Beat Saber Review (PS5 / PSVR2)

Beat Saber is one of the best VR experiences you can play. The king of the VR rhythm scene and a constant presence on top-seller lists, Beat Saber finally makes its way over to the current generation with PSVR2. To read our initial thoughts on the PSVR game from 2018, you can view that here. To see how the port fares, read on.

One thing that sticks out with this port compared to a number of Beat Saber’s peers is just how small the jump forward feels. Environments look much nicer, with crisper textures and better particles and lighting, but that’s one of the most substantial improvements. This version of the game now supports the 360° mode, where notes come at you from all directions. Thanks to years of support, you’ll have a much larger track list than the original launch. The music has a degree of homogeneity to it, though much of the DLC mixes things up. You still get the same experience that doubles as both a great game and a great workout.

The original PSVR version of Beat Saber was impeccably designed, able to skirt many of the tracking and hit-detection problems that plagued many other titles trying to make the most out of Sony’s newfangled headset. While there were occasional issues, it wasn’t a regular enough occurrence to pose any real problem. Such is not the case this time. Frame dips on songs are common, though mercifully not severe. Hit detection on slicing notes also randomly fails to register. But the most irksome problem involves the rumble feature on the PSVR2 Sense Controllers.

With shocking regularity, slicing through notes will fail to elicit the expected rumble from your controller. On the surface, this sounds like a trivial problem, but when you’re conditioned to expect each and every note to provide some degree of feedback upon contact, the absence is massively disorienting. We missed out on multiple full combos because of this problem, and that’s only from the first few days. Beat Games has confirmed it’s working on a fix for these issues, but they remain present for now.

Even with these setbacks, you still get a brutally exhausting, immensely fulfilling gameplay loop with masterfully charted songs. However, until those issues are fixed, what you have is merely an adequate port.