Man, I really wanted to like this game. All the trappings are there - solid graphics, phenomenal optimization (runs great!) and art design that I can get behind. There's some tiny rough edges that aren't really worth discussing. Overall the presentation is great!

But the guns... the guns :(

First hour was fun, but something seemed a little *off*. I figured I'd get over it, but rounding the corner on hour two, I had to face it - the guns in this game just don't feel good to me. The designs and everything are really imaginative. I'm not about to say the game should have mil-sim guns or anything like that. I don't mind that they aren't hitscan (I *love* Compound's guns).
But they deal so little damage that combat - y'know, the main part of the game - starts to feel like a slog.
Sidenote: The exception here is the revolver, that gun feels great. Unfortunately the ammo system doesn't really allow you to use a single gun for too long.
Since the player has such little damage output, gunfight encounters all play out the same: Hide around a corner while robots walk towards you in a straight line and take them out 1-by-1 with revolver headshots. Its a shame, because the areas that you're clearly meant to fight in are, again, imaginative and well-crafted.
Encounters with other creatures are at least interesting, but again marred by all the enemies feeling like damage sponges.

Final straw for me was a sort of turret section - I'm riding on a platform moving along an orange lava river. Orange lava monsters that throw orange projectiles start spawning rapidly. They're too far away for the shotgun to be effective, and the revolver shoots too slowly to be viable here (you need to shoot down projectiles that are lobbed at you; the revolver has a very slow rate of fire) - and the weapon system is too slow for quick-swapping to be an option. But the pistol, the most best option here, takes about 1-1.5 mags to kill one enemy, and there's something like 8 on screen. Trying to aim at the tough-to-see damage sponges while dodging tough-to-see projectiles was just... boring. This section was then immediately followed up by another corner-camping gunfire battle. And that's where I quit out.

I dunno, maybe the problem is me - it seems like other VR players are loving this game, and honestly that's a net positive for them *and* the dev. (Which, also, holy crap, this is a solo dev project, which is mind-blowing!) You love to see it! But its nuts to me that people are putting it in the same league as HL: Alyx, etc.

That said, I won't refund it -- I feel like my core complaints are mostly addressable by tweaking weapons stats & damage values, maybe they'll do that. Or maybe they'll use the money to make the next game an absolute banger, which they're clearly capable of.

PS - to all VR devs out there (I'm looking at you too, Boneworks/labs) - please hire voice actors if you're going to have extensive dialogue in your game, OR just don't write you game to have 2+ minute sections that's just being talked at by someone.

Initially inspiring, it becomes later excruciating and repetitive. Bigger hordes and unfair boss fights follow each another. What a bummer. Boring and stressful for me. Ended it in god mode - colorful graphics - lol.
A little bit hurts me in addition the sharp not bevelled edges of many objects (very low complexity).

While I didn't enjoy it I can see how others can.

Vertigo 2 starts out interesting, but slowly devolves into genuinely frustrating, infuriating, and just outright awful gameplay as it progresses. The sheer number of times I got save-locked into nearly unwinable fights is just unforgiveable.

The difficulty wildly and violently flails between "I have full healing and no reason to use it" to "I have no healing and must survive on only the natural 50% regen for the entirety of a 4 part boss fight."

The game is utterly saturated with combat cheap shots. See a healing item? Sure there will be melee units who can each half-health damage you instantly spawning the moment you try to get it. Everything feels remarkably cheap, and almost everything devours your health, leaving you no choice but to be either full health, or living on a prayer hoping they miss long enough for you to deal damage. Combat is nothing short of either boring, or infuriatingly painful having to eat cheap shot after cheap shot or being just outright swarmed by suicidal enemies who just face tank you.

Level design is often nonsensical, leading to a lot of painful back tracking and skyrim-esc self-looping rooms. Its not always apparent where you need to go, and the pacing drags on painfully long for some levels.

The Lore is the only redeeming quality of the game, and the only reason I completed it. Which is strange to say that a game that is borderline "Rick and Morty non-serious" actually has a decent sub-plot when its not being perpetually self referential or just cheesy.

And yea, I do not encourage you to play Vertigo 1. I made the mistake of playing it, and it is honestly this but shorter and even more riddled with the same problems.

