It’s Rail-gun Time!

At an Oculus comfort rating of Moderate, Hyper Dash is suitable for most VR users. It relies little on smooth locomotion and primarily uses dash teleportation and an on-rail movement system. Despite the high-speed turning and movement inherent to most shooters, the teleport mechanic is well suited to those who haven’t entirely developed their VR legs yet. Once properly understood, players will need to utilise the erratic movement granted by this teleportation to improve their chances against enemies. Although those players will likely be doing the same to you, so you’ll have to watch out for the ephemeral trail that marks a sudden dash. Hyper Dash also gives players complete control of their movement on the rail system, allowing them to hop on or off at any time and even choose their initial direction. 

Moving on from movement, the akimbo style dual-wielded weapons lend themselves well to the freedom offered by the Oculus Touch controllers. Players can equip any combination of guns they choose, depending on what they need for that map and assuming they can find the weapon spawn points within it. Various map designs allow diverse gameplay across multiple modes, including Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Domination, Elimination, and the ever-popular Payload. 

Dashing Good Looks

The graphics are absolutely astounding for a game that can run natively on Quest 1 with up to 10 players! While maintaining solid framerates, movement trails and weapon discharges are colourful and dynamic up close. The player avatars are crisp and easily identifiable from across the map. The simpler wall textures likely assist the game’s stability but still fit well with the theme of a futuristic combat simulation and rarely detract from the overall experience. Most of the time, your focus is drawn by other visual elements like faux reflections, impressive lighting and water splashes.

While the game doesn’t give you much time to stop and smell the roses, you can still appreciate some things before you’re struck down by a gun-toting robot. Whether it’s a laser, bullet, or missile, the unique and satisfying weapon sounds won’t ever be as enjoyable as the hit register when you strike an enemy. 

Audio in this game is designed to feel busy and action-packed, from the ambient hype music through to the movement sounds and game alerts. Constant communication with your team adds further to this, and there’s almost always someone desperately trying to yell callouts or coordinate a new plan. Proximity chat with enemies allows for even more interactions; some good-natured teasing, various intimidation tactics, and the requisite trash-talk that’s an ever-present aspect of most online games.

Jumps the Rails

Where Hyper Dash frustrates is in the high skill ceiling set by an already experienced player base. Despite doing its best to teach players the ropes, the tutorial doesn’t quite prepare new players for the brutality of experienced players. However, players can practice as much as they want, and the AI bots are surprisingly good, albeit lacking in team tactics. 

Smooth locomotion is present in Hyper Dash but seems utterly useless in the game. Emphasis is rightly given to the teleportation dash mechanic, but if you struggle with that system, you will stand absolutely no chance at trying to get by using only the sprint mechanic. It is, at best, a helpful way to close the gap after a poorly aimed teleportation or to strafe while shooting from a distance. 

Further Down the Line

Luckily, most players quickly adapt to the teleportation mechanic and find it one of the most crucial elements in making the game exciting and fun. After amassing an extensive player base through SideQuest, the official launch allowed for even more popularity as access became more accessible and the dedicated servers became more populated. 

Competitive tournaments and eSports groups such as Dash League will undoubtedly continue to develop as the numbers and interest grow.

Hyper Dash also provides cosmetic upgrades, unlocked through experience points earned in-game. Skilled, dedicated players will, of course, reach higher levels faster, allowing them to show off fanciful weapon skins and replacement heads for their droid avatars. 

 More Grinding Required

Though players have some level of individuality, the developers at Triangle Factory could take a page from EchoVR and implement greater degrees of customisation to the colours and patterns players can equip on their avatars and gear. Additionally, the introduction of ranked games could reduce the barrier of entry for new players, with potentially more customisation rewards available in the competitive servers as an incentive for high-level players. 

Hype Train

Despite some barriers to entry for new players, Hyper Dash is a solid FPS that made its mark early on and managed to foster a healthy community of players. I can’t wait to see what changes they bring to it in the future with proper funding and an ever-increasing fanbase. 

