FREDDY FOR THE BIG TIME

I revisit Arizona Sunshine every so often because it’s a great game; it can be enjoyed solo or co-op in ten-minute chunks or as a more satisfying long-form session, and the core conceit of gunning zombies down is still really satisfying. Honestly, there have been so many shooters released in VR since AS, and nearly none of them have nailed the satisfying and substantial feel offered by Arizona Sunshine, still. However, it was never a very good-looking or slick affair and was full of less and less forgivable jank. I was relieved when Arizona Sunshine 2 came along and smoothed out a lot of those rough edges, whilst largely doubling down on everything that made the first game so good to play.

A remake of the original using later tech is a rather great idea, and I’m largely happy to report that Arizona Sunshine Remake does what it promises to. It includes all the DLC for the original release, similarly remastered, and offers tremendous value for money – there’s even a nifty discount if you’ve got the original in your Quest library already. So, before I get into the specifics, just know that if you’ve played and love the original and are looking for a shiny new version to show off your Quest 3 or 3S, then go to it, I recommend it. You won’t be disappointed. But wait – hey – I haven’t fini… Ah sod you. In your impatience to go spend your money you’re missing out on some exemplary videogame criticism and penmanship. Your loss. The rest of you still with me? Ok, let’s get into it.

FRED DEAD REDEMPTION

Players both familiar and new to Arizona Sunshine will find a lot to love. The setting still feels fresh and original, despite the zombie theme having been done to death, resurrected and headshotted more times than can be counted in the past thirty years. Even Resident Evil, whose fault it all is, has been trying to move away from zombies for at least 15 years. However, zombies do provide a gloriously guilt-free way for us all to virtually live out our fantasies of taking our frustrations and loneliness out on the general public with gardening equipment and automatic weaponry.

Arizona Sunshine Remake casts the player as an unnamed, initially slightly dislikable dude who’s been surviving alone in the Arizona wilderness in the wake of a zombie apocalypse. He’s trying to find any living souls to team up with and has been alone for quite a while when the player quantum leaps into his head. He sounds a bit like a bassist, a roadie or a general stoner – in fact, it occurred to me as I played through the remake that my mental image of him is that he’s Neil Fak from The Bear dropped into a zombie survival scenario. This is a Good Thing. His journey in the course of the game is slight, but brilliant and engaging, and as I mentioned in my original review Sky Soleil’s fantastic performance is key to making the whole thing work. A majority of protagonist voiceovers in VR can be grating or off key, making it a chore to literally inhabit their heads as you progress, but here you are completely engrossed in getting the guy where he wants to go and keeping him alive. If you’ve only ever experienced him in Arizona Sunshine 2, then it’ll be an extra frisson to experience him getting to the point where he’s obsessed with keeping his dog alive when the sequel hits the fan. There’s no massive story here, so the narrative sells itself through empathy with its only character, and this has stood the test of time well.

DEAD MAN, FRED MAN

The game offers pretty cool options for customising the feel of the game – from movement and turning to switching between the simple reloading of the original, or the new VR standard of sliding in a clip and cocking the gun. Thankfully you can now hold pistols with two hands. You can calibrate where you’d like your holsters and ammo to sit on your body. All good, as is the improved Half-Life Alyx style wrist inventory and inclusion of tremendously fun bludgeoning melee weapons like crowbars, picks and hammers. These can be balanced on railings or the sides of tables or shelves while you reload or scavenge, and this feels really cool.

FREDDING THE NEEDLE

The level of challenge is pretty good – on the easier difficulties if you’re a reasonable, quick enough shot you’ll be ok. The game has two paces; scavenging for ammo and exploring, popping heads as you go, and then set piece horde rushes where you hope that you’ve stockpiled enough bullets and picked the right weapons to survive. Like the sequel, these horde rushes can be suffocatingly frustrating and stressful chokeholds on progress or exhilarating and rewarding tests of endurance which provide a tremendous rush of relief and accomplishment when you’re through. If this is your first rodeo, I’d advise playing through on lower difficulties first, so you know roughly what to expect, and then have another playthrough where you’ll have to be a lot more sparing with your ammo and inventive with the offered weapons at your disposal. You won’t have to worry about finding crafting ingredients like in the sequel, but supplies get pretty scarce even if you aren’t the sort of person who likes to spray and pray.

This all changes again when playing through in co-op with a friend, which is such a good feature of both the original game and its shiny new incarnation, Arizona Sunshine Remake. Sadly, the same limitations apply, and this is one thing I really hoped would be improved with the new gameplay. There are points where you’d think one player could be running around gung-ho with an automatic amongst the horde whilst the other takes overwatch, but this is often not so. When a player triggers the horde, the co-op partner will be teleported to their side if they’re in a place the game doesn’t want you to be. Sometimes invisible walls will prevent the player from taking a visible path, the game locking off areas of the map that should be accessible just because the designers wanted it that way. It’s pretty lazy and annoying, and it was weak eight years ago. It’s downright unforgivable for such a classy game to be so graceless in its execution, reiterating its mistakes verbatim after eight years of iteration.

LONG AND WASTED YEARS

Whilst we’re on the subject of things that really should have died and stayed dead with the original game, let’s talk about graphics. By and large the graphics in Arizona Sunshine Remake are a remarkable improvement on the original, as one might expect. The bacon wood textures of the original are long gone, thank goodness, but there are still some items of text that are unforgivably pixelated and horrible. The searchable trunks of the police cars, for example, just about say ‘HIGHWAY PATROL’ on them, but I’ve seen better image quality on those Captcha things online when they’re trying to ascertain I’m human. Most egregious of all is the sniper scope section, where distant zombies are rendered with such horrible quality that the graphics don’t match the original release. In fact, in this one instance they don’t even look as good as the original PlayStation. Vertigo Games have done so much to fly the flag for VR as a gaming medium, and all eyes are on this remake to show us all how it’s done. We let some things slide about the original because of the ambition and overall quality of the experience. Don’t let Ed Wood get hold of your Director’s Cut version, because we’re going to mark it down accordingly now.

The same goes for how fiddly things can be. Scavenging is better and drawers and doors have a far more physical interactivity to them, but sometimes picking up stuff can be unnecessarily finicky and sometimes even bugs out. If you’re carrying things when the game loads a new area, these can sometimes disappear.

This is all stuff that absolutely should have been sorted out. Some of it is patchable, some of it ain’t. Let’s see what the next couple of months may bring – but this is a remake of an eight-year-old game, and it should have been slicker. It only takes seven years to train as a doctor or an architect, so I think it’s reasonable to expect Fred to have got his shit together a bit better than this, dead or no.

SUNSHINE DESSERTS

Arizona Sunshine Remake does exactly what it promises to do, and provides great value, great fun and great challenge in one juicily headshottable package. It drips with atmosphere, from the setting and impressive voice acting to the perfectly judged musical score. It still provides the most satisfying gunplay on the Quest and sidesteps the time commitment problem of Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners by being playable in bitesize chunks, and in co-op too. You get the excellent DLC stories as part of the deal, and there’s also the endlessly replayable Horde mode to play with up to 4 friends. It supercedes the original game entirely and provides fans of the original and the sequel plenty of reasons to dive back in, whilst being a very enticing and recommended prospect for new players.

