Back into the land of the virtual.

A long time ago I snagged Light Tracer, back when I owned PSVR for the first time (yes, I stupidly sold it) but never got around to playing it, and had written it off as I no longer had a PSVR.

So I figured may as well blow off the digital dust and dive into this little gem.

Light Tracer is a MC Escher like puzzle game, where by you girl a little princess up a tower (no so unlike the tower of Babel) to the gods residing at the top, in an attempt to save her people from a sickness that put them all into a slumber.

This plays out over 8 levels and about 5 hours of playtime.

The game is both fantastically designed, and a frustrating mess all at once.

The concept was solid, the world itself is made from floating platforms that continue to ascend. It can be turned and manipulated with the left wand, and some items can be pulled, or moved with the same hand.

This works about 70% of the time.

As there is no real sense to the rotation of the level, it can sometimes be frustrating to get the camera in the right place so you an continue or make a jump.

This frustration can be compounded by the fact that the princess is not super responsive.

She is essentially a cat (not literally) that follows you laser pointer from the wand in your right hand. You point a beam of light and pull the T trigger, and she will approach follow the pointer.

This is terribly frustrating at times when you angle is just slightly off, or you lose tracking, and on a key jump she plummets to her death.

This will happen about 200 – 300 times in your play-through.

Now that is not a total bad thing, the game would have been a cake walk outside of VR, but the unique puzzle and angle ideas really worked well in VR.

Just go in knowing you will be cursing under your breath sometimes.

The story itself is kinda cool, nothing ground breaking, and it plays out in between level cut scenes.

It came to a surprising and satisfying conclusion.

And speaking of which, after the game is over, you are shockingly treated to a trailer for the sequel, a game literally no one is talking about. It looked reeeeeeealy rough, but it was nice to know they are moving away from this to a more traditional 3^rd person adventure game.

No clue when it is coming or how far along it is.

All in all a fun little weekend romp, I would recommend it to anyone looking for more puzzle games in VR.

A decent 7/10

So I stepped out of VR for a bit of a brain break and ran through FE last weekend. AS much as I love VR, a man can only take so much in one week.

I had a lot of initial reservations about the game when it came out earlier this year.

Reviews panned it for terrible controls and game play, and I had decided I was going to skip it entirely based on that aspect, as nothing ruins a game for me faster than shoddy controls.

I will tolerate plot holes, shitty graphics, and a myriad  of other issues in a game, but if you give me bad controls you are dead to me.

But this past black Friday FE was marked down to just a few bucks. So I figured even if it is dismal, I can just delete it.

Well color me surprised when it turned out to be MUCH better than I expected.

The game itself revolves around a small woodland creature, it is kinda a mix of a wolf pup and a squirrel for lack of a better description.

You set out on an adventure to save the forest you inhabit from these evil entities hell bent on enslaving all the woodland creatures.

The kicker is, unlike some Disney movie, you cannot actually communicate with them.

You speak squirrel thing, and they speak, bird, or wolf, or elk, etc.

So once you complete a series of tasks to help these creatures, like recovering eggs for the mama bird from said evil creatures, you learn their language.

Thus opening up the abilities in the game.

Once you speak bird, you can talk to the lesser birds and have them fly you all over the game. Or you can commune with some plants to have them open up and give you a seed to throw at enemies.

All of the 6 languages play out this way, each with its own realm and ability to learn that will help you through the world.

It is a solid idea that plays out rather nicely.

The story itself is a little hard to eek out, as it plays out mostly through cave paintings and flash backs found in hidden (and some obvious) stones that put you into the eyes of the evil creatures.

Truth be told, like many indie games, I had to head online to get an explanation to what I just played (one of my major gripes with indie games in general)

It was a heart warming little trip that lasted about 4 hours. But all in all was satisfying front to back.

One thins I will address is the controls.

I can see how some reviews slammed them, but I think that was honestly shoddy journalism.

The controls are different, but never did I find them painful.

