So in the end, I recommend it, but preferrably on a slight sale? It's up to you whether or not $20 is worth it for a 2 hour campaign that relies on jumpscares and okay, if not sometimes janky combat, with good graphics for VR that sometimes has a bit of jitter or visual roughness. Overall I don't regret playing the game at all and glad i got the experience. Hopefully they fix some of the bugs and index controller jankiness.
First off... a lot of what you're going to read further on might seem like i'm calling the game bad. It's not. I genuinely enjoyed it and think it was a great game. A lot of what I'm going to mention is more of how I think a good game could have become an even greater game. It's more of a wishlist on how I had hoped the story and combat had played out. The concept of the story is great! The execution is mostly good, except for near the end where I wish it had done a few things different. Other than that, the feel of the game was pretty good, other than a few silly enemies.
[SPOILERS SORTA]
Got this because Wolf In VR played it... I didn't actually watch past 2 minutes because all the comments seemed to love it, and didn't want to spoil it for myself. So far the story has me hooked. There are a bunch of jump scares, the first one actually made me throw my headset onto my bed. The rest of them manage to get some sort of expletive out of me.
First off... I really enjoy the voice acting and audio work that this game has. It sets the proper atmosphere. The VA work is flawless and the main character actually seems like somebody you could be invested in. The ship's AI is also voiced well. Honestly i'm very surprised, as the recorded lines were crisp, and actually had good writing. I didn't feel like I was in some weird indie horror game where they had their friends and family do the voice acting because it was cheap... It feels like they actually got professionals, and used quality studio equipment to record! Sound track has no complaints from me. As with most games these days, not terribly memorable, but it sets the mood perfectly anyways.
Visually and mechanically... the game is good for VR. Most of the graphics looks great, but there's the occasional area that just seems a bit.. weird. In fact, right before this review the game crashed. Performance at certain areas just tanked for seemingly no reason. Besides that... it's an overall good experience. It does do some cool stuff though visually. It has that indie horror feel to it, which I can appreciate. I also am getting some "SOMA" and "Dead Space" game vibes, mixed in with the movie "Pandorum".
Gameplay is... standard for your run of the mill indie horror game. You walk around, spooky things happen (honestly the scariest parts are the jump scares where something runs at you almost instantly, there were times where I screamed extremely loud and almost deafened my friend on discord). Combat is alright. You can punch with your dominant arm, or use weapons you pick up. Enemies can ragdoll when you smack them, and they will get back up, which was actually refreshing for a VR game. But enemy diversity just seemed a bit repetitive once you get halfway to three-quarters into the game. There are parts of the game where it just seems like they thought spamming you with endless waves of the same exact enemy is "horror".... At that point it just becomes annoying. By the time i hit the part of the game where you take the skiff between sections of the ship... I was done. I just flat out think that the "repair bots" that just endlessly spawn and throw explosives at you at the speed of molasses could have been completely removed from that section, and nothing of value would have been lost. It just turned into a rail shooter at that part, which just felt so out of place. In fact... A much better thing for that section could have been to have the skiff malfunction and crash onto the surface of the ship, and it cracks your helmet, giving you limited time to get back to the other end or something before you suffocate in the cold vacuum of space, mixing in some nice hallucinations of your sister, or some kind of boss chase. Something a bit more exciting than "haha enemies keep spawning in exact same spot and throw slow explodey things at you". But I digress! I just think that was a point where the transition could have really changed the mood of the game, and nothing particularly special was done with it.
Index controllers feel a bit janky with this game. This is a game that's obviously going to make you clench your hands... Gripping the controller picks something up, and gripping it again makes you drop it.... except it's really sensitive to dropping items when you're already holding them, and it's very difficult to pick up certain objects. Personally I wish that grabbing objects would be tied to actually gripping the controllers with force like other games do, rather than just sensing my fingers resting around the grip. Combat is also kind of janky at times. About a third way into the game you finally get that "bolt" gun attachment for your omni tool (omni was a bit of a misnomer because it only does two things by the end of the game... let you punch things, and let you shoot things, but by the time you get the bolt gun you only use that). The bolt gun has rechargable ammo but.... The aiming is very frustrating. The boss fight would have taken much less time if the targeting system was more accurate. The aiming reticle snaps to different parts of the body, but it just has something very off. It's just difficult to get that reticle where you actually want it, but with the benefit of unlimited ammo, this isn't as bad as it could be.
Also, not going to lie, the ending was just plain meh for me. Not bad! But I was hoping for more in a horror game. All this buildup and it just ends instantly after fighting the "boss" that you had fought in the same exact fight not even 20-30 minutes prior. Was expecting some kind of big twist since half the game you spend inside your crewmate's nightmares, but the twist never happened. The buildup all dies down in less than what feels like two minutes. You beat the boss! You find out the expedition didn't go where you think it would and.... you see alien ships on the radar. Then it's over. I just feel like it ended in a bad spot. Everything I just played felt like the first half of a two part game, but there's no second part? The scariest buildup to the end was watching all the pods open and the crew members just slowly hobble away? That ending could have been much scarier imo. Explosion. Tons of aliens start pouring in? You get trapped under rubble while you helplessly watch your sister get taken away? You bleed out? And if it didn't end there so quickly... It could have been a great opportunity to do something more now that you know what the actual enemy is... I get that the situation has almost no hope to it, but that was genuinely a great opportunity to then have to sneak around the ship to avoid all the other crew members that started breaking out of the pods.... Have power failures on the ship and you have to navigate the rest of the ship in search of some goal. Honestly, I bet it would have been a great idea to then need to access all the way back up to the bridge again to send out a signal warning anyone to stay away from that area of space... look for an escape pod... anything. Have some big twist where maybe you send out the warning, but you accidentally tell the potential other expeditions that you found a "suitable" planet, leading to the ultimate demise of the human race once and for all? Something that hurts just a little bit more than just watching your crewmates break out of the pods, lol. I guess that's just my opinion. Some people like that kind of story, just not me. The overall story was still enjoyable. I like the concept, and the story overall was playing out nice. But at the end it kind of lost it for me because of how rushed it felt imo.