AFTERLIFE: ALYX

Starting off, you will be callously informed of your death and then guided down a simple path, following along with the tutorial steps until emerging at Barclay Mansion, where the game is set. This expansive manor will become your prison, in the great beyond, as you navigate an essentially linear path in search of answers. Utilising object interaction much like the gravity gloves from Half-Life: Alyx, you can grab items at a distance or lean down to pick them up manually. As well as the haptic feedback used on doors, drawers and handles when physically reaching for them, these specific objects will glow to indicate the ranged grab functionality. Unfortunately, this haptic feedback is also triggered by an invisible line extending from your hands to these objects, excessively vibrating as you walk through any room filled with random things.

Movement generally has its own challenges, seemingly based on flatscreen logic rather than a real-world with peripheral vision. Players are unable to move quickly in any direction other than where their head is facing. Looking around while moving is clunky and off-putting, as your speed will change dramatically by turning slightly to look at a door as you pass by. 

If you can overcome these frustrations, the gameplay does a good job immersing you in the world, encouraging physical interaction with doorknobs and turning keys to access new areas. To proceed, you will need to investigate and solve puzzles by scavenging requirements hidden throughout the mansion. These include keycodes and character-specific story items, making the linear storyline a little less straightforward if you are repeatedly backtracking or looking for clues.

Additional powers and controls are granted as you advance, with instruction on their usage varying in quality. Still, a staple throughout the game is that you have no fighting chance against the otherworldly entities roaming the halls. You will often find yourself implementing stealth and guile to bypass or distract those that see you as an obstacle to their vengeance. 

AM I HEARING THINGS

Past events will often be presented to you through re-enactments seen from beyond the veil of mortal eyes, allowing you to feel appropriately unnerved by the actions and consequences of the story’s characters. Early on, these story segments act as mild jump scares, usually triggered by passing by their location only to hear a conversation spring up behind you. Likewise, the wraith guiding you through the world is prone to narrate in many scenes. However, the wraith’s ghostly cacophony of layered voices is impossible to spatially pinpoint as it seems located inside your head even when he chooses to be visible.

Ghoulish whispers and a relentless sighing, as if the last breaths of the dead, carry through the halls. Eery echoes and creepy creaking embellish the already ominous ambience. A realistic graphical style further immerses you in this supernatural world. Although the visual style alone isn’t what brings life to the dilapidated mansion. The world is credibly cluttered, and you see deterioration all around you. Discarded furniture litters the locations, and mould accumulations abound. Paranormal plant life and inky black portals that shift and distort when you approach them help build a fantastical atmosphere. 

WRAITH: THE OBLIVIOUS

Spend enough time in the game, though, and you’ll find several grievances that don’t require posthumous investigation from beyond the grave. Several fundamental game mechanics are, at best, loosely explained, causing players to rely on either the respawn mechanic or knowledge of other, similar stealth games. For instance, your ‘corpus’ is never presented, with players having to just figure out they have a health meter after dying multiple times. You are given numerous refills for your ‘corpus’ before you even have the chance to take damage, leaving players with no natural way to connect the dots. When encountering enemies, a subtle icon appears on the screen, indicating your presence is being detected, and immediate action is required. Again, this detection meter is something players must either be familiar with through other games or somehow figure out through dying and making the arduous journey back through the storyline.

Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife doesn’t let you skip dialogue, regardless of how many times you’ve repeated a section, or even if there is already dialogue being played. You are forced to endure it as you seek out a Save Point. Subtitles don’t always match the dialogue you’re hearing and aren’t even always visible, including during the pitch-black death screen.

Despite the insistence on revising information at every stage, crucial information gathered during your journey cannot be recalled from its storage location until immediately required. This results in situations where you will have to knowingly stand in a dangerous place to reacquire information the game expects you to have remembered. Conversely, providing the required information often makes puzzles immediately predictable or removes any challenge they may have otherwise posed. A different method of accessing gathered clues and important notes would go a long way towards reducing these frustrations.

