Recent reviews by umbra

Do you enjoy single player games? Play this.
Do you enjoy alternate history fiction? Play this.
Do you enjoy shooting Nazis with regard for little else? Play this.

The art in this game is incredible, and while there are some obnoxious aspects to this game (the very immersion-breaking 3-5 second interactions that you have to do any time you interact with something other than a gun, for instance) its still a lot of fun. Think "DOOM" but with the action set to a narrative instead of just a soundtrack.

With a few tweaks this game could be straight amazing. As everyone says, its kind of a mash-up between Beat Saber and Pistol Whip (more so the latter, in my opinion) but that doesn't really do it justice.

The movement feels fun and natural once you start to get it down a little bit, and the game is energetic with meaningful differences between the difficulty levels (read: you'll burn a few calories while you have fun). The game could be a little bit better optimized as changing the graphics settings seemed to have no impact whatsoever on the game's input lag, which felt much higher than it was because of the few things I'll mention below.

These are things that need to be fixed:
-Targets need to stand out more from the background (e.g. there were multiple times that I was shot, but because it happened near a wall-jump I thought I wasn't timing the jump right. Nope, it was more that the enemies just kind of blended in.
-The player needs more feedback on why they're failing in general. This is important because there's so much going on at once, especially for new players. See above for an example.
-It can be very difficult to "dodge" the "snakes" because it is hard to read where they're going to strike, as opposed to reading the axe-throwers, for example, who are easier to dodge simply because its easy to trace the axe's trajectory, but with the "snakes" it feels more like you have to guess (which is not the case as they seem to have specific stances that you have to memorize to know where they'll strike...not ideal for a rhythm game). The challenge should be either the move or the timing, not reading the environment.

As far as the story goes...its not exactly the most compelling stuff, but that's not primarily why I play games like these so it's not a big deal to me. If you're familiar with Pistol Whip's so-called "story," then you're already familiar with the art style that kind of seems to say "I'm a graphic novel, how dare you call me a comic book" while the writing undercuts that statement completely and is very campy.

So far only about an hour in and its a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to what happens after a few updates. If you like VR rhythm games, you'll likely enjoy this.

Still stupid that they didn't include a campaign

That said, the multiplayer is pretty fun. Hated it the first iteration for the INNUMERABLE glitches, but *enough* (not even close to all) have been fixed for it to be a good time with friends.

Good synthetic benchmark, but you should probably wait for a sale.

Key word: synthetic. This is NOT a real-world test, but it's still very useful for comparing different components in a system or comparing your setup to others with the same components. How else would we know if we won the silicon lottery?

However: high scores don't necessarily translate to good performance. It truly depends on the kind of workload you're running and what resources are being used. Its kind of like looking at your average FPS but not looking at the frame timing -- it might give you a general idea of the kind of performance you can expect but it doesn't account for the actual experience you'll have.

TL;DR

Pros:
-Very useful for overclockers, nerds and braggarts (or all three, in some cases).
-Useful for intra-system comparisons; less useful (but still somewhat handy) for inter-system comparisons.
-Very useful for stress-testing.

Cons:
-They release new tests as "DLC," which requires you to pay for anything they might add to the software. The only worse way to treat your customers is to move to the subscription model.
-The numbers here don't necessarily reflect real-world performance and the whole thing contributes to the "I need new and shiny!" syndrome that is all-too-prevalent these days.

Overall worth it on when on sale.

I absolutely loved this game when I was younger and I was not disappointed by the remaster.

Not only is there a great deal of content here and its all extremely high quality. The videos look better but still have the same perfectly stilted action and that "this was the best the 90s could do" kind of vibe to them. Great stuff!

This game was fun back then and it still is, now it just looks a lot better and runs incredibly well. There's a cool feature that lets you hit space and view the old assets which is a nice little cherry on top of a truly delicious cake.

If you enjoyed Far Cry 5 at all, you'll enjoy Far Cry: New Dawn. The two have a lot in common, seeing as they take place in the same fictional world about two decades apart from one another. However, the feel of the game is more inline with its story: it feels post-apocolyptic, and the "mutated" world is absolutely stunning and wonderful to explore and play inside of. The enemies are straight up obnoxious, which just makes killing them more satisfying and the AI is about a 7/10 in my book.

I enjoyed the story and the game and if you enjoy the Far Cry series in general, I think you probably will, too.

Accurate and useful real-time stats like FPS, frametime, reprojection rate, whether ASW is enabled and others. Incredibly useful for dialing in the perfect settings, whether you're using SteamVR through a wire or through something like Virtual Desktop.

Very useful, frequently updated. A must-have for SteamVR users.

Very fun game, good story, great environment and details. What more do you need to know?

EDITED: Just experienced the game-breaking "Menu Bug" that is apparently still not fixed. Lost hours of progress. Infuriating!


As of Game Update 2 this no longer happens. Fully recommend!

Very fun, works really well with Virtual Desktop + Quest 2, great for all kinds of gaming: casual, the campaign, or even as a cool-down from a workout.

The additional content the developers keep adding is really admirable, as well, since they're not even releasing it as DLC but just updating the core game. This is not only super consumer friendly, but also really good when it comes to replay potential.

Speaking of which, replay potential here is huge because not only is it fun to play over and over, but it has a great multitude of "modifiers" that let you create a new experience. You can play the same song (or "scene," as they're referred to in-game) a dozen times and have a different experience every single time.

While there are a bunch of modifiers, they've also introduced a new grouping system for them that helps prevent them from becoming overwhelming and provides a noob-friendly way to explore the modifiers without even having to glance away from the scene selection.

The game also includes a huge array of weaponry, which gives different aesthetics to various weapons as well as introduces different game play mechanics (burst-fire weapons, futuristic rays-guns, single and double-barreled shotguns) that again create different experiences in-scene.