Recent reviews by EternalGamer

A very cool, short teaser of what is to come. It's not a full blown game or even experience by any stretch, but it's well made, it's free, it's Star Wars, and it's in VR made for roomscale. What more do you want? Check it out. Highly recommended.

Left Hand Path is a first person view action RPG a lot like Vanishing realms but darker, harder, and more horror influenced. The game takes some nice cues from Dark Souls in terms of design. Short cuts that open pathways back to earlier areas, a persistent world where you keep your items, shortcuts and bosses defeated even if you die, etc.

One thing that sets it apart is that this is primarily a spell casting game. You spend a lot of time drawing signs in the air and channeling the spells through your staff. Sometimes even sitting your staff on the floor to conduct rituals. The air drawing is unique and feels really good.

This game may be early access but there is already as much here than many VR games. If you are tired of endless wave shooters and want a "real game" for your Vive, this is an excellent choice at a cheap price. The developer is very active on forums and is making continious quality of life improvements.

Note that you'll probably die a lot at first. But in time you'll get better. Fear not the darkness. Choose the Left-hand Path.

First, I'll get an obvious point out of the way. I know you are thinking. This game looks terrible and not terribly interesting. Why would I pay $15 for this? I thought the same thing. In fact, I put off buying it at least five or six times, sometimes adding it to my cart and leaving it, but never going through the transaction. Buying this game is a lot like taking bad tasting medicine. It's not an enjoyable purchase, but afterwards the game's effect on you will kick in and you'll be feeling pretty alright about it.



What you can't really gather from looking at screens or even the videos is that the gameplay, as others have reported here, is really damn good.

I admit I'm a tough sell on multiplayer shooters. It's not a genre I even bother with in recent years. Part of the reason is that it's just not fun to get stomped over and over again by people who are already far better at them. Part is just the game play loop of them is a bit stale to me and too twitch laden. But this isn't your standard FPS game. Far from it. There is a lot of thought going on here. Thought about which load out to use at different points in the map based upon what your team mates are using. Thoughts about positioning. Because people can't just run freely in this game like in most FPS games, taking up good positions and holding good positions matters a lot more. And because it uses room scale, you'll catch yourself doing cool stuff like desparately shooting a teleport on way while crawling back towards cover, while looking the other way while shooting cover fire. Or standing tip toe to see over a box, or blind fire overing it while you paint and area in front of you. This isn't just a typical twitch based shooter. Or even a stop and pop cover shooter. It is something different. Something that rewards thinking about spacial awareness in a more fundemental way.

A lot of VR experiences are about visually placing you in a space. But this game is about the mechanics of placing you in a 3D space. Give it $15 and 20 minutes. There's more game here than most VR offerings combined.


PROS:

-Active multiplayer scene - plenty of people playing, at least this weekend.

-A more thoughtful shooter. The Two handed vs. One handed Paint and Shoot dynamic is very clever.

-Visible projectile (a la Doom) - this is a huge plus in my book. You can actively dodge shots.

-Not nearly as "twitch" as most shooters due to limited mobility. Nice pacing.

-online play seems very stable and solid, especially for an early access game this early in development. No port forwarding nonsense or other issues. Jump in and play.

CONS

-When a team gets an advantage it is literally an uphill battle and really tough to turn the tide.

-Players who don't work together lose. You have to be comfortable talking or have a buddy play with you if you want to get the most out of this game, I think. At the very least, you have to pay attention to what your squad is doing and try to compliment each other/back each other up.

-People who are above you and in cover have too much advantage. It needs something like grenades desperately. It's too hard to even the playing field.

-Needs more maps and some some kind of unlock/level system (some kind of persistence between plays)

-Art and animation really needs some kind of clear style/direction

-mechanics are simple but could use some kind of tutorial/tips aside from the writtne controls on the wall.

I'm posting this as an early access warning. The Nest is currently a very cool "proof of concept." It is not yet a game in any real sense of the word. It's meager offering even for an early access game. Still it's fairly cheap and it shows promise. I would strongly suggest holding out until there is more content here and keep an eye on the developer's updates.

I really wish some developers would be more careful to have a more full project to offer before putting their projects on sale and The Nest is a perfect example. It's a great concept and what is here is well executed. I hate to review it poorly but this isn't currently a game. It's a $10 tech demo.

Holoball plays a great game of VR tennis/pong with a very cool Tron aesthetic and solid techno soundtrack. If that sounds good to you, that's pretty much all you need to know. The ball physics feel good. The settings let you scale your play area for saftey concerns.

As with many VR games, the look in screen shots/videos don't do the look and feel of the game justice. When you are playing, you feel like you are in Tron playing Pong.

This is a great choice if you want a "Wii Tennis" like experience in VR (which is way cooler than Wii Tennis ever was).

