Recent reviews by wooberjig

This game is awesome. I've wanted to play this for years, and I finally got around to it after being reminded of it after all these years. If you love survival horror, particularly Silent Hill, and can get past some jank, and are good at navigating a maze now and then, play this game. It's a difficult game though, so if you have issues with resource management, stick to the easier difficulties.

I would recommend this game, but I think it's important to be informed. My total playtime when I finished the game on Nightmare (hardest difficulty) was 2 hours and 10 minutes (My total playtime is more because I played for about an hour on Hard at first). Keep that in mind if you're a penny pincher. This game doesn't go on sale very deeply either.

With that disclaimer out of the way, this game is pretty fun. If you're a resident evil fan, you'll feel right at home; This game puts you right on the ground in the shoes of what would be Jill or Chris. There's ammo and health management and resurrecting zombies. The only difference is in this game you have the sense to push zombies away before they actually bite you (if you have good timing) and destroy their heads (once you have the right equipment).

There's a lot of pretty good scares that are timed well in this game, and I really recommend trying to play in full free movement and turning if you can handle it. The way the enemies lunge at you, especially on the harder difficulties, is quite frightening.

A weak spot of the game is the voice acting. They're all pretty clearly ESL and some of them have pretty drab deliveries. The character animations outside of the zombies is also not impressive. There's not THAT much dialogue though, so there's plenty of time to get immersed without the distracting voice acting. If you're one of those people that like to fiddle with random props, you also can't do that, besides opening doors. Personally, I'm not really impressed by that sort of thing, so I appreciate the clarity when it comes to looking for important items more.

Also, due to the short length of the game, the combat difficulty ramps up (and kind of throws the inventory management out of the window in the last half hour) extremely quickly near the end. That's enjoyable in itself, but in the first 2-3 quarters of the game, I often had the choice of sneaking around/running away from zombies, but the game pretty transparently turns into zombie death match. Bosses are a way to shake up gameplay and test player skill, but I think the balance is a teensy bit off.

Overall though, it's a pretty good horror experience, and I recommend it.

This is a charming little resident evil clone. The voice acting is nice (I like Norman and Junebug's performances the best), and the character models are designed well. I do wish the game had a bit more bite to it, but I understand it would be limiting its audience or maybe just wasn't part of the vision, story-wise and gameplay-wise. There's pretty much only a single enemy type throughout the whole game, so it can get a little boring if you aren't making constant progress. I know that there are differences (Junebug will move the fastest and is the weakest for example), but those are just values slightly changed; There's a good chance you won't even notice. The difficulty is pretty static as well, the unique enemies are hardly a threat. Regardless of some parts being boring due to that, the game is entertaining, but I would recommend waiting for a sale.

This game is worth playing, but there are some caveats. The game is pretty clearly rushed, and you can see the seams where they cut content and stitched stuff together. There is also extremely few cutscenes, and no in-game dialogue; You can go hours without hearing Billy and Rebecca talking to each other. The game is much more linear as well, which leads to some boring backtracking when you need to go back with empty inventories for both your playable characters to transport all your crap to a different chosen hub. There's also a smaller emphasis on puzzles, the majority of it is sticking keys into doors. Really, I would only recommend this if you enjoyed the "puzzle" that is ammo and healing management of the original game, as it is much stricter here. Be wary though, it does the Code Veronica thing and takes one of your characters away later in the game... and their inventory! Then proceeds to make you fight a boss in small room (admittedly, he's pretty easy to dodge, it's no where near as hard as CV). STAGGER YOUR SAVES, but you probably already knew that if you've played an RE game before.

One thing that is excellent is that the environments look amazing. If you're a fan of the classic resident evil art style, you'll love the look of this game. The lighting, the textures, it's all never been better.

Utlimately, I think this game is worth playing, but keep a walkthrough handy. This game is essentially a classic style adventure game, ambiguous player direction and crappy arcade sections and all. It's quite easy to get stuck in this game at very specific points. Not because anything you have to do is illogical, but simply because certain things are not introduced to you at all. It's made worse by your resident "talk for the mute player" character's hints, as those mix between cryptic and telling you exactly what to do and where to go, leading to inconsistent difficulty. It's also really easy to run Samuel's and other characters dialogue over one another, leading to one character's track getting turned down so you can understand the other, or cutting Samuel's dialogue short, leading to an unnatural stop.

The voice acting is good, and the plot hook is really great too (it's essentially a more complicated version of quantum leap). I just would've enjoyed this so much more if it wasn't so easy to get stuck (and if certain characters would quit yapping and ordering me around. at least you can have the satisfaction of shooting them, though this causes a restart and is not acknowledged by Samuel). For example, there's a certain point where if you ask for help, Samuel will tell you to go to a tower's "summit" and "look around you". I foolishly thought this meant there was something I could only see in the surrounding area if I was at the highest point, but what the game really wanted, was for me to look at the ground and notice an important item that was textured to have the same color as the floor texture... Not only is the item hard to see, especially in VR, but the hint is easily misunderstood. There's more than a handful of those moments throughout the game. There are also moments where you have to use very specific items to solve problems even if logically you could use a different one. Example: Just shooting the guy behind a cannon, instead of jerry rigging a more complex and janky motion controlled solution, or being forced to use some setpiece.

This game gets compared to the like of Half-Life: Alyx, but there's no way it got playtested as much as valve playtests their games.

Also, regarding the items: Come on, we figured this out already with Resident Evil 0... Give us a list of items we've touched that are important and tell us where we left them. There is also some inconsistency with the dialogue. When you are in control of one certain female character, Samuel will use female pronouns when speaking to you. That's fine, I think it would be cooler if the game leaned more into actually becoming those characters when you control them. However, when controlling a different female character, Asher goes back to calling you son. What for?

Anyways, like I mentioned at the start, this game is worth playing, but not even three years later the developer is remaking it instead of making a sequel to their cliffhanger story in this game... (of all the half-life influences to absorb) I'll let you decide how you feel about that, but you're better off just wishlisting the remake and playing that. Far as I can see on forums, you'll only get a 20% temporary discount on the remake if you already own this version.

I overall liked this VN. The character sprites are visually pleasing (someone likes fangs, eh?), though they could use a bit more variation for the poses, overall just their facial expression will change for a good number of characters, and the music does some decent lifting in regards to the atmosphere. They add weight to the more dramatic scenes where I feel like the writing isn't quite up to standard. I can't tell you exactly how many, but I recognized some backgrounds I've seen in other VNs, so the production values aren't the best, but I appreciated the effects they used. The battle scenes are quite deliberate in feeling like they belong in a RPG.

The game, however, is quite funny. Particularly so if you understand all the game/anime references made throughout the story. (Yes, I read all the newspaper articles dear author, they are decently amusing). I think that's its main strength. If you are a fan of the slapstick humor of games like Ace Attorney, you may also enjoy the humor here. There's a decent amount of content here, especially if you read the 2 other shorter stories that are unlocked after completing the main one, though I wonder if it could not have somehow been incorporated in the main story somehow. I read pretty quickly, so expect 10+ hours if you are a slower reader.

This is a charming puzzle game with a light horror atmosphere. It most reminds me of theme park experiences, and that's about the level you can expect regarding the acting. However, I think the exaggerated and cheesy acting is appropriate for the game. I haven't personally played the original, but from what I've heard from others who have, this game is considerably toned down regarding how gruesome it can get. It's basically Haunted Mansion on PS2, but instead of lots of arcade style shooting mixed in with puzzles, this is all puzzles.

If you're familiar with escape room style puzzles, you shouldn't have any issues with this game. The difficulty is on the easier side, I'd say. Nothing you need to take notes over (a concession for the VR, likely). Nonetheless, it is fun to solve the puzzles, and you can essentially pick your difficulty: No hints, a riddle that can point you in the right direction, instructions on how to solve the puzzle, and outright solving it for you.

That last point is important, as the game is unfortunately a little buggy. I had a case where a door would not open, and I could not access a puzzle piece, so I had to do an auto-solve, robbing myself of the achievement for not using it, but I would just play it again if I really cared about the achievements. Another criticism I can levy at it is that certain areas of the game look very poor graphically, specifically outside the windows of the mansion, and the model used for Stauf in certain areas. Everything else looks up to par with great lighting (that sometimes is pointing to a hint).

It is a relatively short game; if you're an experienced puzzle solver, you could probably beat it in about 6 hours. If you're a miser like me, wait for it to go on sale; it happens regularly enough. I managed to get it for just under $17 from Gamers Gate. As I write this review, it is on sale from Humble Bundle for just under $20, though you can get it for that price on steam directly occasionally. For that price, I can heartily recommend it.

As someone who is just getting into VR, I'm so glad that Into the Radius was one of my first VR experiences. It is a very fun game, and I fear not many other VR games are going to hold up to it.

The guns. Lots of effort went into making the animations and feel of them realistic. They are very satisfying to use and sound great, with all having unique sound effects and visuals. It is very fun to suddenly hear the clicking noise of an empty gun, and have to scurry into cover to load a magazine and chamber the next round before an enemy turns the corner!

