The Blood Eclipse

[h1]Experienced on the Oculus Rift[/h1] [i]Please note: I received a free Steam key through the Steam Curator Connect program.[/i] You can view my gameplay & initial impressions review here: https://youtu.be/GIY8sDJT-_Y I don't always accept free games I get offered through the Steam Curator Connect program as I have a huge backlog of games that I have actually bought that I would like to play & review. If a game doesn't look good, I usually reject the offer. I don't want to waste your time or mine reviewing obviously bad games. I took a chance on this game, mostly because they recently added Oculus Rift Support. I was wrong to do so. This is a bad game. It's a mobile VR game that was ported to the Steam store. Unfortunately, it would have a long way to go before it would ever be at a satisfactory level to be recommendable for PC VR. It's basically a humans versus zombies game. You can play either single player or online multiplayer. I was unable to test online multiplayer, because as you may have guessed, nobody is playing this game. It may be fun with other players, but there is so many things wrong with the game that I strongly doubt you could get your friends to play with you even if they were giving away this game for free. There's different modes available. Kill them all. Deathmatch. LTS. However, as single player, it all basically plays exactly the same. You kill all the zombies with the different weapons scattered all around the different locations. Once you die, you turn into a zombie and then you go after any surviving players. Since you're likely playing solo, that just means it's game over and you can try again. The locomotion is bad and there is no smooth or snap turning. The terrain makes you go up and down for reasons unknown. I was always floating above the ground even though my Steam VR settings has me clearly at ground level in my Steam VR home. Light and shadows swirl all around each scene. I couldn't tell if it was a bug or if this was a game design choice. Either way, it was very annoying. I guess the devs didn't want you to see how ugly this game is. Selecting weapons is very cumbersome. You basically have a rotating circular menu. Shooting is very basic. Death animations are very poor. A railing (or other objects) can stop a zombie right in front of you. [b]Rate 3/10. [/b]

When the most frightening thing in a horror game is the textures, you know you are doing something wrong. I played this game trying [b]various setups[/b]. Desktop, and in VR with the Valve Index + Xbox controller, mouse/kb, Index controllers, and Vive wands. I got this game free [spoiler]more than its worth[/spoiler] via the curator program from [url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/HTCVIVEVR]>THIS<[/url] lovely VR group, which usually has a more positively humoured Aussie doing reviews and videos. [b]Performance[/b] is terrible. A 2080ti was unable to keep 120fps in this game at default settings (by that I mean steam VR settings, because this game has no settings), and it was ROUGH, some games I dont mind some droppage but I felt it badly here. On desktop @4K my framerate went between 50 and 300fps (mostly double digits) .... on this [b]mobile game[/b].... on a 2080ti. [b]Controls[/b] are terrible. You feel floaty. You aim as if you are a mannequin. In VR, pushing up on the thumbstick/trackpad is to move forward, but left or right is to open your inventory (which sometimes doesnt want to close). You cannot turn (lets be honest, no ones doing turning anymore!!), so you need to spin in your chair (yes, its listed as seated.) Theres plenty more I can say, but its just all bad. All of it. [b]Graphics[/b] are ... it has graphics - they're fine for the most part. The most interesting thing I have to say about them is how distracting it is to turn your head only to have buildings and landscape come into view (light up) in your periphery. Even bearing in mind its low price and the fact it is an indie title, I cannot come up with anything good to say about it. Its literally a mobile game which was ported to PC. As if 2020 wasnt going bad enough. *E: It occurred to me today that there is something good I could say about it. The little I saw of the level showed some effort was made. Its possible this is an ok mobile game - maybe. But most PC users dont like bad console ports, that goes quadrupley so for a mobile port. So while it was ambitious of this dev to try cater to so many platforms, this one I hope was a learning experience and better luck to them in the future.

Really amazingly impressively horiffically bad. It's meant to be a horror game and that is something it achieves admirably, but not in the way it intended. Aspiring game devs should study this as an example of what not to do. Everyone else should avoid like the plague. That has leprosy. On its tumors. The controls. Oh my god the controls. They're so amazingly unintuitive that I spent about 20 minutes trying to figure out how to start a game. Reloading a weapon is a 10-keystroke epic of horror. As far as I can tell there's no way to drop a weapon you have picked up. Combine this with a 2 weapon limit and the ability to have 2 copies of the same weapon and you have a recipe for frustration. Using the weapons is bad on a similar level to reloading them. Don't bother trying to shoot at anything more than about 3 metres away, you'll just waste your ammo and have to go through the rigmarole of reloading, it seems bullets just dissappear into thin air. Aiming is all but impossible given the lack of iron sights or a crosshair. This combines with the requirement for headshots to kill the zombies to create an impressive lebel of unplayability. As far as I can tell there is NO PATHFINDING AT ALL. Zombies walk directly towards you and then just stand against the rail that's between you. This could perhaps be seen as a good thing, as it allows you to take the required 47 shots to get a headshot without worrying about being injured. I could probably find about a million other things to go on about, but my brain is busy repressing the memories of playing this massive turkey. The core issue here is a complete lack of fun. This is the kind of thing that not even masochists would enjoy.

Ok here is my thoughts:- 41 Minutes Ill never get back, 41 MINUTES!!!. This is horrid, a mobile port to PC with no consideration for a mouse and keyboard, the menu system is terrible again 41 minutes of game time 20 minutes was trying to workout how to use it, the other 21minutes was just pucking in the toilet as to how ♥♥♥♥ this is. In short evn if this is pile of turd is offered up for free that is still to expensive. And Devs if you read this review, head back to the drawing board and rework the menu system for PC, NOT EVERYBODY HAS VR!! or at least state is "VR ONLY". "The game was built to be played with just ONE tracked controller (because it was designed with mobile in mind)" <------AND LEAVE IT THERE.