RagingPoet

Batman Arkham VR has 2 parts. It seems like most of the players only experience the first one - a short interactive movie - and were upset that it's less than 1 hour long and has very few gameplay elements. Even so it's one of the best VR movies with AAA visuals, professional voice acting and interesting story. But the 2nd part of Arkham VR is actually way longer and has more gameplay. It's collectible/trophy hunt with puzzle elements, that requires a second playthrough. And it rewards the player with kinda Batman museum: a lot of animated 3d character models and vehicles from different periods of the franchise.

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is an amazing experience, but just an ok game. It's kinda like Moss in that regard, even though these two games are very different. Pros: + Visuals are stunning: environments and character animations are among the best in VR + Great atmosphere. I've never expected free VR port of 3rd person action/adventure to be so immersive + Voice acting is top notch, overall sounds and music are pretty good Cons: - Main puzzle mechanics - searching for hidden runes - is a bit boring. I get it that it's very thematically fitting, but still, it's very slow and unrewarding type of puzzle. - Combat is a bit too easy and repetitive. The only interesting part was boss fights. - 3rd person camera can sometimes be a bit awkward and nauseating in VR Posted 24 May

Gorogoa is a beautiful short puzzle with unique mechanics. It's about 2 hours long.

Door Kickers is tactical combat-focused RTS. Approachable, challenging and fun. Sometimes absolutely infuriating due to RNG, unreasonably huge maps and controls, designed for a touchscreen.

Race the Sun is probably the only well-known Endless Runner that outlived this genre's short popularity surge. With free VR support, clear minimalistic visuals, satifsying gameplay, semi-random levels, full Steam workshop integration, Race the Sun is still playable and fun today, 5+ years after release.

Played the whole thing in VR without biofeedback. I highly recommend changing the Comfort settings to Severe(if you don't have problems with motion sickness), because without it movement speed is way too slow. Nevermind is an atmospheric adventure/exploration game with horror elements. I really don't wanna call it 'walking simulator', it has way too many puzzles for it. Pros: + Creative and diverse visuals. Nevermind a lot of time looks like more realistic and creepy Psychonauts) + Accurate usage of jumpscares, most of the horror comes from the atmosphere + Great monologues and voice-acting + Reasonable length for that sort of experience Cons: - A lot of puzzles are mediocre, especially extremely long and linear car labyrinth - Final puzzle of every chapter - sorting photos - is unfairly difficult and unintuitive - I really don't get why Advanced Neuromapping is not the part of main game and require additional playthrough

One Finger Death Punch is an ultimate tribute to early 2000s stick figure flash violence

Sprint Vector is an interesting take on VR sports/racing. Pros: + Skating is a lot of fun, especially with Overdrive power-up + Maps are awesome, they have tons of shortcuts and alternative routes + The game is highly polished and optimized + Visuals are really stylish, best choice for VR Cons: - Switching different movement mechanics is really difficult to master. Especially between skating and gliding when it's hard to tell if you are standing on the surface or flying just few centimeters above it - Climbing is quite clunky, and there are some sections with obligatory climbing in Race mode - Later racing maps are much more focused on platforming rather than skating. And platforming when you can't see your legs can be really frustrating - Online multiplayer is almost dead

Experienced the whole thing in VR, so this review is mostly relevant for that. Everspace is rogue-lite arcade space sim with continuous skill and narrative progression. Pros: + Core gameplay is simple but fun. Flying gives a real sense of speed and shooting feels good + Controls are easy and well-optimized for gamepad, no need for additional equipment that a lot of VR flying and driving sims require for an optimal experience + Visuals are pretty good, locations overall look interesting + Flexible difficulty with fair risk and reward. In addition to 3 levels of difficulty, you can always start the fight with neutral ships for huge bonus challenge and loot. Cons: - Some visual effects are not optimized for VR at all. Cloudy locations and big explosions cause huge FPS drops on any graphical settings - Gathering resources can get old: it is not very interesting to shoot static rocks) - Finishing main story can require some grinding, but i didn't mind it since I liked the gameplay

Subsurface Circular is an almost perfect text adventure game. It has good writing, interesting story, unusual setting, difficult moral choice and logical dialogue-based puzzles.

