Recent reviews by VRJosh

Just a wonderful little game.

Early Access Review within a week of launch, so keep that in mind.

Really loving this game so far, about 20 hours into it plus 10 or so in the demo before launch. I think the cartoony artstyle might make some folks think this isn't a serious FPS game, but the shooting mechanics are SOLID. The guns all feel very unique and the action can get pretty frantic. The game definitely also rewards preparation and experimentation, with a surprisingly deep cooking system with what seems like dozens(hundreds?) of hidden recipes. Having a few high quality meals on hand can make a big difference in surviving some of the later encounters. Also, if you love inventory tetris, this is the game for you. You're going to constantly be making tough calls about what items are worth keeping, what's gotta be thrown away, and what you can combine to make extra space.

Some negatives right now around EA Launch:
-framerate gets rough in some spots even on high end hardware
-some bugs that are run ending or hinder progress, and given Early Access, it's possible progression might reset at some point, so be prepared to start over if something in the game breaks.
-some item descriptions or functionality could use some work. Magic Oils in particular can have unintended results for your guns with no way to remove them once applied. (extra ammo consume chance on a single shot gun making the gun just NOT fire 1/3 of the time and need to be reloaded twice is a real unfun pain for example)

Not totally a negative but something to consider:
-the sheer number of hidden recipes and no way besides experimenting to figure them out means you either have to take extensive notes of your own, or rely on cooking guides to really experience the depth of this mechanic

Overall tho, I highly recommend if you want a solid FPS Roguelite with a ton of depth.

Abiotic Factor is at its core, a survival crafting game, but the setting is what makes it shine. The secret underground lab nails the Black Mesa aesthetic; and the way the game combines freely explorable zones with gated linear progression between zones makes this one of the most unique survival experiences I've played. You spend just enough time to become intimately familiar with a zone before you've gathered the resources/built the tools/found the pathway to the next zone without any given zone overstaying its welcome and becoming boring. The game also does an excellent job of creating pathways and shortcuts back to previous areas, it really does feel like one large interconnected facility. The main facility zones are also interspersed with smaller unique portal worlds that each offer their own interesting items/enemies/lore.

As to some negative feedback, the game is still Early Access, and that shows in a few places. While the core is SOLID, there are some performance issues, especially in regard to level streaming/loading even on a high end pc with a fast NVME SSD. You'll come across areas where the game might entirely lock up for a few seconds to catch up on loading the area around the corner, and this can be somewhat annoying when traveling back and forth on looting expeditions. There are also areas where framerates seem to dip dramatically for no apparent reason. Hopefully these performance issues will be improved as the game develops but it's something to be aware of right now. One other small complaint I have is that the LORE related emails and voice recordings you find sometimes feel out of place for a given area or are duplicated. It would be nice if more of a sense of mystery and progression could be built around various subjects of the facility with information more slowly trickled out as the player moves through the facility. I would also love if some form of gameplay mechanic existed for players to actually "study" the enemies to learn more about them, akin to the camera from Bioshock that unlocked damage buffs against enemies or other perks (mostly just wishful thinking).

If you've enjoyed survival games in the past, but felt like the genre was becoming stale, I highly recommend giving this game a try, either in Early Access or once it's fully released. Even at the initial launch, I got a solid 50 hours of solo gameplay out of it and feel like there's still some areas I could explore. I also see this game being a lot of fun to replay with friends as more of them buy it.

Very fun and unique Co-op experience. Highly recommend that you watch as little as possible about the game before jumping in with friends, as much of the experience is just encountering new gameplay elements for the first time and learning how to navigate them. Also recommended to play with your mic always enabled rather than push to talk, as hearing each teammate's unfiltered screams brings a lot of joy.

Definitely a "better with friends" kind of game, but with the right group of friends, there's nothing that really compares to the mayhem of 4 dwarves facing a horde of hostile bugs deep in the mines. Rock and Stone!

A surprisingly fun rogue-lite coop shooter that I never would have heard of if a friend hadn't recommended it to me. Tons of unique weapons to find and a huge meta-progression skill tree to upgrade between runs. Definitely recommend if you enjoy the rogue-lite genre, fun solo, and even more fun with some friends.

- Vive User

XSOverlay has quickly become my favorite way to bring desktop content into my VR space.

Whether that's a Twitch chat window, youtube video, or all three of my desktop monitors, XSOverlay is the smoothest and least buggy desktop overlay I've experienced, and this is coming from someone with 3 years of VR experience with overlays like OVR Drop and OVR Toolkit. As someone with 3 desktop monitors, I've long begrudged the fact that other overlay problems make it very difficult to drag and drop things between separate monitors. I've often needed to drag a window half way to another monitor, then click on that monitor to activate it, then drag the window the rest of the way. With XSOverlay, I can open up all three monitors side by side and freely drag and drop windows/files between them with little/no hitching. It really is a godsend for trying to actually be productive in VR without needing to take off the headset and fiddle with something at my desktop.

Edit: I've finished the game now. I tried to take my time and really absorb all the environments and tallied about 14 hours by completion. My opinion has only improved upon finishing the game. Admittedly there were a couple areas that had some performance issues, nothing major tho. And a couple bugs I encountered which have already been patched and fixed. But the experience as a whole was so polished that none of those issues felt like they detracted from it. I am more than excited for the future of the series and anything else Valve has planned for VR. I'm not sure I would say "go buy an index" for this game, but I would DEFINITELY say "Buy VR for this game" Considering how amazing it was on a relatively older headset like the Vive, I can't imagine the experience isn't equally as impressive on newer and cheaper headsets.

Note: I'm about 10 hours into the game and will update this review if my opinions change dramatically by the time I complete it.

Original Vive user.

It's amazing.

I started the game and was awestruck immediately by the scale and detail of City 17. The level of interaction with the world is top notch, every area feels expertly crafted to encourage the player to look under/over and inside every nook and cranny to scavange for ammo/supplies. The combat segments are perfectly rolled out to ease the player into the game's combat system and various enemy types without overwhelming you.

There's really so much more I could say about the game, but suffice it to say, I totally understand Valve's decision for a VR only title. This game sets the bar for what a AAA VR title should aspire to and I hope that other big budget studios take note.

A very fun VR puzzle game with some awesome visual aesthetics. Makes great use of vr in it's puzzles as you have to often look all around the environment and use your hands to throw cubes/keys to copies of yourself. The time looping elements are fantastic and the puzzles I've experienced have used them to great effect, I'd put alongside classic puzzle games such as Braid in that regard. The added bonus of such puzzles in VR is that you can wave/dance/gesture to your future self and see those actions replayed for you. The story comes across as a bit of an afterthought, at least as far as a couple hours into it, but it doesn't detract from the awesome visual design and intriguing puzzles. Highly recommended if you're a fan of puzzle games or just want a game that gives your eyes a real treat in VR.

Here's my first impressions video if you're interested:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=080vkgg0ZfM&t=3m52s

TL;DR The most MUST BUY game that currently exists for VR.

Can't believe I haven't reviewed this game already considering it's hands down my favorite VR game. Anton, the primary/sole developer, is the most open and passionate game developer I've ever seen. He's posting Youtube videos on a weekly basis going into detail about all the changes/updates he's making to the game and regularly interacting with fans in the community Discord. The game itself is the best shooting experience I've had in VR, hands down, with a MASSIVE variety of firearms and a handful of fun gamemodes to use them in, with new modes being added/tweaked several times a year. It's a singleplayer experience, and Anton has made it clear that it's likely to stay that way due to technical limitations of the physics based rendering systems the game employs, but that doesn't limit the fun at all.