A Tale of Two Games

Behemoth casts you as Ren, a lonely warrior travelling cursed lands to battle giant monsters and save his people. The narrative, while predictable, is well-delivered through an engaging mix of environmental storytelling and voice-overs. Unlike many other narrative-driven VR titles, the game respects player agency during exposition, allowing you to move and interact while absorbing the story rather than trapping you in static dialogue sequences.

The game’s lore is cleverly distributed through interactable items throughout the world. This optional approach to narrative depth works surprisingly well – you can engage with as much or as little of the background story as you wish, with voice-overs playing seamlessly as you continue your adventure. It’s a thoughtful solution to the common VR storytelling challenge of maintaining immersion while delivering plot.

Let’s Fight!

The majority of Behemoth plays as a medieval combat adventure with satisfying physics-based melee combat at its heart. The game offers a reasonable selection of weapons, from swords and daggers to axes and bows, as well as 3 special weapons that stay with the character and are upgraded throughout the campaign. Each of the weapons feels appropriately weighty thanks to a solid physics system reminiscent of Saints & Sinners. This physics system, along with great sound effects and crisp animations, delivers satisfyingly impactful combat that drives the action sequences throughout the campaign.

In addition to the standard array of melee weapons, Behemoth also provides a grappling hook, which is a lot of fun to use. While initially finicky, it quickly becomes an invaluable tool for both vertical traversal and combat. Grappling an enemy’s leg and yanking the rope will pull them off balance, opening new opportunities to attack. The grapple can also quickly reposition the player during fights, pull enemies off ledges, or pull distant health pickups to you during intense battles. This versatility adds a welcome layer of depth to the combat system.

Combat in Behemoth employs a stamina system that, while not overly restrictive, adds a tactical element to combat. When depleted, your arms become notably weaker, the weight of your weapons becoming far more tangible as you can barely lift them to defend yourself. The system feels well-balanced and fair, giving you enough stamina for aggressive play while preventing endless flailing and encouraging a tactical dynamic that serves the game well.

All that said, the combat definitely struggles to find balance in other areas. The “strength” ability feels massively overpowered from the start. Once you get used to relying on this power, most combat encounters become trivial. This is compounded as you upgrade your weapons to the point that late-game human boss fights that should be climactic challenges can be defeated in under a minute.

The power in and of itself isn’t bad, but its implementation highlights a real misstep in progression. While the skill can be upgraded over time, all of the enhancements feel superficial when compared to the abilities base power. Had this been a skill that grew from more humble beginnings throughout the campaign, then waltzing through late-stage combat would have felt empowering and hard-earned. Instead, Behemoth effectively provides a built-in cheat code that makes every encounter almost game-breakingly easy from the outset.

Behemoth also undercuts the tension it otherwise creates by providing generous health pickups throughout combat areas. This abundance means you’ll rarely feel pressured in combat by the game’s latter half, knowing that healing items are always readily available.

The game includes an arena mode in beta, offering additional combat challenges for those seeking more action after the main campaign. While it provides a pure test of the combat mechanics, including encounters with the game’s human bosses at higher waves, its repetitive nature and inability to use upgraded weapons from the campaign may limit its long-term appeal.

Hardly a Head-Scratcher

Behemoth’s puzzle elements represent one of its weaker aspects. Most puzzles boil down to simple box-moving exercises that feel more like busy work than genuine challenges. While there are occasional clever moments – such as using the grappling hook to create swing points for objects – even these more innovative puzzles lack complexity and can typically be solved in just two or three moves. Compared to contemporaries like Asgard’s Wrath 2, the puzzle design feels particularly underdeveloped.

In fact, overall, there seems to be a noticeable decline in polish and performance as the game progresses. The first two-thirds of the game provides a high-quality and broadly stable experience, but the final third feels rushed, with technical issues occurring more frequently. Combat becomes less reliable, visual glitches become more common and things generally begin to feel a bit repetitive.

This sliding scale of quality is particularly noticeable in the later Behemoth encounters, where the combination of ambitious scale and technical instability creates frustrating experiences that fall short of the game’s early promise.

The Bigger They Are, The Harder They Oof

The titular Behemoth battles, which should be the game’s crown jewels, deliver mixed results. Of the four major encounters, only one or two truly capture the epic scale these battles promise. The second Behemoth battle, featuring a massive flying creature, stands out for its ambition. The concept is thrilling – fighting atop a giant bat-like creature as it soars through clouds, requiring careful climbing and tactical thinking. However, even this highlight suffers from scripted sequences that limit player agency and technical issues that break immersion (if you let it). Our team had mixed responses to this sequence, but I found it one of the coolest things I’ve ever done in VR.

Other Behemoth encounters prove less successful. The third battle, for instance, reduces what should be an epic confrontation to a relatively simple platform/climbing exercise. Where you should feel the tension of scaling a massive, dangerous creature, you instead find yourself comfortably hopping between static platforms or dealing with short, easily manageable climbing sections that never test the stamina system and so never actually feel like a threat. Couple this with excessively forgiving waypoints, which make dying almost meaningless, and you end up with an encounter that feels more pedestrian than the desperate battle against a colossal beast it should have been.

These sections also suffer from various and occasionally severe technical problems, including screen jittering, glitching grab points, and accidental holster triggers. These issues are particularly problematic during climbing sequences, where precision is crucial.

The disappointment is made so much worse by the fact that the Behemoths actually look amazing. At several points before battling each of them, you will see them ponderously moving through the world, and they are a sight to behold. Spotting a massive Behemoth in the distance while completing other objectives creates thrilling moments of anticipation – anticipation that isn’t seldom satisfied when you finally face them.