SHORT-LIVED AFTERLIFE

Similarly, non-essential items containing lore and story material are sent directly to a memory palace separate from your person. Items sent to the memory palace are inaccessible until you reach a save point. Until the tutorial occurs, you’ll only know it exists if you maybe, possibly, happen to notice the extra orb that appears. These collectable tidbits of information grant deeper understanding and insight about the characters and even clues for dealing with the various spectres.

DEAD ON ARRIVAL

While progressing through Wraith, I felt that I was struggling for the wrong reasons. Instead of fearing the nightmarish creatures or feeling uncertainty regarding a complex puzzle, I felt frustrated at the control schemes and gameplay mechanics. While the story and world-building are amazingly well done, playing the game itself didn’t deliver the satisfaction I expected. Admittedly, the story improves as you get further into it, so if you’re a fan of horror titles or like the World of Darkness series, you’ll likely enjoy Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife. 

Still, a few more game patches couldn’t hurt.

Hanging by a Bowstring

For starters, drawing the bowstring on the historically asymmetrical yumi requires your hand to extend past your ear. That’s almost impossible with the Quest’s forward-facing tracking. Nonetheless, I got in the habit of pulling my hand back until my controller lost its tracking and froze my in-game hand. This allowed me to aim freely without any shakiness. Therein lies another unique aspect of this archery game, which is the floating reticle used for aiming. While it is frustrating that this reticle cannot be disabled, it does come in handy later on as you try to gauge the effect of wind on your arrows. You will eventually find an aiming method that suits you, especially since that is all there is to do in the game. Bow Man can be played seated. Apart from shooting, leaning to the side is enough to dodge the occasional flight of arrows shot by your mechanical samurai counterparts. 

I Think I’m Turning Japanese, I Really Think So

You can also block arrows shot by your steampunk foes with an armguard. This results in a satisfying thunk that far outweighs any satisfaction gained from returning fire. The stylings on the wind-up enemies match closely with your own character’s design, building on the steampunk samurai motif as you knock them down and progress through the levels. An element that adds to the feeling of progression is the shift from day to dusk and then to nighttime. These decidedly sudden transitions bring a welcome change. You will remain rooted in place facing an empty street lined with near-identical buildings of Asian design and banners of Japanese script from the moment you load the game. Despite this, the broad street and absence of life give the distinctly Western vibe of a cowboy film, further accentuated by the low-poly sand stretched across the ground. The game combines Kanji and English words alongside Japanese voice acting to instruct you as you progress. Additional audio cues further cement the Japanese theme, with a repetitive oriental soundtrack and the game’s version of a Wilhelm scream emanating from the clockwork enemies. 

Grinds my Gears

It’s worth mentioning that there was a noticeable performance variance between Quest 1 and Quest 2, with the former having near-constant audio jitters and tracking issues. Even without performance issues, Bow Man misses the mark in several key areas. The tutorial system may highlight the game’s basics, such as the armguard and aiming mechanics, yet it fails to cover other crucial elements such as the difference in AI levels and how this corresponds to their health and shooting abilities. It also fails to mention the power shot ability for shooting through multiple targets or the wind mechanic’s existence and how to measure it. While usually, this might be difficult to discern, here, it is merely frustrating. Anyway, it’s discovered quickly enough due to the repetitive nature of the gameplay. Additionally, ignoring this repetition, the Versus mode uses an entirely different version of the “Ready, Set, Go” present in the Solo mode. The time between starting a game and actually playing is also extended due to constant pop-up notifications. 

