VR Gets Weirder With ‘IKEA: The Game’

  A whole range of different things probably come to mind when I say the words ‘Virtual Reality.’ One of those huge chunky-ass helmets that the sci-fi writers of the eighties and filmmakers of the nineties imagined us using by now, perhaps. Or maybe the shit-your-pants disaster that was the release of the Oculus Rift. VR is a weird and wacky, usually experiment thing, however you see it, and it’s not going any-freaking-where.

My typing finger has been worn down to a useless lil’ bloody nub with the amount of times I’ve said it lately, but VR is the Next Big Thing™ in video games. Said Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive, PlayStation VR… as was the case with motion controls a couple years ago, the tech’s being shoehorned into every kind of game you can imagine. And many that you can’t.

On Monday, I told you all that we’d reached the best and badassiest thing that VR gaming could offer with that kitten-rescuing weirdery. Well, here I am eating those words. I present to you, Ego-friends, an IKEA shopping simulator.

Yes indeed. Among HTC Vive’s launch titles was an app from the Scandinavian store, which lets you wander around a kitchen decked out in IKEA furniture and interact with things. It’s weird as all hell, kind of Sims-esque; you cruise about changing furnishings and where they’re placed in the environment. Because… well, because, that’s why.       

This is, natch, just a tech demo sort of deal. We’re not really talking IKEA: The Game here. Still, the batshittery of it all should be applauded. If you want to see it in action (which you totally do, come on now), here’s EuroGamer giving it a go: