virtual reality reviews

talking virtual reality (with ammy)

cw: blood

CLIMBEY

climbey is a game in which you grapple up abstract white boxes to get to your destination... and sometimes theres skiing too

the main method of moving is just by gripping onto empty space and carrying/flinging yourself towards your destination (usually a wall). this may sound pretty bad to those that haven't played vr, but in my opinion it actually feels far more natural than joystick/teleport movement does in a lot of games. the built-in set of levels may take you only an hour or two to complete and are a decent amount of fun, but you also have the option of downloading hundreds of custom stages from the steam workshop, many of which are fucking sick, including all the ones made by the single dev (i have no idea why they are not just put into the base game??).

a big part of the fun for me was the ability to play coop/try and race with friends, watching eachother fling ourselves into the void trying to do sick cross-map jumps on levels we'd never played before was almost enough to drop me to the floor laughing at times

the game has its issues for sure, it has some of the strangest vision glitches I've seen in vr (some REALLY awful ones) and it could really use a couple quality of life features such as mid-level hardsaves (for those hour+ long levels that i'd love to get around to finishing) and maybe an option to disable the ability to grab one another in multiplayer.

BLADE & SORCERY

i never understood the hype around modding random pop culture shit into skyrim, but after getting blade & sorcery and the nexus mod manager set up i think with b&s i've finally felt that sort of hype for just seeing something i recognise from something else in a game i like

the game is currently barebones for sure, only offering a small number of maps with only a few weapons, two spells and a very limited selection of wave and enemy types, but even in its current state i'd call it the best melee combat & physics playground available on vr at the moment (sorry boneworks).

the upcoming (NOW RELEASED) content update also seems to show a massive amount of promise, most likely flinging this game into the "basically complete" category of early access titles. i believe the moddability of this game will help carry it even beyond the stage where vr headsets have been replaced by funny chips that we shove up our nostrils...

UPDATE!!! the update came out!! it's very laggy :) but it seems like a pretty good update otherwise...

this update pushed the game much closer to a Fighting Simulator as opposed to the Brutalizing Simulator it was before... the enemies are much tankier, are a little more complicated(?) to kill (they have armour now... plate that cannot be pierced and leather that is meant to be able to be pierced but just can't) and the new ability to imbue weapons with spells just adds a tiny bit more needed depth to the game that gets it out of the Mindless Murder Zone.

I assumed player armour would be coming with this update but it looks like that's not for another few months :/

ANOTHER UPDATE!??! yeah... update 8.1 came out. performance is worse and somehow they've managed to erase women out of existence. wtf? i hope they slow down or figure out wtf is going on cause this is just super scuffed...

WTF... another update... 8.2. Finally, U8 of Blade & Sorcery is "Playable" (if you turn down some of the new settings) defo still wouldn't recommend it to people that NEED high FPS in VR to not get sick, but I guess that was never really the case with B&S.

THIEF SIMULATOR VR

thief simulator is a weird one. it feels like i'm not playing a vr game... but not in a way of "oh, this is so immersive, it's like im really there!" but in a way of "wait, i'm in vr?". something about it just feels incredibly... mouse and keyboard-ey. it's definitely not BAD... just really surreal in those moments.

its kind of basic... kind of buggy... has a pretty odd level up system and can even be grindey in parts. its early access but i really don't see it being expanded much.

the devs are working on TWO more vr games at the same time for some reason... & the game has a strangely large amount of defenders in the steam review comments and discussions. this whole thing is just weird all around

DAVIGO

Davigo is an asynchronous multiplayer VR game where the VR player acts as a giant against a group of 1 or more flatscreen players. both sides are there to do nothing but kill the other player(s) as much as possible via either blowing them up with bombs/rockets (flatscreen) or flinging them off into the void (VR)! usually a vr game being some asyncrhonous multiplayer shit would make me not even consider playing it but since this title allows for Steam Remote Play it's simple enough to get a game of 5 going.

The game is definitely much more intense for the VR player (and maybe harder? the balance has been a hard thing to understand), but that'll probably be the case when comparing anything VR vs. PC. The way the game stops you from just mindlessly flailing as VR is by having a pretty decent delay on your movements, which you have to work with to be able to do well at person-flinging. It's a decent solution, but I really don't think it should apply to your head, as you can't really track the delay on that as you can with your hands.

You can currently get access to the public alpha of Davigo for free on their Discord server.