(Edit: I am extremely pleased to see the devs listening to feedback but I believe there is still a lot of work to be done. I'll be closely following the updates as they come through and will be considering a reinstall after substantial fixes have been made. Please understand this was a day 1 review and I will try to do my best to update it if and when I reinstall after updates/patches and improvements have been made to the game. If you are playing the game and see that changes have been made which conflict with the integrity of this review, or disagree with anything I've covered please feel free to leave a comment. I think I speak for everyone when I say that we are rooting for this game and the entire community surrounding PCVR gaming. The review was not intended to be hostile, but rather a plea for us as a community to be treated in the same regard as desktop, console gaming and even wireless VR gaming. This game alongside HL: Alyx are/were seen as the catalysts to bring PCVR into the realm of AAA devs interests, fully fledged VR experiences and to the overall 'renaissance' of VR. We want devs to be excited and daring to venture into VR with their innovative ideas and industry knowledge, not to be turned away, afraid of a community or bad reviews. I think one of the biggest things that people have mentioned was to take a look at some of the groundbreaking games that exist in VR already and takeaway those ideas and concepts that people already love and know work perfectly in VR and to apply these to the game-making formula.)

Well, after a lengthy download and some game-play I definitely have some things to say.
This game is going to seriously make its core demographic REALLY mad.

Lets go over the glaring problems right now with the game...
____________________________________________________________________________________


Issues encountered after only playing for about 40 minutes:
(*review update below* i tried out the MP for another 40 min)

1. The first scene when you are supposed to shoot the nazi coming up beside the jeep in front of you, never spawned so I did not even see anything. After reloading the scene again he appeared.

2. Aiming is atrocious. They went for the "realistic sights" approach and you basically have to hold your VR controllers right up against your headset or even touching your chin to aim down. I know of 0 VR shooters where they are THAT close to the headset. From playing other VR shooters I expect there to be some kind of room to breathe when it comes to aiming and at least some sort of sights compensation so you dont clunk yourself in the headset.

3. EDIT: smooth movement has been added

4. The character expressions. Dear god. The eyes on some of the NPCS are just flat out lifeless. 0 eye movement, like hollow shells.

5. Picking up and throwing objects is super inconsistent. I can chuck a potato 50 feet just by sneezing on my controller but to throw a grenade 10 feet its gonna feel like im throwing a hail mary at the super bowl with 10 seconds left.

6. Inconsistencies in object interactions. Potatos/wine bottles and scenery just float in the air stiffly and dont rotate or have any sort of flight physics. Its jarring.

7. Game stutters. Not terrible but they are noticeable and for the price of this game and my high end rig, you really gotta be joking.

8. Guns holster animations. God. Nobody wants to see that flippy janky gun animation moving its way back to your holsters. Just remove it or make the guns invisible while they move back to your holsters (or ya know just have them teleport back to your holster when you make the movement to put them back). Its super distracting and looks bad.

9. 2d menus towering over you. Enough said.

10. Gun reloading feels weird with magazines. It just feels really loose and lacks the snappy re-activeness you should get when attaching a mag to the gun.

11. 2 hours of download to play a game with half baked controls.

MP:

-Arcadey but in an alpha build sort of way
-your dominant gun shooting hand has the round info on it? Stupid design. I need that hand to shoot.
-Generic and bland menu screen pops up every time you die, no auto respawn
-Spawn points dont matter, enemies just spawn wherever
-AI fills the remaining MP spaces
-No major on screen cue or pop ups to indicate events for the round.

The majority of time in MP was spent using only the shotgun because the rest of the guns arent worth fumbling around with and the shotgun deals good damage. It really felt like we were all wandering around just shooting at whoever and whatever without any aim or objective. Think VRchat but with really terrible gunplay; we just talked about how outrageous it was that this game shipped out in its current state. Oh and nearly everyone complained about the performance. People with 2060s/2080s were seeing some choppiness, our PCS were CHUGGING to play this game in MP. Even the dude with a brand new 3080 said his PC was getting pushed pretty hard. The Maps were really pretty though so theres that.


OK BUT HOLD ON.

____________________________________________________________________________________

The visuals in this game scenery wise are pretty sweet. The guns look good. Artistically besides some of the NPC's expressions, this game is very beautiful. I can tell there is a lot of love put into this game's atmosphere and I'm willing to change my review once these initial gameplay/ essential VR issues are resolved.