However, be warned that this is a remaster rather than a true remake, and the failings of the original game are often brought along wholesale for the ride.

For those of you who have seen our review of Myst on the Quest (caption: we gave it a 9) from a couple of years back, you already know that I’m a book-carrying member of the Cyan fan club. In that review, I mentioned that the only real problem with Myst was that it was utterly eclipsed by its sequel, Riven. Now, the unthinkable has happened: Riven has materialised on the Quest and Steam, remade and rethought for VR and modern systems. I’m almost impossibly excited about it, but I promise you, dear viewers, that I will do my best to objectively analyse whether Riven 2024 is worth your time, money, and emotional investment. We will avoid spoilers for the plot or puzzles to the best of our ability.

A Link to the Past

I believe that Riven is one of the most important and successful titles in the history of narrative gaming. It epitomises the principle of “show, don’t tell.” It traps you alone in a beautiful, forbidding world where exploration and understanding are the primary rewards. There are mysteries to be solved, and each machine, lever, and room is an organic part of the world-building, context building upon context in a satisfying, thrillingly non-linear way. The original game was beautiful, intriguing, and immersive despite being presented as a series of static prerendered images. This remains a wonder today. Now, in the age of VR, the promise of Riven should be fully realised.

Age of Wonders

I have seen the opening scenes of the original Riven hundreds of times. I can vouch that Cyan has not only beautifully updated the graphics and gracefully replaced the live actors with motion-captured models, but they have also stayed true to the original performances and body language. The slightly dodgy 3D models of what were once real (but also dodgy) performers were the main sticking point of Myst in VR, but this is thankfully not the case here. When the cutscenes have played out and the game finally opens the door to the world of Riven, you’re free to explore Riven in full 3D for the first time. For me, that is a very emotional moment. It’s the difference between obsessing over a place through photographs for a couple of decades and then finding yourself there for real. I will preempt the rest of my review here and state right now that Cyan has utterly, definitively nailed it.

D’ni, The Champion of the World

The original Riven is a masterpiece. The remake surpasses it in every way, and VR is the definitive way to play it. It’s so much more than just a new way to explore the world; like Myst before it, it’s as if it has been waiting for VR to exist. To virtually stand in beautiful environments that have hitherto only existed as barely animated stills is a dream realised. It actually makes the puzzle-solving so much more rewarding and substantial. A very early puzzle involves working out the rotation of a pentagonal room to make progress. Being able to stand in the room and physically rotate makes the logic of the problem a lot easier to parse. Peering through lenses and gaps for clues is a physical act in VR rather than a button press, and the islands of Riven have been subtly retooled to take advantage of the new possibilities of vantage points and perspectives not available before. The physicality of VR—such as pulling levers, pressing buttons, or opening doors—feels completely fantastic. Reading a book requires physically holding the book and flipping through the pages, which is crucial to the lore and setting. The ability to use both hands on a machine or gadget while looking around, a natural act in real life but impossible in flat gaming, is a necessity in the VR version of Riven.

Cyan Pride

All of this is what one might cautiously and hopefully expect from a developer with a duty of care to its beloved back catalogue. What truly impresses me is that Cyan has been fearless in daring to improve on the original title. They have introduced new approaches to puzzles and new mechanics, altered the topography of islands here and there, and added subtle narrative tweaks and touches that enhance the classic version. All the changes are improvements; some were made not just to bolster gameplay but to make the narrative sing a little more. To new players, everything will seem well-wrought and satisfying. To returning players like me, there are a hundred little improvements and changes that delight, intrigue, and occasionally astonish. Cyan has served their fan base well and provided a wealth of riches for those taking their first steps in this brave new world.

Get the Book Out of Here

Riven is beautiful. The concern with any modern 3D remake would always be whether they could convey the same level of beauty as the original. For a 26-year-old game, Riven still stands up as astonishingly good-looking, the sheer quality of the prerendered world transcending its technical limitations. The folks at Cyan were kind enough to provide us with copies of both the Meta Quest and Steam versions of the game for comparison. Of course, the Quest will never compete with PCVR, and the nature of the game means it can’t draw from the same technical aspects as Red Matter 2. The PC version of Riven is utterly incredible to look at, bringing joyous new life to the game. Even with my gaming laptop running Riven at modest settings for VR’s sake, the graphics are wondrous.

The Quest version is an eyebrow-raisingly decent attempt to convey the same content with some caveats. Firstly, of course, the textures take a hit, but some more so than others. It’s still a beautiful game, but some environments are a little fuzzy and muted. There’s occasionally a bit of glitching and pop-in, but nothing too aggravating. In some areas, the foveated rendering (the pixelation around areas towards the edge of the Quest lenses) is noticeable and a little distracting. But it’s the water that’s actually problematic, noticeably devoid of splashing effects at best and, in one area in particular, flat and glitchy, making the surrounding geometry appear off. The rest of the game is so lovely to look at, and these issues really stand out. They could be better realised. Overall, while the Quest version is never going to reach photorealism, it’s a beautiful thing.

The Cries of Strange Birds

The audio is my favourite part of Riven’s presentation. The sound design is peerless, from the atmospheric ambience of different locations to the creaking of boards and old metal and the clanking of ancient machinery. The fact that most of it remains unchanged from the original game is a testament to the effort and care lavished on every detail over a quarter of a century ago. Sound plays a possibly more significant role in the success of Riven than the visuals, and this becomes even more apparent in VR. Put on some headphones, and you can lose yourself entirely in this alien yet relatable and familiar world.

Special mention must go to the music, a score that manages to be creepy, mysterious, and soothing all at once. Music is sparing and subtle but essential to the game’s fabric, underpinning everything with an unsettling, nagging sense of dread and wonder.

Familiar Patterns of Decay

There are a few things that could be improved in the current Quest version of the game. The glitches and pop-ins are a little concerning, detracting slightly from the game’s polish. While the use of VR is wonderful, and the additions to the game are completely welcome, the new inventory satchel could have been more organically realised. Many VR games use an over-the-shoulder motion to retrieve backpacks, which would be preferable to the button press here, making its absence a curious omission.

Loading times can be distracting and are the main thing that breaks immersion. While the lengthy initial loading process can be easily forgiven and forgotten, the long pause to take an in-game screenshot and bring up the menu is a drag. This might sound spoiled coming from someone who played through the original game multiple times and had to endure physically changing CD-ROMs between every island. However, the (short) loading screens during travel are unwelcome and jarring in VR. At least there’s a pleasant animation to watch while it loads.

My final gripe is that there needs to be a way to annotate the screenshots you take. A virtual pen to scribble on the screenshots and keep notes would have been a most welcome addition.

