About The Virtual Reviewer
I am Blake Pierce Howse, and this site started because I could not find a straight answer to a simple question: is this VR place actually any good, and will my kids like it?
My wife Patty and I have two kids, John and Jenette, and somewhere around our first free-roam session we turned into the family that plans trips around VR arcades. We would drive an hour on a promise from a listing site, walk in, and find a couple of headsets bolted to swivel chairs next to a claw machine. Other times we walked into a warehouse with haptic vests and came out grinning. Nothing online told us which was which ahead of time. So I started writing it down.
How I rate places
When I visit a venue in person, the review says so, and it gets a verdict rating out of 5. That rating is mine. It is not an average of Google reviews, and nobody pays for it. I care about the things that decide whether a family trip works out:
- Is it real free-roam VR where you physically walk, or a seated headset experience?
- Does the gear actually work, and does someone show you how to use it?
- What does it genuinely cost per person once you are standing at the counter?
- Which ages will have a good time, and which games will scare a nine year old?
- Is it worth a drive, or only worth it if you are already nearby?
How the city guides are researched
Being straight with you matters more than looking bigger than I am. I have not personally walked into every venue on this site, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
The city guides are researched guides. For each metro I work from the venue’s own website and booking system, public reviews, and current pricing pages, and I write up what is actually there: address, price, session length, ages, and what each spot is best for. Where I have visited a place myself, the guide links to my first-hand review of it. Where I have not, the guide sticks to verifiable facts rather than pretending I felt the haptic vest.
Prices and hours move around constantly in this industry. I check them when I publish and re-check them on a schedule, but call ahead before you drive out. Venues close with very little notice, and when I find one that has, I take it off the site.
What I do not do
I do not take payment for a review, a rating, or a spot in a guide. No venue on this site paid to be here, and none of them can pay to change what I wrote. There are no affiliate links in the venue guides. If that ever changes, it will be disclosed on the page, in plain language, before you read the recommendation.
The gear side
Somewhere along the way people started asking the obvious follow-up: we loved that place, should we just buy a headset? So I started covering the hardware too, always through that lens. A Quest 3 is not a replacement for a warehouse with body trackers, and it is worth knowing what you do and do not get for the money before you spend it.
Get in touch
If I got something wrong, a price has changed, or a venue on this site has closed, tell me and I will fix it. If you run a VR venue and want to correct your listing, I will take the correction from you directly.
Blake Pierce Howse
The Virtual Reviewer