Let’s Play Summer Lesson, PlayStation VR’s Most Unexpectedly Creepy Game

Is it possible for a "sexy" VR game to be boring? Summer Lesson does its damnedest.

Released at the launch of PlayStation VR exclusively on the Japanese PlayStation store (which you can access from any PS4 if you want to), Summer Lesson falls, from a purely mechanical standpoint, into the "simulation" game genre---you're the tutor of a high school girl who's preparing for an exam, so you choose from a menu of lesson options in hopes of boosting her statistics high enough so that she comes home with an A at the end of the week. But really, it's about spending time in virtual reality hanging out with that ne plus ultra of Japanese erotic archetypes, the girl in the sailor uniform.

As interested as I am in novel VR experiences, there's a baked-in element of creepiness to this scenario that's hard to write around. Your student Hikari Miyamoto isn't said to be underage, although the game doesn't say that she's 18, either. What is seen as mundane in Japan may not be elsewhere, which is why I sincerely doubt we'll see this game appear here. That said, I think the lessons that it teaches about up-close-and-personal contact with a "person" in VR are something that should be taken seriously.

I found Summer Lesson to be fascinating when I tried the initial demo at last year's Tokyo Game Show, especially as proof that the smallest hints of intimacy can be extremely powerful in VR when your brain is telling you that a real human being is a few inches away from you. This experience is certainly present in the full version of Summer Lesson, although the game they've wrapped around it is so simplistic, repetitive, and ultimately boring that it's not likely to have much of an impact beyond that brief novelty.

To wit: the gameplay of Summer Lesson. Pick a vague "lesson plan" (math, logic, history, etc.) from a menu, looking over at a chart of Hikari's progress to see how that lesson will affect her stats. Enter the lesson. You're sitting on a chair in her room. She greets you. Scene fades out. Fade in: She's working on something at her desk, and you can pick from a variety of options. Should you take notes, open the window, cheer her on? You don't experience doing any of these things, because the screen fades out again, and suddenly we're at the end of the lesson. Now it's time to select a piece of random small talk from a few options: What are your friends up to today? What do you do for fun? How was the lesson? Rinse and repeat six more times, and the game's over.