Once example I will give is tree climbing, in most traditional games when you latch onto an object to climb it, you move the stick forward to traverse it.

Well in FE once you “stick” to a tree, each press of the jump button moves you up, and when you are on the top, if you press jump again, you jump off.

This is a bit annoying for about 2 mins, til you realize you cannot just hammer jump like crazy. You have to practice a little restraint.

Little gameplay quirks like this is what in my eyes sets FE apart from all the other 3d platform clones out there.

Sound and visual were every nice as well, looking fantastic on the JVC projector. Inky blacks in the forest and shadow detail really pop since my nre calibration.

Sound was amazing too in simulated Atmos, with the wind and environment of the forest coming alive up above.

All in all a great package and a fun game for a quite afternoon.

A reasonable 7/10

So moving down the PSVR road we have Inpatient.

Lets get this out of the way right off the bat.

DO NOT PLAY THE INPATIENT!

Why?

Is it too scary? Nope

Is it too hard to take in VR? Nope

Is it a steaming pile of crap? DING DING DING, give the man a prize.

Warning, I am going to completely spoil the game here, so you dear reader, will not have to endure the torture that it is.

The game had such a solid foundation, it is about the events that preceded Until Dawn (one of my favorite horror games of all time) and was by the original developers (Supermassive Games) and was somehow completely bungled.

My best guess how is that like so many developers, indie and AAA alike, they have no concept of how to make a game in VR.

We are stepping back to the 80’s here in the floundering days of Nintendo and story telling in games.

The game like its predecessor has multiple branching decisions that will lead to 4 different endings.

What it does suffer from though is a completely lousy path to those decisions.

You start off strapped to a chair (in an obvious attempt to capture the restrained feeling of the Resident Evil “Kitchen” demo) whereby you are asked some questions that really lead nowhere.

Trying to regain you memory after some trauma. None of which ever becomes clear start to finish.

It is eluded to you are a Dr, but there is no proof of it.

The game plays out primarily with you locked in a room with you new roommate. Who is also maybe a Dr.

All in all it was hard to tell. Events happen outside the room whereby a bunch of miners turn into Wendigo, and start killing all the staff and patients alike.

How did this happen?

Who knows, it is never explained.

Your door just magically opens one day after what is about 1 week in game, you cell mate, now completely insane, just vanishes, only to show up later in the game perfectly healthy and fine.

Was it all a dream? Was she there? No bloody clue, because IT IS NOT EXPLAINED.

Are you getting a theme here?

That is In Patient in a nutshell.

Lots of small jarring conversation and events, that lead nowhere and have no context or sense to them.

Short of the Blackwell Hospital, and the Wendigo, there is ZERO ties to Until Dawn.

Or so I though.

Apparently if you do a super human series of events, make all the right conversation choices, then you get a special ending, whereby you finish the game as a Wendigo, ultimately finding out you turned into the Wendigo that attacked Beth and her friend encounter at the start of Until Dawn.

What do you get with just normal choices?

A slow ass gondola ride down the mountain, then credits. No wrap up, no “OMG we made it” moment, just a trip in silence and an elation that this turd of a game was over.

Now for the controls.

They were typical VR fare, where you have the ability to go full free rotation (my preference), the issue was primarily with controller detection. I constantly could not grab things I had to in the game, with my “hands” popping around and out of place. Trying to push buttons or turn knobs became a huge chore.

Another major issue was the pacing. This being a walking sim, you had to walk slow like molasses behind NPCs. Now I get pacing in a game, but this seemed like an intentional slog just to garner more time in the game.

The only positive I can offer here is it was over damn fast, lasing only about 2 hours total. Thankfully this was not a 8 hr game to endure.

I sincerely wish The Inpatient was a better game, because its roots were so damn strong.

But instead we have this me too approach to VR where companies feel they can just pop out any piece of crap and we will buy it.

Sadly I did, and the only bright spot here is I get to sell it used to some other sucker.