Pros:

-Very nice aesethetics; great visuals and great sound track
-intuitive easy pick and play controls for gamers and non-gamers
-intense; a nice work out
-trash talking AI robot talks trash at you.

Cons:

-Wish there was a bit more of a single player campaign in the form of a tournament ladder (AIs with differnet names) to give it a bit more persistence between sessions.
-game can be dangerous if you aren't careful
-Could use a bit more options (music/environment color/changes).

The Lab is the Wii Sports of VR and I mean that in the most complimentary way. The game collection here has been polished to a sheen and they are games anyone can and will love.

But it's also a wonderful love letter to the Portal Universe in the same way Nintendo Land pays homage to Nintendo's universe. Everywhere you look in it, there are in jokes related to Apeture Science and the Portal themed VR min-game/experiences here are literally some of the funniest stuff in the Portal universe.

Valve often gets criticized for "not making new games" but honestly, this is a fantastic new game by them. It shouldn't be underestimated. It's great pack in title and I go back to a number of the games in it again and again.

I'm a pretty amateur pool player and have on a very casual interest in real life in pool. I mean amateur in the "oh look I hit a ball, yay" kind of amateur. Yet I love this game. It's one of the best, most full featured games on the Vive currently.

The Pool Hall itself is fully realized with loving detail to explore. A full physics engine lets you mess around with basically anything in the environment in some cool ways. Menus are a breeze to navigate. Playing pool feels very natural and inuitive after only a few minutes. I don't know if these skills I'm gaining would transfer that well back to real life, but I have a feeling at least the knowledge I'm gaining would. At the very least, I can already feel a real sense of progression in my ability after only playing a dozen or so games of this and that feels great.

Now if the developers could just find a way to make self aware AI for the sole purpose of letting me make my opponents feel shame when I beat the AI. I want that birthday hat wearing bastard to feel HUMILIATION when I take him down.

Pros:

-Great looking game with a nice hazy hool hall atmosphere; amazing in VR
-Great online multilplayer. Finding random games or inviting friends to play is a breeze and very snappy.
-Great unlock system with hats, new pool tables, cues, etc.
-Great inuitive controls that feel very natural
-Nice assists for new pool player such as the ghost ball telling you where your ball will hit before you shoot.

Cons:

-Could use some sort of Single player ladder/tournament (right now just AI matches which are still a good deal more fun than you'd expect though)
-Only two players per game/lobby. It would be great to let more people hang out in a game/hall or have multiple games going on in the same space.
-No Self Aware AI to make victory over robot overlords feel totally sweet.

If you have a Vive this game should probably be in your library. Even if yout have that much interest in pool. It's one of the best, most polished games on the platform right now and it's a ton of fun.

HordeZ keeps it's promise. It really is like Houes of the Dead in VR. Granted not quite the polished or stylized experience of House of the Dead, but it's still a very fun, full featured game well worth the $15 asking price. Whereas many of the current offerings for the Vive are a bit anemic on features with future promises of greatness. HordeZ is a complete and completely fun game right now. And it is also the best zombie shoot em up currently available for the Vive.

It may look like standard zombie shooter number 2,009 in the videos or stills, but as anyone can tell you, it's a completely different experience when you are in VR playing it. The zombies are suddenly as tall as you, lumbering towards you from all directions. But HordeZ is much more akin to an arcade shooter than it is a horror game. There aren't really jump scares here. Just lots of ammo and lots of zombies to put it in.

Pros:
-Full feature set including 9 levels, multiple dififculties, online play up to 4 players, and endless mode
-Great level variations with new enemy types on harder difficulties
-Very easy to pick up inuitive controls with a smart "slow locomotion" system (you are on a hover board) making it a lot more user friendly, even for those with more sensitive stomachs

Cons:

-the weapon select system can be a bit clumsy until you get used to it.
-graphics are a bit generic but completely competant and get the job done
-Online play can take a bit to find a game sometimes

This game could have been really neat unfortunately the interaction system is far too sloppy. Unlike other Vive games where objects you pick up bind to your hands, in this one they kite along, like you are pulling them with a string. It's terrible system and it makes interacting with the world frustrating rather than fun.

It doesnt help that the early game also lacks direction as to what you are supposed to do. I spent 20 minutes interacting with items ina jail cell and never figured out what the game wanted me to do to trigger the next interaction.

I gave up 30 minutes in. Ashame because the production values seem pretty neat. I wasn't scared at all. Just frustrated and bored.

The first real example of a full fledged RPG style game on the Vive. Great room scale exploratoin, great sword play. Nice art style. Sword play may seem a bit spammy at first, but it has some nice depth. Use your sword or shield to block enemies and counter attack. Later enemies require more patter recognition and clever use of equipment/teleport mechanic.

I can't wait for more chapters but even as is, this game is completely worth $20.