Valve Gives The Lab A Competitive Update
Whenever I introduce someone to VR, there are a few different titles that I load up for them to play through. The first one is always Valve's The Lab. Most people I know are alreay familiar with Portal, so it's already a familiar setting. Plus, it does a fantastic job of slowly introducing the player to different aspects of VR. The game has just gotten a big update that will add more replay value to some of the mini-games.
After the first couple of times that I played around in The Lab, I stopped going back to the game. After all, once you've played the mini games a couple of times, you've gotten the gist of things, and there is little reason to return. Valve knows this, and that's why they've released this competitive update for for the title.
I'm a person that's driven by competition in video games. I still go back to Space Pirate Trainer, because I'm constantly competing with friends to keep my top spot on the high score list. Well now you'll be able to do the same thing in the Longbow, Slingshot, and Xortex mini-games inside The Lab, as leaderboards have been added to all three games.
Each of the three games has received a gameplay update as well. Longbow now has an infinite number of waves with increasing difficulty. Your exploding barrels and such will reset every 8 waves, so you've got a little extra firepower in the later waves. Xortex has also recieved an "Infinite" mode, and they've replaced your laser with a super powerful bomb. Finally, the Slingshot has been rebalanced to include "new core calibration career opportunites." You'll find bigger explosions, and new score calculations, which offer plenty of reasons to go back and try it out again.