There is a triple A VR game under here somewhere but I really hope the devs can sit down and fix the controls/movement/gun aiming and even tack on some performance and optimization enhancements.

For now this game is extremely hard to like for these reasons and is going to make a lot of people angry.

I really hope that with some revamping it can become the great game its clearly trying to be.

__________________________________________________________________________

*game has been refunded, I will consider purchasing again if the devs can truly show the VR experience some tender love and care.*

It really breaks my heart to have to write this review. This was a game I was looking forward to all of 2020. What was once an Oculus exclusive, the grand return of Medal of Honor in a big fulllength VR game no less, my hype was off the charts, especially when I saw there were sections of the game in a bomber.

Well, I'm sure by now from the Mixed reception and the absolutely absurd file size and recommended specs for a game that looks like it was made in 2001 that things are...not very good. All the other reviews just call it "trash" and say it is not fun, but I'm not here to do that. Instead, I want this review to be a message to Respawn, EA, and Oculus of everything wrong with the game, because there is a good game in here. But it is plagued with so many issues major and minor that need addressing before it is even close to worth being $60, the same price as Half Life Alyx.

Let's start with the biggest issue: Startup issues. The game worked very well for me for a while. Then after it passed the two hour mark to be refundable, that's when the problems started. Everytime I tried to open the game, the intro would play, but there would be no sound. Followed by the game being trapped in a big static screen of the game's logo forever, never getting me into my OSS office. The Oculus developers said it was because the save file corrupted and it needed to be deleted. At first I did that, but then when I tried to get back in, it just happened again, so the file was fine. Another user suggested adjusted my bloody Windows paging file, which I did. Didn't work either. Out of desperation, I closed every program except for Steam seeing if anything was messing with the game, and that STILL didn't work. After I did some testing, and I managed to figure out why this error is happening. Because the game has no WMR support officially, it's defaulting to Oculus. By having the Mixed Reality Portal as the active window, it starts up normally. You'll have to alt tab quickly and select the Mixed Reality Portal as your active window before the logo. That is incredibly broken.

Which leads into the second major issue that needs addressing besides the terrible optimization and absurd system requirements, is the fact the game is not programmed for Windows Mixed Reality at all! WMR, despite being one of the majority headsets on SteamVR due to the cheap price as well as the upcoming Reverb G2, it does not have any official WMR support at all. This is partly a problem as the Sprint button is bound to the left stick button, which opens Steam overlay. So while I play this game, I have to turn the overlay off. Sprinting is handled so poorly in this game that it baffles me the game shipped like this, as this is all stuff games like Pavlov figured out years ago, and this game was in development for FOUR YEARS!

Now with the major gamebreaking issues out of the way, I'm going to go over gripes and nitpicks I had with the gameplay itself, in no particular order

-The tutorial drags on too long. Having the tutorial take place in a hospital bed (which can be disorienting for some) as the doctor goes on and on about basic VR controls is annoying, same with the firing range. Having to do the tutorial TWICE because I deleted my save file trying to fix the first major issue above was a major turnoff.

-The dialogue sections have awkward silent pauses before any characters start talking

-Syringes are weird. When you red screen, you should honestly only need to use them if you're on the hardest difficulty. Otherwise on normal and below it should auto regen and the syringes just make you heal faster. Otherwise when I run out of syringes I start panicking.

-The graphics options are really lacking when there is so much room to lower the quality more to improve performance. We shouldn't need to edit the .ini file to improve game performance.

-Rocket launchers cannot be holstered. Why can't at least the bazooka be holstered? We carry ammo for it, yet we cannot carry the weapon itself on our back, yet the AI enemies can.

-While we're at it, throwing knives cannot be holstered. This is baffling to me since the game keeps trying to encourage you to use the weapon, a weapon that is difficult to aim and throw might I add, yet you can't store it on your chest. It's such a gimmick weapon and trailer bait, for something that should be fun as hell to use, and when you actually get a kill with a throwing knife it feels so satisfying. Yet you can't holster it like you holster grenades and key items. THE MINE DETECTOR THAT IS USED IN ONLY ONE SECTION OF THE GAME CAN BE HOLSTERED, YET THE COMMON AS HELL THROWING KNIVES CANNOT?!

-If the game stutters you lose your grip of the weapon you're using and it's instantly holstered. Why is there not an option to have the weapon stick in your hand like in Half Life Alyx? Hell this is another thing Pavlov got right, as it had dropsy protection.