Shafted

Versus mode involves no multiplayer aspect but pits you against an AI and uses your score to rank you against other players. No precise information is given on how this score is calculated or even how to improve your ranking. However, you can compare how well you did, unlike the Solo mode, which boasts an incredibly simple scoring system with almost meaningless measurements. With a standard point system and a star system reminiscent of mobile games like Angry Birds, the Solo mode challenges you to beat your previous score. Yet, the challenge in this mode is sorely lacking. I achieved the 3-star maximum on over half the levels in less than an hour and felt little desire to return and improve the total point score. 

Misses The Mark

Bow Man feels much more like a cash grab than an attempt to showcase traditional Japanese Yumi archery. Developers DMM took a shot but fell short of anything worthwhile. Bow Man has no engaging gameplay to keep players coming back to the game.

Off the beaten track

Whether you’re familiar with Tsuro or not, you will likely find it easy to jump right in, with the simplistic controls and gameplay being quick to grasp. Although, mastering the game will take much longer. Up to eight players are dispersed around the border of the 36-tile board and must compete to stay on the longest, with a turn-based system for laying down tracks. Choosing between up to three randomly dealt tiles, players must utilise the best orientation for the path they wish to travel. All players are forced to proceed along adjoining tracks until they collide with one another, or until no other players remain on the board. 

There is a great deal of freedom given to players for deliberation and to simply relax in the serene environment presented within the game. You are free to explore the zen surroundings at any time and even encouraged to seek out hidden gemstones to be used as playable tokens. However, this exploration must be done using teleportation, as the game doesn’t allow for locomotion. Fortunately, however, this movement method enables you to jump to platforms of varying heights to gain a better perspective of the playing pieces and potential paths. While this does break immersion, it is acceptable in a game focused around a stationary game board, and I would recommend seated gameplay due to the time spent looking down studying the board. Also, the control scheme easily allows for hand tracking or even one-handed gameplay, depending on what will help better immerse you within this haven. 

Caught between a rock and a hard place

Tsuro is yet another VR game intent on removing rounded edges, with their artistic style tending towards angular and straightforward designs. But don’t think this denotes a lack of effort. This game has some of the most satisfying ambient visuals I’ve experienced to date. Cherry blossoms float in the wind, twisting and turning as they fade in and out of view, while bees amble from flower to flower and fish swim about lazily. Moreover, the board game itself is brought to life, with colourful lines indicating the stone pieces’ path and sparkling indicators aiding the player in tracking the game’s progression. 

Whispers in the wind

These and other elements have a well-developed sound design which is at times only audible upon close inspection, such as the buzzing of the bees’ wings or the crackling of a fire. Additionally, the soothing sounds of trickling water and wind passing through the trees and wind chimes help you to forget the presence of the real world. Accompanying the natural ambience and item-specific audio is a gentle oriental soundtrack that fits incredibly well in a meditation/relaxation setting. 

Tend to your garden

Nevertheless, there are several noticeable bugs in this zen garden that detract from the experience. Glitches with the menu interaction can be quite frustrating while trying to use the curved teleportation laser pointer. This difficulty is especially prominent when interacting with objects from a distance or through the phantom UI tile slots. Games should streamline interactions with the virtual world, providing intuitive controls and minimal input delays. In Tsuro, you quite often register that you’re waiting for a menu to pop up, whether that’s while navigating the settings or if you just died and have to wait for all seven bots to make their next move before progressing.

Furthermore, moving forward in the game requires meeting specific criteria, which are, at times, somewhat vague or even completely broken. For example, to unlock more difficult AI, you must defeat three of the preceding difficulty, but the game doesn’t mention that those AI must all be defeated within one match. Nor does it note that using the collectable tokens will not count towards the unlock criteria. 

You reap what you sow

Once you manage to unlock the successive AI difficulties, you will discover a significant increase in intensity, especially when trying to accomplish the various Achievements. As well as these milestones, the additional game modes add greater levels of depth to the gameplay and yet more options for online multiplayer matches. Unlike most online games, Thunderbox Entertainment has designed matchmaking and gameplay to progress over multiple days. This approach is very well suited to the turn-based nature of board games as players aren’t beholden to the online community’s immediate availability but can instead simply relax in the serene setting or return later to continue their game.