Pretty With a Side of Jank

Graphically, Behemoth is impressive on the Quest, particularly when compared to other Quest fantasy titles. The environments are varied, from snow-covered landscapes to lush castles and the striking Red Forest. Character models and animations are well-executed, though the lighting can sometimes feel murky, especially in underground areas.

The sound design stands as one of the game’s strongest elements. The score knows when to swell for dramatic moments and when to remain understated. Combat sounds are particularly well-implemented, with weapon impacts carrying satisfying weight through audio cues. Environmental audio adds depth to the experience, with footsteps and echoes changing appropriately based on your surroundings.

However, there are technical issues with the sound implementation, particularly in music transitions. Tracks can cut off abruptly between areas, breaking immersion with jarring silence before new music begins.

A Tale of Diminishing Returns

Behemoth presents a challenging case for reviewers. The first two-thirds of the game offers solid entertainment with satisfying combat mechanics, a well-told narrative and well-crafted environments. The combat system complete with grappling hook provides a nuanced take on melee combat (when not overshadowed by the overpowered strength ability

However, the game’s quality noticeably degrades in its final third, with a less polished level of design and an increasing array of technical glitches. Most disappointingly, the Behemoth battles, which should have been the game’s crowning achievement, on the whole fall well below their colossal potential.

Note: If you’re a fan of Shadow of the Colossus coming to this specifically for massive creature battles, you might want to adjust expectations closer to 7/10.

The key addition in this update is the “Hunter” class, which equips players with a recurve bow and throwing knives, adding a new dynamic to the game’s combat system. Alongside this, the update brings in “Sunless Keep,” a new procedurally generated battleground that expands the game’s environment. Additionally, players can explore new tarot cards, further enhancing the game’s roguelike mechanics.

For those unfamiliar with The Light Brigade, the game places players in the role of humanity’s last line of defense against an encroaching darkness. The gameplay is a mix of physics-based gunplay and light-powered magic, challenging players to navigate ruins, free trapped souls, and master their abilities to restore the world.

The update reflects well on Funktronic Labs’ commitment to providing ongoing support and enhancements to The Light Brigade, enriching the player experience with new content and improvements.

I have to give props where props are due, Dungeons of Eternity puts up a great front, the presentation is well polished, and sports an intriguing mix of science fiction and fantasy elements. From the opulent design of the map room, where adventurers plot their next course, to the welcoming embrace of a lounge allowing for tranquil moments in front of a fireplace with companions, Dungeons of Eternity was clearly crafted with great attention to detail.

In a genre oversaturated with hastily assembled entrants, Othergate beckons players with a promise — a promise of a unique, ever-evolving adventure where fantasy comes wrapped up in a sci-fi cloak, holding within it the potential to redefine the VR dungeon crawler landscape.

Crawling Through Eternity

The backbone of any great dungeon crawler lies in its gameplay mechanics, and here, Dungeons of Eternity does not disappoint, offering players the opportunity to craft personalized avatars along with an expansive range of load-outs and power-up perks.

A standout feature is undoubtedly the game’s melee combat system. Dungeons of Eternity does very well here, steering clear of the pitfalls that have ensnared other titles such as Everslaught Invasion. Here, the weapons bear a satisfying heft, interactions with physical objects feel convincingly real, and parrying attacks actually work.

Although the game allows several playstyles, you can use melee weapons, ranged weapons, and magic, my experience was that you only really get melee weapons and a bow at the start of the game, you’ll have to do some grinding to get magical weapons. This is a curious game design choice since it means that new players to the game can’t really go into the dungeons with a wide range of classes. In fact, there are no classes per se, you are what you do, essentially, and, at least at the start, you can’t be a mage. 

The game can be played single-player, but if you’re looking to fulfill its unspoken promise, that of essentially playing Gauntlet with friends in VR, you’ll want to play it in multiplayer, where the stakes are higher, the enemies more numerous, and the fun multiplied by the presence of others whose company you enjoy.

There are three different quest types; Dungeon Raid, where you have to traverse a dungeon to find, power up, and retrieve a drone that’s been lost, Crystal Hunt, which has you in a pyramidal structure hunting for three crystals that’ll power up a smaller pyramid at its center, giving you points you can use to buy perks, and Soul Harvest, which is essentially a horde mode and the least entertaining mode of the bunch. 

At launch, the Dungeons of Eternity offers 12 dungeons, not counting the tutorial, that are divided into different areas or themes. Although this gives some variety to the proceedings, a couple of the areas are similar enough that they don’t really feel fresh. 

Visual Vaults

Despite the generic dungeons and creatures that are on offer once you get past the sci-fi framing of the game, Dungeons of Eternity is a really good-looking game by Quest standards. The graphics are atmospheric, with real-time lighting, some nice particle effects, and good textures. The overall look of the game is very good, and the enemies, although they remain mostly generic are well designed and well rendered, if lacking in variety. 

Eternal Echoes

The audio in Dungeons of Eternity is good, if unremarkable. Suitable music comes up sometimes that helps enhance the atmosphere, but the real star in the audio department is the sound f/x for the weapons, the clangs of steel against steel, and the spatial audio that helps you turn around in time to attack, or defend yourself against, an enemy coming at you from behind. It works, and it works well. 

Pitfalls of Perpetuity

Okay, so good graphics, great physics, decent combat, and a great opportunity to go dungeon crawling with friends! What can go wrong?

Well, as mentioned previously, there are only three game modes, and one of them is a dreadfully boring horde mode that I can’t imagine many players would enjoy.

Another issue is the lack of character classes. Although this might initially seem okay, since you can increasingly customize your character and their load-outs and perks as you unlock more and more of the game, it also means that fresh players cannot play a mage, for instance. Magic is mostly staff-based, so it amounts to you becoming a shooter, and it’s only unlocked later on, which means that fresh gamers coming in can’t have a magician as part of their party of three. 

