I thought I was fed up with fantasy games and their lore, but to my surprise Eastshade draws me in. I think it's simply because it's not ye ol' fighting warrior dragon blah blah narrative, but a story focused on artists, painting, writing, architecture, reading and creating. There's a laid back atmosphere, a calm demeanor in the characters you meet, that's contagious. The driving mechanic is to paint commissions for people to solve quests, and the concept works splendidly. It's exciting and engaging, at least for me who have an interest in photography. To solve a quest you could just sloppily get a corner of the thing you're supposed to paint into frame, but I spend a lot of time on finding the perfect angle and light, simply because I find it so enjoyable to compose. I'm itching to paint all the time, but there's an "inspiration meter" that has to be filled before you can paint - you get inspiration from seeing, experiencing or reading about new things - so I'm constantly driven forward by that enticing mechanic. I'm coming straight from screenshotting an AAA title, which makes the graphics a bit meh for me, but of course I understand why it is the way it is and I'm impressed with what they have pulled off here. I was also at first disappointed at the low quality of the paintings themselves, but it seems that doesn't stop me from internally screaming for painting everything I see. There are at the moment of release a lot of bugs, some unfavorable game mechanic kinks here and there, bad voice acting, and the weird, glaring omission of giving us the possibility to get a clear screenshot of our paintings to share. Added together these things drags the score down for me. Expect an excellent core idea, with the endearing flaws of a fresh indie game. I've been aching for years for a story driven game like this that doesn't shove constant combat in my face, and it's finally here. I'm so grateful!
Oh wow. This is the kind of experience I bought PSVR for. I had high expectations for Moss and yet the game exceeded them. Moss is beautiful in every way. The gorgeous world, the calming ambient sounds, the enchanting music, the heartbreakingly cute little mouse Quill; all together that alone puts this game at the front of the VR games pack. Then the game play itself is satisfying and fun. You steer Quill with your controller stick and your own hand, represented by a sphere of light, by moving the controller. This feels like you're truly cooperating, a fact that the game also reminds you of in other different ways, like you giving Quill the world's most adorable high five after job well done. It's a platform puzzle game with combat, all of which escalates in a kind pace from learning the first step to more challenging puzzles, fights and jump action sequences. There were fights I died over and over, and there were timed jump puzzles I failed at an embarrassing amount of times, but I didn't feel frustration over it. I felt that all the times I failed it was because I didn't perform well enough. The controls and level design are solid and were not to blame. Not entirely at least, there were some moments towards the end where you kind of had to die once to understand what you were supposed to do. Regarding the controls there was one spot I had to spin a thing that for some reason was annoyingly difficult to turn, but for the most part it was smooth sailing. It's a short game, but I feel like it would be enjoyable to play again. There are a couple of things I know I missed that I want to find, and some tantalizing hidden trophies I'd like to sniff out. Finally a massive congratulations to the narrator Morla Gorrondona. She did an amazing job. Amazing. Probably half the magic of Moss is how she tells the story. Polyarc struck gold casting her. When you step into the world of Moss, remember to pause now and then and look around you. The world truly feels alive when you look up at the distant treetops, listening to the sounds of the forest. I'm going back there right now.
Apex Construct is one of the rare games on PSVR that feels like a real game and not a demo or a gimmick. The story and storytelling is good with real nice voice acting. The environments are beautiful, and if you're lucky enough to know Swedish you'll have a couple of extra laughs over things found written here and there, as well as a nice feeling of being home in this warped post apocalypse like version of Stockholm. The controls works nicely, and I was glad to find you can change settings to drawing your bow with left hand. Shooting the bow, dodging and blocking attacks with a shield feels pretty cool. I'm super prone to motion sickness in VR but have had no problems in Apex Construct because of the teleport mode of transportation. There are elevator trips that make me queasy, but they're short so I just close my eyes for a couple of seconds. A lot of input in the game is typed on large virtual keyboards, and that's a bit of a pain since you write the same thing over and over. Very quickly I wondered why there couldn't just have been an "open" button to press instead of having to type it repeatedly. Also the terminals where you type this have a small font, and whenever I leaned closer to read it the game auto adjusted its position so the terminal popped away from me and I had to bend over double to squint at it at a distance. All the information is however stored and readable in your home base, and there the font is large and easy to read. I could not find any subtitles for the game which is kind of a bummer, maybe there will be in a later patch. The game feels intuitive, immersive and engaging. Is it the best game ever made? No, it's not. But considering what's available on PSVR right now it is without a doubt among the best PSVR games.
