despatch: Entity Astray

despatch: Entity Astray

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Rune Nov 14, 2020 @ 10:28am
First impressions - using Rift CV1 (oled)
It's not a bad game, but gpu demanding (=lacks optimization). As suspected the game supports native Oculus drivers - I furthermore suspect that this game was developed using the Rift CV1. It's so dark you can notice the spud (oled mura), but not so dark that the spud is easily seen and annoying - thus devs seem to have found a nice balance between darkness and spud, lol. Not sure I'll bother checking this game with a lcd hmd (I have the Valve Index), I believe this game profits a lot from oled. I tested the game using a GTX 1080 and i7 7700K with 16GB 3200 MHz.

Graphics settings are either medium, high, epic or ultra. Using CV1 ss 2.0, Ultra might require a RTX 3080 or similar for 90 fps. I chose High, and that's fine thanks to my great buddy, Mr. ASW 2.0 ;-) I get 90 fps from time to time with those settings.

The game seems to have an interesting story - not sure what it's about yet - but reminds me a lot of Red Matter without any Russian themes, lol. Graphics did remind me of Lone Echo, but it's still slightly below Lone Echo quality. Devs said graphics were AA quality - I might not necessarily disagree - and that's judging using High settings (and ss 2.0, which might be a lot more demanding than Ultra + ss 1.5). Lighting and shadows are great.

Controls are a problem, there's only snap turning and controller directed movements - thus no hmd directed movement. You do get full locomotion though - but no choice for left or right handedness. Feels old school and like made by devs who have been sleeping for the last 2 or 3 years - and thus have no idea of how modern VR controls should be.

For the price this seems like a nice experience, although controls need more polish. I will not be refunding this game. I've only tested using CV1 and Touch - might be much worse using a lcd hmd and non-Touch controllers, because I'm convinced this game was made for the Rift CV1.
Last edited by Rune; Nov 14, 2020 @ 10:35am