izigame.me

This is definitely gonna be one of those VR games to keep an eye on. Maybe don't buy it now if you dislike anything mentioned below, but I would understand this game being a few people's current favorite VR title. For 20 bucks, it's certainly not going to give you too much buyers remorse if you end up not enjoying it's current state, and I'm willing to bet the finished product will be generally fun to play. I'm really hoping the gameplay turns out like Stranglehold, one of my childhood favorites. Or like Max Payne, if you never played Stranglehold.
From best to worst:
The enemy ragdolls are the most fun to interact with out of any VR title I've played. You can do things like using your forearm to push the barrel of the gun out of your face, something painfully missing from other physics based VR games; the ability to use the thing connected to your wrist. You can do some restraining martial arts moves and joints will bend exactly like you'd expect. Once they hit the max amount they can bend and you're still applying pressure, they'll go down, following your momentum. I love grabbing wrist and locking elbows against the shoulder's natural rotation. I do wish they bodies had more weight to them but I understand why they don't.
Perhaps the best climbing of any VR game, and a very natural feeling rope/chain swing. Can't grab corners and climb like B&S but it's still excellent, visual hand placement is great as well. It was pretty remarkable how natural the little standing gym set felt compared to real life.
Damaging enemies is very visually rewarding. This is the only game I can think of where blunt strikes make peoples face puff up, just like they would in real life. And it's accurate to where you're hitting. Lips get bruised and swell up, cheeks and noses too. It's great. Also if you unload a mag into someones face, the impact point starts to crater inwards, and their eyes will pop and leave a hollow eye socket. Absolutely brutal.
The dive/jump is almost great. On the Index, you press the center touchpad dealio and you'll jump the in direction of your momentum. That little touchpad doohicky is SEVERELY underutilized in VR titles, and it feels like a pretty natural application. However, when you jump, it's VERY floaty. You have very little control once you're in the air and you can't combo it into anything like a flip, or slide. You can actually walljump, but it's that same floaty jump again, and only once before you have to touch grass again. I'd like the ability to change the angle of the jump based on where my hands are pointing, and additional movement options (dive roll, flip, etc). In the VR game Sairento you can initiate a flip by putting your hands above your head and jumping. While at first, quite nauseating, it's a seriously awesome feature. No exaggeration, I would not of played Sairento for more than two hours without this feature. I ended up putting about 30 in.
The guns are above average. I liked that I could pull a pistol's slide midair without needing another hand on it. You can do something similar with the pump shotgun, which I should also mention is the best version I've used in any game. You actually have to make a conscious effort to pump it. Most games the damn shotgun damn near pumps itself as soon as you shoot.
One thing I do greatly dislike about guns right now is that magazines do not actually have a physical box when they're loaded into the gun. That and the magazines are held at different angles from what I'm used to, especially the pistol magazines. Also when you rack the slide of a completely empty gun after inserting a new mag, a bullet still flies out. Minor nag.
Melee weapons were apparently pretty god awful before I played, but felt ok by the time I picked this up. Personally, I think they could use some more work though. I definitely felt that weapons weren't going where I felt they should every now and then, especially two handed. It felt pretty difficult to build up enough momentum with a blunt object to get a satisfying hit in, yet sharp objects cut and stabbed as easy as butter. I dislike both these things. But once again being able to manipulate the ragdoll by jamming a weapon between both their arms and twisting made me smile.
The sandbox mode has an impressive amount of features for an Early Access game. That's not really my cup of tea though.
A decent amount of options to configure the experience. Could use some more in my opinion though.
It seems bullets do actually have a physical presence and travel time (maybe?). It's strange that in a game like this you can't see the bullets in slow motion.
Speaking of slow motion, it's pretty terribly implemented. You press a button, it's on with no limit. You press it again, it's off. And if it's off you'll immediately want to turn it back on. The game feels pretty awkward to play at full speed. I just don't understand why games like B&S and this one don't have cinematic slow-motion. Controlling your own slow-motion is a pain and takes away from the experience. Sure give me the ability to slow time for a little bit to help the chain-kills get started, but don't make me manage it through the whole fight. Hopefully this is implemented better in the future. Killing Floor does it ok-ish, but copying that would still be quite lackluster in a game where it could really shine.
I saw a melee attacker in the trailer, but not a single one in my playtime, unless I disarmed them of their primary and sidearm. It's a real shame that everyone just shoots at you from a distance. The gunplay is alright but the ragdoll manipulation is better. I got real tired of having to chase down everyone. I wish they'd eventually run out of ammo for their big gun and move in close with their secondary or something like that. I could seriously just sit behind full cover and take out people one by one without any rush. Hopefully this is only an issue in Early Access.
Pretty annoying, crusty red vignette when you take damage in full-speed. Luckily it disappears when you are in slow-motion. Another reason to never turn slow mo off I guess.
And the worst thing about this game is performance and graphic quality, besides the ragdoll damage, which is excellent. And when I say graphic quality I don't mean it looks bad. When I started up for the first time, I was surprised to see that the game had automatically set the graphics to "Low". I turned them to "High" and started up a random map and default wave. I immediately noticed nauseating performance issues. After resetting the option back to "Low" the game was playable again. I now understand why that is the default. It's not my system, that's for sure. And for graphics, I didn't notice any difference between the High and Low settings other than performance. Bullet trails, muzzle flash, and bullet impacts look pretty terrible. The muzzle flash has no variation to it's pattern. The bullet trails form and disappear at once, are very fat, and have an extremely overdone effect. I suppose they are technically transparent but it's like there's a cloudy glass straw hanging there. I could see the bullet impacts being argued as a style choice, but the amount of sparks being thrown up are a bit much in my opinion. But the large kick-ups of dust are absurd and flicker in and out against certain environmental objects.