You step into the shoes of Serdar, a doctor whose personal quest to help his ailing wife leads him through the dangerous underground world of the Metro. Without spoiling anything, I can say the narrative is one of the game’s strongest elements, featuring several compelling twists and turns as you uncover various truths along your journey. The writing really shines throughout, delivering both emotional depth and narrative complexity across the game’s 12 chapters. The story manages to feel both personal and consequential, maintaining the series’ trademark blend of human drama and post-apocalyptic survival.

Bullets, Beasts & No Workbenches

At its core, this is quintessentially Metro, though with some notable streamlining of mechanics. The gameplay loop alternates between narrative sequences, atmospheric exploration, and intense combat against various mutants. You’ll encounter everything from dog-sized creatures to more imposing threats, each demanding different tactical approaches. Your arsenal starts with a pistol and gradually expands to include a semi-automatic rifle and other weapons. While the selection isn’t extensive, the gunplay is exceptional, ranking among the best I’ve experienced on Quest alongside titles like The Light Brigade and Arizona Sunshine.

Unlike Metro Exodus, for example, there’s no crafting in Metro Awakening. You won’t be crafting grenades or Molotov cocktails, and weapon modification is extremely limited – the only weapons mod I found was a silencer for the pistol, which was automatically added once found. In that sense, Metro Awakening keeps it simple: no workbenches, no crafting systems. While some might miss these features from the mainline series, this streamlined approach works well in VR, keeping the focus on immediate action and survival rather than resource management.

Don’t Blink: The Art of Metro Terror

The game masterfully straddles the line between action-adventure and survival horror, and this is where it really shines. While it comes with an explicit arachnophobia warning, it never ventures too deep into pure horror territory – something I appreciate as someone who typically “nopes out” of VR horror games. Instead, it excels at building a persistent sense of tension and anxiety. You’ll experience moments of frantic panic in dark corridors, managing limited ammo while mutants scurry about, creating intense situations that feel challenging but manageable. The game keeps you perpetually uncomfortable without crossing into overwhelming territory, striking an impressive balance between tension and playability.

Tunnel Vision Never Looked So Good

Metro Awakening is visually impressive, with strong art direction and effective real-time lighting that contributes significantly to the atmosphere. The game consistently maintains its foreboding atmosphere through excellent environmental design. While much of the game takes place underground, each area feels distinct and purposeful, avoiding the potential monotony that could come with a subway-based setting. Some locations are intentionally revisited as part of the narrative – this isn’t lazy asset reuse but a deliberate story choice that adds to the overall experience.

The attention to detail is remarkable, especially in the interactive elements. You can physically check your remaining ammo by looking at your weapon’s chamber, and small touches like functional fans add to the world’s believability. While it’s not an immersive sim where you can interact with everything like in Half-Life: Alyx, the interactive elements that are present feel purposeful and well-implemented. Character animations are notably smooth with minimal jank – even while recording, which is particularly impressive for a Quest title. The environmental storytelling is subtle but effective, with each area telling its own story through careful visual design.

The Sound of Survival

The audio design stands as the game’s crowning achievement, creating a deeply immersive experience that elevates every other aspect of the game. The soundtrack expertly emphasizes emotional beats throughout the story, from moments of creeping dread to brief instances of hope and optimism. While it pays homage to classic Metro themes, it establishes its own unique identity that fits perfectly with the VR experience.

The sound design is exceptional, leveraging every trick in the horror game playbook to maintain tension. You’ll hear unsettling radio murmurs that you can’t quite make out, precise directional audio that keeps you on edge, and the nerve-wracking sounds of mutants moving through nearby tunnels. These audio elements work together to create a constant sense of unease that enhances every aspect of the gameplay. The voice acting is consistently strong throughout, adding authenticity to the experience and helping sell the emotional moments in the story. The way sound echoes through the tunnels, the mechanical clinking of your weapons, and the environmental ambiance all contribute to making the Metro feel like a living, breathing place.

Mind The Gap: Performance & Playtime

I encountered very few technical issues during my playthrough. There are some minor control quirks, like occasional overlap between mask and reload detection zones, and a few moments where gameplay systems don’t quite sync with narrative elements (like conversations continuing normally while running out of oxygen). However, I experienced no crashes or significant bugs throughout my entire playthrough, which is impressive for a VR title of this scope.

