Google Daydream View review: Google’s Pixel-perfect Gear VR rival

Apps and games

Of course, a good-looking headset means nothing if you don’t have an equally strong line-up of apps and games to go with it, and it’s here where Daydream View falters. At the time of writing, there were only a handful of apps available to buy and download on the Google Play Store, which you can browse and purchase from in situ from the View’s main menu, and makes it rather difficult to deliver a definitive verdict.

More apps will be added in due course, however, and Google has already committed to adding at least another 40 by the end of the year. These include BBC, HBO Go and Netflix apps, plus several games such as Gunjack 2 (the sequel to one of our favourite Gear VR games), Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, and Need for Speed: No Limits VR.

At the moment, though, the experience is limited. Google StreetView is fun, but I wouldn’t say the experience of visiting Machu Pichu in VR is any more spectacular than looking at a 360 degree photo on my PC, especially when you’re still plagued by blurred-out faces and disembodied tourists near your point of view.

The same goes for Google’s Arts and Culture VR, a kind of interactive art gallery that’s been produced in partnership with a handful of museums around the globe. It’s a neat idea to be able to zoom in and get up close and personal with famous paintings, but only some have helpful audio guides to tell you more about the work in question. Admittedly, it’s still in Preview at the moment, so more exhibits may be added in the future to help flesh it out, but right now it’s definitely not that “must-have” killer app Daydream View so desperately needs.

YouTube VR takes a prime spot on the Daydream dashboard, but there’s only so many 360 degree videos you can watch before the initial novelty of it wears off. Otherwise, there’s a choice of three games: the theme park-like Wonder Glade (the only one that’s free), the cute puzzle game Mekorama and gothic, top-down shooter Hunter’s Gate.  

Mekorama is easily the best of the bunch, even if it doesn’t make great use of the headset’s motion capabilities. Instead, all you need to do is use the remote to guide your robot to the goal, pointing and clicking at your destination while rotating and shifting various bits of your environment along the way.

Wonder Glade and Hunter’s Gate, meanwhile, use the remote’s touchpad to control a small character in third person, presenting you with a top-down view of the world below. Simply move your thumb across the touchpad and your character will follow suit. However, I found this method of control very fussy and not at all intuitive, and the lack of tactile feedback made me yearn for a proper gamepad.

The variety of apps didn’t exactly get me hot under the collar, then, but the phone certainly did. After just 15 minutes of use, the Pixel XL became incredibly hot to the touch and remained so for minutes after I’d taken the headset off. Our temperature gun measured a worrying maximum of 56 degrees Celsius. To put that in context, holding your hand in water at 60 degrees for five seconds is enough to give you second or third degree burns, so you’ll definitely need to watch out how you handle the phone after you’ve finished your virtual escapades.

Verdict

Google’s Daydream View certainly looks like a consumer-friendly headset, but in practice it still has a long way to go before it can match up to Samsung’s Gear VR. Right now, it’s a pretty tough sell, even if you do happen to have one of Google’s Pixel Phones.

In its defence, though, the Daydream VR platform is in its infancy right now, and in a couple of months its app support will be vastly superior to what’s on offer right now, so watch this space: in 2017, Daydream VR could well become the mobile headset of choice.