Thirith on 5/11/2024 at 07:44

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I started playing Batman: Arkham Shadow yesterday, and while I've yet to get used to the combat, it looks to be a great translation of the Arkham series' format into VR. Even in first person, it's very recognisably the same kind of gameplay, and it's probably the best-looking game I've played on a standalone VR headset. While it doesn't look like Arkham Knight on a good PC, it is a handsome game that does a great job of immersing you in its world.

I'm also hearing very good things about the upcoming VR game in the Metro series. It seems that quite some money has gone into a bunch of AAA VR releases this year, and I'm hoping it'll pay off. Not that VR must be all about AAA, but it definitely helps to have some good ones every now and then.

Thirith on 8/12/2024 at 12:55

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Glad you enjoyed it! I'm close to the end of the campaign, and I think it's a great addition to the Arkham series and an amazing feat for a standalone headset game. I do think the other Arkham games ended up building better on the combat systems, but who knows, they might get to do more of these VR games and iterate on what they've got. I did think the story's twists were a bit too predictable at times, but it's still a very enjoyable visit to the Arkham-verse, and the immersion of VR does bring things to life in cool ways.

Aja on 3/2/2025 at 22:33

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I just finished Into the Radius, and it’s up there among the best VR games I’ve played. It’s a shooter set in a wasteland filled with anomalies and ghosts, so clearly inspired by Stalker. You start out in a homey little base, with cake and cigarettes. You gear up, and you make trips out into the radius to retrieve artifacts and data capsules and clear out enemies according to your mission parameters. Doing missions earns you money, which you use to buy new weapons, ammunition, and survival gear. The story is slight, told through written text and the occasional audio log, but the setting is interesting enough that I felt engaged.

https://i.imgur.com/vfhPQom.jpeg

The weapon handling is probably the best I’ve seen in VR. Guns look and sound great, but the most interesting part is that you have to manage ammo on a per-bullet basis, which means loading each magazine before you head out and bringing along extra boxes of bullets in case you need to refill your mags. When I heard about this, I thought it sounded horrible, but in practice it’s a way more interesting survival mechanic than having to eat or sleep. You might empty a clip on an enemy, but another enemy is approaching, so you frantically load in bullets, but oh no you dropped your magazine, so you’d better run for it. And now you’re one mag short. Fortunately every item stays where you left it, so you can attempt a return trip to pick it up later. It’s tense and thrilling. You also have to clean your guns with WD40 and a toothbrush and paper towel, which again sounds awful but in practice is a satisfying, relaxing task after a stressful outing. And the guns all have safety switches, which result in the momentarily infuriating (but in fact hilarious) message, “Darn, it’s on safety!” as you’re flailing about, trying to survive.

https://i.imgur.com/gn4RPFD.jpeg

As far as survival goes, it’s thankfully minimal, basically just health and stamina. Restore health by sleeping, which you can do in the field if you find a bed, or with stims, and restore stamina by eating (in true VR fashion by opening the tin and feeding yourself with your knife) or smoking. It does feel pretty great wandering the wasteland with a cigarette hanging out of your mouth. Once I realized I could just smoke, stamina became a nonissue as keeping a pack of cigarettes and lighter took up almost no weight, and I could find food wherever I went.

Speaking of weight, ITR has the best backpack system I’ve ever seen. You get some on-body holsters for ammo clips and those little ribbons tied to shell casings to throw at anomalies in true Stalker fashion, but the pack itself is genius – it’s just a big open space, and you can put whatever you want in it and arrange it however you want, including having overlapping items, which means you can carry more at the expense of it being harder to find (and a hit to your stamina). It’s a pretty good simulation of rummaging through an unsorted bag, and I hope it catches on in other games. It feels more intuitive than the more common Saints and Sinners style, where your pack is a glorified inventory menu. You also have a mini pack on your belt, which you can similarly cram items in. I used mine to hold my anomaly tracker and empty magazines.

https://i.imgur.com/qxD3xRR.jpeg

All this to say it’s absolutely worth playing. It’s not the most polished, but I had no serious bugs, and in spite of a reputation for jank I found it largely intuitive and functional once I got used to some of its quirks. And has a great atmosphere, more of a supernatural bent than Stalker, with exploded buildings frozen in mid air and eerie bits of pre-event speech lingering on the wind.

Aja on 4/2/2025 at 16:46

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I'm on PS5, so no sequel for me yet, but hopefully it'll make its way there eventually. I finished ITR after about 30 hours, and then I bought Arken Age as my next VR adventure, but I'm kinda not ready for ITR to be over yet. Maybe I'll do an ironman mode playthrough, where you can't reload saves and have to retrieve all your items from your corpse whenever you die. Given the finicky nature of some of the anomalies, that might be a slog, but it would certainly bring some tension back to the game as I got rather overpowered by the end.

Aja on 4/6/2025 at 22:06

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Vertigo Games in collaboration with Eidos Montreal. Yeah, it looks a bit corny and new-gamey, but it's got extinguishing torches, pickpocketing, rope climbing, and Stephen Russell (!!) so I'm playing it either way. The fact that it's also on Quest 2 means it probably won't have fancy graphics or big levels, I'd imagine. I'm currently playing the Arizona Sunshine Remake, another Vertigo title, and it feels good in VR, and that's the most important thing.