1.2 hours played
Written 3 years ago
In concept this game is great. It's strange, it's a mystery, it's a bit jarring, and there seems to be a good narrative brewing. That said it has some major issues to fix before this game can be enjoyable from my setup.
I've got a 3070 RTX, wired fiber internal network (& high speed fiber internet) with 5GHz wireless and am using my Meta Quest 2 to Airlink to my base station to play this (no problem with other games running at high res).
Problems:
1) pulling me out of VR. every time the game wants to use my voice, is glitches, freezes and my view flickers between the Steam VR holding screen and the game.. then after about 3 seconds it comes back and I can use my voice. For some of the conversations you have in the game this could happen 3 to 5 times in a row.. Super disruptive to immersion and made me want to stop there, but I pressed on.
2) rendering. there is a lot to read in the office.. there is a lot of information to take in, but outside of the stuff immediately around the desk, everything else was super pixelated and soft.. some text impossible to read.. even when I picked it up and brought it in close, it did not re-render and stayed unreadable.
3) the controllers. The movement, and object handling controls are super awkward and not intuitive. It's a mechanic that is supposed to work like Alyx's gravity gloves, but unlike the gravity gloves, it doesn't "just work" rather it sometimes works and forces you to use a laser pointer to identify the object (not all objects are handelable) and then pull it towards you. So sometimes your laser pointer slips off the object as you try to yank it towards you and then you get either nothing, or some other object you didn't want.
4) the reset. I'll try to not add any spoilers but there is a scene where you have to help a driver make a decision from the tools you have available in your office. There are a number of dialogues you have to go through that ultimately end up with the driver being in the middle of a lot of dogs. I'm pretty sure I was supposed to "do the raptor" in that scene but I couldn't because the instructions were unreadable and over pixelated.. but besides that, when I missed the opportunity and got reset, I got sent back to the conversation path 10 to 15 minutes before the raptor mishap. That's when I quit the game. It should have at most brought me back to the conversation I had right before the raptor mishap, or at best brought me back right after the conversation.. or at super best, let me choose on a time line where I wanted to go back to.
I really like the feel of this game, in concept, but in execution I don't think it's quite there yet.
I'll happily revise my review when my concerns are addressed and it feels more like a finished product.