A dismal 1/10, and I do not recommend any of you play this. Go watch a Youtube video of the playthrough if you are a sucker for punishment.

So, furthering my deep dive back into VR I checked out the critically acclaimed PSVR game Moss.

This was one of the more refreshing titles I have played in VR.

The attention to detail in the world is outstanding. From the leaves on the trees to the dust particles in the air, you can see that Moss was made with love.

The story narrative plays out via a narrator of a story book, with you in a dusty old library, and a magical book telling of an adventurous little mouse on a quest to save her family.

At the core Moss is an environment puzzle game, solving rather simple puzzle (and a few tricky ones) to go further on your quest.

The entire package is very well crafted, and the story (while WAY too short) actually had me crying out for our little heroine victories.

The controls are spot on and out little heroine with sword and doge combat playing a significant role.

I never felt like I was fighting the controls to move along.

The only small gripe I do have is with VR in general on the PS4. This happens in a lot of games.

The game often seems to assume all us players are just hovering over our sofas. The healing mechanic in the game revolves around you reaching down and putting you hand on your little mouse. Well often times this was below my seat.

I eventually had to re-calibrate, move my camera back, and sit on the edge of the sofa instead of reclined so my hands go down father than my lap.

Now this did not happen often, but it did happen enough to irk me.

As mentioned early, Moss is not particularly long, clocking in at about 3-4 hours, it was over just as the story was starting it seemed. You feel part of a much bigger world (no surprise, you are a mouse after all) but the overlying tale seems pretty great, it is just unfortunate that things end just when you want more.

Guess it is better to keep people wanting than to end on a low note.

This is a must own title for PSVR (or PC VR). It truly showcases just how awesome VR can be when done correctly.

A solid 8.5 / 10.

So I am taking another dive into VR right now and blowing through a handful of games I snagged recently during the PSVR anniversary sale.

First on the roster is Transference.

I first saw a trailer for this in a stage demo last year during E3. Elijah Wood (of LOTR fame) was backing the project and involved in the development.

This game me a little hope that this game may be something different. With Big Hollywood involved in an indie game, maybe it would be something special.

Well sadly I am there to say, it was not special in any way shape or form.

It totally missed the mark for me.

 

I found it suffered from Indie game syndrome. Whereby someone who does not really know how to write a solid narrative sprinkle some interesting concepts around that never really gel and the story is not fleshed out unless you look under every rock or go online and try to figure out WTF you just played.

 

Now I will preface this with a warning. I am going to completely spoil this games story, so be wary.

 

This is Transference in a nutshell.

 

The game plays out with you in a presumably virtual world, having downloaded your “mind” into a computer, so you and your wife and child could live forever as a unit.

 

The concept is strong, but the game itself plays out in disjointed perspectives and family member “worlds”

 

It all takes place in your apartment in Boston I believe, and you roam around in a walking sim in the same apartment from 3 different “brain” dumps.

 

Now the main issue is, nothing makes sense front to back.

 

Your backstory and family interaction play out by finding old video tapes and cds that will show you a FMV video recording of certain events, from a birthday party, to you as a mad scientist.

 

This is all well and good, but none of it made any sense. You were a dysfunctional family, and you tried to get all of you together to live on forever in “VR” essentially.

 

But Why?

 

None of it was explained.

 

Your kid was not dying, your wife was healthy and sane, so there was no reason I could find that would explain why they did this.

 

Coupled with the fact that you pretty much had to be put on ice, literally, to stop brain function long enough for a mental snapshot to be taken.

 

So you would have had to pretty much bring your family to the bring of death to brain dump them.

 

The game itself shows you pretty much ghosts of your wife and kid and how they are “trapped” in this VR world, your child being terrified as he cannot find his parents, and your wife crushed by depression because you have not showed up.

 

Your purpose I thought was to reunite all of you as a family.

 

But nope, after 2 hours of walking around, you find 4 crystals that do… something? And then the game ends and you get a final video of you talking to you.