And So, I Close

Riven on the Meta Quest is, by far, the best puzzle and exploration game on the platform. It easily joins Resident Evil 4 on the winner’s podium for beloved older classics, given a new lease of life in VR. The care lavished upon Riven is considerable, presenting thoughtful armchair adventurers with a nourishing and immersive experience that will linger in the heart and mind long after leaving the headset. It’s been my favourite virtual world for half a century, and VR is the best and greatest way to experience it.

COLD, COLD GROUND

Upon loading Sniper Elite VR: Winter Warrior, there’s a sense of familiarity. Menus look and sound the same, and the narrator and protagonist from the original VR release—an amiable elderly Italian partisan reminiscing about his time as a crack-shot sniper in the Second World War—remain. In the first outing, he related his tales from his sunlight-dappled garden, where his young family frolicked, enjoying the freedoms he fought for. This time, he starts in bed, with a blizzard outside snowing him in, triggering memories of snow levels he didn’t mention previously.

After a brief but effective tutorial firing range, which you can leave without completing if you’re on another save, we’re dropped into the first level proper. Well, sort of. It’s still actually a tutorial and quite narrow in scope (no pun intended, for once). The gameplay is familiar: sneak, snipe, use environmental sounds to cover your shots, kill everyone, plant a bomb, and then get to the exit. You know the drill, perhaps too well.

WINTERLUDE

Let’s start with the positives. Many of the nice things I said in my review of the original two years ago still hold true. The sniping is surprisingly intuitive and effective, the slow-motion bullet kill cam is well-realized, and the graphics are largely lovely.

The sound is good, and there’s a core to the gameplay that’s undeniably fun. If you were a big fan of the original Sniper Elite VR, you’ll know what to expect from Winter Warrior—it provides more of the same, mostly. However, I can’t help but feel let down and uninvested in this sequel.

GUNPOWDER FROM ICE

Despite being a standalone title, Winter Warrior never really feels like a sequel. To be fair, it’s half the price of the original and probably conceived as additional levels rather than a full game in its own right, and it shows. The game has a pervasive tiredness about it, like it’s just going through the motions. The Partisan starts in bed and never really gets out of it. Music cues, assets, animations, and sounds are reused from the first game. Missions should feel like playgrounds of possibility, but are actually a staid and workmanlike series of checkpoints and triggered events. There’s a surprising lack of emphasis on stealth and, believe it or not, sniping. Limited enemy numbers mean that after you’ve killed a few, the game spawns more in, sometimes alerted regardless of how stealthy you’ve been.

‘Letters From Home’ and other collectibles are scattered around levels but can’t be read—they’re just busywork, not additional context. There are challenges in each level that add some fun and replayability, but this idea, too, is regurgitated from the original. The déjà vu is strong, and it contributes to the hollow feel of the game.

THINGS HAVE CHANGED

Sniper Elite VR nailed some core experiences and basics that other titles like Medal of Honor and Onward didn’t. It felt like a lot was riding on it, and it confidently quelled many fears. That relief allowed me to overlook some jankiness because it had heart.

The sequel, however, does nothing to advance itself and suddenly feels dated. The lack of engaging VR interactions is grating and reveals a laziness and lack of ambition. Handguns can’t be held with both hands. Door handles, keys, switches, satchel charges, and the like are operated by reaching out a hand and holding down a grip button until a bar fills up—flat game mechanics that break immersion in VR. You don’t feel like an elite sniper; you feel like you’re just waving a pointing finger in the air. These interactions are crucial for VR, and we deserve better. Michel Roux famously asked potential students to crack an egg for him, saying that if they could do that well, he could teach them anything. I feel similarly about VR games handling keys in locks or opening cupboards—if this feels good and intuitive, the rest of the game might have the right attention to detail to be a winner. In this game, those aspects are lacking and definitely hurt the quality of the final product. Reloading and charging guns were nailed in the first installment—now, where’s the rest of the game? The remote pull for ammo and objects is fiddly and inconsistent, with no sense of weight. Enemy animations are basic and staccato, making reading the levels annoying at times. The enemies don’t feel enough like combatants, just paper marionettes waiting to be decommissioned.

THE WINTER OF MY DISCONTENT

One unexpected disappointment in Winter Warrior was the character of The Partisan himself. While there’s nothing wrong with the acting per se, the structure of having him narrate the action as a series of memories means the affable old man persona never lets up. Everything he says has the tone of an advert for authentic pasta sauce, without really conveying the urgency of the player’s situation. Remember the bit in Lord of the Rings where Gandalf suddenly drops the genial grandpa act and reveals he’s a powerful, ancient soul with the weight of the world on his shoulders? That never happens with the Partisan, and a potentially interesting narrative about a lovable old chap who was a super-assassin evaporates in a cloud of whimsy. It would be great if, while peering down the scope of a sniper rifle, the voiceover matched the mood, rather than making me think I should be tucked under a tartan blanket falling asleep in front of Countdown.

A FROZEN, ROTTED ROAD

The snowy theme of Winter Warrior is apt, as the game feels like the first one but frozen in time. It never really thaws, losing a lot of charm and goodwill to frostbite. It will be overshadowed by other releases around it, perhaps deservedly so. With a bit more care, I’d be more positive. As it is, Winter Warrior feels like a dead end. I hope there’s another VR installment of the Sniper Elite games, one that pays more attention to its competitors and respects its audience.

Stick with the original or wait for it to go on sale. It’s got more charm and imagination than this ersatz sequel, which will leave you cold.

If you’re a big fan of the original, you might add a point or two to my score. But if you’re like me and love the original but want more this time, this game feels like less.

TALENT BORROWS, GENES STEAL

It’s very clear from the outset that Genotype has purloined a considerable amount of DNA from Nintendo’s eternally wonderful Metroid Prime. Apart from being reminiscent graphically, the explore-upgrade-shoot-explore-more format is clearly more than inspired by the first-person adventures of Samus Aran. And there’s certainly nothing wrong with that; when you’re attempting to clone something, you should start with very strong genes. And in the opening sections of Genotype, it’s really quite a promising love letter; the graphics are solid and smooth, the premise is intriguing, and the base promises to be a treasure trove of mystery, adventure and discovery; a futuristic setting slowly being reclaimed by organic matter in the shadow of twisted experiments gone wrong. 

WAKE UP, SLEEPY GENES

The player’s interface for everything that happens is Evely’s ‘GRAID’ gloves. Inspired, perhaps, by Half-Life: Alyx’s glove system, these handy hands act as an inventory, weapon and tools system. A ripcord acts as the selection menu; pull the cord from the right glove and let go when you’ve selected the creature you want to use.

You start off with a lowly worm Spitter gun, but soon acquire more blueprints for weapon-creatures, and all of them can be gradually upgraded by acquiring genetic matter and upgrade tokens. It’s a good, well-wrought system that feels good to use and you can get to become quite slick with it; as a way of interacting with the world, it’s definitely one of the less janky affairs on the Quest. Whilst it doesn’t really compete with Half-Life: Alyx, it’s mostly fun and rewarding to use. 