I completed the game in about six and a half hours on normal difficulty. While some players report longer playtimes of 10-14 hours, especially on hard difficulty or when pursuing a stealthy approach, my experience was focused and satisfying. There are collectible postcards to find, which unlock with a satisfying musical cue, but replayability is limited as you’d expect from a narrative-driven single-player game. While there’s no new game plus or challenge modes, Vertigo’s track record with post-launch support (as seen with Arizona Sunshine) suggests we might see additional content in the future.

Last Stop: Final Thoughts

Metro Awakening stands as a testament to how traditional gaming franchises can be thoughtfully adapted to virtual reality. While it doesn’t include all the systems and complexity of its non-VR counterparts, it succeeds by focusing on what works best in VR: immersive storytelling, tense combat, and atmospheric exploration. The combination of great gunplay, impressive visuals, outstanding audio design, and an engaging story kept me coming back for more – I found myself playing about an hour and a half each day until completion.

The game’s greatest achievement is perhaps how it maintains the series’ signature atmosphere while adapting it for a new medium. Every element, from the sound design to the visual presentation, works together to create a compelling and often unsettling journey through the Metro. While some might wish for more weapon variety or crafting options, the streamlined approach serves the VR format well.

It’s very easy to recommend Metro Awakening to all but those who might find themselves too unsettled by its tense atmosphere. It’s easily one of the best games I’ve yet played on Quest, and despite the somewhat brief run-time, it presents a dense and gripping experience from the first cinematic intro to the moment the final credits roll on screen.

Inverse is nothing like that. 

MassVR, the team behind Inverse, brings substantial experience in crafting location-based VR experiences to the table. They have already demonstrated their prowess with titles such as VR Champions, a team-oriented first-person shooter, and Hallow Realm, an asymmetric horror experience. Inverse marks their debut in standalone VR gaming, yet their rich background in multiplayer VR design shines through distinctly, a fact that became apparent from my initial encounter with the game.

Perhaps influenced by Hallow Realm, Inverse immerses players in a 4-against-1 multiplayer survival horror scenario. In this narrative, an entity known as The Foundation inadvertently opens a gateway to a mysterious and hostile new world dominated by an unwelcoming monstrous entity.

Portal Perils

As the game kicks off, a team of up to four players assumes the role of agents, venturing through a portal with a unified goal: to activate terminals dispersed throughout each map. Success in this endeavor unlocks weapon caches, granting the players the arsenal needed to confront the creature stalking them. Cooperation accelerates the activation process, as two players can work on a terminal simultaneously, unlocking it faster. However, this strategy is not without its risks, as it grants the NUL heightened opportunities to track and incapacitate pairs of agents, especially given the agents’ initial lack of weaponry. 

Opposing the agents is a solitary player embodying the NUL, a creature from a world accessible through the portals. The NUL manifests in two distinct forms: the Reaper, a swift and agile entity delivering melee damage, and another variant, slower yet armed with devastatingly potent attacks capable of long-range stuns to catch up to players. While the Reaper offers an easier handling for players, mastering the slower, yet more lethal variant could be a preferred choice for veteran players.

Prior to unlocking the weapon caches, the agents’ defensive capabilities are limited. They possess traps to temporarily halt the NUL, defibrillators for reviving fallen teammates, and a single-use self-revive gadget. Moreover, agents can seek refuge in rooms, sealing the doors to stall the NUL, albeit temporarily, as the creature can breach the barriers with repeated assaults. Agents are not completely defenseless in this scenario, armed with drills to repair the damage and buy time as they strategize their next move. They also have traps that can temporarily slow down the Nul. 

Inverse Realities

The graphics in Inverse are nothing short of excellent, leveraging Meta’s ASW to bring a rich layer of detail and immersion to the quintet of maps available at launch. The environment showcases eerie shape-shifting rocks and floating objects, evoking scenes reminiscent of Into the Radius. The addition of textured glass imparts a heightened sense of realism to the surroundings, immersing players deeper into the game’s unique world.