There’s also a problem with the same-iness of much of the game’s content. As mentioned before, the four areas or themes aren’t very distinct from each other, making me feel that Othergate should have capitalized on the sci-fi setup of the hub world, infusing more of that in a theme or two to give them an altogether different character from the rest. As it stands, however, the dungeons all feel quite samey. Couple that with the tedious horde mode levels, and the overall value of the content takes an unfortunate dip. 

Lastly, the single-player mode lacks any real challenge. Every single time I played the game alone, I breezed through the Dungeon Raid levels. Too many health potions, not enough enemies, not enough difficulty. The game needs to figure out how to challenge single players, even if it’s not designed around single-player gameplay.

End of Infinity

Overall, Dungeons of Eternity lays a great foundation for what could eventually grow to become a rich multiplayer experience. As it stands, it is perhaps the only game on Quest that really offers players the chance to go dungeon crawling with their friends in VR, however, the charm will soon wear off if Othergate don’t build on that foundation with more exciting missions and more varied enemies. 

I also think a longer narrative-driven mode that takes players through several different dungeons with a more gripping narrative than ‘save the fallen drone’ would absolutely propel the game into a higher tier, and make it easier to recommend.

For now, it’s not a must-have, but will provide some value and some fun to older players who miss the Gauntlet days and don’t mind the generic nature and limited scope of what’s on offer. 

When Joy Way announced Dead Hook, our ears dutifully perked up in attention. Ever since we played Stride, it’s been hard to shake the conviction that Joy Way have their finger on the pulse when it comes to fantastic VR traversal. This was further cemented when we played the somewhat ill-fated Outlier on PCVR, a game that had great promise but eventually disappeared. An early beta of it was briefly made available on Quest, and from the ashes of that project, Dead Hook rose, much like a phoenix, if that phoenix was dual-wielding futuristic sci-fi weapons and blades and was drenched in the blood of its demonic enemies.

You’ve Got Me Hooked

The star of the show here, as with most Joy Way titles, is the fantastically fluid traversal system. You have two grapple hooks, one per hand, which you can shoot out with the A and X buttons. You can use both together or one at a time, and the physics work as you’d expect, making the swinging and the movement remarkably intuitive. You’ll get the hang of it straight away, pulling on the chains to propel yourself forward, relaxing them to swing, and anchoring one while letting go of the other to arc through the arenas. The movement is glorious.

Call Me Akimbo

Whereas the grapple hooks help give Dead Hook some of its uniqueness, the game is a shooter through and through. I can almost say, knowing full well that Doc hates these genre-describing shortcuts, that Dead Hook feels like somebody put Swarm and Doom into a blender, set it to ‘roguelike’, and watched as Dead Hook rose to its feet, powered by metal and vengeance. Dead Hook offers a decent variety of weapons, including semi-automatic pistols, rocket launchers, shotguns, and plasma guns, to name a few, all of which are upgradeable. Although they don’t have any alternative fire options and the upgrades mostly make them more powerful but not inherently different, the weapon models are good, the gunplay is satisfying, and the weapons each pack their own distinct punch.

Upon completing a level, you unlock a chest at its center containing either a weapon, a perk, or a buff. Here, Dead Hook is a bit sadistic since some levels contain only buffs, and you’re forced to pick whichever you think will be the least damaging. 

Devil’s in the Details

The killing mechanics in Dead Hook have been tweaked to provide a magnificent murderous flow to the combat. Once you’ve weakened an enemy sufficiently, they glow white, showing their vulnerability. This is your chance to grapple straight into them, shredding them to pieces. This also happens in slow motion, giving you the chance to re-target your weapons onto the next victim, set them glowing to grapple into them, building up a chain of shoot, grapple, shatter, shoot, grapple, shoot, grapple, destroy when you can dash around the arena like a madman, leaving disembodied enemies in your wake.

You also have blades that are set into your arms, and once you’ve built up enough kills, those can be unleashed, allowing you to cross your arms while targeting enemies and sending you flying and slashing into them. Again, this allows for a chain of kills and always feels rewarding.

Dressed for Death

Dead Hook‘s visuals aren’t mind-blowing, but they are appealing. It boasts a graphical style that suits the theme, works well for Quest, and, more importantly, allows the game to operate at a breakneck pace, never once stuttering or juddering during the intense action. The environments are good-looking, and they get better as you get farther in, but their design does more for the game than their looks, allowing for real three-dimensional maneuvering, traversal, and combat. 

Bang Your Head

Had the review copy of Dead Hook that we got before launch not included a glitch that stopped the audio at some point during a certain level, I might not have appreciated just how much of a role the game’s music played in driving the action and the player forward. Don’t worry; I was told by Joy Way that they’re aware of the glitch and that it’ll be fixed in a day-one patch. So chances are, you’ll never encounter it. The sound design of the game is generally great, but it’s the pumping soundtrack accompanying the action that sets the mood of the game and keeps you swinging and shredding. 

Trouble in Hell

Okay, now for the gripes. 

Despite the incredible attention paid to the core mechanics, Dead Hook has some minor UI and UX issues that make it feel a bit unpolished. A typo here and there that I’m assured will be fixed, poor weapon upgrade animations, and text that sometimes overflows past the box it’s set in. None of these issues impact the gameplay at all, and all of them can easily be patched if they haven’t been already by the time you see this review.

The greatest weaknesses of the game are twofold: a lack of enemy variety and poor boss fights. The enemies are mostly the same across the first ten levels, and the enemies you meet, after you defeat the first boss, are mostly the same, with a couple of additions, except they’re stronger and colored differently. I wish it had more enemies, but again, although the variety is weak, you’ll be too busy shooting and slashing through to mind too much. 

