(Played on the Oculus Rift S)

Really solid, excellent game here. Having just finished the campaign, I can say that with certainty. All the core things you probably care about - combat, weapon variety, puzzles, movement, etc. are all great, with a couple exceptions I'll get into below. In any case, I'd recommend this game to other VR owners without a doubt.

All that having been said, the big issue with this game are the roadblocks, areas or puzzles that take an inordinate amount of time to pass through, in a way that is neither fun, interesting, or apparently deliberate.

The two examples I'll give are later in the game, so I'll be vague. In "The T****" level, there is an object in the very first room, absolutely required to proceed, that I just could not locate my first time through. I'd chock this up to me being a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ dunce but I wasn't the only person that felt this way, either. Found several people online who'd been held up over an hour by this.

Then, the worst puzzle in the game, in the "D******" level near the very end, what should be a simple platforming task becomes needlessly complicated due to finicky physics repeatedly setting you back. This puzzle, involving hanging platforms, would be so easy to solve in any non-VR game due to the precision afforded, but in Boneworks, due to high focus on physical interaction, it becomes needlessly janky, for no great award. It is a puzzle that seems to exist specifically to highlight the weaknesses of the engine.

*SPOILERS BELOW*

My final issue is the ending, and story at large. The ending sequence, as a lot of people have pointed out, is overlong and doesn't have a great payoff. The "final boss" is genuinely bad and much too long, and there's a lot of walking/sucky climbing before and after it that, again, doesn't necessarily feel deserved or like it is building up to anything. It is content that could've been cut or drastically expanded, one of the two.

This ending caps off a story that I would describe as sparse, painfully so. I like a minimal/esoteric story that leaves a lot of gaps to fill in, but something about this one feels like a failure to me.

We start the story following the wall writing of someone who seems to know a lot more than you about what's going on, but after the first level or two, that writing become repetitive general warnings, or insane scrawling by other writers, with font differences seeming to be key. Half way through, any feeling that you're being helped is gone. There's a guy that talks straight to you, and a lady who talks very cryptically. They probably get less than 30 lines between them, put together. Worldbuilding loses its edge too. Early on, it seems a major plot hook is that the nullbodies are actually sentient, and have been exterminated/forced to live in shabby apocalyptic ghettos as a result. This is then, I'm fairly sure, literally never touched on again, and has no immediate relevance to the remaining plot or ending. The origin or purpose of almost all enemies goes unremarked on - you just kill them and run.

I'm not saying "I don't get it" because on the whole, I think I got the major plot beats figured out in my head. But I wish there was more to Monogon. By the ending, I had zero concept of what anyone's motivations were. Is Monogon a big evil Aperture style company exploiting people and technology for malicious ends, or are they just a regular VR company being maliciously targeted by outside forces because of unintentional immortality in their technology? What are your character's motivations? Are they the same from the start? Are we even actually playing the guy in the FMV cutscenes? Unfortunately, none of these elements ever coalesce into something more than their parts. By the end, you'll feel like the game is almost missing a story that it was supposed to have, and while I love and appreciate ambiguous, more experimental storytelling, I really wouldn't have minded a couple clear plot hooks in such a relatively long, involved campaign for what has been pitched as this big defining VR blockbuster. As it stands, Monogon and MythOS are very forgettable as story elements, and that's really just depressing.

Additionally, reused symbolism is now leading quite a few people to think that this game takes place in the SCP universe, and an MTF is running rampant around MythOS with you. While I love the Foundation, that does feel a little strange for what seems to be an original IP on this scale. If it isn't meant as a SCP story, did they have permission from the artist to use that symbolism?

I'm still recommending this, despite these issues, since it probably won't weigh too heavily on most players. I'd probably call it an 8/10, but it'd be easily a 9/10 with something that felt less annoyingly vague, and more genuinely mysterious at its core. Nobody ever fell in love with Portal or Half-Life because they got to the end and thought "Wow! None of that correlated in a way I could reasonably piece together as a narrative! Incredible!"

