Recent reviews by Quiddity

Review update @ 653.3 hours of play:
Nerfs to Hexblast/Curses makes playing Witch/Infernalist/Blood Mage too much of a chore the way I want to play. I dislike the requirements of the new parry mechanic (too much annoying clicking and combo'ing). Starting a new economy resulted in a secondary market with a ballpark capitalisation of >USD$90M in less than a week. So it's highly likely GGG will definitely continue starting new economies every instant they can find an excuse to (who wouldn't want to hit riches in 7 days without any risk of running foul of insider trading laws by simply opening a new market for gamers to independently exploit through third parties vendors?). Current focus on microtransactions for cosmetics is just irritating in-game advertising. Sadly, my current feeling is that it is not worthwhile continuing the early access experience. Especially when all "balance updates" essentially mean a completely different game, the experience is too variable to be possibly representative of what the final release might be. The likelihood GGG will just keep nuking all progress and starting new economies by making new leagues or resetting leagues is too high to want to be involved until things stabilise considerably. I have oscillated on whether to recommend this game twice now, and this is the third reversal, again to "Not Recommended" until at least some of these issues resolve.

Review written after 416hrs of play:
Pros: Path of Exile again! Fun core game loop, you kill monsters to get gear. Thanks Grinding Gear Games!
Cons: Path of Exile again! Terrible performance issues with some spells and abilities not being properly optimised for some maps, causing horrible FPS drops. Terrible server latency with lag spikes in the Australia realm sometimes up to an unplayable 300ms when it's crowded. Same game balance annoyance meaning it's largely pointless to grind on your own, and nearly impossible to grind with others! The story of Acts 1, 2, & 3 are wonderful, and honestly I found getting to the end quite fascinating. It was also extremely difficult. All of the 'cons' only show up after the story is done - unfortunately they currently make progressing through the endgame a disheartening and funless experience. Because the upper levels (90+) are almost completely dominated by meta-munchkin Gemling Legionnaires and Stormweavers, all using the same abilities. Other characters can only follow them around hoping to survive long enough to leech enough XP to get past level ~84. For a game with so many character classes to play, this situation at the higher levels is strange.
Update at 455hrs: I am updating this for 2 reasons. Performance improvements (thank-you) and because there's just too much game here to be concerned with who's having the most fun in the endgame (if you can't beat 'em, level up another character and join 'em). Hopefully new updates will bring new strategies instead of "coming soon" options for Witch ascendancy classes, that would resolve all of my gripes. But just know it's an extremely, extremely difficult game which at times can seem as if it's very un-fun when intentionally punishing.

Takes at least 1hr59mins to get to main title screen of game so good luck refunding this!
Whatever price this game/experience is offered at, it's not worth it if EA's servers won't let you log in to play!
Or if they will let you log in, but require you to MFA a unique code, which the VR system won't let you input into the field, or won't let you select a MFA authentication method to use, even.
Might be a brilliant game I don't know but I'm frustrated even just trying to make the game load!
After over an hour I've still not managed to actually play the game, but have over a dozen login keys emailed to me from having to re-load the game so many times.
Constantly crashing, buggy terrible piece of software! Bottom line is this will run but you won't enjoy it - what a waste of time!

I hate this game, I love this game.
I'm terribly addicted to democracy.
*jab*
Unlike the side effects of Stims (by Permacura)!

Anti-fun space stress and debt simulator filled with intentionally disturbing, stress-inducing or story elements irritating enough to be painful.
This title's concept is not deceptive; I simply found the core game loop was not rewarding enough to retain my engagement for very long while also tolerating the above.

This is a decent-looking Warhammer puzzle game which I'm sure is very faithful to a particular version of the tabletop rules, but it does not respect players or their time. This is evident when it deletes saved games, or just dead-ends progress in any number of badly-designed ways in the early game, forcing re-starts.
While this is happening, in-level animated monster introduction events near-constantly grab control of the camera away from the player to show you the same monster's intro animation with sound effects which got old the second time they were shown. There is no option to stop it from doing this, so instead of positioning your pieces and getting into flow, the player must patiently wait while the camera zooms in and out into animations I'd rather turn off anyway, then dumps the camera back in a silly place, because it's the player's problem to focus their characters after all? You can't keep the character centred in the frame automatically, and there is no free camera option, so only four viewpoints.
Seems like a decent and nice-looking game if you can get into the campaign without having to restart too much to avoid traps in the first few missions, but before I could find a way through, I stopped to write this, so caveat emptor I guess.

~@156hrs:
A good friend with much more D&D knowledge and knowledge of Baldur's Gate franchise than me convinced me to try this again in multiplayer. I am changing this review to recommended, but you may need someone similar to play with.
The opening scene is un-skippable biomedical torture, the whole first area is based on it. It does set up the story, but it's disgusting, be prepared for that and don't let it inform your first experience as happened to me.
There are some similarly yuck plotlines worth skipping. Remember you can always just forge ahead to Baldur's Gate!

