Loading Human: Chapter 1

Kickstarter backer here. Do not expect to play this game standing up. It is designed only for seated play. Crouching is a button; crouching in real life doesn't work. It's not even possible to turn around and look behind you (unless it bugs out and does let you, but then the locomotion and avatar systems get screwed up). The developers have said that their locomotion system is designed to avoid motion sickness, but it's really the worst of both worlds. You don't have the freedom of movement that you have in a game like Windlands, but you can still get motion sickness from sliding across the ground. The way movement is mapped to the Vive controller is simply awful as well. A teleportation system combined with roomscale movement would be much better. Even Windlands-style free movement would probably be better. Similarly the object interaction system is poorly designed. The 3 second "hover to describe" thing is completely unnecessary when you have hands that can point or pick things up. It often triggers accidentally and then doesn't trigger when you want it. There's an arbitrary and fairly short limit on how far you can reach, defined by the avatar system. Attempting to reach out farther will simply fail which is super frustrating. Polish is missing as well. They didn't even bother to implement a proper bathroom mirror in the first scene. The lighting is flat. The loading animation takes forever; there's no reason loading should take that long. The main voice actor sounds bored out of his gourd. Maybe that's on purpose, but it doesn't exactly make me excited about playing the game. There are some interesting gameplay ideas in here, but overall, if you have a Vive then definitely skip this until a better (roomscale) locomotion and interaction system is implemented, at least.

Click-turning is forced on the player. No option for free locomotion with stick/mouse turning. No teleport option for those with room-scale. Your view is blacked out with an "out of bounds message" if you try to turn around without click turning. Strafe keys have been "dimmed" so you only move very slightly to the right or left when strafing. The game itself looks really good and it has some very interesting things going for it especially with how it co-ordinates your HMD movements to the actual character body - like leaning the torso in if you move your head forward. Theres some good stuff here but it is marred by absolute garbage controls with no customizability for either convenience or comfort.

This game has PSVR launch game written all over it. It requires you to stay facing one direction and use the trackpad or analog stick to turn and even press a button to crouch down. If you are "standing" in the game and crouch down in real life it actual says you're outside of the play area. It feels so claustrophobic. To give you an example, imagine there's a switch 70 degrees to the right and 5 feet away that you have to flip. You turn to face the switch, the screen goes black and tells you to look forward. you hit the rotate button, the screen is still off center and you have to walk 5 fieet to the switch. You walk forward and you are now too far to the left of it because you didn't rotate to perfectly align with the switch. you rotate again and you're now looking perpendicular to the wall with the switch. Moving forward, you run into something in the environment and the switch is just out of reach. you step forward in real life to be able to reach the switch, the screen goes black and tells you you're out of the play area. This happens for every little thing you have to do in the game. It's infuriating. If they added 360 roomscale movement it might be a great game. The story seems pretty interesting so far and it runs well and the character models are pretty good.

Despite the negative comments from other Vive owners, I decided to take a gamble and bought it. Personally, I love the intriguing story a lot and graphically it's very beautiful. Voice acting and music are good too. This is clearly a very well-made production. On the other hand, it's obvious that the developers have chosen for a one-size-fits-all solution for PSVR, Oculus and Vive, and this means : a seated vr game with less refined control and movement than Vive owners are used to. A seated game has its advantage though : you can perfectly play it when you feel lazy or tired. But, to be honest, you own this incredible room-scale capable piece of technology with these advanced controllers, and yet, while playing this game, you feel like you are forced to use a primitive system of moving, and of picking up and using things, and this doesn't feel quite right. On the other hand, it's not all that bad : once you get used to the interface and start focusing on the story and the game itself you can enjoy it a lot. Like someone else wrote : maybe we should stop complaining and be glad that it was released for Vive as well, instead of being a PSVR exclusive for example. :) Anyway, bottomline : game and story are really great, I'm going to keep playing this one, no doubt, I'm far too curious of what's going to happen during this game and how the story will evolve, but... potential buyers that own a VIve will have to be sure that they can overcome that feeling of having to use a limited system of movement and control. But for me, being able to play a beautiful full-blown adventure, is a welcome change from the many simple demos and wave shooters for Vive.

