Time Machine VR

that's abvouisly fantastic!!what a new world for me!!

I read a lot of whines about this game and so didn't buy it until there was a fairly low sale price. The Quest 2 support is non-existent; you have to use Emulate Gamepad to play at all. So that's a strike against it. OTOH, I found I liked it much better than the reviews led me to expect. I'm a sucker for underwater exploration, and the water model is not bad (the surface high above is quite realistic, "blue gloom" lighting is nice, etc). The world could be a little more richly dressed (more marine plants for example) but rock formations are quite nice and the playing areas, if a little small, are pleasingly complex. It's an environment that's fun to visit and just loaf around in. The minisub "pod" handles OK, with semi-realistic inertia, and the controls become familiar pretty quickly. OTOH the cutscenes between playing areas are needlessly long and repetitive. They become tedious quickly, as does the avuncular voiceover of AI "Rob". However the screen/voice acting by "the Doctor" at home base is a treat, I like the actress and she's refreshingly realistic, not a fashion model. The game seems kid-oriented; gameplay is somewhat repetitive and edutainment flavoured. I like dinosaurs, so I'm enjoying this tour of some of the more unusual Jurassic sea creatures; but if you aren't into paleology than it might not hold your interest for long. Basically, you execute research missions, rather like real-world natural science fieldwork, except that your missions take you back in time to the Jurassic, and you're tagging, identifying, and scanning monsters of the deep. The pod is equipped with various sensors and tools that get unlocked one by one. The UI is hopelessly clunky (these folks have never heard of the "wristwatch menu" convention), and your hands never move from the pod controls. So it feels kind of arcadey and oldskool. The missions are somewhat amusing, requiring a little skill here and there but never really difficult. Sometimes it's hard to tell for a few moments what the devs want you to do, but generally they provide enough clues. So you visit different areas and time periods, you sidle up to big scary monsters and xray their stomachs or scan bits of their body structure, while the rather smarmy robot voice helpfully prompts you and reassures you of what a great job you're doing. There's no irony or dark humour here whatsoever, though there is a little unintentional black humour in the central theme, which is... a pandemic! Yup, an ancient Jurassic virus has got loose (due to ice cap melt) and infected the world, and the infection rate and death rate are ticking up on a dashboard display that (in 2021) looks weirdly familiar. Eventually, your research missions will uncover enough information about the virus to support rollout of an effective vaccine and you will Save The World. At first, you "win" by getting to a 63% effective vaccine, but by returning to fly more missions and collect more data, you can boost its efficacy towards perfection. As usual, it's not really the gameplay that draws me to this title -- frankly the gameplay is a bit repetitive and not all that interesting. It's the fun of exploring a Jurassic undersea realm in my own personal submarine. I hope, after playing the whole game through to completion, I'll be able to roam the world freely and just hang out and sight-see. The underwater environment is aesthetically quite nice, the giant creatures are pretty cool (though they could be rendered in more detail), and just zooming around in the minisub is great fun. If you have an imaginative kid who loves dinosaurs, say age 10 or so, I think this game would be ideal and possibly thrilling for them. If you're a bit older and more jaded, but still like dinos and/or scuba diving, or Jacques Cousteau specials on TV, then you still may find it fun despite the tedious bits. If you like game design and are curious about modelling underwater environments, it's also worth a visit to see what can be done with a certain set of assets and design specs. This is mostly a pacifist playthrough: the worst thing you ever do is attach a bait marker to a hapless herbivore to lure a large predator into eating it. The overall ambience is peaceful and meditative, though there are a few scary moments involving critters with big teeth. You don't have to shoot anything (except with a data-gathering probe), and if a sea monster eats you, you just get reset to your last saved play position and try again. There's a little inter-species violence here and there, but nothing you might not see in an Attenborough documentary. I personally enjoy the remix here of wildlife documentary, time travel, dinos, and submarines. If it's a mix that speaks to you, get the game and have some Jurassic fun!