When I woke up this morning I was like do I have anything to write about? Do I even want to write? But since my days have been consumed with The Oculus Quest 2 playing Population One in VR, I thought I would share. It all began at the beginning of May 2021. I had just driven back to Pittsburgh for one week of processing before my mobilization. I was in the city for the whole day and in the early afternoon after I had finished up work, I went over to my friend E’s house in Mount Washington to say hi and have lunch before driving back home.

Her friends from NY were over as well because her one friend designs and installs shelving in houses and she had hired him for some jobs.When we all sat down for lunch it got real interesting because E’s friend was telling us about the Oculus Quest VR headset. I had never heard of it let alone that the concept of the movie “Ready Player One” was already in full effect. I mean the omni-directional treadmills are already hitting the market. When I got out of gaming in 2011ish, I went cold turkey out of gaming and have not kept up with it over the years.

Within 45 minutes I knew driving home that I was going to buy an Oculus Quest 2. I mean heck, in 2008 the xbox 360 was upwards of $450 and the games were all avg. $60. Now, in May 2021, they are selling the Oculus Quest 2 VR headset for $299 baseline and for the updated head piece and extra GB, you can easily get it for $350 and most games are around $30 or less. The entire gaming console is in the headset! “The files are in the computer!” One was on the way the very next day and I received it just 1 day before my flight to Virginia.

At first, I bought Gun Club VR, Moss a 1 player puzzle game, and Population One. I was pretty scared to jump right into multiplayer and so I held off on actually playing the game for a couple weeks actually, just slowly getting into VR with the other player games. Then, Sonny, E’s friend who has the quest jumped on and we played Population One together. IT WAS MIND-BLOWING! Like I literally couldn’t believe the game. I’ve been addicted since and it’s only been about a month of playing.

Population One the game came out in October 2020. That was the kick off of the game. You also get in game updates regularly. I am sure this was happening on XBOX and Playstation but I stopped playing when you still had to buy the games in store. There is nothing quite so crazy as the VR experience. In this game it is like Call of Duty squads where you play on teams (squads) of 3 and fight others until you are the last squad left. The map starts off big, then it closes down on you as it goes until everyone is forced into a very small area to fight. Population One has the same premise except you are in VR. It’s hard to describe unless you try it for yourself.

What’s even cooler about the game is that prior to the game actually starting, everyone is sent to a “lobby area” of the map were you can interact with all of the players. So you meet people from all around the world and interact “with your enemies” if you will. There are people speaking different languages, doing different things, so on and so forth. It’s a really good time. 3 hours can fly by in no time!

Considering I am spending the majority of my days locked up in a hotel room doing little to nothing, this has been the biggest relief to me. I am feeling stressed and antsy kind of a lot of the time lately. So when I want to lay face first on the bed and scream into a pillow every so often in all of these days of quarantine, I take my aggression out in Population One, by flying around and shooting at people. It is very rewarding.

It as been one of my main daily activities and I have even had a couple dreams about it that’s how in my head the game is right now. It has definitely helped keep me sane and given me an outlet to meet people and interact during the day where I would otherwise have no one to talk to. I can’t wait to see what the next season of Pop One has in store!