Senaste recensioner av Zeta

TLDR: I gave it a shot, my friend gave it a shot. I gave it more of a shot than my friend, tried different gear and tactics, still negative on the balance I am afraid. It has some other rough corners brought on by Sony, and the fact it is a live-service. It has MTX, and some rather dangerous wiggle-room to ask for more.


Full Review:

FIrst, the game nails the serious Democracy thing, it is genuinely enjoyable in terms of setting, voiceovers, and imagry.

Second, the game does pretty well with the gunplay itself, almost every weapon I have used feels genuinely impactful, and useful in some way (except the premium exploding rounds rifle, the starter pistol feels better.)

Third, the balance is where the wheels fall off. On difficulty 3, you can get a specific mission to kill a Crusher(s), they are basically bosses, that are genuinely frustrating. They have a giant kick me sign on their back, but how much ammo does it take? One full MG mag? Two? I can't say, since I have really only encountered them with others who are also dealing damage. What I can say is that their presence immediately ruins any fun I am having. I don't mind dying to friendly fire, little bugs that sneak up on me, getting hit by tank rounds from what feels across the map; all fine, they feel balanced because as soon as I can get a solid hit in, they drop easily. "But those are the easy ones, they are alone (unless you are unlucky) and not random or spawned from Bug Calls." Yes, you are right. In this capacity, they are what they are. Bosses to be handled while dealing with little ones. Not terrible, because they are solo, or max two at once. But when you get to the next difficulty, and they start spawning pretty much everywhere in pairs? You need to kill 6+ to cover half a map, and spoilers, they move in pairs, or trios. This is where the fun dies in a dumpster fire. Yes, you can get a cheap kill on them with a one-use thing every 60 seconds, and then you drop a supply pod on another, but when you are only level 10, that is all you get to really hurt them. They go from an objective, to EVERYWHERE in one difficulty band. This ramp-up is not good feeling, not fun at all. When I am level 20 and can drop bombs that kill Titans in one go, or have a railgun that just pens anything, sure, they belong there. Last-minute addition: I noticed the second to last video shows four people fighting a Crusher; a single crusher. This makes me think the GM/Director is bugged, and spawning way too many.

Addendum to Third: There are materials required to upgrade your ship's capabilities that are exclusive to higher difficulties, these difficulties include Crushers and worse. If the medium resource is locked behind them, then it crushes (har har) your ability to improve your ship.

Fourth, you can tell Sony had their hands in this game. From the weird controls (PC) to the DRM that is a ticking time bomb. I am sad this is the norm now.

Fifth, this is a live-service game i.e. "Always Online". The servers host everything, from stats, to the boards themselves. This game will die and be delisted the moment it stops becoming profitable and a quick boost to numbers isn't ready. As of writing this, the game appears to have had two outages of note, one unplanned, and one planned. The unplanned one I can chalk up to teething issues. The second was several hours of maintanance, that ended in (paraphrasing): "We fixed some stuff, mitigated others, and the rest we will fix tomorrow after we get some sleep." I don't normally buy into live-service games, but they seem to be happening a lot more frequently. I gave this a try because my friends were interested, I think I am going to have to skip these moving forward.

Sixth, the boosts to numbers, yeah. This game has MTX. It appears they plan to have seasons (warbonds,) some costing money, some not? It also looks like they aren't leveraging FOMO, as their loading screen tip says (almost verbatim): "Earn medals to complete your warbonds. No rush though, warbonds can be completed at any time." The obvious MTX is the ability to buy 'supercredits' which you can find in-game, so no big deal there I guess, but it does lend itself to a deeper concern of longevity and how they handle the warbonds.

Seven, the game is beautiful. The sound effects are super punchy, you feel the artillary hit "too close" for comfort, you can hear every bug skittering around the corner. VIsually, the styling and visual queues are consistant, and always in the perfect tone for the subject matter. Terrain deformation from artillary, bombs, etc leave craters in untouched dirt, giving you a real feeling of advancement when you charge in over your destruction and through the mountain of dead bugs.

EIght, I am mostly fine with the movement of the character. Diving feels cinematic and dramatic when you can't even spend time to get up and frantically shoot at small bugs as they try to expose your democratic blood to the air. Wading through the mud/snow adds tension in the Bot levels, or when you have bugs approaching. The animations for all of this are pretty good as well.

