Max Mustard Review (Rune)
One of the best 3rd person perspective platformers so far in VR, and reminds me more of Lucky's Tale than AstroBot. (For those wanting more story elements and puzzles, Moss 1 and 2 are still my reference by far.)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3350118277
Max Mustard uses OpenXR drivers, so Meta hmd users will get optimal performance.
You do not need a fast rig to get great performance in Max Mustard. I get 80 fps in 80 Hz using an extreme res of 500% with the Index - that's an insane 45 million pixels per frame combining both eyes. The game has some jaggies and lack antialiasing, but using extreme res jaggies can be greatly reduced. My rig: RTX 3090, i9 10900K, 32GB 3200MHz, Win10 Pro and Valve Index.
You should be able to play the game just fine using for example a GTX 1060 6GB. The game plays and looks great with my old Rift CV1 too.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3351573847
This is an enhanced Quest port explaining the great performance. The Quest version is just 4GB, while this version is a whopping 32GB installed (31.8GB). You get the premium version here with dynamic shadows, advanced water shaders, much better lighting and more high-res textures.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3350120467
Within the genre, I'd probably rate the game 8.0/10 (best levels are 9/10, but some levels more like 5/10). The game has no difficulty setting, and may be too hard for kids. Some levels have too much distance between save points. While the first 5-6 levels are easy, the difficulty level quickly increases. For casual players not particularly fond of platformers, this game is not easy to recommend - because many levels will require high precision jumping and timing - and can be very frustrating.
The geometry is simple due to the Quest 2 origin, but mostly the game still looks great/fine. Just do not expect to find high-res textures and high-poly surfaces like in the best PCVR games (=games made ground-up for PCVR). I've added some screenshots here:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/922490/screenshots/
So far no crashes. A few suggestioms for improving the game:
There is snap turning, and I would love some smooth turning.
Being able to select weapon hand independently of locomotion hand would be great.
For going backwards in a level, it would be great being able to push a button to recenter behind Max.
The game only has one graphics option: Post-processing On or Off. Would be great with options for antialiasing.
When changing Hz (refresh rate) while playing, the screen goes black and the game must be restarted - it would be great to have this fixed.
Some (animated) 3D grass would work wonders :-)
Add difficulty levels so the game gets less frustrating for kids or rusty old-timers. One quick way would be to adjust prices in the shop, so playing on Easy would give access to much cheaper items - and maybe increase deflation time for some floating platforms etc.