GENE MILDER

When I started Genotype, with no prior knowledge or expectation, I was very impressed indeed. It’s always puzzled me that Metroid Prime hasn’t been more widely aped directly like this, and it’s excellent to see it happen. The presentation is excellent, the graphics are lovely, and the performances are solid.

The combat seemed a little slight and inconsequential at first but not exactly bad – I expected this would be something to scale with Evely’s abilities. However, what happens over the next couple of hours is that everything becomes more and more annoying, and less and less interesting. Cracks open in the structure and direction of Genotype, and then everything that you like about it starts to fall through them.

HALF-BAKED GENES 

First off, there’s no pacing at all. You have a laundry list of stuff to do in each area, and it’s never anything more than mundane. Find security keys, find a gizmo, use the gizmo, and upgrade the gloves. Nothing feels like it’s ramping up or raising the stakes, it just feels like doing actual maintenance on an empty base. The combat is all over the place. Genotype randomly spams waves of enemies at you to pad things out, and despite some interesting creature designs you beat them all honoured way. Strafe, shoot. Hitboxes for damage are ridiculous as if to compensate for an intrinsically easy system. Dodging incoming projectiles and attacks in VR should feel intuitive – in this, the player has a field that extends beyond the physical space the character should inhabit, making it easy for creatures to get cheap hits in, and it feels infuriating. Bosses are ridiculously easy compared to the occasional waves of grunts, and there’s just no smooth difficulty curve of any kind. Your inventory will easily become filled with disposable injectors that might sound interesting – haste, invisibility and such – but you’ll never find the need or desire to use them in combat – it’s unnecessary, fiddly and pointless. 

So combat quickly becomes an uninteresting chore, but this isn’t leavened by clever puzzles or an interesting narrative. There’s literally a beige list of dull tasks to do in each area, a checklist that needs ticking. I honestly don’t find that any of it is ultimately interesting. Exploration is hampered by the fact that the environments are repetitious and massively dull. After the initial spectacle and promise falls away, it’s just a collection of corridors, crates and doors that are all so unmemorable that the map becomes essential in a way that it shouldn’t. Often, the rewards for exploration and progression are so minimal, or even non-existent, that it is completely demotivating. Why fill three identical rooms with cupboards to open, which are all empty?

TELLTALE SIGNS

Everything about Genotype is uneven, and this extends – or perhaps begins – with the writing and performances. Evely and William are played by competent and engaging voice actors, but the script and direction are erratic and poor. Evely is in a desperate situation; she is lost, her colleague is killed quite gruesomely at the start, and she is struggling to survive in a mutant-infested facility while a fatal genetic aberration is killing her from the inside out. Rather than this giving her an air of urgency or determination, most of the time she sounds like she’s having a mildly interesting day at the office.

Look at the cover art; Evely even looks like someone has interrupted her using the photocopier to ask where the stapler is. The stakes of the plot couldn’t be higher – the entire world could be destroyed by the infection escaping from the base, and Evely is dying. But that urgency is lost in what’s actually presented to the player. There are some silly attempts at wit and irreverence which don’t land at all, and I think are meant to be gallows humour from a desperate character, but don’t work on paper and the direction isn’t there. It’s a shame because I think with better guidance and a stronger script the actors would certainly have been able to hit on something special here; the moments of genuine connection that work really work, and this is to the performer’s credit. I just wish they’d have had more to work with. If the living genetic mutations that function as the weapons were part of Evely’s infection – like she was mutating herself to progress, but it was slowly consuming her, then that puts us back into high stakes, Metroid Prime territory.

As it is, all of the DNA, gene splicing stuff is just scripting novelty flim-flam. It might as well be alien or advanced tech; there are no overriding themes explored or written into the genetic code of the narrative, as you might reasonably expect from its title. 

REGRESSION

Everything in Genotype conspires steadily to remove the player’s connection to it, from the uncertain and uneven tone to the pointless combat. Either give me a narrative strong enough to forgive any deficiencies in gameplay or a game that’s so good to play that off-scripting or performance can take a back seat and be ignored. Best of all, give me a little bit of both – it’s not an insane ask. I know that somewhere in the empty corridors of Snowdrop base, there’s a far better game waiting to be hatched. It’s a crying shame because a bit more time incubating could have begat something memorable and special. 

FROM RUSSIA WITH GLOVES

Ah, I see that you’re still here. Probably want a bit more detail about the mission before pitching yourself headlong into the risky business. Well, fair enough. Here’s the briefing proper. I Expect You to Die 3: Cog in the Machine is the latest instalment in a series by Schell Games, dependably solid developers who have a very good handle on what constitutes a solid VR title. Just like the other I Expect You to Die games, it’s a puzzle-based escape-the-room type of affair that you’re expected to play seated, interacting with the levels using a nifty virtual telekinetic implant that allows you to grab, manipulate and freeze items in place while you work out how everything fits together. It’s a very well-wrought and designed system that feels intuitive and right and has remained largely unchanged since the first game. 

YOU ONLY LIVE THRICE

Two things really define this series for me; the first is the satisfying and clever puzzles, which are beautifully realised and a pleasure to mess about with. The second is the setting; a really likeable 1960s retro-but-current James Bond parody, which also pulls in aspects of all the other well-loved parodies of such things, like Austin Powers, Despicable Me and Get Smart. And perhaps of all the possible influences it channels, The Avengers is the most apt of all. (The wonderfully wry 60s TV series, not the unrelated modern superhero extended cinematic universe shite bearing the same name). There’s a joyous confidence to the whole thing, from the voice acting to the utterly wonderful Bond-style intro sequence and bombastic theme song which puts a lot of actual Bond efforts to shame. Honestly, A Cog in the Machine features the best VR credits sequence yet, even compared to its sister games, and the song is a classic. The setting and atmosphere are absolutely crucial to what makes these games sing so beautifully, and it’s safe to say that Schell haven’t put a foot wrong here.

DOUBLE OH BLOODY HELL FIRE

The spy game environment may have a cuddly, stylised feel but there are some outlandish, sudden and shocking player deaths, as you may – ahem – expect from the title. This will really be the only bone of contention here for some players. The puzzles are superbly designed. You start every level with no real clue what you should be doing and the game centres around reaching an understanding of each setting and the objects and gadgets within. While you’re doing that and being made to feel very clever when you start to comprehend, there will be moments when you do something that will lead to you dying. Quite a bit.

With no mid-level checkpoints, you may find that dying repeatedly leads to quite a bit of frustration. But it’s not an oversight, it’s a deliberate design trope of the game and one I really enjoy. Sometimes it’s funny when the game sort of tricks you into self-destruction, and sometimes it’s enraging. But you’ll find yourself clicking restart with determination and the desire to be just that little bit more clever and mindful next time. The feeling of reward when you perfect a level is immense, because it’s been so hard won. And don’t think that because the game plays as a seated, escape room-style affair that it will not have thrilling action sequences because it does. No spoilers here, but some of the levels will have you grinning at the clever way they weave that spy action into the game’s structure. It’s truly excellent stuff. 