But the first boss battle, for example, is simply dull. The first boss isn’t nimble and has no real moves, and although the game describes them as having ‘multiple phases’, the phases don’t amount to much. The first boss is a huge bullet sponge, tedious but not exciting to fight, and hardly rewarding to witness or satisfying to fight or defeat.

Hell Blast

Still, despite my desire for far better boss battles, a greater variety of enemies, and finer UI polish, Dead Hook is easy to recommend for action fans with robust VR legs who want some good old-fashioned mayhem with unique traversal and a few twists. It’s packed to the brim with adrenaline and is being offered at a very fair price. If this is your kind of game, you’ll have an absolute blast.

Now if you’ve seen our impressions video or any other video about the game, you’ll know that its core selling point is its unique locomotion system that, as I said before, reminds me of the Impossible Spaces system used in Tea for God. The idea is that the entire game is played without any artificial locomotion. You don’t use thumbsticks to move, and you don’t use free movement or teleportation. It’s all done in room scale, cannot be played sitting down, won’t work if your space is too small, and relies entirely on messing with your head using moving blocks and rollers, making it feel like you’re traversing all kinds of distances while you’re really just taking small steps to the front, sides, and back. 

Does this system work? Yes. It works brilliantly and, I’m tempted to say, flawlessly. It works so well, in fact, that you have to be careful since stepping off of moving blocks and off rollers subconsciously tempts your body to try to overcompensate for inertia and, more than once, almost had me fall over. I repeat, I’m a VR veteran and I almost fell over a couple of times. So, you’ve been warned; be careful.

The result of all this is that the game passes the ‘Yeah, but is it immersive!?’ test with flying colors. The movement system is, indeed, very immersive.

Step By Step

The gameplay itself is relavitely simple; you navigate your way around the temple, solving puzzles, unlocking doors, and activating a set of seven beacons to allow you to finally enter the inner chambers of the temple, where you can finally confront the great darkness, and save mankind from all kinds of evil things. 

In your adventure, you’re armed with the whip I mentioned earlier and a torch. Did I mention Indiana Jones? I did in the impressions video, so I promise I won’t again. I’m sure every other video about this game has already hammered the Indy angle hard, so let’s not waste time on that. 

Your whip, the developer promises, is ‘physically simulated’, and it does act more or less like you’d expect it to, but only unfurls, so to speak, when the game decides it would be of use. Although I don’t doubt the mechanics behind it, in practice, it’s a bit hit-and-miss, and chances are you’ll only get good at using it by the time you’ve reached the final levels. Initially, the whip is mainly used to pull levers that are too far for you to reach yourself, and the torch is mostly used to light up braziers, some of which unlock gates, activate mechanisms, or reveal parts of the backstory. There are a couple of sequences where you’ll also use it as a weapon, but this is not an action game. 

There’s a cool blue bird – I think it’s a falcon – that follows you around throughout the game, and as the story progresses, you’ll grow to appreciate why. Enough of that! This is a no-spoiler zone. 

As the game progresses, you’ll unlock one extra thing your whip can do, and it’s pretty cool and helps Eye of the Temple offer some variety in its puzzle design.

Hello Legoland

Visually speaking, the game’s graphics are good but not remarkable. There’s nothing here to compete with some of the better-looking games on Quest, but the art style is consistent and attractive enough to keep you immersed. However, it’s too consistent, the South American style that the game relies on is unchanged throughout. This is logically consistent since the game does all take place in ONE temple, but I would’ve appreciated some variety in overall style and textures. A few areas with distinctly different themes would have made a huge difference and surely could have been explained by some narrative device.

The audio design is very good, and the soundtrack by Claudi Martinez is very fitting, although somewhat generic. Although generally sedate and relaxing, it’s triggered by the context and gets more energetic and upbeat when more action is called for. Overall, it serves the game just as it should, as does the sound design.

Matters of Scale

Eye of the Temple takes about 4-5 hours to complete but squeezes out some extra longevity by offering speedrun challenges to gamers who enjoy those, and secret treasures to be found for completionists. 

At $19.99 it’s about par for the course for this scale on Quest. As a puzzler, it offers a unique experience, but I also have to mention it has its ups and downs. It was great fun at the start, then started getting a bit dull as the gameplay and the environments started feeling samey, then it became more fun again when the whip gained an extra feature about halfway into the game, offering a little more variety in the nature of the puzzles. I’m also tempted to say that since the game has a couple of action sequences, perhaps a few more would also have upped the ante.

Eye of the Beholder

Eye of the Temple is an immersive puzzler that perhaps relies a bit too heavily on its locomotion system to keep you entertained. It’s rewarding, but brief, and could have used more variety. Having said that, I had a great time with the game, and despite a bit of a lull mid-run, the latter half kept me going, and I felt compelled to play it to the end. 

Good stuff. 

The update introduces a new area of interest called The Mines, where players can explore dark, dangerous, deadly tunnels, and the abandoned mining town, now infested with hordes of ravenous zombies. Players will also have access to two new weapons, the Uzi and the Rifle, adding more firepower to their zombie-slaying arsenal.

In addition, the update includes new difficulty modes, including a highly challenging Nightmare mode for veteran players who want to test their skills against even more formidable foes. Performance improvements and bug fixes are also part of the update.

“We’re excited to bring new content and challenges to Drop Dead: The Cabin players with this update,” said David Solari, Soul Assembly’s CEO. “The Mines is a thrilling new location that opens up more possibilities for the variation in each game, and the new weapons and difficulty modes will offer new ways to experience the game’s intense action and horror.”