Stone’s throw away

After spending countless hours going up against the clever AI, I can attest to both the immense enjoyment when you come out victorious and the sheer satisfaction you feel while playing a board game in such a relaxing virtual space. While some minor bug fixes are needed, they rarely impact the actual gameplay, and I have quite often found myself playing much longer than intended. If you’re like me and sometimes want a challenging game to unwind to, Tsuro – The Game of The Path is one board game that won’t leave you feeling bored.

Juicy Plot with a Twist

Shooty Fruity puts you in the position of a new employee at Megamart, you’re given a series of retail-related tasks and, of course, an industry-standard arsenal of weaponry and power-ups. Your first job is in a cashier role; scanning and sorting items as they arrive, while fending off waves of demented fruits hell-bent on destroying your register.

Performing your primary duties within your role grants progress towards unlocking the diverse weaponry you can equip. You’re given a pistol initially, whereas heavier weapons take longer to acquire. Once unlocked, these weapons are added to a constant rotation of items dispensed through a hanging rack. You’ll need to properly utilise this rack due to how quickly your weapons degrade with use.

To effectively defend yourself from the hordes of deranged produce, you will need to determine which guns work best against which fruit and save your power-ups for when they are required. Items can also be stockpiled on multiple shelves and benches located on all sides. As it involves mostly turning on the spot and reaching for objects, Shooty Fruity lends itself equally well to sitting or standing gameplay. 

Blast from the past

Set in a classically-retro shopping complex, Shooty Fruity‘s graphics pay homage to simpler times and early cartoons. Yet, they’re clear, and items and fruits can be differentiated at a distance. Shooty Fruity is so full of pop culture that it feels like being on a set. 

Aside from the detailed environmental design, the interactions you have with the different fruits are enjoyable and immersive. Shooting fruits that get too close will result in their juices being splattered over your hands and weapons. Unique attack patterns, varied facial animations, and movement styles give the fruits credible personalities. The atmosphere is accentuated by the contrast between silly fruit voices and grounded supermarket jingles. 

Shooty Fruity‘s sound design is well-thought-out, with ambient noises building the scene and really helping you believe you’re in a 1960’s supermarket. While gunshots lacked the oomph found in other games, Shooty Fruity makes up for it with the satisfying pop from exploding fruits, and metallic clangs when your guns fall apart. In addition to fruits, you get to hear the beautiful, gravelly voice of your maternal supervisor guiding you throughout the game.

A little too much zest

Unfortunately, despite the voice-actor narration, this game doesn’t have the best introduction for new players. While many of the mechanics are intuitive and there are hints given on the somewhat excessive loading screens, much information is only provided through large chunks of text. Regardless of the immersive workplace-appropriate memo theme that the game presents, reading any long text on a Quest feels like a chore. 

Furthermore, if you are still gaining your VR legs, I wouldn’t suggest playing the game standing. The rapid movement, when reaching up high and down low, could cause disorientation and some nausea. While seated, this effect is far less severe, though you should still be cautious. Navigating the staff room starting menu via teleporting was also quite awkward, with your avatar placement always seeming a little too close to the surrounding fixtures. 

Still more to squeeze out

An essential aspect of replayability in any game is competition, whether with yourself or others. Luckily, the developers (nDreams and Near Light) have provided both in the form of leaderboards, and per-level challenges. The challenges alone take hours. Points, earned by completing your jobs and shooting frenzied fruits, go towards your leaderboard scores. These points also become funds to be spent on weapons. 

With 18 different weapons and 6 weapon slots, you have lots of options to customise your load-outs for each level. Useful, since, as mentioned previously, different weapons are more effective depending on the specific type of fruit.