Nine, almost done I promise. They are taking an interesting community-based approach. With a global campaign, and individuals executing missions to beat back empires of enemies. This is cool, it adds a sense of scale, and makes you feel small and entirely expendable. It also adds a sense of frustration that I think I can see building already, in that with what will be one of the largest peaks, the difficulty to complete objectives before the time limit is up. Of course, these limits are arbitrary and can be tweaked behind the scenes by their live GMs, but it does concern me that this may cause a rapid burnout if/when these objectives feel unobtainable. Your mission(s) contributes something like 0.0001 to 0.0004% to the global war at the moment, and it feels impossible to make a real difference with just your friends.

Last: Achievements seem to be per person, so if you and your friend kill the first titan together, you have to do it twice and make sure the other person gets the last hit next time.

Summary:
A very solid game, has lots of promise, and also lots of risk. For now, the balance curve is super broken past level 4 and it stops being fun REALLY quickly. It took just one mission to get my team and I to go from laughing to everyone (except that one guy just living his best life with the laser cannon) basically ready to drop the game entirely. Second mission, and my squad is done. I tried some more after that and can only conclude it is indeed 100% a "This is really fun and I don't think I could not enjoy most anything about this." to not having any fun at all. It gives, then it takes it all away, burns down everything, then nukes the ashes.


Edit: Fixed Spelling

TLDR:
Stalker fan, don't mind some inventory management, and ok with some pretty tense situations? Get it.
Sweaty palmed Index players, you may need to disable the touch portion (not the pressure) of your controllers to keep from losing your hand control during hot situations.

Full text:
If you like the slow-fast-slow-oh shi- flow of the Stalker Series, and you want to do that in VR, then this is for you.

Fun to explore the ghostly world, that is decently populated, and feels massive until you get used to it. The orienteering aspect is pretty cool, you can mark up a map at your home base to remember what was interesting (or downright 'NOPE'.)

The story is on the lighter side, so I won't spoil it, and I am only about half-way through, and I think it picks up.

The enemies are easy, as long as you are in the light, and there is only one of them. Once you get a few types of enemies mixed together things can get pretty hectic, and some enemies hit like a truck even if they are 'easy' so you can't let your guard down.

The graphics aren't exactly mindblowing, but it does run with hardly a stutter at all, which is a very uncommon experience (nvidia 1080) for me, and I honestly think the sharper look lends itself to the grit of the genre and isn't a negative.

Very tense, every little sound will have you jumping until you are 100% used to them. Sounds of the trees, ancient steel, whizzes, pops, and bangs of anomalies, or wait, was that gunfir-.
Playing on the non-ironman mode is pretty nice, if you die and don't like how you can reload a save, although you might be moments from the same death with the autosaves.
The map is the same each run, but the anomalies like to shift around a little between runs, so you always need to be on your toes as you trudge along your established routes.
There are a few points which feel unfair in terms of suspense, either they are similar to jumpscares, or turn the freak factor up to 11.
If you do not like inventory management this might not be for you, there is a decent amount of prep for each run in terms of what you take into the radius, and what you are willing to carry out.
The backpack feels tiny when you are a loot hoarder and pick up every little thing, but makes it fun deciding what is worth it to bring back and leave.
The game does have some janky physics regarding inventory and item management, but most of it is not terribly critical. I think the worst was that I lost a pistol in my room because I grabbed something behind it and the pistol was yote.

If you have even the slightest sweaty palms with the index controllers you may run into issues getting your hands to let go of stuff when things get heavy.
I hear there is a setting you can disable in the steam settings to combat this, but you lose the light contact grip and need a little more pressure.

(Written in steam's tiny tiny tiny review window, sorry if the formatting and spelling is terrible.)

TLDR: If you like VR and you like Fallout 4 then this is for you, and still worth another 60 USD.

Pros:
Same Fallout 4
Frickin' Pipboy!
Dare I say... immersive as f---? (Seriously, it is super cool.)
Mods Work - You will have to work a little for it, if you know the old school method you should be fine. There are youtube videos if you don't know how.

Cons:
Controls are awkward sometimes, see explanation below.
Pipboy Menu (projected) is tough to read in daylight
No Scopes (Not COD's problem, but still just as bad!)
Surprise Pipboy!

Explanation:
I played FO4 a lot, I am the type who liked FO4 for it's better gunplay over New Vegas' many possible stories and routes.
Story is good, but when I ADS and the real point of aim is way to the left and up (not the random spread, I am talking about the really bad point of aim on some of the guns,) that is not what I signed up for as a FP game with guns.
I run mods, many many mods.
With that out of the way, I loved FO4 before, not necessarily for the story but the exploration and amount of time one can spend doing the most meaningless things (like filling a shack with pipe weapons and leathers.)
Now I can do the same exploration, and loot hoarding as if I were there.
Radroach lunges are actually distressing, groups of feral ghouls make you feel like an action hero, and mirelurks will have you pannicking and running while they charge you.
Bayonets are a newfound friend, when the accuracy/range stats don't matter nearly as much as they once did, and melee comes way more naturally. Running out of a clip with a near dead ghoul inches from your face? Beat it to death!
Running out of ammo with a crapton of ghouls still on their feet and in your face? Swing wildly until you are the last bloodsoaked person standing (hopefully) and feel like you actually just beat a bunch of crazed zombies down!