Soul Assembly invites their players to check out the update and share their thoughts and experiences. “We’re always thrilled to see players sharing their gameplay and experiences,” added Solari. “We’re confident that the new content and features will give players more reasons to come back and have fun with Drop Dead: The Cabin.”

The update will be available for free to all owners of Drop Dead: The Cabin on Meta Quest 2, and Pico.

Content Update Highlights:

• The Mines – Descend into the dark and foreboding tunnels of the mine and find yourself in the abandoned mining village, where the unearthly glow of the mysterious purple rock illuminates the way. Prepare to face the undead creatures lurking in the shadows, their eyes aglow with supernatural power. Will you have what it takes to survive?
• The Rifle – Take aim from the many vantage points within The Cabin, such as the balcony or the roof, and become the ultimate marksman in the fight against Dr. Monday’s undead minions. With each successful shot, earn XP to level up your shooting skills and unlock new perks.
• The Uzi – When the undead are closing in fast, the Uzi is the weapon you need to keep them at bay. Perfect for tight spaces and close-quarters combat, this rapid-fire submachine gun is your best bet when you’re outnumbered and outgunned. Whether you’re fighting your way through the narrow tunnels of the mine or trying to survive in the cramped rooms of the cabin, the Uzi is your go-to weapon for taking down the zombie hordes.
• Difficulty Modes – Ready for a challenge? Drop Dead: The Cabin’s new difficulty modes will put your skills to the test! Whether you’re a seasoned survivor or a new recruit, you’ll find a mode that suits your playstyle. For those who seek a true test of their grit, there’s the nightmare mode, where the undead are stronger, faster, and more relentless than ever before. With the new difficulty modes, you can customise your gameplay experience and push your limits to the max. Are you up for the challenge?

We loved The Cabin when we reviewed it, and are absolutely going to dive back in to try out the Mines and the new weapons! How’s your experience been with the game so far? If you’re not already playing it, this might be a great time to join in on the fun!

Today, almost two years later, and having been adopted by publisher Fast Travel Games, Guardians comes to the official Quest store as Guardians: Frontline!

Guardians Frontline takes elements from RTS games like Red Alert and StarCraft and mixes them with the action-heavy first-person shooting of games like Halo and Destiny. In some ways, it even reminds me a bit of BattleZone 98 Redux, a wonderful game in its own right. 

In Frontline, you play as an eponymous ‘Guardian’ tasked with protecting humanity from nasty alien bugs. This involves a lot of bug-killing and a general feeling that you’re playing a virtual reality adaptation of Starship Troopers.

Welcome to the Roughnecks!

Most players will start Guardians: Frontline in campaign mode. This is made up of a tutorial followed by 13 chapters or missions, stretching across three different planets. The story is perfunctory at best, but, as in most RTS games, the real point of the single-player campaign is to prepare for the all-out havoc of multiplayer. 

The gameplay is very engaging, making you alternate between first-person bug shooting and the kind of things an RTS demands; placing extractors near the shiny red crystals that give you your resources, building turrets to protect your base, building ground-to-air defenses to take out the flying bugs, and various other strategic concerns. Your offensive forces are also quite diverse, you can build drones, robots, bipedal armored units, and even mechs that you can teleport into and pilot, all used for wreaking havoc amongst the alien baddies. 

First-person locomotion consists mainly of running around using free locomotion, although comfort teleportation is also available. You’ve also got a jetpack that allows you to hop your way across the terrain in large leaps, as well as the ability to teleport to pads that you can place throughout the maps. All these options make it easy and intuitive to get around, once you’ve gotten used to them.

Speaking of options, I have to commend the game for the ridiculous wealth of options it provides in the settings menu. You can essentially configure just about anything you can think of, a true testament to how gamer-focused Virtual Age were when developing Guardians. 

Command & Conquer

What really surprised me, though, is how well Virtual Age have integrated the more complex RTS elements of the UI. By pushing one button on the main controller, you switch from gun mode to command mode, allowing you to easily navigate a menu that shows up on your other arm, easily selecting defenses or units to build. Once selected, you point at the landscape to decide where the selected unit will be built and rotate your hand to change its alignment on the ground. It’s simple, it’s quick, and it works effortlessly.

I only wish there was a way to build several units of the same type in one go without going back and forth to the menu on your secondary hand. I checked with the devs on discord, though, and they seemed open to implementing that as a feature, so I’m hopeful we’ll see it soon.

Guardians Frontline offers a wealth of mission types, all of which can be played in single-player or co-op mode. When you launch any mission, you have a toggle that determines whether other players can hop into your game and join you against the bugs. Whenever this happened to me, it was always welcome. Players who hopped in, regardless of their age, were invariably cordial and cooperative, and it was their involvement that got me through a couple of difficult levels! 

The other potentially huge draw to Frontline is an ongoing, potentially endless mode called Galaxy Conquest, fueled by community-created maps. Although this mode, in theory, provides an endless supply of end-game content, the quality of that content will vary, as with all community-created content. 

It’s relatively easy to complete Guardians’ main campaign on Normal mode if you’re a seasoned FPS/RTS player, but switching to Advanced provides a lot more challenge, so much so that I didn’t dare try out Insane.

Fight for the Future

Visually speaking, I’m impressed with the clarity on display. The graphics aren’t spectacular, but they’re good, and the interface is clean and clear. The alien bugs are well-designed and very easy to tell apart, as are your own units. It’s easy for RTS games to become visually overwhelming, especially when lots of units are on the screen, but Frontline never falls into that trap. If you’re getting overwhelmed, it’s because the bugs are crushing you.

Your guns are pretty cool, each is distinct and well-designed, and, in general, they’re fun to use, each with its own pros and cons.

The sound design is equally pretty good, and spatial audio is used to good effect, making it clear where you need to be paying attention. Gun sounds, however, could be improved, they’re not bad, but I feel they could use a boost.