Well-Blended

When making Shooty Fruity, the developers seem to have found a rare balance between a quirky style and intense gameplay. This surprisingly challenging game capitalises on an almost compulsive need to tick all the boxes and earn all the stars. As the levels become increasingly difficult, the game demands that you adjust accordingly, and makes you want to beat your previous scores. If you consider yourself a completionist, enjoy a good challenge, or like watching your name climb up the leaderboard, this is probably a game for you.

ON PAR WITH OTHER PLAYERS

Being able to play solo, challenge other online users, or invite up to five friends to play against, ensures Walkabout Mini Golf caters to all preferences. In this regard, it is notably different from other golf titles already available on the Quest – Pro Putt allows up to two players, Cloudlands 2 allows up to four. Additionally, the translation of virtual golf clubs to the touch controllers works really well and easily accommodates all players, with left-handed or right-handed options, as well as the shaft length adjusting to your hand’s proximity to the virtual ground. 

Throughout the game, any relevant information is displayed on your hand, and both menus and golf club handling can all be done using the one controller. 

Unlike real-world golf, teleportation is the only method of movement. The game can automatically reposition you to specific locations depending on the placement of the ball and whose turn it is. However, as with regular golf, playing seated isn’t easy due to the ball being directly at your feet upon teleporting for your turn. Players who prefer playing while seated will need to manually position themselves for every stroke and may struggle more when aiming their shots.

STROKE OF GENIUS

Carefully aiming each stroke is crucial in mini-golf, and especially on these courses. As well as four intricately constructed 18-hole courses, each course has a challenging night mode. These nighttime variants provide even more complex and unforgiving layouts. Developer Mighty Coconut makes the most of realistic physics to challenge players, but you will also be able to utilise those physics to find shortcuts through some designs if you have the skill.

As you progress through the unlockable courses, you will be able to collect an assortment of “lost balls” to add to your own usable collection. Your chosen balls will be visible in-game when playing against others online, allowing for some individuality.

PUTTS YOU IN THE MOOD

The best aspect of this Walkabout Mini Golf is that it really makes you believe that the courses you’re playing in could be digital recreations of real top-notch mini-golf courses. Their angular and cartoony style may not immerse you as much as other games like Real VR Fishing, but it keeps your attention on what’s important while maintaining a feeling of realism through quality lighting and well-layered sound design. Each course has its own theme and accompanying lighting, including lanterns, tiki torches and even varied sunlight depending on the weather or time of day. Appropriate use of shadows and reflections adds depth to the settings, making them more convincing despite their minimalistic appearance.

Moreover, depending on the location of the course, environmental sound effects add yet another layer of immersion. This is done through elements such as crashing waves, water droplets, the crackle of fires and even sounds from cicadas, birds, and other animals. The ambience is just one aspect of the sound design though, with the interactions between your golf ball, golf club and various obstacles all registering like they would in real life.

HANDICAPPED

Sadly, one aspect that doesn’t translate well to VR is the front-heavy nature of the headset. With the vast majority of the gameplay spent leaning forward and looking down, the added weight of the Quest strains your neck muscles faster than it would in real life, or even in other games. If you’re a long-time golfer, this probably won’t affect you as much. Still, speaking as a novice, it was noticeable after every long session. Walkabout Mini Golf also does little to describe the terms or rules of mini-golf, so I found myself looking up some words, despite the straightforward nature of the gameplay. 

Similarly, there is no designated tutorial, but the game does provide helpful notes on the controls and gameplay when going through the single-player mode. In regards to these popup notes and hints, the developer thought it best to keep all notifications centred in your field of view, most likely for the sake of clarity. Thankfully, once you’ve understood the basics, you can turn these popups off with a toggle on the scorecard. Although, there are still some popups that can’t be removed, and can get quite frustrating when the text box is blocking your shot. 

Furthermore, the scorecard that tracks your strokes doesn’t actively update the tally while opened and can’t be manually refreshed once the round ends. Unfortunately, no record of your scores in previous games is kept. This means that there is no way to check who won which game or to see if you’ve improved compared to previous attempts.