Premise: tried to play this seated as advertised, even with this imposed limit it sucks bad. Day one Kickstarter backer here and fellow Italian who wanted to believe in this project. Unfortunately, more than a year later than promised, they've just released an unpolished piece of software that I wouldn't even have given away for free on the Oculus share as a demo for the ancient Rift development kit 2. In particular, the IK, the locomotion model and the control scheme all contribute to render it completely unplayable on a comfortable level (and this comes from a guy that has surpassed 100 hours of running around in Onward) and utterly frustrating even when performing the simplest and (what should have been the) most intuitive tasks, heck even looking to the side takes you off the experience! 1 out of 5 stars for the idea, if they fix everything we'll see about that, at this point if they don't implement full roomscale for the VIVE I won't be running this again.

The locomotion in this game is really bad. There's a button to move/turn and it usually does the one that I didn't want. For example, I want to walk forward a bit but my controller is pointed in slightly the wrong direction so I turn instead. It wasn't what I wanted or expected to happen so it breaks immersion (and gets very frustrating). The game looks good but locomotion is so bad that you can't ever believe that you are there. If I lean forward in my seat, it says "Out of Bounds". If I swivel in my chair too far, I get an error. There even a button to croutch! I think the developers don't understand the "reality" part of virtual reality. Why can't I just turn to turn and crouch to crouch?! We don't need buttons for these and when the game inhibits natural motion to enforce the use of buttons, it's really bad. There is no immersion and no presence in this game and it's all thanks to the really bad locomotion. Such a shame because it does look like a good game. Based on the "Chapter 1" in the name, you'd think they'd be cooking up more chapters in the series. I personally won't have anything to do with any more "Loading Human" chapters until the locomotion is fixed for Chapter 1. This game feels very broken as it is.

[h1]Experienced on the Oculus Rift and Windows Mixed Reality[/h1] You can view my full gameplay here (part 1): https://youtu.be/lGiwfhdV2H0 and here (part 2): https://youtu.be/63vsjWkhku8 This is one of the best walking simulators in VR. It's got a really good story with very nice VOs. My first playthrough took 3.5-4 hours to complete. On my second playthrough, it took a little under 2 hours. Most of the negative reviews have to do with the default locomotion method, which admittedly is terrible. However, the game did add full locomotion with smooth turning a while back, so those reviews are now no longer accurate. There are high production values in this experience. The puzzles are pretty easy. Most of the difficulty of this game is just having to figure out where you need to go or where is the item you need to proceed. There is a hint system, but it's not always good at pointing you towards the correct destination. The frustrating part of this game is not only the vague nature of some of the fetch quests, but that the walking is just too slow. So when you're having to walk around to figure out where you need to be, without quite knowing where, it can get quite frustrating going so slow. There is one puzzle in particular that is pretty bad so I'll go ahead and spoil it. You're asked to find a light bulb. The hint system actually points you to the wrong place. What you actually need to do is get the bulb from a standing lamp near the walk-in closet and you have to click on the switch on the pole to lower it down. It was not apparent at all that you needed to do that. The other bad part is that the game ends just when the story is getting very good. There is no chapter 2. I'm hoping by doing my playthroughs that more people will buy this game and somehow we still get a Chatper 2, even though it may be 4 years too late. Please devs, give us Chapter 2! With improved controls, and lessons learned from the mistakes in Chapter 1, this should be a great experience in VR. [b]Rate 7.5/10. I would rate higher, but the slow walking and some of the fetch quests questionable nature, do bring this experience down. Still, it's one of the best walking simulators in VR and a must buy for any fan of VR and walking simulators.[/b]

