As VR is becoming more popular, there seems to be many peripherals coming out – arching back to the Nintendo Wii days, where you had accessories for everything. But, what I like in VR and this technology is these can be used to boost the immersion, a lot more than they could back on the Wii. I have been running the AMVR Controller Gun Case through some testing, but how did they work out?
What’s in the box?
Inside of the box you get the controller cases split into three parts, two handles, two barrels, two bases, and the instructions on how to connect them up to your controllers. Which is all you need with how the product is designed and works.
Attaching them to the controllers
Connecting them to the controllers is very simple. Firstly you will connect the bases to the handles, place in your controller and connect the barrel over the top – which in turn holds to controller in the handle. It also has holes in the bottom of the handles to allow you to put your wrist straps through, which could be an idea, as I will discuss later.
The way it builds up, it makes it easy to remove them, when you are not using them. There is buttons on the side of the barrel that will allow them to slide off when pressed in. Making everything quick and simple to put on and take off.
Benefits
Of course with it being a pistol in design, it is made to be used with games where you will be using a pistol – which does limit what you will be able to use them with. But, using them in these games really does bring an extra level of immersion, feeling like you have a pistol in your hand while using one in the VR worlds.
Now, the reason I mentioned the wrist straps are going be important, the grips do have some weight to them, and makes for realistic weight distribution. This also helps with the immersion as it feels like you are holding a weighted gun, over the lighter controllers.
Testing the product
When testing to product I wanted to try them across different sort of games that have pistol elements to see how they performed.
The first game was pretty obvious and that was Pistol Whip, it seems like an accessory like this was made with this popular game in mind. Now, I do only really play the one-pistol mode in the game, but as you can just place the other controller down, this did not make it an issue. Did it make better at the game? No, but, it does feel much nicer feeling like you have the weighted pistol in your hand.
Next up, I wanted to try out something that I prefer with the two pistol option and that was Beat Blaster, played via PC link. Very similar to Pistol Whip feeling like you had weighted weapons and you were holding the pistols was great, and the more I was using them it does give you that bad-ass feeling.
Then it was time for a game where I don’t normally use a pistol now, but you can either duel-wield or just use the one, and that was After The Fall. Again the extra immersion of having the pistol and weight in your hand added a little, but this is where I ran into my first problem. I really found the design of them and having them on both controllers made the manual reload a lot more clunky and I kept smacking them together. This was something that wasn’t an issue in the previous games as you just bring your weapon down in Pistol Whip and there is no reload in Beat Blaster.
With slaying Snowbreed, this gave the taste for slaying some Zombies, and wanted a game without that manual reload issue. So, I headed into Zombieland: Headshot Fever, as this uses Pistols and a hybrid reload system. Now, I am not sure why but I did seem slightly better at hitting those double tap headshots that I am without the grips on – maybe this was just down to all the pistol practice I had in the other games.
For my final game testing I wanted to give another two pistol game a final run, so I headed into the classic Space Pirate Trainer. This is where I realised the two handed games really do make you feel more like a bad-ass over the single handed ones.
reviewed using meta quest 2
For the purposes of transparency, this review was created using a sample provided by the company or their respective PR company. The use of a press sample does not affect my judgement of the product.
Review Overview
As expected with the design of the AMVR Controller Gun Case this is made to be used with only Pistol games. But, for those it does bring the extra immersion of holding a pistol and the excellent weighted design gives the feeling of holding a pistol as well. With them being easy to install and remove it is easy to jump into other games without needing to take time to remove them, and I have no complaints with the build quality of them either. They do come with some issues though, if using a manual reload, they can be clunky and get in the way if on both controllers, and you will need to remove any other controller accessory like grips to install them. Now, the big question… should you buy them? I think this comes down to the user personally, as they do bring immersion to pistol games and can made you feel more like a bad-ass. But, then on the other side, if you don’t play them much and use grips on your controllers they might be more of an after thought.