The Wizards is fun spell slinging VR action-adventure. There are no other games of this genre among well known titles, so it is quite a unique experience. Pros: + Great pacing. Main campaign keeps juggling action, puzzles and exploration and never gets boring + Gesture-based spellcasting is an awesome idea. Really made me wish for something more complex, like rune-based magic of Arx Fatalis + Nice environments and bosses. Giant structures and creatures look really impressive in VR, and everything in this game is huge) + Flexible difficulty settings via score modifiers like in Bastion or Sairento VR Cons: - Targeting is really wonky on any auto-aim settings. It's especially annoying when using bow spell, since any auto-aim is unnecessary for bow combat - Visuals could be better, especially enemy animations - Slow start: you begin the game with only 3 spells, two of which are just summoning shield and bow

I didn't encounter any bugs, but I still really hated this game. It's like Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons but worse. Beautiful art style, tedious gameplay and basic tear-jerking story. Pros: + Amazing visual style of the environments + Good music Cons: - It's VERY repetitive, you'll do the same chores many times and watch same unskippable cutscenes over and over. "Puzzles" require nothing but trial and error method, characters move painfully slow and encounter tons of dumb artificial obstacles on their way - Characters have completely blank faces and speak with exaggerated annoying noises instead of words. I especially hated the Kid: it laughed like an idiot in every scene, sounding like a hybrid of stoned clown and a pig. - The story is as cliched as time travel plot can get

Pixel ripped 1989 is an absolutely unique VR experience - nostalgia-packed multitasking 2D platformer. Amount of details and references is astounding, I really liked how hints were integrated in game world. Platforming itself is not particularly challenging but can be frustrating at times.

Distance is a lot of fun, after you master its mechanics, but will be a bit frustrating before that. Core gameplay of jumps, barerolls and thrusters usage during racing is quite unique and challenging. Visuals are really stylish and look awesome even after a downgrade in VR mode. The best part of the game is hands down its maps. With fully integrated workshop Distance can provide almost unlimited amount of tracks to choose from in Arcade mode.

FORM feels a lot like The Gallery: Heart of the Emberstone but without story, characters or exploration. All that's left is 1 hour game that has amazing visuals and abstract puzzles. And those puzzles are not even good: most of them require putting stuff into stuff-shaped holes. That's kind of activity that even mice, ravens and small children are capable of. It does not feel satisfying for a grown-up human to solve such 'puzzle'.

If you liked Form, then you will probably tolerate this one - it's basically the same stuff in a different wrapping. But if you didn't like Form, then you gonna absolutely HATE Twilight Path. Those two games have a lot of similarities: awesome visuals, short length, unsatisfying ending and the most boring puzzles ever. Follow the path with your hand, solve a 3D jigsaw puzzle with 2-5 pieces, point your hand on an object for a few seconds - that covers about 90% of the gameplay. I don't think this can even be called "puzzles" with all seriousness.

Moss is an absolutely charming 3rd person platformer/adventure. It is one of the the very few VR games that look and feel like AAA products. Every location is a piece of art and a blast to traverse through. The gameplay takes a backseat though. Platforming, combat, puzzles - everything is casual and fine, but not great. Overall, Moss is a must-play not only for platformer fans, but for everyone who owns VR-headset.

Sairento is the only VR action game that has a lot of different combat options and succeeds in most of them. Melee weapons, firearms, bow - all are pretty good by themselves, while slo-mo, gory decapitations and awesome movement mechanics elevate them to being absolutely amazing. Throwing is a bit clunky, because it is performed with trigger buttons instead of grip buttons. Traversing locations is a blast, there are tons of options, if you don't have VR motions sickness. All of the awesome moves from Hong Kong action films are present: jumps, dashes, slides, wallruns, back/front/side-flips. Main gameplay loop is very close to Shadow Warrior 2: you mix story campaign with procedurally generated side missions, getting XP and tons of randomly generated loot. But here this grindy formula works way better, because of the engaging and diverse combat. Visuals are fine but very demanding: I personally have severe screen stuttering problems on 1070Ti when there are to many enemies and projectiles around. Overall, Sairento is an epitome of VR action and a must-play.

One of the best VR standing wave shooters: stylish visuals, very satisfying gameplay, high difficulty and a lot of replayability

Short VR tour into world of Psychonauts. Amazing stylish visuals, fun puzzles, good dialogues and voice-acting - everything is back except for platforming. Controls are a bit awkward since they were not initially designed for motion controller, but it's a very minor flaw.

Great Parkour|Racing VR game: highly polished with unique and highly entertaining gameplay and amazing level design. All it's missing is the level editor to get infinite replayability. On a very subjective side: I didn't like the music too much. For the game that require multiple playthroughs, songs with vocal may not be the best choice, because they get old quicker than instrumental tracks.

Invisible hours is a great VR experience, immersive cinema at its best. Interesting plot and characters, decent visuals(except for characters face animations), amazing sound mechanics with muffled voices from distant sources and a lot of well thought small details.