Players also have a range of skins at their disposal for modifying their agent’s appearance, with some options available right off the bat and others set to be introduced as in-game purchases later on. This visual splendour successfully transports players into a strange, new world, with a sense of being relentlessly pursued by the Nul adding to the haunting experience. In certain respects, the atmosphere conjured bears a likeness to a mysterious and eerie vibe reminescent of Stranger Things.

Acoustic Dimensions

Not to be outdone by the graphics, the audio in Inverse offers atmospheric audio that plays a pivotal role in the gaming experience. The spatial audio is adept at facilitating the localization of fellow agents and alerting you to the stalking Nul’s presence. Voice chat is a remarkable feature, allowing seamless communication amongst players.

Moreover, the game innovatively mutates the Nul’s voice to resonate with a grotesque and monstrous tone, enhancing the eerie atmosphere. This cool effect oscillates between being silly and effective, heavily reliant on the player embodying the Nul and their choice of utterances during the hunt, adding an unpredictable and entertaining element to the chase.

Parallel Pains

Inverse lays a robust foundation for an asymmetrical multiplayer survival horror experience on Quest, with MassVR’s expertise in creating location-based multiplayer VR experiences clearly reflecting in the game’s design and execution. However, like many online multiplayer platforms, it faces the common predicament of player base unpredictability, which invariably affects the matchmaking process. The future remains uncertain — it can either foster a community where matchmaking is seamless and the company enjoyable, or it might attract individuals who indulge in disruptive behavior, dampening the gaming experience for others.

At launch, the game promises a substantial amount of content with five well-conceived and beautifully designed maps, offering a playground ripe for exhilarating adventures and lots of fun. The quality and potential enjoyment hinge on the community that builds around it, making the player base a critical element in determining the game’s long-term success. The long term success is impossible to predict right now.

Endverse

In conclusion, Inverse by MassVR emerges as a standout title in the asymmetrical multiplayer survival horror genre, especially on the Quest platform. Leveraging their substantial experience in crafting immersive VR experiences, MassVR offer a game replete with atmospheric graphics and sound design. Their meticulous attention to detail extends from the audibly grotesque mutations of the Nul’s communications to the visually immersive landscapes. The gameplay encourages collaboration while also teasing the thrilling risk of ‘going solo,’ offering a great experience whether you’re an agent working against the clock or a Nul delighting in the chase.

However, the unpredictable nature of the online player base casts a shadow of uncertainty on the long-term enjoyment of the game. It stands at a critical juncture where the community that congregates around it will play a pivotal role in defining its success. 

For now, however, and as it stands, Inverse is an excellent, well made and polished experience that should provide hours of enjoyment for fans of the genre. 

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. 

JURASSIC WALK

Jurassic World Aftermath is a combat-free narrative first-person game with light stealth elements. It’s set in-between the events of the films Jurassic World and Fallen Kingdom, apparently, and features characters old and new. At the outset of Aftermath, the player is trapped as their plane crashes into the dinosaur-replicating facility on Isla Nublar after being attacked by inquisitive pteranodons. At the facility, in the grand tradition, things have gone Terribly Wrong^TM. Equipped only with a radio, the player must follow the orders of Dr Mia Everett to get some of the besieged facility’s systems back up and running and escape. 

The first impressions of Jurassic World Aftermath are mixed. Regular readers might have picked up that I’m pretty annoyed by bad loading screens in VR. It hardly bodes well for the developer’s treatment of the player when the first impression you have of a game is glitchy and unpleasant. Jurassic World Aftermath is an awful example, juddering like an Oculus Link game with low bandwidth, complete with stuttering black borders. Once in the menu, there’s a rather prominent button that says ‘BUY EXPANSION’, a store link for content not even available yet. This scurrilous practice can also be found in the recent Star Wars: Tales From the Galaxy’s Edge, and I wish devs would just sodding stop it. It’s cheap and makes the consumer feel they’ve bought something incomplete (at significant expense) before they have even had a chance to play the game itself. As it happens, it’s also an exercise in pure hubris, because I can’t imagine anyone wanting more of this, if and when they finish it. 

