There is nothing harder for me than trying to relax. Maybe losing a loved one, but who knows? While my loathsome body yearns to never move, my brain is like a pinball machine created by some sneaksby who hates me. Imagine having a roommate in your head who yells at you about dishes and then looks over your shoulder as you do those dishes telling you that you’re wasting your life. Fortunately, I’ve met with medical professionals and specialists who’ve helped diagnose and improve these issues. Unfortunately, they don’t take my insurance so that’s fucking stressful, too.
In my ongoing quest to quiet my brain with something that isn’t charged by the ounce, I’ve frequently tried and failed to learn to meditate. Because we’re all supposed to meditate, right? That’s a big message you get a lot. Want to start off your day right? You have to meditate. Feeling anxious? Maybe it’s meditation time. Can’t sleep? Who cares; meditate! If you don’t meditate, maybe it’s your fault you feel bad. Idiot.
Just to be clear, I want to meditate. I’d love to meditate. I’ve used apps like Calm. I’ve used YouTube tutorials. But my brain doesn’t take kindly to chilling out. In fact, it does the opposite: I’ll briefly feel comfortable, note that I’m comfortable, remember another time I felt comfortable, remember a time I felt uncomfortable, realize I’m not meditating right, think about how I need to focus, realize that by thinking about focusing I’m not focusing, and then hopefully by then a gentle bell and soft voice tells me the time is up. But I want to feel better. I do!
So when I saw the meditation app Tripp on the PlayStation 5 VR 2: Hyper Super Ultra Edition Turbo, I figured, hey, maybe this will work! Maybe I can finally turn my life around in just a few minutes a day! Sure, solid changes to my behaviors and lifestyle might have a greater impact on my mental health, but if there’s a video game that helps me avoid putting in the effort, I love it. Shortcuts always work, and here was a $60 shortcut that was also kind of a video game.
I say ‘kind of’ because outside of a few interactive elements, most of Tripp is just sitting in a psychedelic landscape as a voice talks to you about a topic like being okay with yourself, loving yourself, and not disliking yourself. In other words, it’s basically like every other meditation app but there’s visuals. These visuals are supposed to be the secret sauce of the app. All of which sounds like a great pitch to help people with trouble concentrating.
Except Tripp stresses me out. A lot of this is my own inability to focus, even when focusing on focusing. But also, the app doesn’t really make it easy to relax. Those special visuals on Tripp look janky as hell. While I’m not normally a graphics guy, the entire point of the app is to have something nice to look at to keep yourself in the moment. It should have beautiful visuals that smooth the edges of an anxious world. It doesn’t. The app looks like it was made for the Meta Quest 2, which it clearly was. Despite being on a modern console, the visuals are chunky and blurry. Rather than being taken to another, calmer space, it feels like you’re watching a screensaver on a Nintendo 64.
That alone wouldn’t bother me. But the app also interrupts you every few minutes with a task. The moment you feel peaceful, the app will inexplicably demand you do a breathing exercise. Not at the start of the meditation. Kinda in the middle here or there. Even worse, if you turn off the narration, the breathing exercises still randomly pop up with no warning, making you choose between a condescending voice telling you to get past procrastination or being surprised by a sudden screen prompt to breathe differently than how you were already breathing. Slightly better, but still jarring, is a minigame in which you move your head to avoid obstacles and get coins.
All of this is supposed to be peaceful, but after the third or fourth meditation, it becomes annoying. I’m trying to clear my brain and pay attention to instructions at the same time. I respect that for a lot of people, that’s a crackerjack way to bring the temperature down. For me, it made me feel like I was sitting in a theme park ride that got stuck on the tracks with the audio still playing. True, a lot of this is adjustable, but the app doesn’t really give you a lot of info on how to do that. Disappointment first, fixing it yourself later.
Not Tripp’s fault is the PS VR2 headset itself. Sitting still, doing nothing, you start to feel the weight of it on your head. In addition to finding a comfortable position to sit in, you have to find a comfortable position for the headset. It’s easy to ignore that shit being too tight or too loose when you’re fighting aliens. It’s much harder when you’re supposed to clear your mind and focus on how your body’s feeling. And while the app expects you to look around your surroundings, looking too far up - as is often the case in VR - has the sensation of three pounds of plastic pressing down on your eyeballs. Again, not Tripp’s fault, but also it doesn’t help.
Another thing that’s not Tripp’s fault is the fact that the PS5 will happily announce as loud as possible when it downloads an update. Yes, you can turn off notifications. If you thought to do that in the first place. And turning them off and back on every time I want to meditate sounds like a true annoying low level nightmare.
The whole experience stresses me out. Which is a shame, because Tripp does seem like it would be good for a lot of people. And since a lot of people are never buying a PS VR2, it’s a wasted opportunity. Then again, perhaps that’s why Tripp seems closer to a cheap mobile port than an experience that takes advantage of the PlayStation 5. I can’t blame the developers for moving fast and spending less on an app for a gaming headset. It just sucks for me, a person who paid for it.
That said, I’m still going to try. Like I said, I want to feel better. I want a clear mind. I want to wake up without hating myself. I want to be able to enjoy a book without having to keep rereading paragraphs when my mind demands I check my phone to see if any life changing events happened over the last two minutes. I’ll keep using Tripp for a while. I’ll see if maybe I’m wrong and I just haven’t broken through yet.
Meditation takes time. It takes patience. And also I spent $60 on it so I’m going to get my goddamn money’s worth.