DR. YES

There’s not much more I can say about I Expect You To Die 3 without spoiling something. And there’s very little I feel I can criticise about it, because it does everything it sets out to do with style and finesse, and for the core audience that love these games it’s more high-quality spy puzzle action that manages to have both a lovely sense of humour and a genuine sense of danger. There are no doubt some people who might say ‘It’s still just like DLC for the first game’, but this would be to demean the amount of work on display here, and the fun to be had. The first game hit upon a genre-defining formula which hasn’t been bettered and won’t be any time soon – it shouldn’t be denigrated for trying not trying to reinvent the wheel, any more than Tetris should be criticised for always using the same blocks.

ARE WE ROLLING, BOB?

 At first glance, aside from the art style and the likeable narrator Bob, there seems little to link the first game with this one, at least in terms of gameplay. Instead of being confined to a series of rooms inside a lighthouse, Another Fisherman’s Tale is a seafaring adventure, with many different settings both above and below the sea. This time around, Bob is a marionette with string limbs who can detach his head and hands from his body.

His head can’t move around when separated from the body but can be projected to different viewpoints, acting as a third-person camera, and his hands and body can scuttle around independently of one another. Bob’s stringy, detachable hands can also be replaced with other things such as a crab’s claw or a pirate’s hook. As you can imagine, this leads to some unique and interesting puzzles; there’s something almost Nintendo-y about the playful and creative ways this is explored throughout the game, and the levels are never quite what you’d expect. 

HERE’S THE THING

There’s great fun to be had controlling Bob’s body parts. No, not like that you filthy animals. At its best, such as when you’re sending one of Bob’s hands scurrying into an air vent to retrieve a vital puzzle piece, it can feel like the Addams Family game we all want and deserve. Some controls can take some patience and don’t always feel quite as intuitive or well-honed as they might. Rotating the detached hands with the controllers can often feel a bit of an unpleasant strain on the wrists; both of us who’ve played it here in the 6DoF fortress think that this particular aspect of the controls could use some work.

For the most part, interacting with the game is quite joyful, but this makes the things which aren’t quite as good stand out a little more than in other games which are just janky per se. 

ARE YOU STANDING COMFORTABLY?

The first game was an original puzzle game which blended clever gameplay with a dose of armchair philosophy, and it did it very well. The sequel tries to inflate both these aspects in equal measure, but it’s only partially successful in bringing them together, and the result is uneven. Given the game’s short running time, I’m even more concerned about avoiding spoilers than usual, so I won’t go into specifics. I will say that the story explores themes of freedom, responsibility, memory and commitment, and some of it feels very heavy-handed and jarring, and really doesn’t marry up with the fun gameplay nearly as much as it should. Instead, the need to tell a meaningful story sometimes overshadows (if not interrupts) some really nifty, clever and fun gameplay. It really doesn’t work for me – imagine Super Mario Odyssey occasionally breaking off for a slideshow on the nature of identity. One of the game’s five chapters takes a detour into being an only vaguely interactive and quite poorly written musical, which actually left me wondering where the game had gone. The gameplay just does not support the narrative in a way that weaves it all together, or vice versa for that matter. Later in the game, it feels like two hugely conflicting forces are at play. 

There’s some lovely and moving stuff in and amongst, but it is often undone by clunky realisation in other areas. Bob’s narration, delivered in what is clearly not the actor’s first language, is mostly charming in its delivery but has some moments when you wish the direction had been stronger for him. One actor is playing all the female characters in the game and her performances are extremely variable. The story tries to make points about childhood, memory and the effects of age; when the child in the game sounds this irritating and unconvincing, and the elderly mum has such a silly, put-on old lady voice, it just doesn’t work.

IT’S A BEAUTY

Let’s delve into some of the good stuff though. Another Fisherman’s Tale is beautiful. Sumptuous at times. It has a very strong visual identity and a lovely variety of levels. Some of the ideas and vistas here will make you gasp, and the way it initially seems like a slightly disconnected sequel but reveals itself to be directly related is very well done, and a treat for those who played and loved the original. The music is lovely but suffers from some quite obvious looping in places.

When the game is happy identifying as a platform puzzler it has some rewarding and delightful moments which you won’t find anywhere else, and make a very strong case for VR as a medium. Whilst I think the story and ponderous exploration of its themes ultimately bloat and harm the game, there are some genuinely touching moments in and amongst which still warrant a playthrough.

CATCH OF THE DAY

Another Fisherman’s Tale is an original game with a lot of heart, and some things about it will make you smile. Narrative stodge and unwieldy storytelling get in the way of both the gameplay and the tale it’s actually trying to tell. There’s a lot of what feels like padding in an already short game, and this is a shame as it will have some of us reaching for the refund button or simply not buying it at all. The fact is there are some aspects of Another Fisherman’s Tale which really should be experienced.

If there is a case to be made for Oculus providing a monthly subscription service with shorter experiences included to download and play, then Another Fisherman’s Tale makes it very strongly.

On the Quest alone we’ve already got a ridiculous amount of zombie-themed titles, some better than others. Where does Propagation: Paradise Hotel get off, thinking that it can just waltz in here talking tough and expecting to be heard above the crowd? Well…

AN EVIL INFLUENCE

The thing which is immediately apparent is that Propagation clearly takes its main cues from the original Resident Evil titles. The survival horror ones, you know, pre-RE4. The spooky hotel setting, full of locked doors, puzzles and shuffling undead twats, has all the trappings of a classic Resident Evil game. It’s not a background flavour either – from the use of the first aid spray to the save game room music channelling Resident Evil 2 pretty hard,

Propagation doesn’t so much wear its influences on its sleeve as much as wear an Umbrella onesie and prance around a mansion proclaiming itself the Master of Unlocking. This could of course be a foolhardy move, especially given that not only is the Quest swimming in zombie games, but also – an actual Resident Evil title, the sublime Quest version of RE4, is one of the very best games on the system already. Propagation has to be pretty bloody good to stand out, and I’m happy to report that, by and large, it hits the mark. With a few caveats, as ever.

THE DOOR WAS LOCKED

I’ll try hard to avoid spoilers. The basic premise is that you play Emily, one of two sisters working in a hotel, an already creepy old building which, at the outset of the game, is a few days into holding out against a zombie plague at the outset of the game.

When the game begins you’re holed up in the kitchen, running out of food, accompanied by another survivor, a security guard who kindly teaches you how to use a gun before asking for it back. (Who can guess what might happen to him after the prologue?) When Emily hears via the radio that her sister is alive and hoping for a military rescue, she heads out into the depths of the hotel to find her. And thus begins a classic survival horror scenario; key and keycards must be found, puzzled must be unpuzzled, drawers and cupboards must be raided for health, batteries and ammo, and the undead must be re-deaded.

