back to the title screen.

I had fun with The Inpatient demo, as it was a nice way to introduce you to what they are aiming for with the game, which is to provide the player with an extremely creepy setting and psychological scares as opposed to the gory jump scares from Until Dawn. I did have some issues with the game though and mainly they are with the movement using the DualShock 4. The right stick movement is very jarring and catches you off guard if you accidentally push it in the wrong direction while you are looking somewhere else in the environment. I hope that before the game releases, Supermassive modifies this control scheme to make it more seamless when you move the stick in a certain direction.

The Inpatient is nice entry into the VR space and one that fans of Until Dawn or fans of the horror genre will enjoy. I just hope that before it comes out they address the control issues that most other attendees I spoke with had issues with too, and if they do, The Inpatient has an excellent chance to become a truly great PSVR experience.

Stay tuned to Gaming Age for more coverage from E3 and future updates on The Inpatient.