This game is actually pretty fun, even though it doesn't break much new ground with the types of things you do in game.
It's comprised of three different parts: Bowshot (an archery game with powered up projectiles), Smash (Like Pong in a long hallway with powerups and slow-mo beams) and Fracture: which is a bit more like breakout, except to make it different from smash, they gave you a bat and a Tractor beam thingie to grab the ball.
The game also seems to have an announcer that is autotuned, but instead of sounding like GLaDOS, she sounds like a squeaky autotuned mouse voice. Not that unpleasant but not a bonus either.
Since each game is kinda different I'll have to do a "What I liked/disliked" for each section.
So Bowshot...Pretty standard archery game, only you can choose between a single shot or a triple shot (you must choose before the round starts and you stick with it all through the round). Triple Shot is as it sounds... you have three arrows that are launched at the same time, and depending on how far you draw back the bowstring, they'll be spread out or more or less aimed at the same target. Each arrow in the triple shot isn't very powerful so unless all 3 hit the same guy, you're not doing as much damage, but you're probably better off on clearing a crowd with this style. The triple shot also allows you to power up a shot that fires in a straight line (I think aligned perpendicular to your bow). It's somewhat useful if the enemies spread out in a straight line, but the times where this happens are kinda brief. The "line" is also rather narrow so the enemies can just move up or down a bit and it'll pass them entirely.
On the other hand, you can use the single shot to focus more power on one target at a time, and the powered up version of the shot shoots a sort of shotgun blast type power in a little circle around your arrow... this is useful for plowing through enemies that are lined up single-file in front of you, but as before, the times where this happens is few and far between. However, since the single shot focuses more on power, you'll more than likely destroy the enemies you DO hit.
Your enemies are all boring cubes that fly around you, but every so often they take shots at you, so you have to dodge a bit. More Room-scale space is better here. On the plus side, there's powerups that you can buy both passive and active, though to use the active powerups you have to spend points on allowing you to assign the powerups to a controller touchpad. You can also refund the points if you haven't used the powerups, and the point refund even includes the passive powerups as well, so if you spent too much on some passive powerup and need more of an active power up, you can do that between rounds.
There's also separate powerups for each bow style (triple vs single shot)
Things I liked:
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[*] Each round has a set of goals to achieve and if you achieve all three goals, you get more points to be used for powerups.
[*] The bow looks a bit cooler than some of the other archery games, and thankfully they don't make you reach back to a quiver to grab another arrow.
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Things I didn't like:
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[*] Boring enemies
[*] No realistic physics (So you might as well been given a small missile launcher that you fire with a single button press)
[*] It's not really this game's fault but I'm kinda getting tired of bow and arrow games in VR.
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Smash has been described as 3D Air Hockey but really it's more like pong in a long narrow hallway. You have two paddles and you can hit the ball, or apply some spin to it by moving the paddle as you hit the ball. If you do it right, the AI will slowly try to follow the ball and the spin will give it a more unpredictable movement after a bounce. Spin won't help at all if it goes straight down the hallway though.
As before, each round has a set of goals to achieve and those goals turn into points you can spend on one-time use powerups and passive (permanent) powerups. Also as before, you have to spend points to be able to attach these powerups to each controller so it's kinda deceptive on the price... also as far as I know, each controller only holds ONE powerup so that limts you to two.
HOWEVER, in addition to the powerups you buy, there are some powerups that show up midway down the hall that will immediately take effect if the ball hits it. These include one that makes the ball huge (easier to hit), one that increases velocity on each bounce (which is deadly if used right) and also a multiball powerup that can cause your score to go from 0 to 5 in a hurry....it can also go the other way if you're not careful.
Things I liked:
[list]
[*] Smashing the ball down the hallway and making that stupid AI bot miss the shot
[*] Hitting the multi-ball powerup in such a way that the AI could only stop one or two shots (while the other 3-4 went in the goal)
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Things I didn't like at all:
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[*] trying to smash the ball and instead, smashing my WALL... because yeah, you can really lose track of where you are in your room and when you see the ball coming towards you, your instinct is to sprint forward and slam it... don't do that.
[*] The Bots have that annoying "Fake robot speech filter" that everyone is using in their games... the result is that the speech turns into a scratchy mumble that is tough to understand. Imagine if you were talking into a kazoo and that kazoo buzz was loudly playing over every word you said. Congratulations, you're almost as annoying as the bot speech!
[*] The enemies also spit out these "mines" that can intercept the ball and cause it to go flying back at you unexpectedly. This occasionally happened to the AI as well, but really those mines are just an annoyance.
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And finally we have Fracture, which is basically what I'd expect Breakout to be like in VR, only it doesn't seem to have as much of a point when the whole room is a target for breaking bricks. The "enemy" here is time since you have a limited amount of time to hit all the bricks and your combos are determined by how many bricks you break in a short period of time.
The ball and ball grabber is similar to another game (Racket NX) but the grabber seems to pull the ball from anywhere, so you can shoot the ball and grab it again quickly (which is probably the best strategy). I didn't really find this game engaging though. Once again there are powerups and stuff to earn, but I'm not sure you'd even need them, though I didn't play it for long so maybe the score needed to pass the levels goes up sharply or something.
Things I liked:
[list]
[*] Well, the bat was somewhat new. I figured they'd just use a paddle again.
[*] If you manage to break a lot of bricks in a short time period, the ball changes color to signify the combo level.
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Things I didn't like:
[list]
[*] It was actually kinda hard to aim the ball where I wanted it to go with the bat. I think I would have done better with a paddle/racket.
[*] Since there were no enemies, it felt the least exciting of the three games. It seemed more fitting for a separate game mode or something.
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I actually bought this game even though it was given for free on Viveport... Two reasons: 1) I liked the game and wanted to support the developers and 2) I hated having to have the vive home software running just to play the game. (also for a 3rd reason, I wanted the steam achievements).
There's a whole multiplayer aspect I haven't even tried yet, so I may need to edit this review later. Single player is enough to keep me somewhat busy for a while though.
Anyway, I'd say this game is worth the money... Fracture is the weakest link but it's still fun...and maybe it's more fun in PvP than single player? We'll see eventually.