Worse is the game has some real potential, its just buried underneath agonizingly bad combat and level design. Absolutely reeks of "we ran out of ideas, so lets just, uh, THROW EVERYTHING AT THE SAME TIME! THAT'S ENGAGING RIGHT?" Only combat utterly falls apart when you have next to no cover and no means of defending yourself outside of healing item spam. Atleast Vertigo 1 had a laser sword you could cheekily use to defend yourself from projectiles, Vertigo 2 has nothing and expects you to "Doom 2016" the game only you don't have the health, speed, or mobility to do that. So you get stuck in a corner and relying exclusively on the one most broken gun in the game, the shotgun. (It's so broken they actually have to take it away from you at the very end.)

okay, so good things first:
the gunplay is fun
the weapons are nice
environments are neat conceptually
enemies and bosses are varied and have good AI

now, the bad:
people keep saying this game is hard, and ill raise a point that you can make any game hard by throwing this many spongy enemies at the player. the worst 2 enemies are introduced at the same time (the centaur archers and the flies) and if im being honest i never got the impression the game was genuinely hard, just that the enemy placement and health pool seemed to be overlooked.
the writing. dear god the writing. if you still keep up with borderlands and laugh at all the jokes then you probably wont have any issues with this but eventually i just started putting in my airpods so i wouldnt have to hear anyone.

story is alright but the difficulty is mad wonky, at some parts it gets so swarmy that its impossible to beat without using the built in-game cheats. feels like it was never properly balanced for combat to feel engaging almost a great game but missing the vital combat aspect of the action rpg genre

I really want to give this game a chance, but it feels way off based on the first vertigo. The guns and all the physic based interactions feel very floaty and clunky. To the point where playing the game feels like a chore, and that sucks because visually it's amazing. The textures, lighting, and enemies are all great. But it's overshadowed by the weird new UI for the gun selection and hand interactions. The bigger spaces could use more work, some of the areas feel like they got more love than others. I'll keep pushing through, but snappy gun play is what will really make this game shine. Would be awesome if there was a sensitivity for the physic based interactions that you could mess with in the settings.

Not Sure Why This is Praised – Feels Unfinished and Clunky

I really wanted to like Vertigo 2, but I’m honestly confused about why it gets so much praise. It has so many frustrating design choices that make it feel unfinished and unpolished.

Movement is a Complete Mess
The teleport system is hard-coded to your movement trackpad, meaning you constantly teleport by accident while trying to walk. On the other hand, when you do want to teleport with precision (like in platforming sections), you can't prevent your character from walking at the same time—leading to endless frustrating deaths. Why on earth can’t we rebind our buttons like in other VR games? Who thought this movement system was a good idea? It’s awful.

The World Feels Large but Empty
At first glance, the levels seem expansive and impressive, but there's almost nothing to interact with. A huge part of what makes VR games immersive is the ability to play around with objects, yet Vertigo 2 feels lifeless in that regard. There's no incentive to explore beyond the occasional secret room for weapon upgrades—ammo refills automatically, and there’s no rewarding scavenging or hidden details to uncover. You’re just moving forward, ignoring everything that isn’t a combat encounter.

Combat Feels Cheap, Not Challenging
If exploration isn’t the focus, surely the combat makes up for it? Unfortunately, no. The AI is dumb and predictable—either charging at you brainlessly or awkwardly running into objects while shooting. To compensate, the game just makes enemies ridiculously tanky and lets them deal massive amounts of damage. Even basic enemies take a full magazine to kill. Instead of being fun or strategic, fights feel like bullet-sponge slugfests where you just dump ammo into damage-sponge enemies while trying not to get shredded in seconds.

Final Thoughts
There’s so much wasted potential here. The game could be great, but it's held back by baffling design choices and a lack of polish. If the devs want to make this enjoyable, they need to:

- Fix the movement system (or at least let players rebind controls).
- Balance the combat—increase player health, reduce enemy damage, and add more enemies instead of just making them tankier.
- Make the world actually interactive so exploration feels rewarding instead of just something you rush through.
Until then, I can’t recommend it. Vertigo 2 is a frustrating experience that constantly gets in its own way.

The game is out for 9 months and there is a game breaking menu bug that breaks 50% of the menus when I accidentally touch touchpad as to scroll down the menu, the list disappears. In the main menu and in the game itself on HTC Vive.
If the bug gets fixed, it's better game than Vertigo Remastered as the newer game should be always better :D

The games combat system feels good, and the graphics are good, but theres just one part I kept getting stuck on like 7 times in a row. Every time I got to the Commander 13 part, nobody would continue the dialogue and i couldnt progress in the game any further. Ive had the game just stopping everything happen several times before this as well.