While the giant Jaeger robots of Guillermo del Toro's "Pacific Rim" likely won't ever become reality, the next best thing is available right now -- the Jaeger Pilot simulator, courtesy of the virtual reality headset Oculus Rift and Legendary Pictures.
The two companies teamed up to bring the one-of-a-kind experience to San Diego Comic-Con and it sounds awesome, if in need of a little polish. After strapping on the Oculus Rift VR headset, players are thrown into the cockpit of "Pacific Rim's" star robot Gypsy Danger, walking through the Pacific ocean off the coast of Alaska just before the first battle of the film.
Lead "Pacific Rim" actor Charlie Hunnam himself is even there piloting the metal behemoth with you for a moment and walking you through the experience, all before he's sucked out of the cockpit by the Kaiju Knifehead. The Verge reports that the simulator is a fun experience visually, as it runs on the powerful Unreal Engine 4 while using assets and help from Industrial Light and Magic to create top notch visuals.
In terms of gameplay, the simulator doesn't hold up quite as well. The Verge says that players don't have any real control over the action, and the promotional video for the experience doesn't offer any glimpses as to what the simulator actually entails.
While the Jaeger simulator sounds like a fun distraction for convention goers, it could become something much more. Legendary has teased that an updated version of the simulator (hopefully with actual gameplay) could see public release in a few years when the Oculus Rift lands in the hands of the masses.
The actual Pacific Rim game, a budget digital console release that launched alongside the film last summer, failed to live up to the potential of the giant monster vs. giant robot premise, but just think about how promising a VR enabled full Jaeger piloting game could be! As the concept behind piloting the Jaegers is all about having two pilots in sync, it could be a cooperative multiplayer experience, with both players needing to coordinate their movements in order to defeat increasingly difficult Kaijus. That is a game that would sell Oculus Rift's like hotcakes.
Who knows, maybe the game could even be available by the time the recently announced "Pacific Rim 2" hits theaters, and use characters, Jaegers and Kaijus from both the films and the upcoming animated series. Anything is possible, but right now nothing is set in stone. At least we can always hope.