Starting a new game, you’re given a little square environment to wander round in while you set and test your movement and comfort preferences. This is a lovely touch and one which more VR titles should adopt. To me, the default preset felt overly weighted towards people who aren’t very comfortable with first-person movement in VR. The vignetting when moving around is so extreme it’s like peering out a small hole in a cardboard box. Fiddle around with the settings and you should find something to suit you. There’s no teleportation, however, and the three speeds for smooth turning should be relabelled ‘fast’ ‘too fast’ and ‘ceiling fan’, but they’re somewhat accommodating. 

SPARED SOME EXPENSE

When in the game proper, the graphics, sound and music are impressive. I really enjoy a good cel-shaded art-style, and it’s beautifully done here; visually, it’s reminiscent of, and on a similar level of quality to, the fantastic Lies Beneath. It’s stylish and looks consistent, and also allows the Quest a little room to breathe in terms of graphics processing. This means the game has impressive animations and a good eye for a lovely vista or two. 

It’s a shame, then, that Jurassic World Aftermath highlights a lot of its worst features in the opening scene. You’re trapped in the cargo hold of the aforementioned plane – a rectangular room – and can’t interact with anything until you’re instructed to do so by the intercom. There’s some well-acted waffle to listen to by way of exposition, and you’re left with little to do but look out the windows. This throws up one of the first real immersion-breakers about the game. When your head goes outside the boundaries of what the game thinks is acceptable, the display blacks out until you put your head back in the ‘right’ place. It’s tremendously aggravating and unfriendly, especially as the game presents the player with nothing to do at this point but look out the windows, then makes you feel you’ve broken it by trying to do just that. It’s a horrible practice; it’s up to the game to accommodate the player, not the other way round. It only gets worse later in the game when navigating small spaces like air vents. 

Just as annoying is the lack of interactivity in the environment. In the starting location there’s a desk containing two items which are clearly meant to be picked up – but the game ghosts you through them until you’re told to pick them up, and where to use them. 

This is a pattern that repeats through the whole game; switches, buttons, doors and items that can be seen but not used until the woman on the radio says to use them. It’s patronising, linear and suffocating, and it’s a bore.

CLAWS FOR CONCERN

After the intro, the game settles into a pattern of incredibly mild puzzling and basic stealth. The best way to describe it is Fisher-Price Alien Isolation. Hide in lockers and under desks from velociraptors (and later, other dino-sods which have the Latin name spittus gittus). Use your computer glove to hack systems with basic mini-games. Listen to the story conveyed via radio. The audio is thankfully well-written and performed, and it’s a genuine pleasure to hear Jeff Goldblum crop up in voice-over. It’s continuously undermined, though, by the lack of interest in the environments, despite the beautiful dinosaurs and attractive visuals.

For all the excellent presentation, there’s just a lack of imagination to the actual game. If this is your first time in VR, you might get off on the novelty of turning wheels and pressing buttons. However, Nintendo did this kind of stuff on the Wii without the benefits of VR. Behind such novelty lies very little of substance. Quite apart from anything else, I’m incredulous that the devs thought that anyone would find Simon Says interesting as a hacking mini-game. I wasn’t expecting Myst levels of intrigue and puzzle-solving, but this stuff is just going through the motions.

There’s also a distinct lack of threat. The velociraptors are terrifying when first encountered, and it’s a neat idea to try channel the Alien: Isolation trick of getting you to shiver in a locker while your scaly pursuer leers in through the slits, almost making eye-contact. But when they catch you, the game freeze-frames as they leap at you and the screen goes red. Load a checkpoint and carry on. There’s not even a grisly chomping sound effect to feed the imagination. Whilst being a family film, the original Jurassic Park did not shirk from showing some dino-horror. It’s a bit weird that Jurassic World Aftermath seems to be going for a U rating.

TRAPPED IN AMBER

It’s a rum do that for all its high production values in some areas, Jurassic World Aftermath is such a forgettable affair. I’ve no doubt that if you love the films, then you might get more out of the experience than me, and you can supplement the score I’ve given it with a point or two. It’s the modern equivalent of one of the nice-enough-but-bland licensed platformers that were two-a-penny on the 16-bit consoles in the 90s. It won’t linger in mind at all after you’ve switched your Quest off. You’ll get just longer than the 2-hour refund window out of it if you stick with it, and there’s little reason to replay even with the carrot of the (paid) DLC coming next year. It aims low and ultimately frustrates.