Recent reviews by Reaper

It's about the tech behind it. NVidia Remix. I don't think people realise how huge its impact will be on the modding landscape. NVidia Remix is essentially black magic.

Portal with RTX isn't a "remaster" in the way many gamers imagine it. It wasn't a bunch of devs remaking the game from scratch. Most of the bulk work is done automatically, using NVidia Remix. This is a piece of software that basically hijacks the rendering of the game. Before everything gets displayed on your screen, NVidia Remix "steals" all the game's assets and replaces them with new ones.

This means old textures get instantly replaced with new versions, either done automatically using AI to upscale the textures or with custom replacements. Model meshes can be improved or replaced outright with newer versions. All light source positions are recorded and RTX is used to calculate reflections and shadows. This is the equivalent of someone hijacking your eyes and replacing everything you see with higher quality models, textures and lighting; BEFORE the information even reaches your brain.

This software will allow any old DirectX 8/9 games to be remastered, without needing to build a new game from scratch. New textures, new lighting, new models - most of it will be able to be done automatically, with some custom fine-tuning here and there to make the experience perfect. The potential of this software is essentially infinite. Imagine all your beloved, nostalgic games, remastered fully.

Half-Life 2, The Elder Scrols, NFS Underground 2, GTA Vice City/San Andreas, the old COD's and BF's, Mass Effect, Bioshock, STALKER, and so so so many more. All with remastering potential, at our fingertips. For a fraction of the effort it would take to do so at the moment.




I suggest you watch this video explaining the tech. I promise you will not be dissapointed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg52-HZhrFc

Automobilista 2 is fun. Just, fun. So much fun. Consistency in the physics and the fun of racing are AMS2's cornerstones. Sure, you may have other sims that do *some* things better, but Automobilista 2 is probably the best overall package out there.

iRacing may have better and more competitive multiplayer, but AMS2 doesn't cost a kidney per year to play. rFactor 2 may have better physics, but AMS2 has superb VR integration and an actually good UI. Project Cars 2 (RIP) may have had more cars, but the cars in AMS2 are all consistent physics and handling-wise, and the playerbase is way more mature.

Automobilista 2 may not be perfect, and may not excel in any one area, but is consistently solid in all aspects. And with a passionate team that constantly keeps improving the game and adding new content - I cannot wait to see this game keep growing.

Foreword: if you're new to VR and are looking for a good entry level game, go for it. The game is very enjoyable (up to a certain point) and the weapon interactivity by itself is sure to provide some fun times. So if this is one of the first games for your brand new headset, definitely go for it.

TL;DR: Shooting weapons, especially two handed ones, just isn't fun. The guns have no weight, everything feels floaty, virtual stock barely works, consistent aiming is impossible, good luck (with some weapons) getting a magazine into the mag well on first try. Look to Boneworks, VTOL-VR and Into the Radius to see how to do physicality properly. Guns are modeled very nicely however. Enemies aren't fun to fight, gamemodes are lacking. TF2 gamemode is probably the best thing this game has to offer.

The game is admittedly loads of fun for a while. There is a ridiculous number of guns to fiddle around with, from the most well-known to some obscure appearances, and just finicking around with each weapon and testing them out to see how they work is really enjoyable. Plus, you even have some combat scenarios to test out your shiny pew pew sticks on some human-sized hot dogs. However, I couldn't help but grow more and more dissatisfied and annoyed with how the game handles physical interactions with objects.

It is only after a longer play time, and after playing other games that handle the problem of the lack of physicality in VR much better than H3VR does, that the cracks in the game started to really show. Because of the nature of VR, objects in games naturally end up feeling weightless. If a game executes this wrongly, it will feel completely unsatisfying to pick up and handle objects. Now, in a game about guns, where aiming a weapon is dependent on body position, hand and shoulder support, weapon weight, etc... making things feel "real", and making the weapon feel like it has weight, is crucial to making shooting said guns fun. H3VR doesn't really do that...

- You don't have physical hands, instead you have these floating blue spheres which do not connect in any way to a physical object, so you can never be quite sure where you're holding a weapon from.
- Try successfully shoving a mag into a mag well, on the first try, when you don't have any clue where exactly your hands are. Bonus points for tiny mag wells like on the Sten gun or MP40.
- The guns don't have any sort of weight or physicality to them. You can grab a two handed weapon and do the windmill with your hands as if there was nothing there. The guns don't collide with your body, which is arguably the most important part that guns should collide with.
- This means that keeping a two handed weapon steady is impossible, since not only can both of your hands still move independently of each other, but there is no shoulder/pectoral support for the stock of the weapon.
- There is a virtual stock, however it does not stick the weapon enough to your shoulder for it to make a difference.

Let me put it this way: grab a two-handed airsoft weapon (or a broom, I guess?), and hold it as if you were aiming down the sights, pushing it back against your shoulder. Now turn around in place, trying to keep the sights aligned through your movements. Not that hard, huh? Okay, now drop everything, and just hold out your hands as if you were holding a two handed weapon. Now raise your thumbs and line them up as if they were your sights (or tie a piece of string to the tip of your thumbs, you get the idea). Okay, now try moving around while keeping your thumbs aligned. See how how hard it is to keep your thumbs aligned, and how you constantly have to re-align the sights? Now realise that all that is essentially how the game handles aiming with two handed weapons. It makes target acquisition and aiming while turning a total pain in the ass to deal with. And don't even get me started on trying to aim a sniper rifle.