Scopes
It looks like scopes aren't working yet. I never used them anyway, reddot for sniping!
Note: The dot is quite small, sometimes almost vanishing in the SDE of my Vive. I haven't been using it heavily yet, as I am still spraying .38 everywhere.

DLC
Not officially supported, my guess is they are doing VR optimizations. Supposedly you can enable them via mods, but I haven't tried them yet.

Dogmeat...
I did use Meat longer than I did with plain FO4, but for some reason I always end up in the order UI open any time they run past. Once again, I sent Dog to sanctuary, to retire from tripping every trap in Boston.

The controls...
Pipboy!
Having a pipboy on your wrist sounds, and can be, amazing... If you wore your smartphone on your wrist, you would most likely bring it closer to your face, to counter this, the game scales up your pip-boy by a huge amount.
This in itself is fine, unless you are trying to stabilize your shooting hand. Basically, if your pip-boy is facing you it scales up, interfering with your shot (by hiding your gun and stopping your movement...)

General Controls and Buttons
FO4 had a lot of features and functions, and some of the methods of control were a bit contrived to begin with.
Add the 'complexity' of my Vive wands, and this becomes challenging at times (like settlement building or long inventory management sessions.) You get used to it, but there will be some sighs involved when you realize that your inventory is filled with pipe weapons and you need to drop something.

I also have lots of issues looting in places with lots of bodies/containers, as your left hand can aslo select a container while your right is trying to grab stuff, resulting in trying to take from the left hand container/corpse that you have most likely already looted to satisfaction, instead of grabbing that radaway you have your eye on. Note: Bloody Mess exacerbates this problem by quite a bit, but it is worth it to see the meat showers...

A major plus, gone is that rubbish heap of a favorites menu that looked like a crappy T, and was tough to read quickly.
Now you have a glorious improvement, a simple wheel style, that takes advantage of the Vive Wand's touchpad!

Lockpicking is now much easier, without the 'reset' on a break as your thumb can stay in place.

Grenades can be a bit rough, I managed to grab a 'nade while attempting a reload (so I had already released the grip, a bug?) and had a grenade stuck in my hand that I wasn't able to throw properly. This resulted in a load screen and asking myself if the 2x explosions mod was worth it.
There is a plus, I rarely, if ever, used 'nades in FO4 (no vats support IIRC.) Now using a 'nade is simple, easy, and feels meaningful. Especially when rewarded with a boom, shockwave, items, and arms shooting by.

The power armor hud is a tad painful, good luck seeing your feet (items near your feet anyway.) Some would call this immersive... I am not sure it is a good immersive, but to each their own.
The power armor does make you feel a lot bigger, but I am tall IRL, so this just makes me feel like I have to duck in door frames in game. The struggle is real.

So, after all these gripes, is it worth it?
Yes. A most emphatic yes!

I think I shall spend a great many hours in FO4VR, just as I have in every Bethsoft release since Morrowind.

If you like the atmosphere, the tongue-in-cheek comedy of a well placed bathtub toaster, and breaking out into an embarrasing shimmy with your gun and pipboy whenever Atom Bomb Baby plays, then join us, I doubt you will be dissapointed.

TLDR: The base game is well worth the base price, I haven't sprung for the DLC yet, but I would certainly consider them also.
If you like games where being attached to your people is rough ('rougelike', I guess) and you have some mascochistic tendancies, buy this now!
I am not big into the 'rougelike' genre, but I love this game. 9.9/10

Pros:
Perfect artwork
Storytelling is very light-weight, and unobtrusive
Gameplay is a perfect bittersweet blend
Solid and simple gameplay, with just the right customization and complexity to make it perfect
You can configure your experience with in-game difficulties, custom gameplay toggles, and mods from the steam workshop.

Cons*:
This game can go from you feeling like an unkillable god party, to everyone dead and rare trinkes lost in just one fight.
(Honestly, I have ragequit several times, but most of the causes of quits, like crits and the like, are toggleable and my own darned fault. So if you like your games hard, this is only another pro!)
No android support yet. (Hardly a con, this game would be a perfect mobile candidate though. [They are working on mobile ports now!])