@~75hrs: A technically brilliant game which can be not at all fun to play - if you are depressed, all characters and their motivations are way too dark and gross. :(
I stopped at Act 2 because I wasn't having fun.

I can't recommend this game because when playing it my son broke one link cable and TWO controllers playing, and damaged other gear. The total cost of this game's damage to HTC equipment approaches $1,000. Before it costs any more most play has been summarily BANNED from Steam accounts with more expensive equipment. The safest way to play this is outside on a standalone unit. You could join a fencing club for a year with what this can cost in an instant! To the developers, if you're reading this, we hate you. You've created so much work in repairs, it utterly destroys enjoyment of VR!

Wonderful tool which allows you to alter all those various annoyances in VR to best fit the way you want to play, saves lots of time and frustration and continues improving with each update. Muchly recommend!

So far I've racked up 595 hours and on the whole, my VR experience continues to be both interesting and gratifying! I have played Elite: Dangerous: Horizons, VRChat, Beat Saber, Synth Riders, Onward, Pavlov, Blade & Sorcery, and lots of other games on Steam and offered through Viveport Infinity. Throughout all my gaming and socialising in VR, SteamVR has been the software which makes the experience possible. The lighthouse hardware is fantastically responsive for FBT, headset, and controllers. The only real "problems" I've experienced with the system have been VRChat's bugging out when going in and out of SteamVR's menus to control my desktop (I don't feel I can realistically blame Valve for this). Of course Half Life: Alyx is wonderful, but though it is a newschool vr-gaming masterpiece, it wasn't the catalyst for my buying VR hardware, just a happy accident I owned the requisite hardware to play. Sadly, I remain incredibly disappointed that Valve have denied availability for Index hardware to Oceania/Australia, a sad thing I hope changes as soon as possible. I feel the people working on SteamVR at Valve are put in an invidious position, every change they make to this software risks breaking functionality in so many games which rely upon it working flawlessly as expected to run. SteamVR supports many different hardware platforms, with many more to come. It must be very difficult to track who will be upset by every change, and a brief look through the posts on each update confirms this assumption. I am sure people who write this stuff DO at least occasionally read through these messages, and just in case that's happening now - Thank you, I appreciate your efforts! Please keep up the good work on SteamVR ^_^

Are you looking for a single player VR game which finally makes you happy in the pants you bought your HMD and set aside a play area the size of a child's nursery for your adult-sized entertainment?
Half Life: Alyx has everything you need.. Particularly: jump-scares, bio-hazards, dangerous gun-play.
Also jokes provided in the style of "I'm a Fighter Jet" Rhys Darbies (Noo Zulland yaaaay)!
If you're not so into horror, this game is _utterly_terrifying_. There is just enough humor that filthy casuals like myself are able to shakily laugh while incessantly dropping ammunition clips as salivating headcrabs jump at your face. You can't get away. They will find you. They will scare you.
Slow-moving zombies weave and shamble towards you, then suddenly throw heavy objects at your HMD-enclosed face. Remember that ammo you kept dropping? You will wish you had it in your backpack.
You can pick up and manipulate practically any asset in all the environments, and this is fascinating and remarkable at first, but when you're in a firefight with Combine soldiers you will hate having to search through every cupboard, knock stuff off every shelf to look behind packets of powdered eggs and other detritus to find resin and ammunition. You will hate the level designers for their attention to detail.
But all this will wash away in a flood of happiness when you find you can put a traffic cone on your head to ward off barnacles, a respirator on to deflect headcrabs. You can fill an entire bucket with grenades then run around screaming, throwing ridiculous numbers of grenades at anything which moves. At this point the game becomes what we'd all like to think of as "Coronavirus Simulator 2020", but then it shifts gears.
With the appearance of Jeff, who is terrible.
It seems like everyone hates Jeff. and I am no exception. Jeff is a boss monster who hurt me. Physically as well as my pride, he is so scary and terrible I injured my hand flinging a virtual vodka bottle into my physical wall. Yes, really. I stopped playing for a day because of that.
But what brought me back was the minigames! An entire puzzle game could and ought to be made from these in-game unlocking puzzles (NOT the multi-tool ones augh)! They are the best minigames I've ever played bar none, not just VR. Unlocking things gives you access to the fabricators, which make your guns more shooty-betterer!
This makes you feel powerful, and in the third and second-last levels you WILL feel like some kind of elite soldier, kicking Combine grunts and heavies and their pet drones up and down the corridors and open spaces of the most amazing environments I've ever seen Valve produce.
As is traditional of the Half Life franchise, the ending leaves you hankering for more, but remains somewhat...