Never Pass Up a Good Thing

Guardians Frontline has come a long way since its early days when I first tried it out while Pete was reviewing it. It’s now a full game with a substantial amount of content, a good variety of units, and a general feeling of polish that was initially lacking during its first iterations. Virtual Age have done well, making a game that’s easy to recommend for fans of the genre, and, at least so far, the only game of its type on Quest.

If you want to shoot wonderfully designed alien bugs without the strategy component, be sure to check out Crashland!

[Psst: We have two Guardians Frontline codes to give away and we’re running a giveaway competition for them, click this link if you want to enter!]

Barbaria sets you up as a god, or, more accurately, a semi-god in charge of your own realm. You have your piece of land, which you can expand, you have your own brutal self, embodied in VR via a huge and ridiculously muscular player avatar whose arms are so bulging with muscles that they’re practically touching all the time, and you have a goblin mentor who guides you as you make your way to nether worldly conquests!

Gods & Monsters

The action in Barbaria takes place in two modalities. The first is a hands-on experience that feels a lot like Gorn but with less ridiculous physics. You embody your muscle-bound avatar, and you invade another semi-god’s realm, either alone or with some of your minions, and you set about to destroy their defenses and destroy their altar crystals, giving you your victory and earning you some loot or treasure. 

As you go about your raiding, you’re armed with a variety of upgradeable weapons; axes, swords, and bows. You can also, obviously, use your fists, hurl rocks, or even throw your enemies at each other. It’s all wild and crazy and incredibly bloody and quite a lot of fun. It doesn’t hurt that you can also zoom out to god-view and use magical superpowers to shift the tides of battle. 

The multiplayer element in Barbaria is asynchronous and comes in when you attack other players’ realms and contend with their defenses, or when you come back to the game and are updated on attacks that have taken place against your own realm. You’re never fighting another player in real-time, but for realm-builders, there’s a lot of fun to be had in building up your realm, fortifying it with all kinds of defenses, populating it with minions and monsters, and seeing how it fares against players who attack it!

Chronicles of Cruelty

The gameplay in Barbaria is very cool, the combat is physics-based, but it feels good and solid and much less rubbery than that of Gorn, for instance. You can stun enemies and grab them, hurl them at each other, decapitate them, and indulge in all sorts of brutal punishment. It feels good and provides quite a lot of satisfaction. 

The graphics are stylized and utilize a cartoony aesthetic that works well with the Quest, providing a lot of atmosphere while always being sharp and clear. There are a lot of graphical flourishes all around and the presentation is generally superb. 

The sound is equally well crafted, from the special FX associated with the fighting to Edvard Grieg’s ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ that plays at the start of the game. It all adds to the whimsical and carefree mood of the game and sets the tone quite well. 

There’s a lot of truly enjoyable whimsy on display in Barbaria, starting from your goblin instructor and mentor whose writing is constantly deriding your realm-destroying efforts, insulting you, and making a point of sounding quite surprised whenever you achieve any victory, to the catwalk-model goblin who comes out to display your chosen banner colors, to appropriate music and catwalk spotlights. 

These kinds of touches are sprinkled throughout the game, and add a real sense of joy to all of Barbaria. They make things fun to unlock, fun to play with, and fun to look at and see. 

Stalwart Games have done well here, clearly enjoying their game, peppering it with fun elements, and allowing players to really feel like they’re in a fun playground. 

Cruel and Cruel Yet Again

There’s a lot of game in Barbaria. The more you play, the more loot you acquire, the more weapons you have that you can use, and the more gold you have with which to purchase expansions for your realm and upgrades for all your defenses, weapons, minions, and avatars.

Building the perfect defenses and seeing how they fare against other attacking players can prove to be quite addictive. If you’re a player who likes that sort of thing, you already know you’re going to enjoy it. 

There Can Be Only One

Barbaria is a great game that’s a pleasure to play. It’s not afraid to show attitude, and it carries itself with an endearing, whimsical stride. It’s a lot of fun for fans of brutal first-person melee combat, as well as competitive base-builders who like to see how their base-building holds up against other players. It’s well-priced and easy to recommend to anybody who’s into either genre. Stalwart indeed. 

The thing is, we all know the default strap is kind of crap unless you have a head that somehow works perfectly for it, but as somebody who came to Quest by way of PSVR, I found that the halo-strap design of the PSVR was far more comfortable. Halo straps don’t press hard against your face, instead, their grip is between your forehead and the lower back of your skull, and they suspend the headset in front of your eyes.

NOT QUITE ELITE

So, like any dutiful Quest player, I went ahead and about an Elite Strap straight away. I wanted the extra comfort, and of course, I wanted the extra battery time.

Then Elite-Straps started breaking apart worldwide. It was the great Elite-Strap catastrophe of 2020, thousands of users had cracked elite straps, and Meta had to save face, and re-issue some of them with supposedly better materials. Mine lasted longer than most, and it’s still usable despite showing a fracture and getting lopsided. So it goes, as Vonnegut used to say.

ENTER THE BOBO

With a functional, although not perfect elite-strap, I held off on going the Way of the Bobo, until they upped their game, released magnetic hot-swappable batteries that worked with their new M2 Plus half-strap model, and the package just became too attractive to resist. I sent them a request for a review unit, and lo and behold – they sent the Bobo VR M2 Plus with the Twin-Battery Combo and Magnetic Charging Dock. They all came together in a surprisingly compact box, and I’ll tell you right away; I was impressed with this combo pack right away.

