My gift for Christmas is sore arms from playing Beat Saber. It’s a serious workout playing high-difficulty maps.

That map shown in the head video is:

I consider Beat Saber to be one part of the essentials pack of modern VR gaming. As a rhythm game fan, it’s what got me hooked on VR, having played it at a VR arcade back when the HTC Vive was considered new. I visited that arcade multiple times and would spend my entire time slot playing Beat Saber. A few years later, I got a Valve Index and it’s still one of my go-to games when I use it, alongside Half-Life: Alyx.

Both sabers slashing down hard as mines approach

Water breaks!

Beat Saber is obviously a physically intense game, so I make sure to stretch beforehand. I also take water breaks every few songs or I’ll get too exhausted to play well. To help reduce fatigue, I move the rest of my body around with the beat so I’m not just standing still like a scarecrow.

Modding!

One great benefit of PC-powered VR is easy access to modding, and with Beat Saber, modding enables the ability to play community-made beatmaps, which are all I play. Interestingly, my preferences for music in rhythm games tends to be slightly different from my personal tastes. As a result, my collection of maps is very EDM-heavy since the strong beats feel fun to hit in-game.

I also use a camera mod that shows a view on my monitor that’s nicer for spectators and screen captures, which is why I have clips of my gameplay. I record with camera settings that roughly approximate what I see and my experience in the headset.

So many maps!

Over the past few years, I’ve collected a whole lot of maps. I’ve noticed that the maps I like to download and play fall into four categories:

  1. Really fun movement and patterns
  2. Music from another rhythm game (mainly osu!)
  3. Music I own
  4. Novelty (maps of stuff like “half life 1 medkit type beat”)

Here’s an example of movement that I find particularly fun, on a map that I like to play a lot as a warmup. Both hands move independently while having a matching rhythm.

Finally, here’s a “Bandcamp special”, a map I found just today by plugging in names from my music collection into search. Getting to play music I personally listen to is a treat. I think this would count as extremely active listening.