-The tank mission is on rails. Is there any reason why? You only operate the turret yet in the mission they give you so much space, yet they don't let you drive the tank like you could in pancake screen Medal of Honor and classic Call of Duty, two games the devs originally made! At least give us that. Let us drive the tank ourselves using our touch controller's sticks. Please, let us have this. Let us actually outsmart enemy tanks. (PAVLOV JUST ADDED DRIVABLE TANKS, AND THAT'S MADE BY A SMALLER TEAM!)

-The "stealth" sections in Scuttle the Nazi U-Boat, are absolutely awful and janky. Firstly when I'm stealing the plans, I constantly fail the mission because I didn't put the plans in a very specific part of my waste basket. Doesn't matter I put it in the waste basket, it's because I didn't put them the highlighted part of the waste basket, which might I add sticks out like a sore thumb. Secondly as I'm walking towards the weapons locker of the next section, If I pick up anything and then drop it, nevermind throw it at someone, just simply dropping it, it fails the mission and alerts the enemy. Why?

-Speaking of Scuttle the Nazi U-Boat, my god these swimming controls are AIDS. Standard strokes are broken and you get stuck a lot when swimming in the sinking sub. I'm struggling to try to reach the rebreather. I only managed to complete this incredibly tedious and jank section by dog paddling awkwardly. The swimming controls need more tuning, and there needs to be comfort settings added for this. There's a reason VR games generally avoid swimming sections unless they were stick controlled

-Skiing controls work a lot better but are also a little janky.

If I find any other issues I will update the review accordingly. But man it was painful to have to write this. This game was not ready at all and needed another three to five months. I really hope Respawn you're reading this and can fix this game, because when the game worked, it was so fun. A return of the old WWII shooter, where this time you're actually IN THE WAR. There's so many amazing moments in the game too, like the two missions in the B-17 bomber (the reason I bought the game to begin with, as those were the highlight for me) the entire mission on the train as you're shooting from car to car as epic music plays, blasting nazi after nazi as The Wedding of Figaro plays loudly, making you feel like an unstoppable badass, storming Omaha Beach on D-Day and clearing bunker after bunker, having that train woosh past your head. There's so many great moments, and the Archives and PvE survival mode is fun too. There's a game here, but currently, that game is clearly not ready yet.

Win + R
Type %appdata% & press Enter
Exit the "Roaming" section and go to the "Local" section
Find "Mohab"
Go to "Saved"
Go to "Config"
Go to "WindowsNoEditor"
Find "gameusersettings.ini"
Once in, you will see a first section with numbers at the end of each line.
Experiment with these by lowering the numbers, with 4 being the best looking and 0 being the best performance.
Do not mess with anything else in the document.
This certainly helped me, so you should try it too.
EDIT: The ironic thing about this review is that I run a GTX 1660 with everything set to zero, running at 720p, yet I still barely crack 40 fps. Oof.
Edit 2: I have a 3060 Ti now, it runs fine I guess, could still be better.

The M1 Garand doesn't ping

Edit: They made it ping

I'm going to give an honest review.

I see so much potential in this game, and it had the opportunity to be great. But as of launch date, the game is unoptimized, respawns on maps are atrocious, and gunplay feels alright, but doesn't feel up to par with other VR shooters. Graphic fidelity is great! But doesn't make up for the fact of being unoptimized. Constant frame stutters, and no (in depth) graphical settings that you can change to your liking to fine tune it. Also there is no smooth turning as of the moment, so know that when you are heading in on launch day. Not saying that they won't add it eventually considering "Half Life Alyx" didn't have it working off of launch either. But as of writing this review, it is not apparent.

Maps are cool, sound design is alright, but nothing overwhelmingly stunning about the game in my eyes. If you want a good VR shooter to hop into, I'd suggest Contractors VR or Onward VR. And these games are more than half the price of this AAA company game. Overall I was super hyped ever since I saw the trailer for this game, but it did not live up to the expectations. Feels like a 2016 VR game with a lack of variety options to change. I really wanted to love this game and it pains me to write this review, cause overall Respawn Entertainment I've been satisfied with a lot of their work. But this just feels like a sub-par VR shooter that definitely needs some work. Not to mention the reloads and weapon handling are a bit "hand holdy" meaning that they light up sections on where the clips go, how to rack the slide, etc. Wish that could be a setting to change within the settings.

