Recent reviews by [DG] | Homunk

TL;DR: yes.

Beat Saber is a game that sounds like a gimmick on paper, but has become one of my favourite go-to VR games. The core principle is simple: blocks come racing towards you and you have to cut them with your lightSABERs, which usually happens on the BEAT of a song playing during that level (mind=blown). Over the time I have collected some things I don't quite enjoy, but more on that later.

If you have the faintest interest in rhythm games, music or dancing, you will find something to like here. I never considered myself someone who likes to "dance", but once the campaign told me to swing my arms as much as possible on one level, it just clicked for me and I had one of the best honeymoon-periods with a game of my life. To the spectator you of course look absolutely ridiculous, but you will feel like Michael flippin' Jackson and - in my case at least - I usually start bopping and bouncing on a well-made level. On a good day you'll be endlessly telling yourself "just one more song" while your wife (or mom) yells at you to finally come to dinner for the last hour (sorry, honey :U).

For the price you can do waaaay worse in terms of VR-Titles (or rhythm games), so give it a go. The base-content will keep you entertained for some time, and there are custom songs made by the community - if you're willing to hop through a few hoops regarding modding your game. Beware though, that you might end up buying lots of DLCs along the way.

Once the honeymoon-period is over, however you'll find that the quality of the experience heavily relies on the quality of the beatmaps (=how the blocks appear during a song). Even the official ones can be hit or miss.

You see, the magic word is flow: the best songs are the ones that make the movements you have to do "feel" right, which is very hard to put into words. For me, there's nothing worse in beatsaber than cutting the same boring, uninspired patterns, which then are of course mirrored and repeated to fill the rest of the song.
On the other end of the spectrum most beatmap-creators - including the devs - unfortunately operate under the misconception that faster and more complicated means better, so prepare to flail your arms like an electrocuted madman in higher difficulty levels, flow of the song be damned.

In terms of music selection: the base game has the most "fitting" songs for the kind of experience it tries to convey, even if the songs might be not your usual taste. I certainly wouldn't listen to them outside the game, but ingame it just makes sense.

For the community maps: Prepare to sift through massive amounts of off-beat or simply poorly made beatmaps. Luckily, there is an active community curating songs and playlists... hope you like the hip and trendy millenials choice of house and pop or anime, because that's 95% of what you're getting. I'm aware taste can be very subjective, but if you really, really want to cut blocks to a certain song you're usually better off learning the editor for yourself. Still, it's free and theoretically "endless" content, so I cannot really complain about that.

Free. Yay.
Very Hard. Sort of yay.
Very frustrating with lots of waiting, lots of fidgeting around and throwaway gimmicks where proper content should be. Not yay. At all.

Messenger is a nice game, but the flaws it had get pushed to the spotlight very much in this DLC. Not sure if I can complain about free content but after failing the punch-out minigame for the third time in a row and having to do it all from the beginning each time is leaving me in a very "not recommendy" mood right now. Alt-F4'd very fast.

My wife and I made it a habit to play the witcher 3 together instead of netflixing or similair over the past few months. It took a few tries to get into it and it was a menacing and daunting task at first. We went into the game totally blind, not knowing anything of the books or the games that came before.

Here I sit, having finished the main storyline and most of the side content (took us 120 hrs.), writing a game review. Something I hardly ever do.
As i write this, there is some dreadful feeling of emtpiness inside me and that's because of two reasons.

Firstly because over the last few months this was our ritual. Firing up the game, slaying monsters, conversing with peasants and kings alike, laughing, crying and worrying about the situations we found ourselves in. We were genuinely immersed in the struggles of characters big and small, well written and relatable. In the end we sat there, watching the credits. Reflecting on our journey. Seeing Geralt and pals off with the same bittersweet feeling you get when you finish that one book or watch the last episode of your favourite show. You know it's over. Those people you grew attached to, you have to "let them go" in a way. At least we still have the DLCs and the older games to look forward to.