AIM FOR THE HEAD

It’s nothing particularly ground-breaking or original, but you know there’s a lot to be said for some games which set out to make a decent, solid experience rather than change the world. And Propagation is a confident, largely solid attempt at a first-person horror game. The overall amount of polish is commendable for a Quest game. Interactions between hands, inventory objects and the world are pleasingly convincing, and certainly better than a lot of other, more expensive and more hyped titles. A lot of thought and work has gone into the way that things fit together, giving the player enough agency that it still feels like a VR game, but guiding and locking interactions enough so that it sidesteps a lot of the usual jank.

The three resources that have to be managed – health, ammo and batteries for the flashlight – are all dealt with by the same, context-aware system and it becomes second nature within minutes. Levers, switches, keys and number pads are lovely to use and it all just feels right, most of the time. The puzzles are great, and there’s one brilliant example which manages to blend text clues, the environment and even a zombie fight, and it’s pretty much a best-in-genre example of how to execute a puzzle in a game like this.

BY THE PRICKING OF MY THUMB

The game soon settles into a flow state of opening doors and creeping around, with flashlight and gun drawn. The combat isn’t particularly challenging, but the gunplay is very well realised and chunky; you’ll always feel a sense of dread when zombies lurch towards you, which is no mean feat in an overcrowded and familiar genre. There are some genuinely creepy and scary moments in here to keep your pants the wrong side of brown, even if the beats that it hits are well-worn. The sound design is truly excellent, from the creaking of the hotel to the groans of the undead bellends. There’s always something to unnerve in the gloomy halls of this old place, and that is how it should be.

The music is sublime. Like the rest of the game, the soundtrack dances with practically every trope of the genre but it does so with grace, poise, and the unashamed objective of creating dread and unease at every opportunity, either by its bombast or its absence.

I’ve very few complaints about the actual gameplay. For the most part, it’s one of the better story-based horror games in VR by some way. I’m not entirely happy about the fact that the core things are managed via physical interaction – guns on hip and back, resources in bumbag, torch on breast pocket – but the inventory is a button-press menu, one which clips through the scenery and is a bit of an immersion-breaker. This brings us to the main reason I’m not giving Propagation a higher score, even though I really like it.

ALMOST A JILL SANDWICH

The one bit of Resident Evil’s twisted, mutated DNA that I really, really wish that Propagation didn’t share is that it often fumbles moments of drama with poor scene-setting and awful acting. Two of the peripheral characters in the game sound so stilted and weird that I suspected for a while that they might have been generated by AI.

The player character, Emily, fares a little better with the performance but the direction is often way off, like the actor hasn’t been given any context for her lines at all. If she sounded like a desperate survivor dealing with unimaginable amounts of shit because she wants to find her sister, it would be far stronger than what we mostly have here. She often sounds smug and quippy when she really shouldn’t, and I’m sure that isn’t the intention. Even worse, there are a couple of occasions in which the scene is completely ruined by the timing of the dialogue – early on when one of her friends dies after a battle with something horrible, Emily starts talking about them being dead as she is standing over them before they’ve even expired, and it jars to the point of making her appear truly heartless. This is one aspect of the game that appears unpolished and unfinished, and it’s a shame. It’s not hokey enough to be good for comedy value, as with the earlier Resident Evil titles; it’s just a bit shit. The story is slight but otherwise well-told, and it deserves better realisation than this. With better cues and actors this could really be elevated to being a solid 9. I could certainly put Wanadev in touch with some decent voice-over artists cough

YOU TALK TOO MUCH

Propagation: Paradise Hotel is a well-made tribute to classic survival horror, with neat gunplay, solid mechanics, some great puzzles and magnificent amounts of atmosphere. Its running time will put some off, at around three hours, but at the very decent price of 15 quid, it provides pretty good value for what it is. There are longer (and more expensive) zombie narrative experiences out there, but Propagation will not leave you feeling short-changed, and there’s so much entertainment here that it’s a recommendation for sure. Just don’t let those bad voices and pacing issues put you off.

IT IS WHAT IT IS

First up, a bit of context. Most of us have experienced the syndrome where we don’t engage with a piece of media simply because of hype or popularity. I, for example, have still never watched Game of Thrones. Sometimes this turns out to be justified – my first rodeo as a professional games reviewer was Driv3r, an overhyped mess quickly vilified by the press and public alike with good reason. Sometimes, however, because I’ve been allergic to the popularity around something, as a punter, I’ve missed out on some gems until comparatively late in the day. Fight Club, Breaking Bad, and Super Mario 64 are a few examples from my personal list of shame. I’d already grown weary of the hype train around Bonelab months ago, but knowing I was reviewing it, I tried to remain as objective in my opinion as possible. I set out to review the game as a first-time player with as few preconceptions and expectations as possible.

THE EMPEROR IS NAKED

Well, here goes nothing. I think Bonelab is crap. I think it’s crap for many reasons, which I’ll try to go into here, but the main one is that it feels bloody awful to play. 

I’m not here to review a game engine, its ‘potential’, or what it might be like in a few months when the modders have taken it apart and reformed it. What we have now is a messy, janky, hugely overpriced sandbox which thinks it’s far, far better than it is. Nearly every single design decision here is wrong-headed, and it all stems from the fact that interacting with the world and inhabiting it is borderline unpleasant. On the Quest, at least, the engine does everything it can to convince you that you aren’t playing it properly or holding the controllers right and that you don’t get it. 

NO NOOSE IS GOOD NOOSE

I don’t really give a shit about spoiling the game because it does that itself. But we won’t show the game’s opening out of sensitivity, so here is a trigger warning. I’m going to discuss the intro level, which contains some content that might be disturbing. If matters around suicide or self-harm might be upsetting for you, please skip forward to the next time stamp. Still here? OK. One of the very first things you do in Bonelab is walk up to a rope noose and physically put it around your neck. No trigger warning, and no option to skip. You don’t have to be a qualified psychologist to ascertain that this might be a pretty irresponsible thing to put in a game, particularly with no establishing narrative context. I am a qualified psychologist, and I can say with some authority that it’s a dick move. It doesn’t contribute anything beyond giving edgelord content creators something about which to say ‘that’s sick, man’ as they pretend high-five their anti-woke fans.

Even if this doesn’t bother you, the fact is that what should be a showcase tutorial level highlights everything that’s turd about BoneLab. Standing naturally with your hands holding the Quest controllers makes your hands look like they’ve had fingers broken. Using the analogue sticks to move or jump makes you waggle your thumbs, and it looks ridiculous. Movement feels imprecise and unpredictable. Objects have no sensation of mass, and clipping and sticky objects abound, making melee combat a flailing chore. The holstering/inventory system feels inept and counterintuitive. It’s like Stress Level Zero have compiled everything wrong with most VR games and then genericised everything it found until Bonelab became demonstrative of the least enjoyable ethos of any given category. 