Now, the Bobo VR isn’t the only beast in the halo-strap battle! At around the same time I got this review unit, the kind folks at Geek VR also sent Pete a review unit of their own halo strap, the GeekVR Q2 Pro, which also features the ability to hot-swap batteries, so I’m reviewing the Bobo VR, Pete’s reviewing the Geek VR, and we’ll both have a Zoom session later (which we’ll post on our 6DOF Reviews YouTube Channel) to compare notes and see if we can decide who the winner is! For now, he’s the skinny on the Bobo VR M2 Plus.

BOBO BLISS

The Bobo M2 Plus Twin-Battery Combo and Magnetic Charging Dock came, as you can surely tell from the self-explanatory name with the M2 Plus halo-strap, two magnetically attachable batteries, and a slick low-profile charger that’s capable of charging both batteries simultaneously. It even came with some double-sided adhesive so that you can stick the charger to whatever surface you choose, so that you don’t have to hold it down with your other hand while you detach batteries from it.

The packaging was clean and simple. It won’t win any design awards, but it doesn’t really need to. Inside, it’s packaged well, with cardboard inserts and boxes keeping everything neatly tucked away. All the items are light gray colored and perfectly match the Quest 2’s color scheme. You have a nicely padded front forehead foam, and for the back strap that goes to the back of your skull, you have two options, a padded foam covering that’s possibly more comfortable but a little slippery, or a flatter honeycomb padding that’s much less slippery and a little more breathable because of the honey-comb pattern. Both use Velcro to attach and are super easy to replace.

Installation was simple, you take off your Quest 2’s strap, you slide the side arms into the M2 Plus side arms, and you’re good to go. Now, I must admit that because this is a tight fit, I was initially reluctant to push the arms as far in as they needed to go, so my first attempt at a fitting was terrible. The headset was too far from my eyes, the back didn’t balance and kept slipping upwards, and I was getting frustrated. I then went online, watched a couple of videos that showed the installation process, and realized I just hadn’t pushed the Quest’s side arms far enough into the M2 Plus sockets, so I went ahead, pushed it a little harder than I was initially comfortable with, and it then fit perfectly.

BUILD THE BOBO

Once I had things set up properly, I started a proper play session. Although my headset was already well-charged, I attached one of the hot-swappable batteries just to see how its added weight to the back helped balance the headset, and, sure enough, it did.

The M2 Plus is comfortable, easily adjustable, and the build quality feels excellent. The strap feels solid, the adjustment knob feels much better than the one on the Meta Elite Strap, and, as an added bonus, because of how the halo strap is designed without a top front-to-back strap, no more VR reverse mohawk. The charging dock is slick, and its low-profile design looks great on any surface you put it on.

The only manufacturing issue I had with my unit was that one of the Velcro-attachable padded backs had a bit of a tear in its seam. I fixed that with some Scotch Super Glue, and it’s not been an issue since.

CLICKETY BLISS

Now I must comment on just how satisfying it is to attach the batteries both to the headset and to the docking charger. The magnets are strong enough that, once you bring the batteries close enough to where they should reside, they just pull themselves into position with a ridiculously satisfying CLICK. It sounds good, it feels good, and it makes you 100% confident that the battery is well-locked into place. It’s a small, almost stupid thing to get giddy about, but giddy I got, and I remember messaging Pete about the clickity satisfaction I got from the batteries immediately after I finished my first session.

This also means that it’s remarkably easy to swap batteries in the middle of a play session. I can, without taking the headset off, remove a now-depleted battery, place it in the charging dock (satisfying click), take a fully charged one, place it onto the back of the M2 Plus (another satisfying click) and keep on gaming, with zero interruption.

BANANAS FOR BOBOS

In the three weeks that I’ve been using it since then, the M2 Plus has not disappointed me in any way. It’s comfortable and well-built, and unless you’re running a game that’s using up the battery faster than it can charge your Q2 (I have yet to see such a beast), it really does seem that, with two batteries, you really can just keep playing as long as you want.

If I’m being difficult, I have ONE issue with the actual design of the unit. I wish they had included a pass-through USB-C input at the bottom of the back of the strap so that I could charge the headset’s battery without having to first remove the USB-C cable that goes from the strap to the regular Q2 charging port. It’s a slight bit of friction that an extra USB-C port at the bottom of the strap could’ve eliminated. It’s not a big deal, but that would’ve made the design impeccable.

BOBO PRICING

Bobo VR offer a lot of entry options for customers. If you want, you can buy the base M2 Plus strap without even the battery option for around $40 on their site or $36 on Amazon. You can then upgrade it (or even the M1 strap if you already have that) to be battery-compatible with the Battery Dock upgrade which costs $40 from their site and comes with one B2 battery included. The Magnetic Charger Station costs $44 and comes with another B2 battery.

So you can start small and keep adding to your setup, or if you choose, you can go ahead and buy the whole M2 Plus Twin Battery Combo + Magnetic Charger Dock for $80 on Amazon, which will save you money in the long run, and is $20 cheaper than getting it from Bobo VR’s own site.

FINAL BOBO

The Bobo VR M2 Plus strap is a great accessory for the Quest 2. It’s far superior to Meta’s own Elite Strap. It’s well-built, well-designed, and the hot-swappable batteries allow for almost infinite VR playtime. If you’re looking for a good comfort option with extended battery life for your Quest 2, this is a very easy choice to recommend.

But, as anyone who has spent even a small amount of time in the headset will tell you, the off-the-shelf version is ostensibly incomplete and there is at least one accessory that is an absolute necessity. By this, of course, I mean the strap that comes with the base Quest 2 unit, which is quite frankly an abomination. A cheap, flimsy stop-gap solution, no doubt designed to keep product costs down and encourage add-on sales.

Well, that tactic has certainly worked, and it is broadly understood that all but the most casual players will need to invest in a new strap quickly, or risk giving up on VR due to significant comfort issues.