The combat. This is mostly enjoyable. I haven't felt this tense wandering an enemy stronghold in a video game for a loooong while. The ambient noises of anomalies and enemies all around me while I load up one of my magazines with ammunition, I can't get enough of the tension. There is a bit of a learning curve to aiming; you actually need to bring it up to your face and line up the sights correctly if you want to hit anything past 7 yards. Which if you play on Realistic, will happen quite often, with enemies regularly taking potshots at you from all sorts of distances. I recommend visiting the gun range to practice a bit and learning the effective range of some of the firearms before heading into the zone, though you can pick it up through regular experience as well. For example, shotgun slugs have SERIOUS bullet drop, and thus are ineffective at anything past modest distance. Money is also pretty tight on realistic, so you may want to make sure you like the sight picture before investing the money (or you can just stick a holographic sight on everything, I personally like using irons, on certain weapons anyway). The game also has a bit of a railroad in regards to the ammo types you'll end up using the most. Mid and late game enemies that are armored are EVERYWHERE. So it feels like a waste to invest in the subsonic ammo for suppressors or to fool around with the low quality "surplus" ammo. Both are not guaranteed to penetrate armor with each shot, and leaving your life up to the roll of the dice will lead you to taking more damage at the very least. They are only good for styling on weaker enemies with your fancy end game weapons, so there isn't much point in ever investing in non armor penetrating calibers and ammo types.

On the topic of the enemies, this is something I was a little underwhelmed with. Once the game introduces enemies with firearms, the game kind of tips its whole hand in regards to enemy variety. Don't misunderstand, there are different firearm types the enemies will use, and they'll have different strategies to use against you. (Those bastards with the bullpups will wait around corners and burst you down in seconds even with body armor) However, they all look very similar, especially when you commonly deal with them at 40 meters or more, so you can't tell at a glance what kind of enemy they are. You have to wait until they start shooting at you to tell what kind of enemy they are 😂. It would be much more visually interesting if they looked more unique. Also, I don't know if I'm just horribly unlucky or what, but I tried to never fuss with explosive devices. They almost always backfired on me (shrapnel ricocheting around corners with the enemy still standing), or they were simply too slow. It would've been a bit more fun if they were weighted a bit more in the player's favor.

In regards to the visuals, this is also something I think could be improved. There are some striking visuals the game creates, but in general the game is a little underwhelming visually (including the enemies I've mentioned). The unique environmental setpieces are cool, and a lot of work went into the guns, but the visuals otherwise are a bit underwhelming.

The story. There's more of a narrative than I was expecting here. Now, it's nothing on the level of your average AAA game; You can go hours without hearing any voice acting or reading a new diary entry. But what is there is interesting enough. I personally would have loved even more anecdotes from Katya, as well as more exposition that is tied to the side missions. As it is, there is practically no story for any side missions, which is a little disappointing. They are essentially excuses to explore certain sections of the maps and increase playtime, and I prefer my excuses with some story justification. Only the main story gets this sort of attention. I was engaged by what was there, regardless. Just look at my playtime!

I really enjoyed the simulation aspects, like loading magazines, eating food, cleaning guns, etc. It would be amazing if they went so far as to add first aid simulation. I played on realistic for most of my play time. I started out on normal, but felt it was a tad too easy, so started over on realistic. That's because the game was trying to ease me into things! When the missions start telling you to bring a lot of ammo due to heavy enemy presence, they mean it! (100+ rounds if you're bringing automatic weapons and a handful of healing injectors is my recommendation!) You also need to weigh your weapon choice well on that difficulty, since you receive less cash. However, you can always simply grab artifacts and loot the same areas every time the tide resets everything, so you can also grind things out Dark Souls style if you don't feel like you can compensate for a tough situation with your own skill. That's why I don't think you should feel afraid to play it on realistic (and for the hardcore people, you can up the difficulty past that with custom settings).

Overall, this is one of those VR games that I've found are on the rarer side, it feels like a complete experience instead of just a test sandbox or a short arcade shooter (though it does also have that in the firing range I mentioned earlier). On average, I think the typical player will get about 20-25 hours out of this game. I recommend trying this game if you've found other VR experiences a little underwhelming and want what is essentially a slavjank game... in VR!

This game has a lot of annoyances that would be tolerable in a regular video game, but not so much a VR game. To start with, exposition dumping. VR can be tiring for many players, so this just seems like a bad match. They let you skip it, but would it kill them to have a text box so you can read it and still understand what's happening, like Diablo?

The enemies have movement that doesn't quite line up with their animations, so you end up seeing them slide around a lot while attacking because the animation only shows them standing still and attacking. This is particularly obvious for enemies with ranged attacks, you'll spend a lot of time watching archers slide around, facing away from you, but still some how shooting you. It's like fighting a laggy human in a pvp game. You waste a lot of time trying to catch them, and if you play the ranged game, they are outright programmed to react to your arrows and dodge them while standing in place. On top of all that the hitboxes are not generous at all; combine that with the difficulty of aiming precisely with VR controls, and you get an intensely unsatisfying experience. The netcode is also pretty bad, and you can't adjust player volume. There's just so many amateur aspects that I can't recommend this game.

For the price of free, this is a nice little experience for someone looking to dip their toes into VR. You can finish it very quickly, especially if you play on the harder difficulties where enemies run instead of shamble towards you; assuming you don't die, you'll finish the whole thing in about half an hour.

But it's free and a small file size, so try it out. I recommend playing standing so you can turn around to shift the camera instead of using the thumbsticks, I think it's more fun that way.