ONCE UPON A TIME

Just as the narrative portion of the game gets going, it stops. Then dumps you into a hub where you are forced to experience the different mini-games, moddable content and subsections of the game before you move on. The flow is appalling. Imagine completing the first chapter of Half-Life 2 and then being dumped in a Garry’s Mod bowling level. According to the press release, the devs don’t want to ‘hand hold’ and want to concentrate instead on ‘player agency’. This is a mistake because the awful, rubbery feel of the game engine does not encourage experimentation or exploration. It’s all a chore. Parkour is a nightmare and yet has its own section. Puzzles are either overwrought or insultingly simple.

Time and time again, the game presents you with physical interactions that would be far easier to perform in real life. VR should be about empowerment and immersion. It’s a long time since a VR game has made me so painfully aware of the gulf between my corporeal presence and my avatar. Try climbing or grabbing something, and you’ll invariably end up pulling an ammo clip from your holster, which you can’t just put back. Navigating the tops of ladders and other climbing points is just nasty. So on, and so on.

VALVE PRESSURE

And everywhere, the off-brand Valve Software feel persists. From the robot versions of headcrabs, the gas-masked soldiers, the gun turrets, the buttons… It thinks it’s clever and meta like Portal, but it doesn’t come close to the cleverness in design, narrative or feel that Valve is capable of. Level after level of unenjoyable dross goes by, occasionally throwing in a pseudo-edgy plot point. THE FUTURE OF VR scream other channels. So why, in the name of Gordon Freeman’s left bollock, do we have an on-rails minecart shooting level? Does the future of VR reveal itself before or after the ‘Street Puncher’ section, which actually plays far worse than Drunkn Bar Fight? Am I too devoid of vision to see that the future of VR lies in endless bland corridor gunfights against dumb, shuffling crash test dummies that constantly fall over themselves? If so, I’ll stick with the past of VR. Things like Half-Life: Alyx. Or Superhot. Or Sairento. Or, you know, anything else which actually feels great to play.

CACK OF ALL TRADES

There isn’t a single thing that Bonelab does better than other games, and most of those other games can be bought far more cheaply, and a lot of them are even free. Gunplay is OK but completely unchallenging. It’s also quite challenging to reload some guns without your avatar looking like they’ve got some sort of degenerative bone disorder or moving like a dainty princess. 

Melee combat is terrible and weightless. Climbing is horrible.

I’m not impressed by the engine, either. Whilst it looks better than a lot of other Quest games, the frame rate can be chuggy, and some textures literally look like they’re from the original PlayStation. I can’t express how ungainly the avatars look whilst doing practically anything and how immersion-breaking this is. The dev team have obviously watched some Youtube video or Blu-Ray extra where an ex-Navy Seal has imparted wisdom about firearms training whereby the trigger finger is kept against the body of the gun and only rests on the trigger when firing. The result is that whilst your in-game hands waggle and twist when moving around, your trigger finger doesn’t curl around gun triggers until pressed all the way in, despite what your hand is actually doing on the controller. Nothing seems to have been thought through from the right direction.

And don’t get me started on the music. It veers between parping monstrously and screaming electronic dirges. The game only scores as highly as it does because you can turn the music off. 

AVOID THE VOID

Bonelab is a howlingly empty, malformed experience. Yes, in terms of the possibilities that may present themselves with modding in the future, it’s a little more promising, but the same could be said of VR Chat, and that’s free. It doesn’t matter how scaleable the worlds are or how many avatars you can inhabit if it all feels so dreadful to play. I have nothing but contempt for other channels that have built this up because there are other, smaller, more original titles that are quietly perfecting VR as a game medium and are well worth championing. (They’re also a fraction of the ridiculous price being charged for this). Instead, the hype machine is in meltdown, hungry for clicks, over an unoriginal, vaguely unpleasant engine in search of a nucleus or a decent plot. As it stands, and until the community makes more of it, BoneLab is, genre by genre, outclassed by many similar games, many of which are free. 

Will Into the Radius live up to it?

STALKING IS THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY

First impressions are not at all good. Menus are a bit basic and fiddly, and the tutorial is one of the most obnoxious and misleading introductions to any game. It took me two attempts to get past it, making the game look bare, unfinished, finicky and hard to play. The text seems poorly translated and is full of typos; some of the instructions obscure their intent. The tutorial’s slight taste of exploration and combat is unconvincing and dull. The review was writing itself – why is this game even bothering when the loot-combat-explore gameplay loop has been done so much better in The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners?

When I limped past the tutorial section and found myself in the starting hub of the game proper, it hardly seemed any better. The opening mission, delivered via text on a computer interface, reads as deadly uninteresting, and the first taste of the open world made me save and exit until I was in a more patient mood. Nothing had clicked with me, and technically the game seemed a bit of a bust. So I left it for a couple of hours.

NO, WAIT, STOP, COME BACK!

Before my next session in the game, I did a bit of research. Into the Radius has been out on PCVR for a while and has earned quite a following. After a bit of reading and some YouTube, I was surprised to find myself genuinely intrigued. The game had sold itself to me very badly. Thanks to the inept tutorial and janky first impressions, it blinded me to its ambition and potential. It mis-sold what it was trying to achieve. What I heard other players waxing lyrical about and watched them playing didn’t tally at all with what I’d seen of the Quest version, but the game seemed to have far more depth than it had shown me. So I went back in, started a fresh save, and met it halfway. Within twenty minutes, my opinion had changed completely.

BACKPACK IN THE U. S. S. R.

What changed my mind was the way that the game handles stuff. The scavenging, arrangement and management of stuff is what the game is all about. Whether that’s the frantic scramble for remaining bullets in the middle of a firefight or the careful selection of gear and supplies for your next run, it’s all about the minutiae, inconvenience, and joy of stuff. When you’re introduced to the backpack in the tutorial, it seems like a low-effort and clunky version of superior efforts in other games (cough Walking Dead Saints and Sinners cough). Objects you store in it don’t arrange themselves nicely in bubbles and rows, and there aren’t any physics. They just freeze in place in there wherever you leave them. 

You can not only stack objects but clip them through each other – it physically looks like a rucksack yet acts more like an object placement tool in the game engine itself. 

It’s not slick, but spend a few minutes in the world, and you’ll love its freedom. There are plenty of other VR titles with backpack inventory management, but none of them replicates the actual feel of frantically sifting through a bag of miscellaneous crap, wishing you’d been more organised. It also brings finicky joy to the act of hunter-gathering. The player’s room in the game hub acts similarly to the backpack – stuff you place anywhere in that room stays there. Organise the shelves into neat piles of ammo, fill up empty ammo boxes with individual bullets, litter your bed with cigarette stubs and Red Bull cans… It’s your domain. The joy of hauling a bag full of spoils back home to sell or put on the shelves is rewarding and the right side of fiddly. If you’re like me and love faffing with the inventory in Resident Evil 4, you will adore this. 