 

No family reunion, no payoff, just Meh… then credits.

 

What a waste of 2 hours.

 

The best thing I can say about the story was at least it ended quickly.

 

Also in true VR style, they resort to a few non-sensical jump scare.

 

There is some 8 bit looking monster that will charge you if you go into the dark.

 

Why is it here? What is it? None of that is explained, just some ominous dark force that kills you if you stray from the path pretty much.

 

From a VR perspective I found it frustrating on a technical level as well.

 

The speed for smooth turning (my preferred method) was WAAAAY too fast, even at the slowest speed in the options menu, it was nausea inducing, and I have a strong VR stomach.

 

You would whip around faster than a turn in a FPS like Call of Duty. Totally jarring in VR, even with brain hacks.

 

Additionally I found that item placement was a pain in the ass at times. Where clickable item were too low for standing mode, and too high when crouched.

 

So when sitting you had to bend way forward to maybe get lucky enough to be able to click a drawer to open. Or if you crouched, the draw was face level, but you could not see the contents as you were too low.

 

All in all, this was a terrible game. And if this is what we can expect when actors get involved in games, then please guys, stay on the big screen and let the real game devs tackle VR stories.

 

A horrendous 1/10 and I do not recommend it to anyone under any circumstance.

When Lara Croft came back on the scene in 2013 in the Tomb Riader reboot it took the gaming world by storm.

We got to see a venerable young girl marooned on an island, and the events that started to shape her into the Tomb Raiding woman she became.

It was a title about growth, about survival and about family. You felt like you had to protect her, keep her safe.

Well 5 years later, and now Lara is a full grown woman, and no longer needs protecting, if anything she may need a bit of counseling to help her get over the murdering predator she has become.

Now before I get into the review, there is one thing I did that made Shadow an infinitely better game. The developer added in something I have never seen in a game before.

3 levels of difficulty sliders.

You have one for combat, one for environment and one for puzzles.

What these do if pretty slick. The environmental slide will turn off hints of when to press X button or whatever, but more importantly it turns off the traversal highlights present in so many of today’s games.

Gone are the white painted lines along the path you need to climb. Instead you have to logically look over the area you are in and find the path to travel. This adds way more fun and challenge to the game.

On top of that the puzzle slider turns of Lara’s dialog to help you along. There are no tips for how to solve environmental puzzles, no hand holding at all. Which is a welcome change as well, as it seems most modern adventure games pretty much let you turn on autopilot and just go through the motions.

Sadly though Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a mixed bag.

On the surface, you have one of the best adventure games ever made with the new difficulty mode. But below that you have a bit of a technical mess with a terribly disjointed and at times nonsensical story.

The combat here is completely geared towards stealth and bow use. So much so tha tthe gun combat feels terrible. The aiming is slow, the bullets do not do enough damage, and the ammo is almost non-existent in the game.

You can totally tell the developers wanted you to sneak around and snipe people with the bow, but someone higher up insisted they put in other weapons.

When you play the game like they force you to do, it is damn good, but as with all stealthy games, make one mistake and all hell breaks loose, and in this case, you almost always die due to bad combat mechanics.

The stealth thankfully is very good though. You can cover yourself in mud to hid in the bushes better and not be seen by infra-red googled enemies.

You can punch from trees like a panther, or string up your enemies in tress like a spider.

It is a great system when it works.

The real mess though comes with the story, or really how it is presented. I will give you a non-spoiler idea of one terrible spot.

After a level you meet up with your 2 companions just as a helicopter is leaving damaged, Lara comments she is going to chase after it. She turns to run down the mountainside, and just as she does, as lava and mudslide come crashing down the mountain behind her. She rushes through a village that is getting wiped out, coming to a crashing conclusion as she dives off a waterfall. Where he friend from the top of the mountain picks her up in a boat.

Well…. Your “friend” that you ran away from 10kms away would have been covered in lava and mud as the slide was 5 ft behind you when you set chase to the chopper. And somehow, he magically teleports down to a boat.