So what is my take on it... Give it a while before you drop the $60 and see if the game gets any improvement updates. But as of right now. Save your money. No one's okay with buying a game off the rip just to expect "the game will get better eventually". ABSOLUTELY NOT, IT'S NOT OKAY. If you expect to jump into the VR market and drop a $60 game. You better blow people's expectations. Because 1st of all that's a pretty high asking price for VR in this time. Most are around the $10-$30 range due to the fact that the entry market for VR is already pretty high. Plus the fact that Virtual Reality just isn't up to speed with the modern graphic fidelity of games. Trust me I love games like Population One, Pavlov, Beat Saber, Etc. and all those titles aren't the greatest looking when it comes to the quality. BUT THEY'RE FUN ASF AND OPTIMIZED TO PLAY. Overall first impressions for a wide majority of people on this title are nothing short of negative. But I really hope the Dev team listens to the community and brings the needed fixes to this game. Cause it has a OVERWHELMING amount of potential. Just isn't there atm.

-Brandon

Medal of Honor™: Above and Beyond, does not actually feel like a game.

It feels like the result of small dev teams working on different VR scenes to play around with VR game development. After a couple of years the stakeholders probably wanted something released. Thus this crazy mash-up of tiny experimental tech demos that are all over the place was released at a full premium price. With a tiny polish pass, a non-existing script that after production cut out the more humorous stuff and a documentary slapped on that has nothing to do with it. I speculate in this way because I simply can not believe anyone in their right mind envisioned this trainwreck whether they funded or worked for years on this project.

Sadly this falls into the tradition of the franchise though, no clear vision and no respect for the player and the player's wallet, its a game lacking any heart or soul. This game can not be saved. Its a real shame that 'Medal of Honor', is not a badge of honor but has become a warning sign.

There is no melee in multiplayer even though there is in singleplayer, which surprisingly is never explained in the tutorial resulting in many players probably never resulting to melee combat even though that can be quite fun. You feel like your being flipped off every time you are forced to chamber a round in a weapon after changing mags halfway trough. AI is non existent it feels like you are trapped in a rail-shooter meets very slow walking-simulator. Some of the environments and assets are nice but not really impressive in VR and there is some fun to be had albeit fleeting and in between long boring sections and dialogues with weird pauses that were obviously cut, it seems originally they had more goofs and fun in them but that was probably deemed to offensive. I would agree with that, I find all WWII comedies in poor taste even though I respect people practicing their free speech to do so. This however feels like it was written by a 7 year old who just watched a old WWII action movie and read the Wikipedia page for 5 minutes, played with his friend in the forest the next day and adapted that play session into this script.

Its a trainwreck of a release but by accident it still has something going on, like in a really, really, really bad movie kind of way, if the price was right. Say around, 15 USD I'd recommend it but until then maybe spend your money elsewhere?

*Update*
A giant portion of my total playtime was spend searching for a codebook on 'Our men are trapped', that is simply not there, must be a bug, what a weird oversight. I also finished the game and the one time you'd actually like a Victory screen and see the credits roll, you are actually just send to the main menu. Where you can click continue yourself and get this weird ending scene that again just warps you back to the menu. There is also a crappy game mode called survival that could have been fun but simply isn't. Some survival and multiplayer maps are decent looking but sadly you won't find anyone to play with besides terrible, terrible CPU players. In all the hours I spend online, without cross-play cause ♥♥♥♥ Facebook, I only found one other lonely player and he could only say how ♥♥♥♥♥♥ everything was and that he was going to refund so I was alone once more.

Besides the one missing codebook there are also a handful of achievements that are broken right now. But I'm sure this will probably be fixed in a upcoming patch. The ending was really disappointing and showed just how unfinished the game really is. There basically is no plot, just plot holes. A main character even gets the name of the organization you are part of wrong at some point. There is a guy that is taken away by the Germans but mysteriously pops up later again without any explanation. It feels like they just added some placeholder stuff while experimenting and that never got replaced. The tone of the game is so weird as well. It switches a couple of times with being painfully kid friendly and then all of a sudden a lot of explicit swearing will ensue.

Ending on a small positive note, I would like to mention the game runs mostly smooth at 144hz on my really old but fast CPU and 1080TI. Only a couple of times I resulted to dynamic resolution instead of high due to choppiness. I did make sure almost nothing else was going on on the CPU as I was afraid it wouldn't run properly due to the crazy recommended specs.