As a fan of the earlier game Under a Killing Moon I'm biased when I say Tesla Effect is perfect. I have no idea if you should even bother with this if you don't have happy memories of Tex Murphy, but if you're a fan you absolutely have to play Tesla Effect. It plays heavily on nostalgia and it does it good.
Fun adventure puzzle game with dialogue that made me laugh out loud a couple of times. For me the puzzles were balanced in how challenging they were, but a lot of times I had to backtrack far because there was some item I hadn't found yet. I never got to see the ending either, because what had been a puzzle game in the end fight suddenly out of nowhere became a reaction time game. Since reaction time never was a skill you practiced in the rest of the game I suddenly had to learn a new skill by dying over and over again. In the end this made me so angry I shut down and never started up again. I had preferred the ending tested my proficiency in what the rest of the game was about rather than blindsiding me by becoming an action game.
Good looking, funny with lots of callbacks to the developer's other games. This charmed me at first, as did the card game play mechanics. But when it got apparent to me that the only focus of the game is deck building, and no help or automation was given to me who has no interest at all in that area I dropped Card City Nights like a hot potato. I just wanted to play cards.
Although I liked the feeling of speed in Fotonica it was so hard I couldn't get past level 2. That failure is on me I guess. Still even if I could progress I can't picture me playing this for more than an hour or two. It got boring for me pretty quickly and I didn't feel that had to do with my inability to play.
Very special, dreamlike and artful game centered around dialogue. You choose what your character says, but pretty quickly it becomes apparent that your choices does not affect the game outcome in any shape or form. The only thing you really choose is your own poetry, your own inner narrative. You have no control over where the game takes you. I found this absolutely fascinating and thought it elevated the game to greater heights. It's beautifully done. This game is for dreamers enjoying a mystery that maybe never will make sense.
Quirky pacifistic game unlike anything I've seen before, with a great soundtrack. Some puzzles gets frustrating and the deliberately slow pace can get annoying, especially in those frustrating puzzles. Because of it's uniqueness I recommend this game to anyone looking for fresh ideas in games.
Statik feels very real. It's a puzzle game where your hands are stuck in a box. This sounded uninspired to me when I heard about it, so it was a pleasant surprise to discover it was the opposite, a very engaging game that I didn't want to end. The puzzles are hard, and the mechanics feels very real. I really felt that my hands were stuck and that the different buttons and levers were actual physical things. More than once I snapped audibly at the scientist sitting in the same room, especially when he hilariously started to slurp coffee with a super annoying whistling sound. The game is funny, with humor reminding me of Portal. Also the game does not help you with the puzzles At. All. You're completely on your own, and that only added to my immersion. Highly recommend this for people who enjoy sitting down with conundrums.
I feel like I'm playing the first works of what in years to come will be the first widely acclaimed video game artist. I will carry The Beginner's Guide with me always, for the hallmark it is in video games evolution. While the game itself is fantastic, I'm not saying it is the best game ever made. I'm saying that the artist behind it has made some very special games so far, and can go just about anywhere from here.
It's like stepping into a time machine. You start the game Friday afternoon and suddently it's 2 am on Monday and you haven't eaten or fed your cat in two days.
One of the best MMO's out there. The quests are awesome, investigation quests in particular, and the community is super friendly. The characters you meet are excellently written. Also if you're a woman or LGBTQ person into being treated as a human being this is the MMO for you. I'm not a fan of the combat system, but the good quality of everything else makes up for it.