STOCK INVESTMENT

The tactile nature of Into the Radius extends to the weapons. Guns and even ammo clips degrade with use and can jam in a firefight if not appropriately maintained. Delightfully, maintenance is carried out manually at the workbench in your room. Pop a gun in the vice, spray it with non-copyright-infringing off-brand WD40, and use a toothbrush to clean it. Clear the barrel using a rod and pieces of toilet tissue you tear off a roll. As the game progresses, you’ll unlock weapon upgrades and accessories and get even more stuff to do stuff with. When you head out into the wilderness, you’ll do it with sparkly, well-looked-after weapons, hand-picked supplies from your stash, and a sense of ownership and investment in the entire experience, which other survival/exploration games lack.  

UNSETTLING SETTING

So what of the world you’ll be trying to survive in? It’s creepier and more surreal than some other games of this ilk. I won’t give any plot details away or ruin the exploration for you, but suffice to say that the aftermath of whatever happened has left the landscape a twisted, broken place, populated by brittle statue memories of people and unsettling shadow zombies. It’s not radiation, we’re told, and the scientific gives way to the supernatural. It all still feels grounded, though, thanks to some good scene-setting.

Whilst by this point, the post-apocalyptic Russian setting is in danger of becoming a familiar trope, the distorted reality of Into the Radius presents a slightly fresher take on it. Yes, there are Soviet trucks and warehouses, and we’ve seen most of it before, but twisted train tracks spiralling into the sky and surreal parodies of architecture litter the land. It’s not just that something bad has happened here, but something weird. And that’s refreshing. The sombre tone of the sparse, ethereal music is entirely fitting, and the air of unease and dread the game generates is exceptionally effective. It’s just you, your guns, and your cereal bars against the world. Exploration is a stressful but rewarding affair and an addictive one. There’s some lovely design here, and the curious are rewarded with stuff and plenty of action. 

GLITCH, HUH?

It’s a pity that the game isn’t all it could be on a technical level. The graphics are, by and large, dogshit. There’s lots of pop-in and uninteresting texture work, and the colour palette is all over the shop. It’s not as if this is all to do with the downgrade from PC, either – it’s not a pretty game even on Steam, so by the time it reaches the Quest, it’s downright ugly. It gets away with it, and there are enough little touches here and there to carry it. But if you want something to wow the crowd, look elsewhere. The poor English and typos in the menus are pretty aggravating, too.

The sound effects, music and atmosphere are excellent, but Into the Radius makes the same mistake as Red Matter 2… Russian setting, poor American voice acting. Set a tone and give us some accents, please. It doesn’t help that the cast sound like they’re all reading for Family Guy rather than a bleak survival experience.

More harmful to the game is there’s a lot of glitchy jank. All objects feel weightless, and opening doors, cupboards and drawers feels frustratingly like wrangling paper; it sometimes feels like being a toddler. Your hands get caught on stuff, and there’s generally too much clipping and odd physics for it to feel like a true class act. 

The more you play, the less of an issue all of this will be, though. It finds different ways to be immersive. If I had one major complaint about the gameplay, it is that, although combat is usually satisfying, the stealth seems non-existent, despite the presence of silencers and sniper rifles. Bad sods always seem to know I’m there, so everything becomes a straight fight. Your mileage may vary.

I’M GETTING A STALK ON

It turns out that Into the Radius is quite a slow burn, and that is very deliberate. Much like the S. T. A. L. K. E. R. games it so clearly adores, it doesn’t go out of its way to integrate the player into the game world, and that’s commendable if you’re the right sort of player. You’ll need to be patient and methodical and buy into the game’s systems to get the best out of it. There are all sorts of customisation options to make the game as brutal and survivalist as possible. There are hours and hours of gameplay here, even with standard difficulty. Whilst the missions often boil down to simple fetch quests, the experience is very much what you make it. It’s clear the team have a strong vision for the game, and following the game’s progress on Steam, it seems that the title is constantly being tweaked, improved and added to. I’ve no doubt that if this trend continues on the Quest, we’ll be looking at one of the best games on the system. 

LITTLE BOXES ON THE HILLSIDE

What is immediately apparent upon loading Little Cities is that it really has been designed from the ground up to be satisfying to interact with. From the menu screen onwards, everything is clean, uncluttered and extremely pleasant to be immersed in. It’s going for cosy, and it gets there immediately.

Everything about Little Cities is pleasing, from the benign music to the sharp, crisp and appealing graphical style. The tutorial is not only painless but fun, an ongoing and welcoming experience which efficiently introduces everything you need to know to play the game in a pacy way. 

Little Cities is a simple joy to whizz about in. The navigation is clever and effortless; the controls rely on pointing physically at bubbles and drawing clean gridlines, and clicking for construction. Rather like the wonderful Tentacular, it’s one of those titles that make you feel like some developers really are getting to know what works in VR and are tailoring the experience to be as delightful, interactive and virtually tactile as possible. 

HIP TO BE SQUARE

At heart, there’s a simple formula to building Little Cities‘ little cities. Build roads, build houses, supply the houses with power and broadband and give the inhabitants somewhere to work and shop and emergency services to call when things go wrong. Do this well and keep the population happy, and the city grows exponentially, so it gets trickier to place things in a way that keeps everyone smiling. Put an industrial zone in the middle of a pleasant housing estate, and it’s going to irk the locals, for example. And you’ll want to keep everyone smiling. So joyous is the experience of playing that it’s very jarring to see the sad un-smiley icons pop up over previously harmonious locales. The demands and satisfaction levels of the populous are simply portrayed as a little 3D pie chart and graph and require only the briefest glance to keep on top of.

The city design never gets overly ambitious; it’s all clean gridlines and tidy blocks. The downside is that you’ll never make anything mad or erratic – the massive upside is that you’ll never get lost or make something hideous. The game’s systems are transparent and instantly make sense; there’s a huge focus on making sure the game is always readable and kind to the player. It never feels like plate spinning or trying to second guess an ever-changing hidden spreadsheet, which games of this genre can often be guilty of. 

TAKE YOU DOWN TO FUNKYTOWN

This game gives you plenty to smile about as you play it. Seeing cars beetling about on the roads and building slowly taking shape is just a pleasure. All of the information you need to know to assess the needs of the burgeoning city is so easy to access and concise; it’s just like checking your watch. After a couple of days away, I didn’t dread having to relearn any complex mechanics, and the interactions became and remained second nature. If there are awards for UI in VR, then Little Cities really needs to win some.

By containing its ambition a little, Little Cities manages to achieve everything it sets out to do in style, providing an engrossing and gentle city-building experience which is a delight from the minute you fire it up. The contrast between this and Cities VR could not be starker.

LAST EXIT

Everyone I’ve shown Little Cities to has been immediately drawn in by its accessibility, to the point that it’s actually been problematic. Being a busy VR reviewer, it’s a pain having to wrestle the headset back off friends and family, so addicted are they to the hypnotic and rewarding gameplay loop of city-building that Little Cities manages to forge so well. 

Overall, Little Cities is just a beautiful way to lightly engage the brain, hands and imagination for a few hours. It creates a wonderfully engaging and warm environment and uses VR in an astute manner so simple that it appears effortless, which is obviously where the developers have made the most effort. 

It’s a joy to recommend Little Cities to players of all ages and abilities.