Call of the Starseed is an interesting game, environments are very good looking and immersive, controls are intuitive. Hard to believe that it was made more than 2 years ago. Main thing that I didn't like is item interactions: there are very few meaningful combinations and most of them are showed off in the first location and are not used to progress in a main quest. Overall, it's good game, but very short, so if you are looking for value, better buy it on sale or in bundle with the second episode.

One of the best adventure VR titles I've played, Hearth of the Emberstone improves literally every aspect of the original Call of the Starseed, especially amount of actual gameplay. If I have to nitpick some flaws, it would be those: there are still barely any item interactions, puzzles mostly require precision and speed rather than logics and reading diaries in VR is a bit awkward, narrated logs would be much better. I'm very excited to check out next episode of the Gallery when it comes out.

This is one of the most atmospheric standing wave shooters, 3D sound and lighting make it truly immersive and spooky. Very nice gunplay, this is the first VR shooter where I preferred ironsight to laser pointer. The only thing that spoils the immersion is the way enemy corpses and ammo shells collide with the environment: most of the time they float slightly above the floor.

I Expect You To Die is a very good puzzle game that plays like escape the room kind of game. Gameplay is intuitive, puzzles are very logical and sometimes have an alternative solution. Also it has the best cinematic intro I've ever seen in a videogame)

Classic top-down shooter. The only thing that could be improved is the difficulty curve of campaign missions: it's still missing and difficulty just jumps up and down randomly.

IMHO, the only thing that makes Raw Data a game worth playing is it's melee character - telecinetic cyborg-ninja that is basically just a jedi. I'm still waiting for someone to do a full game around lightsaber swordplay and jedi powers and Raw Data is the closest thing I've found so far. The rest of the game is kinda mediocre - it is a lot like a Robo Recall but worse in every aspect. The missions are probably the weakest part - all campaign levels after the first one are basically the same: defend core against waves of enemies. It is not very exciting to defend something in an action game and especially annoying for solo melee character. Well, at least they are not an escort missions, I guess)

Xing is a beautiful VR puzzle/exploration game of epic proportions. You change the weather, throw stuff around and turn day into night and back to solve various environmental puzzles on 5 huge levels( + there 5 smaller levels without gameplay just for spectacle and story). It is overall very relaxing and casual, but not insultingly easy - Xing has very steady difficulty curve. Some puzzles require too much backtracking for my taste though. P.S. The game has only sliding locomotion so people with VR motion sickness may have some problems with it.

Dead Secret is a thriller/detective adventure VR game with interesting characters and good writing. It has great atmosphere and just the right amount of jumpscares to keep you on your toes. Puzzles are very logical and easy, and there are a lot of them for 2-3 hour long game. Some nitpicks: - visuals are not very good + point and click movement is VR is kinda clumsy, but it doesn't break the immersion too much - "alternative vision" introduced early in game is way underused, could be much more interesting and creepy

Conversion of Scanner Sombre to VR is amazing, It feels like the game was initially designed for it(except for the very first part, where you can get stuck in a tent). Stylish visuals convert to 360 format without any noticeable loses in resolution. And great sound design makes ordinary VR teleporting feel like actually stepping.

Gameplay is extremely exciting, but the length of the main campaign is very short, about 1.5-3 hours. Also there can be consistent bug with Oculus Touch controls that can only be fixed by validating and reacquiring broken file. Still this is absolutely mast-have experience in VR.

The Banner Saga 3 has less resource management and more impactful choices than previous games of the series. There are few bugs that cause crushes during loading, I personally had two in 10 hours of playthrough and they can be cured by reloading the last save. Overall, despite it's technical issues, it's a great finale for one of the best modern game series.

The Sexy Brutale is a very unusual adventure game with unique game mechanics, interesting story and amazing sound/music. Main drawback is its very low difficulty, especially the first two "missions" that are almost insultingly easy. And backtracking can be a bit annoying at times, but overall The Sexy Brutale is a great game, definitely worth playing for any adventure fan.

Shadow Warrior 2 switches classic linear shooter formula to Borderlands-like mix of FPS and Diablo with a lot of side quests and randomized loot. Handling tons of weapon upgrades and elemental mods is annoying at first, but I've got used to it very quickly. SW2 improves some aspects of the previous title like graphics, gunplay, enemy and weapon variety; leaves some elements unchanged like awful dialogues and overall boring and predictable story. But it fails in one important thing - level design. It became very obvious when I looked at the top right corner of the screen and found a detailed minimap where every single item, enemy and point of interest was marked. There is even a drawn route to your current objective! Levels in SW2 are so messy that it is almost impossible to navigate them without such minimap. Overall SW2 is a decent FPS/Slasher mostly because of the very satisfying melee combat, inherited from the previous game.