Yi and the Thousand Moons is obviously made with so much passion that I get drawn into it immediately. It has to be said from the beginning of this review: this is a game centered around music, and you should make sure you like the music and singer in the trailer before you buy. The rest of the review is for you who like the music but still aren't sure if you want the game. The gameplay is basic, a walking simulator with a few instances of simple interaction. The graphics is a mostly empty world populated with a few block people, block houses and a block shamisen. Yet your brain is a pro at filling out those gaps, and the game looks beautiful within the constraints it operates in. And you know what else fills out the world? Music. We're here for the interactive musical ride. The interaction is that you do different simple things to prod the music along, there are no choices or anything fancy like that going on. Yet to me it feels satisfying to release an arrow and hear the characters start to sing when my arrow hits its (non living) mark. The music fills the entire world and sometimes sends shivers down my spine. One song in particular gives me goose bumps every time. The game is short, and I keep coming back to it for replays to listen to the songs again. I will carry Yi and the Thousand Moons with me for a long time as one of my favorite experimental indie games. I've played it five times, and every time I'm done I'm longing to play the game I feel Yi and the Thousand Moons wants to be, or could have been if the developer had a 10 people studio with him to elaborate upon the parts that had to be down prioritized now. There's so much potential here. While Yi and the Thousand Moons is already great as it is, I'm itching to see what the next step will be for David Su.
Crack cocaine is slightly less addictive than **** Valley. Pros: no micro transactions. Cons: you'll get glued to your controller and forget to eat and sleep during 48 hours after starting up the game.
I wanted a space trucker where I just could hang out in space in a ship, listen to some groovy music and grind to my heart's content. Elite should have been a perfect fit but it didn't click. I didn't like the music or ambience. I didn't feel I got any reward for my grinding, there wasn't really anything I could buy that caught my eye. Docking is a nightmare and you have to go out of your way to BUY an auto docking feature for in game credits. Exploring was boring, there wasn't really anything to find. Nothing was beautiful anywhere. I don't do space battles unless they're really cool, which these weren't. Getting started with the game was a horror: I consider myself game savvy and I still got stuck in the tutorial twice and had to go on YouTube to find videos explaining the tutorial. The video explaining how to get past basic flight tutorial has almost 600 000 views. It took me 1,5 hours to learn enough of basic movement and combat just to get out of the tutorial. I gave Elite some fifteen hours in total before I gave up and uninstalled, it just wasn't for me.
What if you create a game that is all about Easter eggs? This is not, I repeat: this is NOT a game that could be a mobile game. There are hidden depths here that you probably won't find before you've invested some time. I get super sad reading reviews - be they good or bad - by people who never discovered what The Witness really offers. I've read reviews by professional reviewers who had to run through the game and missed these hidden gems that are the things that make people so wild for this game. The Witness is the smartest game I've ever played, and the reason has little to do with puzzles.
I love Crystal Rift in VR, it's like literally stepping into the dungeon crawler games of my youth in the nineties, but without the cumbersome inventory and combat systems they had. Crystal Rift is easy, not much variation, not scary. No inventory, combat is super simplistic, puzzles are laughable. There's a mystery told through notes you encounter, and these notes are sometimes very funny, but there is no other storytelling, no voices or anything. The comfort settings are good so I could adjust movement so I don't get motion sickness. I play the game for the atmosphere, that's pretty much all it has, but it's totally enough for me. I get to feel childhood wonder every time I step into these dungeons.
Nope. This is just 360° footage of the kind you can find for free on YouTube. You get no feeling of being in the scenes, you can't pause or walk around, it's just videos. There are some interactive elements like for educational purposes answering questions about rhino horns, but if you want to educate your kids you can just pop up Wikipedia next to your YouTube 360° video of choice. I'm very disappointed I spent money on this.
Great feeling in PSVR. I'm prone to motion sickness, but Thumper gave we no symptoms at all. The game is simple on the face of it, you just press combinations of x button and direction button on beat with the music. A few levels down the road however it gets viciously hard to get a good score. If all you want to do is get through the levels that is manageable by just skipping most of the beats, the difficulty comes if you want to get on the leader board. The joy of the game is when you let go of conscious control and get perfect scores on just pure instinct, something that happens far earlier in the game than you might expect. Don't be deterred hearing about the difficulty. The learning curve is kind. All this said Thumper appeals to a certain kind of player that embraces repetitiveness, hunts high scores and gets a kick out of getting immediate feedback on their improvements. My only complaint is that the music isn't really for me, but the game is so good it overshadows that.