With a range of third-party options available, the choice in style and brand can be daunting. To that end, the team at GeekVR have sent us a review unit of their new halo-design Q2 Pro Battery Head Strap and as the first installment in head-strap accessory reviews, we take it for a spin to see if this could be the answer to your comfort-related concerns.

FALLEN ONE (I HAVE NO HALO)

It’s worth noting that as soon as I bought my Quest 2 I invested in the Meta-branded Elite Battery strap. Although there were a great many concerns around durability for this product, it has served me flawlessly for the past 2 years. So much so that I have never felt the need to try a different style until now. As such, I don’t have a basis for comparison in the world of halo straps, so this review will be conducted primarily in isolation.

That said, Omar is currently reviewing the Bobo VR M2 Plus, so after giving my opinions on this strap, we thought it might be a good idea to get together (virtually) and compare the products. That video will show up soon on your 6DOF Reviews YouTube Channel. Until we get to that, let’s just talk about the GeekVR Q2 Pro Battery Head Strap on its own merits, shall we?

FEELING SAINTLY

The head strap comes neatly packaged, including the strap itself and a single external battery. The packaging and presentation of the product are sleek and modern and feel reminiscent of the actual Quest2 packaging.

Installation is quick and easy, with the side pieces of the headset sliding easily onto the mounting on the headset without needing to be forced or overly manipulated. If you’re new to these types of head straps, it’s worth having a quick look at the easy-to-understand instructions to see where the final position of the strap should be.

I rather foolishly rushed into the experience and tried to force the strap into a position it was clearly not designed to go, and as such nearly bent the side arms before even getting started. It’s worth noting that this is a criticism of my own ineptitude, not the product, as the instructions clearly show how to install it.

IS THIS HOW ANGELS PLAY VR?

Once set up, the experience of using a halo design is incredibly easy to get used to. The halo design itself is constructed to more evenly distribute the weight of the headset and remove pressure from the face, giving greater balance and a longer-lasting comfort option.

The Q2 Pro strap has a good quality adjustment knob at the back to allow players to get the right fit, and I had no problems finding a position in the headset that gave me a good visual sweet spot and a comfortable wearing experience. There will of course a good deal of subjectivity here, as strap style and comfort options are quite personal and there are definitely some people who just don’t gel with the halo-style strap.

It was also MUCH easier to adjust the fit than the Elite strap while entertaining and trialing VR to people. I used the strap to show VR to about 6 people (including children) at a party, and this head strap was so much easier to transition from one person to the next and easily find the optimum position.

I will say though that the halo design did see the headset move around a little during my more vigorous play sessions. I would probably switch back over to my Elite strap for a workout or a particularly active game, but for 95% of titles out there the design was comfortable and more than adequate.

The padding at the front and rear of the strap is both firm and yielding. It gives decent support to stop the headset from moving at the same time as providing ample cushioning so that the weight of the headset is barely noticeable. The PU leather material that surrounds the padding is again of good quality, making the entire experience comfortable and easy to clean.

Compared to the Elite strap though, the support arms did feel a little thin and flimsy, but that is possibly just a cosmetic observation. After about 20 hours of use, I haven’t had any issues that indicate this will form the basis of an ongoing problem.

UNLIMITED POWER!!!!

The review unit that I was sent includes a single additional, rear-mounted battery that significantly increases playtime by allowing new batteries to be “hot swapped” while still in-game. The battery is a sleek design that clips magnetically into place in between the rear padding and the adjustment knob and once in place will begin to charge the headset’s internal battery. The concept as a whole is, without falling into the prerequisite hyperbole of the industry, game-changing.

While the concept is exceptional, the actual delivery was just short of the same mark. The magnetic interface between the battery and strap is actually one of my only real complaints with the Q2 Pro Head Strap, as attaching it while in the headset was an unfortunately finicky process.

There was no tactile guidance at the back to help you find the right spot while “flying blind”, nor were there any satisfying audio cues of the magnets clicking into place to indicate that you had succeeded. In fact, the only assurance that you get that the battery has actually been connected is an obnoxiously loud BEEP that seems almost deliberately intent on rampaging through your in-game immersion.

Because it is difficult to reach behind your head and sightlessly get that perfect connection, I found on a number of occasions the battery would just disconnect and then reconnect while I was moving about. This of course ushered in that horrific BEEP again until I was forced to take the headset off and made sure I had it fitted correctly.

Keep in mind that if I had just taken my headset off in the first place, this never would have happened, but I would think that the ability to easily switch batteries while in-game would be one of the core features of the product.

As I was only sent one battery (SAD FACE EMOJI) I can’t confirm that having two batteries would give the “unlimited battery life” that the GeekVR website claims. What I can say is that with the aid of a single hot-swappable battery I was able to significantly increase my play time to a level that was around the same as my elite strap. I can imagine that with multiple batteries that can be swapped without taking the headset off, a player might be able to stay in-game for a near-unlimited time. While the head strap as a whole is definitely comfortable, this functionality is the real selling.  

THE PRICE OF DIVINITY

At $60 for the strap and $40 for an additional battery, there is some decent value to be had here if you compare the unit to the Meta Elite strap.  The unit is comfortable over longer play sessions, easy to clean, and has the ability to provide a significant increase in playtime. As an alternative to the standard head strap and the Elite head strap, it is fairly easy to recommend the Q2 Pro halo strap with an additional battery.

That said, there are other products out there that offer a similar experience, and it is worth looking at your options (for more information about the Bobo VR M2 Plus halo strap check out Omar’s review or our virtual comparison video).

Although this is the only halo design strap that I’ve personally used, my experience with the GeekVR Q2 Pro has been good enough, that on the basis of this product, I have completely switched to the halo as my daily driver.