Gonna try keeping this as constructive as possible with zero to no emotion.

Graphically, it looks decent, it doesn't stack up to the depth and detail and scale of games like Half Life Alyx, but it doesn't look terrible. It looks good. The scale however feels off, guns feel too big at times and are hard to aim down sights because of this.

Speaking of guns, the loading mechanics are outdated and plainly unacceptable considering we have indie games with loading mechanics leagues ahead of this. The weapons also don't have the impact you'd expect out of a weapon built for war. The guns also don't really match up with your hands very well, I felt disconnected with all the rifles.

The immersion is not there because you're never given a chance. Levels last from about 5 to 10 minutes before you're taken out of the game and met with a "Victory" screen and cheesy audio jingle before fading to text that introduces the next level. Characters are often introduced during this off screen time so you're loaded in with new characters wondering where they came from. It seems as though they omitted transitional scenes and any form of cohesion between levels.

The AI is boring and will often just stand in front of you rather than taking cover or even using basic tactics to try to overcome you. There is no challenge, this is a point and shoot. A glorified shooting gallery.

Performance. The performance is terrible. Judging by the graphical fidelity, I was wondering where the 180GB install was being used, now I know that its because this game is VERY poorly optimized. I'm using a Ryzen 9 3900XT and a RTX3080. I had frame drops and reprojections all over the place on high fidelity and rendering at 50% resolution through SteamVR settings because it was nigh unplayable at 100% and up. Now I feel I could rework some graphical settings in game to bring performance back by reducing certain things I don't care as much about, but there are no graphical settings other than resolution leaving little room for adjustment.

The story. Oh the story, in 30 minutes of playing a managed to get quite a few levels in and characters are stale, lifeless, dolls. Most of their dialogue is said standing around looking at you. The cutscenes often take place with characters standing in a circle or sitting on the back of a moving truck, telling me the devs clearly cut time and resources by not wanting to do actual scenes. The tone feels like a toned down campy kids title as opposed to something that should be tossing you into the horrors and intense torture that is war. All in all, the story failed to hook me in almost an hour of playtime.

Overall, this game is incomplete. This game feels like a 2016 tech demo but longer. I'm not sure if this is an EA cash grab thing or if Respawn weren't able to produce their full vision. (Considering they gave us Jedi Fallen Order, it urkes me they would put out something like this.) I'm extremely disappointed. This quality is unacceptable. It's these types of games that hurt VR. I realize that some people are having fun with it, but its undeniable that we were lied to prerelease, this isn't what we were shown. It's just plain unacceptable. Half Life Alyx set the bar, developers need to meet it.

I cannot recommend this game for its price tag. It feels and plays like a $19.99 title. So disappointing.

UPDATE. Others were saying it gets better so I decided to try it for a few more levels. It only solidified my opinion. It doesn't get better, you just get use to it.

Game is an insult to the vets they interviewed. Doesn't even meet the bare minimum for it to even be a mediocre VR game.

Don't buy this donate the 60bucks to a Vet charity instead.

This game has a ton of issues, and definitely needed more time. Don't buy it for $60, wait half a year for patches, or pick it up on sale in a few months. Requesting a refund.

I'm gonna make it quick.

- The first hour is bad, a few mini levels that last 5 minutes each and feel disjointed and lack any real interest. A really bad way to capture people's attention. It's just an introduction but not a very good one.

- After the first hour, once you reach the Gestapo Headquartes, the game becomes everything you would expect a MoH game to be. Levels open up, they're bigger, they're better and the game takes off and never stops until the end. There's all kinds of mission: tanks, aeroplanes, French towns, Nazi bases, missiles, lots of different stuff.

As poor as the first mission is, the other 5 are just superb. The campaign took me 13 hours the first time. After that you got multiplayer, a gallery with very interesting videos with veterans of war and some challenges for the single player. Lots of content that totally warrant its price.

Without a doubt one of the best VR games I've ever played. Great graphics (the videos don't really do it justice), superb sound, combat is incredibly fun, very good length, lots of content and a game that took me back to the times of the first MoH and MoH: Underground games on PSX. The same brilliance of those old games with great combat and beautiful levels but this time in VR.

It has some issues, like all games do, but I'd have a hard time deciding which one I like better, if this or Half Life: Alyx. I think that pretty much says it all about how much I liked this game.