I really tried to like this game but just couldn't. The only thing it has going for it is strong nostalgic vibe. The Quest is a mix of grid-based dungeon crawler and open world RPG, but it lacks the things that make the games of this genre great. It doesn't have interesting combat system or tight resource management that good dungeon crawler should have. You control only one character and there are no special moves for melee or ranged combat. You get way too much money and loot from killing monsters, more than you need or even can spend. And skills are VERY unbalanced: with Environmental magic and wands you can use spells of any other school of magic while doing it even better than a full-mage character. And alchemy allows creation of 100%+ magic resistance potions for example) All those balance and combat issues would be not that big of a deal if The Quest had an engaging story and memorable world like in Morrowind. But it doesn't: quests, dialogues and environments are very generic and minimalistic.

The Lion's Song is an episodic adventure game that consists of 3 interconnected stories and an epilogue for all of them. It has barely any puzzles or impactful narrative choices and the story itself is not interesting enough to justify that. I liked visual style, music and setting a lot though.

Carmageddon: Max Damage improves many aspects of previous titles in the series, but fails in a very important one: car handling. Cars drift uncontrollably on almost every turn and hitting moving opponents can be really hard to do. At the same time, starting cars are very slow and can't deal damage on collisions consistantly. It makes first few hours of gameplay utterly terrible, but after that it actually gets better. After acquiring mid-game+ cars, installing all the damage and speed upgrades and getting a bit used to handling, the game really starts to shine. After all, it does capture the essence of the series in many ways improving it. Extremely complex car destruction model, a lot of new peds and crazy power-ups, main campaign with no annoying race-only missions. New game modes are not as good as classic Carma, but can be very entertaining too and they are optional after all. Overall Max damage is a must-play for any fan of the series.

Fran Bow got great main characters, nice visuals and interesting story, charming and creepy at the same time. Messy pixel hunting was the main drawback for me: a lot of interactive objects looked a lot like background objects just near them.

Detention is a creepy adventure game that looks and plays a lot like The Cat Lady. Puzzles are simple and logical, visuals are very stylish. The story is great: its short, but very engaging and impactful.

Slightly better than The Banner Saga 1 in almost every aspect and the original was already a great game. The only thing was a bit disappointing is the ending: it is even more of a cliffhanger this time.

The Pillars of the Earth is an interactive story with point-and-click adventure elements. Visuals are really nice and the story is interesting even though it's a bit naive. It is a good game, but it has the same problem that a lot of Telltale games have: choices influence only minor details in scenery and dialogues but not the story itself. And in some scenes game takes away any choice from the player, making all options lead to the same result.

Ruiner is a solid twin stick shooter with amazing visuals. This is one of a very few games where i actually finished New Game+. Gameplay is fun, challenging and satisfying, there a lot of weapons and upgrades to use and most of them are very impactful and distinct. Main drawback for me was the story: it is very vague and doesn't make much sense.

Witcher 2 has the most impactfull choices in all Witcher series and maybe even in all Action-RPGs. Writing is on par with Wild Hunt and the story is even better. Being quite short and not an open world allows the plot to be very focused and intense. Sadly, it has the same problems as other games in the series: boring combat, very shallow itemization and mediocre at best skill system. Also it has some of the worst quest stages with unnecessary lengthy battles and tedious boss fights. Overall Witcher 2 is my favorite game in the series and I'm looking forward to a second playthrough. UPD: the second playthrough was even better than the first one: huge impact and sheer number of choices really start to shine there.

Rakuen is an adventure game with emotional and straightforward story. It is made with RPG maker, so the graphics are as bad as in To the Moon. I've never cried so much playing a videogame before.

Serious Sam 3 is a good shooter even though it doesn't feel like it in first few levels. But the rest is great and final level is one of the best in all Serious Sam series(and this is a very high bar).

Zubmariner is my favorite type of DLC: additional content carefully integrated into the main game that improves it in many aspects. The atmosphere got creepier, gameplay - slightly more diverse and map is twice as big due to additional layer.

Age of Wonders 2 is an alright TBS but it gets boring very quickly. It doesn't have the depth of Civilization series and lacks addictiveness of Heroes or Disciples series.

Very interesting strategy game that is highly unapproachable for a new player. The best part of the experience is probably the story choices that are plentiful and can have surprisingly long lasting influence on the game.

Psychonauts is an amazing platformer/adventure with stylish visuals that look good even today, great characters and original story. The only problem for me was that I don't really like 3D platformers and I am terrible at them. So the last level of the game was just way too difficult and frustrating.