ALL FORE THE BEST

Ultimately, Walkabout Mini Golf is a well-designed take on a simple and classic pastime that is well suited to VR. I can easily see players sinking hours and hours into this game, trying to master every level while hanging out with friends. Get together for a game with a few friends and there’s a lot of potential for a great social atmosphere and an even greater experience. 

360 Degrees of NOPE

Despite behaving more like an Oculus Go game, with its limited gameplay making it, essentially, an interactive 360-degree video, walking through the hauntingly hollow hallways of Affected: The Manor has you constantly on edge and ready to take flight if any of those statues so much as blink.

Affected: The Manor makes no use of the Quest’s acclaimed 6DoF. Due to simplistic controls and calculated jump scares, there’s no need to stand, lean or even turn your head. To engage with the occasional items in the world (such as torches), the developers use hand tracking. This provides some much-needed immersion, even if you don’t trust the batteries in those torches any farther than you could throw them. Having to physically open doors to progress to new, potentially scarier, rooms will have you shakily reaching out as if you expect to be electrocuted by the rusty handles. 

Who turned out the lights?!

Being set in an abandoned, haunted building, Affected: The Manor could be forgiven for the sinister darkness prevalent in almost every corner. Yet, it is the contrast between this and the far too common sources of light, which is an issue. The stark differences in light and dark caused a lot of god rays. I found myself repeatedly wanting to remove my headset to clean away what I thought might have been blurry marks on my lenses. 

The graphical style lends itself well to the Quest’s low-poly rendering. However, I could still feel my eyes being drawn to the FFR (fixed foveated rendering) at the edge of the screen more often than in most other games. Admittedly, this might not have been a fault with the game’s design as much as a natural consequence of the heightened state of awareness brought on by the fight/flight mode elicited by it. 

In typical horror style, the ambiance oscillates between eerily delightful and hellishly unnerving, with the combination of background music, environmental sounds, and children’s laughter sure to raise every hair on the back of your neck. 

Dead Weight

I found Affected: The Manor to be inferior to what I’ve come to expect from the heavily curated library on the Oculus Store. With only rudimentary gameplay and a movement mechanic that doesn’t allow for anything other than a slow crawl, I found myself frequently frustrated. The limited interactions that were supposedly “built from the ground up” fall short of the immersion level of every other Quest game I’ve played. Additionally, the graphical issues experienced throughout the game were a constant reminder that I was wearing a VR headset, further breaking immersion. 

I fail to see how anyone keen on this genre would be genuinely terrified while playing Affected: The Manor. When you purchase a horror game, you expect to struggle to finish the game out of fear, or to at least come away thinking “Wow! That was scary!” If a horror game fails to do so, especially given the immersive advantages of VR, then it just isn’t exploiting the medium as well as it should. 

Having said that, the biggest issue with Affected: The Manor is undoubtedly the pitifully short length of the experience. Despite the multiple paths you can choose to take, there are still less than 2 hours of actual gameplay to enjoy. 

Everything’s better with friends

Fallen Planet Studios is clearly marketing Affected: The Manor as a novelty experience (not unlike Richie’s Plank Experience) for users who want to freak out their VR-Virgin friends. If you know that going in, then most of the issues I’ve mentioned might not matter to you. For amateurs, its controls are intuitive, and its straightforward gameplay is perfect. Still, VR enthusiasts will notice the lack of finesse and likely be disappointed.

Condemned

Affected: The Manor is a game with a niche audience. If you enjoy scaring your friends and family or even if you’re just a diehard fan of horror who revels in classic tropes and clichés, then this game might be worth your time. For those of us with a few more virtual notches on our belts, however, the game is more frustrating and disappointing than frightening or amusing. 

For an immersive horror experience that’s sure to leave you terrified, check out Dreadhalls instead!