Secondly because I knew it could only go downhill from here. I showed my wife "teh best gaem evarr made". Any other game we will play together after the Witcher 3 will be "it's good, except for XY". You will not find a more complete package. A game that has a story this gripping with good looking, yet well performing graphics and a core gameplay loop as fullfilling. No soundtrack as fitting, no scenery as convincing, no character models as appealing to look at (or appalling, given the need), no world as believeable. CD Projekt Red have put an insane amount of polish (no pun intended) into every bit of this game, no matter how small and insignificant it may have seemed at the time. And you can tell.

To name a few outstanding occurances that made me go "gold star, you Polish guys":

• You can start a quest "sideways" by discovering something accidently you might have not known about yet. The game still finds a way to get you to complete that quest in a way that doesn't feel like its just leading you by the nose. At any point in any quest there is always a logical, understandable and very relatable reason why you're walking from X to Y, doing Z.
  
• We had the chance to visit a character later in the game and take our revenge. We however had already killed said character before. When Geralt said "sure, lets pay that guy a visit", we finally thought we had found a way to break the game with its countless branching story paths. We didn't. Without trying to spoil to much, the game went "did you not pay attention? This character is in the story as well" and we sat there, mouth agape, mesmerized by the fact that the storywriters kept this in mind, just in case someone tries to be funny.
  
• Your choices truly matter. Most of the time, however, not immediately. Morality, Ethics and the question of good and evil have always been the strong suit of the Witcher universe. Something you thought heroic now will come to bite you later. Worse, it usually doesn't come to bite YOU but the characters you grew attached to. The tension in the cutscenes is real because you're never sure you did the "right" thing at some point before. Once we were done with the game we checked the Wiki page and saw what could happened in our playthrough... boy oh boy, we got lucky...
  
• Some peasant tried to talk ♥♥♥♥ to Geralt. We drew our sword. Said peasant tried not to talk ♥♥♥♥ anymore.

Not that I wish to say this game is perfect.

• A few glitches and bugs occured, but never to such a point that it broke the game. Think of it as little amusing eastereggs maybe.
  
• All the possibilites, side content, potions and blueprints can be overwhelming at first. Especially in the beginning the game has the very bad habit of popping up ten tutorial textboxes once you pick up a leaf. It really takes some time getting into the game and mechanics, but once you do it grips you.
  
• The combat, although easily the best of the series, can be irritating sometimes. Animations tend to have this long (as in frantic-combat-I'm-trying-to-dodge-this-lightning-bolt-long) blending period in which you might get stunlocked or Geralt flat out refuses to acknowledge your button inputs (looking at you, fistfighting right after parrying). The camera, both locked on and not can also be dodgy sometimes. I imagine once I replay this on a harder difficulty it will be responsible for the occasional teeth grind. Maybe it's better with mouse and keyboard, I couldn't tell as we played on controller.

To finish of this boo, review:
Get this game. Even if you don't like RPGs. Even if you don't really care about video games too much. CD Projekt Red deserves your money. They are the antithesis to EA, Activision and comparable companies that put money first and everything second. CDPR made their way from shoddy Neverwinter-Nights-Engine Games which you had to try really hard to love them in spite of their flaws all the way a triple A game Studio, that can easily give Bethesda a run for their money, had they been given close to the same kind of publicity.

trying to rip off both tf2 and cod and ends up with the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ aspects of both. expected some quick oldschool bunnyhoppy shooter with some parkour elements strewn in. ended up with a constant ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of grenades and endlessly revived teammates and enemies, pretty much just one gun to choose from (the majority are submachineguns. theyre the only viable option) and the same three maps repeated ad nauseum. singleplayer is non-existant. for what it has to offer visually, the game runs like crap. speaking of visuals, the mix between cartoonish proportions and realistic textures does not work at all, and is not reflected in the environmental design. at best, you could say it falls in the uncanny valley. the customisation option is a pretty useless gimmick if not even a one that hinders gameplay, since you cant tell who is on your side and what class theyre playing.

this verdict might sound token, but take the advice: dont get it. even if its free. wasted 50 bucks. biggest piece of buyers remorse i ever had to shame myself for.