I believe that this game has three unique features in the VR media: 1- a proper story 2- real interaction with the environment 3- a full body avatar!! Despite some minor and early problems with the controls (but ehi, everything is new here, it's just a matter of some time to learn a new way of movement during the tutorial) I think it's good, beautiful, fun and immersive. I'm happy to see that the VR is evolving from useless tech demos. Some reviews here seem way too upset, in my opinion

I hate to say that i can't recommend this at the moment, although there is a great game underneath it all, the controls whilst not great i could of got used to... but for me the reason i cam refunding is through the headset the game runs in a low resolution and cannot be changed, there are no graphics settings, such a shame as the art work is excellent. I will be buying this again IF they add some graphics settings in to increase resolutions, the Devs dont seem to respond on the discussion page. The hand interaction is also not great. I would have to say wait a bit and see if they do any updates, then purchase it, as it has potential to be a great VR game.

***UPDATE von mir*** Ich habe einen Weg gefunden das Spiel einigermassen (gut) zu steuern. Ich habe auch noch ein Gameplay Video dazu gemacht. Ob ich das Spiel nun Empfehle? Momentan nur bedingt. Teil1: https://youtu.be/Indxas4TWoo Teil 2: https://youtu.be/ImFRlV-HRpo Teil 3: https://youtu.be/2E7daZsitXo ******************************************************************************************* Leider kann ich hier nicht wirklich das Spiel bewerten. Da es sich mit der HTC Vive kaum spielen lässt muss ich aber vorerst von einem Kauf abraten. Allerdings glaube ich das meine Probleme nur all diejenigen haben, welche versuchen das Spiel mit einer HTC Vive zu spielen. Die Steuerung ist sehr, sehr gewöhnungsbedürftig und wohl sehr für die neue PS4 VR ausgelegt. An die Steuerung alleine könnte man sich noch irgendwann gewöhnen. Eigentlich ist es wie mit einem PS4 oder Xbox Controller auf dem man den Analogstick in die gewünschte Richtung drückt nur dass man hier mit dem Vive Controller nach Vorne, oder nach hinten zeigen muss. Wenn ich also nach hinten laufen möchte muss ich den Controller über meine Schulter nach hinten halten und dann den Knopf zum laufen drücken. Gedreht wird dann aber wieder in Motion Steps welche bei mir immer dazu führen, dass ich meinen eigenen Kopf sicher immer in die falsche Richtung gedreht habe, was das Spiel gar nicht mag. Aber nun zum Hauptproblem. Mit der Vive spielt man im stehen. Room scale ist im Spiel eingeschaltet wird aber nicht unterstützt. Das heisst: Ich bin im Körper der Spielfigur welche sich im Level an der Position befindet in der ich mich befinde. Mache ich eine Bewegung mit meinem Oberkörper nach vorne, Verlasse ich den Virtuellen Körper des Spiels und das Bild wird zuerst unscharf und wenn ich mich noch weiter bewege wird es schwarz. Man muss also im Spiel immer darauf achten, dass man schön gerade im Körper der Spielfigur bleibt. Dies fällt sehr sehr schwer. Stehend sich in einer VR Welt nicht bewegen zu dürfen ist echt übel. Ein Stuhl sollte mir Abhilfe schaffen. Vergesst es das Bild wurde aufgrund des zu grossen Höhenunterschiedes wieder ausgeblendet. Systeme ohne Room Scale sollten von diesem Problem nicht betroffen sein. Lösung mit Patch? Ich sehe momentan nicht, dass es der Hersteller schaffen wird eine Lösung für die Vive zu liefern. Es gibt Situationen, in denen das Spiel darauf bestehen muss, dass der Charakter des Spiels an Ort und Stelle bleibt. Z.B in der ersten Szene des Spiels sitzt der Charakter auf dem Sofa und spricht mit seinem Computer. Ich denke das man diese Szene nicht mit Room Scale umsetzten könnte. Dazu müssten Story Elemente angepasst werden. Ich warte mal noch das Wochenende ab. Rückgabe ist ja möglich.