All this to say, it just... doesn't feel good to shoot guns. This is on top of the game's other issues, like how unsatisfying it is to shoot the game's human-sized hot dog enemies. They have no limbs and no momentum around their movements, making it impossible to tell what they are doing in the middle of combat. They work well as static targets, but much less so as moving targets. Essentially, you're just fighting against floating gun range targets - with a weapon glued to them. And, there are barely any gamemodes. A large majority of them are simply gun ranges or test scenarios, and the ones that are combat scenarios suffer from long down time periods with nothing to do and uninspired level design.

It's telling when the gamemode I've had fun with consistently is the TF2-inspired gamemode. Because the TF2 weapons are so comically large, and because aiming is usually an afterthought with them, all the issues about hand floaty-ness and lack of weight of interactions are barely ever an issue. And because the weapons (and consequently, the weapon interaction zones) are so much larger, you have a wider margin of error with your movements; loading a shotgun shell that's half the size of your palm isn't really an issue.

VTOL-VR, Boneworks and Into the Radius VR are good examples of how to do VR physicality properly. It is sad to see a game with so much potential, and with so much work put into it, be dragged down by bad game design and a fundamental lack of understanding of what makes VR feel satisfying.

TL;DR Buy it, it's an exceptional co-op puzzle game. You don't even need two copies because of the friend pass, so actual price is 10 bucks if you split with a friend. Albeit a bit short, you'll have a lot of fun.

Honestly, one of the best co-op puzzle games out there. It seems that half of its puzzles are the We Were Here type (i.e. lower intensity but slightly more complex) and the other half are Keep Talking and Nobody Explode's style (i.e. frantic, usually relying on some sort of "is X this?" and symbol matching puzzles). Of course, the range of puzzles is much more vast than I'm describing, but this is just a simplification to give you a taste of what to expect. None of them very hard, of course. All the puzzles are well paced, so you won't get bored with only doing one type.

As for the game itself, it's clear that a lot of love and soul was poured into it. The artstyle and character design is unique, the settings are gorgeous (even the hacker ones!), and a lot of thought was put into what each character's role is. Simply put, you won't just be solving puzzles as a hacker and providing the clues as an agent. The two roles are often reversed during gameplay, with both the agent and the hacker serving as guides to the other.

Honestly, its only fault is that it's too short! I need more! As it stands, it takes about 3 hours to complete the campaign with one character, and apparently 5.4 to completely finish the game. However, devs say DLC is (maybe) in the works. I honestly can't wait for more missions!

I'm sorry to say, but after the release of S.O.G. Prairie Fire, new standards were just set for Creator DLC. Even though Global Mobilization was the first of its kind, and clearly a lot of work was put into it, I sadly cannot recommend it after seeing the masterpiece that is S.O.G.

You can put about 4 kilos of napalm on a single plane.





Never have I wanted to break the Geneva Convention more than I do now.

It is with these kinds of games that I wish Steam had a neutral review button. The game has some amazing points. The artstyle is unique and refreshing, the music is captivating, the lore is mind-bogglingly intricately crafted, and the characters are multi-layered and complex. And the story, by god the story is simply brilliant. It is clear that a lot of work and love went into creating Sir Brante's world, and making it feel as real as possible. If this were a book, I would stop the review here.

However, this is a game. And as a game, the gameplay kind of flops. The store description and tags make it seem like a free-choice RPG, but it's more like a choose-your-own adventure visual novel. You're not playing your own character, you're playing as Sir Brante. And Sir Brante has a specific path in life that he must follow closely lest you want to have future choice options locked out due to lack of stats. It's similar to the Paragon/Renegade system in ME1 and ME2, where if you didn't stick to your path, it would heavily limit the number of choices later in the game. And the same is the case for Sir Brante. Once set on your path and personality, you are railroaded to a pre-set destiny, and any deviation from the path could lead to locked-out options in the future, death, or even a game over.

Stats are probably the worst aspect of this. The stats are grossly inconsistent. Some stats, despite being "important" to your chosen path, end up being barely used and essentially wasted choices that could have been used to improve other stats. Some choices are locked behind stat requirements, and you will be forced to min-max your choices in order to reach those required stats (even though those choices might be out of character for your Brante). If you fail to reach those requirements, there will be little chance to gain extra points in those stats for future choices, causing a positive feedback loop where you will always not have enough stats for story options. The most egregious examples of this are some story choices that add to the stat that was used as the requirement for the choice! And to add to all this, once you max out a stat, there is no reason to ever touch that stat again; you gain nothing out of choosing options that improve a maxed out stat, again forcing you to min max and make out-of-character choices.

(TL;DR) All this results in a game with a gorgeous universe, lore and characters, but that is strictly limiting as to the path you can choose for Sir Brante. If you enjoy these kinds of choose-your-own adventure visual novels, where your choices end up on a railroad, more power to you, you're probably going to love this game. However, if you were looking for a text-based RPG with free choice, you need look elsewhere.

EDIT: Should also mention the game gives you the option to hide the consequences (i.e. stat gains/losses) of your choices. The devs "recommend" leaving consequences on, but in actuality you're required to do so. Playing with hidden consequences will ruin your experience as the game was not at all designed with that in mind. Why include the option in the first place, if it clearly wasn't part of the design process, is beyond me...

I'm European and this is what I imagine U-haul is like.

Ignore my playtime, I've already finished the game on the Epic Store, but decided to buy it *again* on Steam.

As others have said, this game is simply a masterpiece. It's best you experience it blindly, with as less information about the game as possible. All you really need to know is that it's a space exploration game, and that there's no combat whatsoever. Other than that, let the game itself reveal its secrets.

Gun safety training 101