Otherworld
Virtual Reality Arcade
336 Acton Mews, Haggerston, E8 4EA
£14 - £29 for 40 minutes
Otherworld is London's newest virtual reality arcade. Located inside an East London railway arch (of course), you enter a bleach-white space with 14 pods and staff in robes to match. You can order drinks through the iPads embedded into the tables, and the toilets are awash with neon lights reminiscent of a club dance floor.
When we arrived, we were sat down and given a couple of iPads to go through the games and have a think about which ones we would be interested in doing. You are only given 40 minutes within the pod and this goes by ridiculously quickly, so they recommend trying only 2 or 3 games at most. After only about 2 minutes, we were asked if we were ready for an introduction on how to use the equipment. We said fine, thinking we could go back to browsing afterwards. But alas, after a fast forward chat about the controls - all hypothetical as we didn't have anything physically in our hand to practice with - we were asked if we had any questions and hurried into our pod.
To be perfectly honest, the whole pre-experience prep was horribly rushed, and although the girl who gave us our tutorial was the friendliest by far, she still seemed as if she was moving us along as quickly as possible so she could get back to scrolling aimlessly through Instagram. The staff, on the whole, were definitely the worst thing about this place. No one even acknowledged our existence when we walked in, all stood around the bar looking frankly a bit ridiculous in their Dystopian attire: if you're not going to play the game, don't wear the outfit. It's the kind of experience where energetic staff and eager passion really wouldn't go amiss. However, instead of a healthy dose of enthusiasm, you are confronted with stern-faced hipsters who seem incapable of making normal conversation, let alone getting you properly prepared for a pretty complicated and unique activity.
Difficulty levels are separated into seasons, Spring being the easiest and Winter the hardest. After not much deliberation and more panic choosing, we opted to try Google Earth (Autumn), Arizona Sunshine (Winter) and Windlands (Winter). Strapped into our gear in our separate little eggs, we ventured down a gigantic volcano together onto a magical island where the virtual world quite literally was our oyster. To move around the island you have to hold down the back buttons on your handsets and move your arms as if you're running - the quicker you move them, the quicker you go. We came across Google Earth quite quickly and so decided, that we would try this out first, even though it was a one player game and meant we had to part ways as soon as we'd started.
Starting off in space, you move the Earth around before choosing a country or place you want to go to. After lots of fumbling around with the controls, I found myself in Rio, and decided that I'd have a look around and test the waters. If you're ever fancied flying, then I would recommend this game as this is a close as you're likely to get: with stimulus such as fans in the room to mimic the cool breeze in your hair. Overall, a very cool experience, even if the graphics did take a little while to load and it was by no means anywhere near as realistic or clear as what you get on the good old internet. From here, we went on to try Arizona Sunshine: a multi-player zombie-killing game which turned out to be loads of fun (even if we did spend a large proportion of the time just dancing at each other in this bizarre outer-body experience). There were, however, certain rules and missions you had to fulfil to unlock new levels, as well as an abundance of other things we weren't told about beforehand which would have really made the experience not only a lot easier, but a lot more enjoyable.
The real unsung heroes of Otherworld are the tech-savvy nerds behind the scenes, trying desperately to make sure everything runs as smoothly as possible and helping people out when things go wrong/they're just completely clueless due to the lack of on-boarding. There is a 'call for help' option, which I did end up using a couple of times when my system froze. This is a teething problem which needs to be expected in a place like this, however, does get on your nerves a bit when they're charging so much and eating away at your 40 minutes with a number of technical glitches. This happened to me only once, during the final game Windlands, where you swing through the trees after embarking on a ship to a pink and green land which looks like it's made entirely of marshmallows. This was probably the most intense experience - as you could really feel the motions and became full immersed, however, it didn't last long as our time was up before we knew it and, again, I was ushered out in under a minute.
Once you're finished there is a bar or poke food options if you need a stiff drink or have worked up an appetite after blowing all those zombies brains out. We were there early evening on a Friday, and there wasn't any atmosphere at all, especially with all the casually hostile staff mooching around. VR still has a long way to come, and this place has the potential to be something incredibly special. Overall, I have to recommend Otherworld as the virtual reality experience is 100% the best I've had so far... it's just a shame about the actual reality which greets you as soon as your step out of your pod.
(no images are my own)
OVERALL RATING: ****
https://www.other.world/
