The Five Cores Remastered

[quote][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/9686972/]Follow "[b]First Person Exploration and Puzzle Games[/b]" for more games like this![/url][/quote] I never played the original, so I played this without the nostalgia factor of many other reviewers. Like the game that inspired it, Myst, this game involves a lot of exploration and trial-and-error, with very little direction or feedback to the player. I did run into a few annoying bugs, such as invisible walls that are hard to walk around, and a teleportation system that's more annoying than it is helpful. But overall, the game is basically Myst. If you're reading this, you've probably already played Myst, in which case you already know whether or not this sounds enjoyable to you.

First the positives. The game is quite beautiful. The puzzles are not too difficult but some are a little vague. The music is nice. The negatives. I could not get my Quest 2 controllers to work with Virtual Desktop. I had to use Air Link. The free motion controls worked for the most part but I needed to switch to teleportation in order to reach some areas and to generally get through doors. I found this irritating that I had to switch locomotion modes in order to move properly. Using objects/ handles was difficult with the Quest 2 controllers. There were times I wasn't sure if I could move an object or if my controller wasn't responding correctly. The ending? Um, not much there. So being very frustrated with how the Quest 2 controllers work with this game, I can't recommend it until they fix this. I also tried using a gamepad but could not get that to work at all.

I played this game when it first came out. It was a very nice little adventure game, but it had some rough edges. I backed the Kickstarter to remaster it. The results are impressive. The graphics are all to a higher standard and VR is even supported. The game is beautiful. And it is large. So large that you may feel the need to do some old fashioned mapping. A LOT of effort was put into the visuals. The puzzles are mostly untouched, but with an additional world to explore. Most are quite good, but there are a couple where the clues are ambiguous. Be prepared to try more than one interpretation. All puzzles are logic twiddlers. There is no inventory. The story is still on area where the game falls flat. All you know is that your boat wrecked on a mysterious island. There is a young girl trapped in eternal sleep who can only be released by energizing four crystals. And since no one else is around and since you have nothing else to do, you decide to do it. Why is she there? Why didn't her captors energize the crystals themselves? Where is everyone? What happens after you release her? And where can a guy find a toilet around here? Bottom line - The game is one big, beautiful point-n-click. It took me just under nine hours to complete. If you enjoy adventure games, you will enjoy this.

Love it in VR, I prefer Free Roam setting in VR. Took a few minutes to adjust to it but it seems to work great for me. So much like the Myst series and the graphics are wonderful. The landscape is so beautiful. I give it a Super Nova of Stars

I tried this on Quest 2 and 3, with Touch controllers and Gamepad and could not get anything to control the game and get past the opening menu. Maybe it'll work for you. Worth a try since it's now free. But I wasn't able to get it working.

I am reviewing this for the VR experience, though I wouldn't recommended it as a game to play on screen, either. [h1]Virtual Reality[/h1] The game's port to VR is acceptable. Movement can be continuous locomotion and turning, or snap turning with teleportation to nodes in the game world. The two methods can be instantly swapped between by pressing the grip button on Oculus Touch. I mostly used node teleportation, as it was the fastest way to get around the environments and was a good indicator of where the relevant gameplay areas were. Physical interactions with motion controllers are weak, with only holding books and using levers, ropes and wheels. Other than that, the motion controllers are glorified mouse pointers - not something I ever like to see for interacting with objects with motion controllers. This is a port of a game not designed for VR, but I'm sure interactivity could have been better. The graphics are basic, yet imaginative, and the game ran perfectly on my aging computer. [h1]Gameplay[/h1] As for the game itself, I assume it was a labor of love for a very small developer and I hate to slam it. But I have to share my actual experience: I didn't like anything about the puzzles and gameplay in The Five Cores Remastered. The game's inspirations are obvious and I won't repeat what other reviewers have doubtless said. But this doesn't live up to that and I believe it is poorly designed. I thought all five worlds were worse than my least-favorite world in Myst: the Mechanical Age. The worlds of The Five Cores Remastered are expansive and a sight to behold, but tedious to navigate because they are mostly empty with points of interest spread far apart. There's not enough detail or character in the worlds to give a sense that a civilization actually inhabited them. The lore is told in several notes and books spread across the worlds. I read them all, but I have no idea why all the people disappeared. I'm willing to go so far as to say the puzzle design in Five Cores is terrible. I did not enjoy a single puzzle. I never felt the feeling of accomplishment of figuring out a puzzle because the puzzles are designed in such a way that once I knew the solution, it took several minutes to actually execute it. By that point, all I felt was relief that the tedium of navigating or inputting data was over. There are a number of puzzles that require writing notes or taking screenshots. I don't think transferring information is a legitimate puzzle, and these puzzles were especially awful in VR. I had to keep taking my headset off to look at screenshots on my monitor. Some puzzles had no hints or clues and required good-old-fashioned trial-and-error to solve. I don't mind those kinds of puzzles, but I don't think they're very satisfying, either. Each world has only a few things to interact with, so puzzles end up being very simple. That's where making them convoluted creates the "difficulty." The worst offender was one of the color-changing plants on the Floating Garden world. The game's puzzle elements give little feedback, often requiring puzzles to be completely solved before anything happens. The Necropolis world was, frankly, terrible. It was just walking around a maze pressing buttons and then once all the buttons have been activated, completing an extremely simple puzzle to finish the level. I didn't like it at all! [h1]Conclusion[/h1] I understand that this game was probably a tiny developer's homage to classic point & click adventure games, but I don't think it's good enough. I played many low-budget adventure games during what I call The Dark Age of the adventure game genre in the 2000s. I'm willing to put up with a lot of nonsense to get a good story, adventure or puzzling experience. Five Cores Remastered is too bare-bones for even me. I took my time with it, getting stuck several times, and still completed the game in under four hours. I feel like I barely solved any puzzles, explored any interesting locations, or had any fun. That's unfortunate, and I'm sad to say it, but that's the truth. I'm glad The Five Cores Remastered supports virtual reality, and that did add to the experience, but not enough for me to recommend it to anyone.

This is a great Myst-Like game, and the developer has put a lot of effort into making sure that it plays well in this new remaster. I recommend giving the VR version a spin for some great immersion!