(Played on the Oculus Rift S) Really solid, excellent game here. Having just finished the campaign, I can say that with certainty. All the core things you probably care about - combat, weapon variety, puzzles, movement, etc. are all great, with a couple exceptions I'll get into below. In any case, I'd recommend this game to other VR owners without a doubt. All that having been said, the big issue with this game are the roadblocks, areas or puzzles that take an inordinate amount of time to pass through, in a way that is neither fun, interesting, or apparently deliberate. The two examples I'll give are later in the game, so I'll be vague. In "The T****" level, there is an object in the very first room, absolutely required to proceed, that I just could not locate my first time through. I'd chock this up to me being a fucking dunce but I wasn't the only person that felt this way, either. Found several people online who'd been held up over an hour by this. Then, the worst puzzle in the game, in the "D******" level near the very end, what should be a simple platforming task becomes needlessly complicated due to finicky physics repeatedly setting you back. This puzzle, involving hanging platforms, would be so easy to solve in any non-VR game due to the precision afforded, but in Boneworks, due to high focus on physical interaction, it becomes needlessly janky, for no great award. It is a puzzle that seems to exist specifically to highlight the weaknesses of the engine. *SPOILERS BELOW* My final issue is the ending, and story at large. The ending sequence, as a lot of people have pointed out, is overlong and doesn't have a great payoff. The "final boss" is genuinely bad and much too long, and there's a lot of walking/sucky climbing before and after it that, again, doesn't necessarily feel deserved or like it is building up to anything. It is content that could've been cut or drastically expanded, one of the two. This ending caps off a story that I would describe as sparse, painfully so. I like a minimal/esoteric story that leaves a lot of gaps to fill in, but something about this one feels like a failure to me. We start the story following the wall writing of someone who seems to know a lot more than you about what's going on, but after the first level or two, that writing become repetitive general warnings, or insane scrawling by other writers, with font differences seeming to be key. Half way through, any feeling that you're being helped is gone. There's a guy that talks straight to you, and a lady who talks very cryptically. They probably get less than 30 lines between them, put together. Worldbuilding loses its edge too. Early on, it seems a major plot hook is that the nullbodies are actually sentient, and have been exterminated/forced to live in shabby apocalyptic ghettos as a result. This is then, I'm fairly sure, literally never touched on again, and has no immediate relevance to the remaining plot or ending. The origin or purpose of almost all enemies goes unremarked on - you just kill them and run. I'm not saying "I don't get it" because on the whole, I think I got the major plot beats figured out in my head. But I wish there was more to Monogon. By the ending, I had zero concept of what anyone's motivations were. Is Monogon a big evil Aperture style company exploiting people and technology for malicious ends, or are they just a regular VR company being maliciously targeted by outside forces because of unintentional immortality in their technology? What are your character's motivations? Are they the same from the start? Are we even actually playing the guy in the FMV cutscenes? Unfortunately, none of these elements ever coalesce into something more than their parts. By the end, you'll feel like the game is almost missing a story that it was supposed to have, and while I love and appreciate ambiguous, more experimental storytelling, I really wouldn't have minded a couple clear plot hooks in such a relatively long, involved campaign for what has been pitched as this big defining VR blockbuster. As it stands, Monogon and MythOS are very forgettable as story elements, and that's really just depressing. Additionally, reused symbolism is now leading quite a few people to think that this game takes place in the SCP universe, and an MTF is running rampant around MythOS with you. While I love the Foundation, that does feel a little strange for what seems to be an original IP on this scale. If it isn't meant as a SCP story, did they have permission from the artist to use that symbolism? I'm still recommending this, despite these issues, since it probably won't weigh too heavily on most players. I'd probably call it an 8/10, but it'd be easily a 9/10 with something that felt less annoyingly vague, and more genuinely mysterious at its core. Nobody ever fell in love with Portal or Half-Life because they got to the end and thought "Wow! None of that correlated in a way I could reasonably piece together as a narrative! Incredible!"