It is as if Edios had these great action set pieces they wanted to show off, but had no clue how to include them organically.

Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider did a great job of this, but then again those games were much more solo. This title keeps you friend in tow for a lot of the game, him showing up at the end of tombs and villages to add some humanity to Lara.

But in reality he is this magical pawn that can jump anyone on the chessboard and never get hurt, just to further the plot.

All things taken into account, Shadow of the Tomb Raider was a good game, but it had the potential of being a truly great game.

The puzzles and traversal were the best I have seen this generation, but the story presentation and technical issues mar an otherwise perfect title.

An unfortunate 7/10. A must play for fans of the series, but newcomers may be let down by the jarring stroy and the odd plot devices.

So when the PS4 launched in 2013 one of the little looked over gems was Knack. In true new console form, there is always one or two games that are a new IP, and seem to show off the new tech, all the while being thoroughly mediocre.

Knack however bucked that norm and turned out to be a bit of a cult classic. Looking like a Pixar movie certainly helped.

And while the game never sold stellar, it did however sell enough to warrant a sequel.

Enter Knack 2, a bigger, bolder and better title all around.

Now to jump in to Knack 2 you really should check out the first one, as the game assumes you know all about Knack and his merry band of human companions. So the story may seem a little jarring to a newcomer as there is no introductions to characters or origins to Knack.

At the core of Knack 2 it a brawler meets platformed, but with a twist.

Knack can take on little pieces of ancient rocks and such and grow bigger and bigger, from the size of a small dog, to a 30ft tall behemoth.

This allows for some really robust game-play changes throughout.

The levels do not all start small and end big as it is directly tied to the pickups you are given, so some levels they may push for a titan like battle with a massive Knack, and others keeping him tiny and having to stealthily sneak through levels.

In addition to this, you have various types of “coating” cor Knack, from metal which will make you super strong, to prismatic glass which makes you die in a single hit, but able to pass through laser grids.

You can really tell this is a passion project for the creators, as there is a lot of little detail and a whole lot of love in how Knack is presented.

The platforming side of things is sadly where the game can fall a little flat.

Level traversal can be a little less than stellar, especially the larger Knack gets, ge can slip off of platforms, miss entirely sometimes, just a few minor annoyances that should have been smoothed out.

Some of these can me mitigated a bit by the skills you unlock, one being the ability to not die when you miss a jump, instead it just pops you back up to the last platform you jumped from.

It seems like this was the devs way of acknowledging the issue, without fixing it.

A decent 7/10 and all in all Knack is a great family game that you can play with the kids via couch co-op if you like.

So my second most anticipated game for this year behind God of War was Spider-man.

2 years ago we saw the debut at E3 of a CGI trailer. It looked amazing, but usually the CG stuff does, it is damn hard to get a gauge of how a game will be from that initial tease.

Hence why I think so many developers are now showing off in-game footage 1st and foremost, so we all have a rough idea what is being show is real.

So fast forward to last years E3 where we finally got to see Spidey in action, and it looked amazing. Jaws dropped in the auditorium, yet we still held on with a little skepticism, as we have all been burned by companies like Ubisoft before.

But this year, 2018 E3, that was when the curtain truly got pulled back and we had our first real taste of a close to finished product that made all us fanboys drool.

Well the day is finally upon us, and I can tell you up front, after having just hit a Platinum on the game, it 100% lives up to the hype.

I can;t recall a time in recent memory where a game lived up to the hype Spider-Man has built up.

Front to back, this game is nearly perfect.

The story is fantastic, with lots of little unexpected twists and turns. Some are predictable, but it is hard not to be when you have so many years of comic history and movies behind it.

Yet through all that Insomniac still made a very solid entry to the Spiderverse.

The only gripe I can offer about the story is the pacing. for the first 80% of the game, the pace is rather leisurely, you complete missions at your own pace, and that holds true start to finish. But the game goes from just a friendly neighborhood spider doing his thing, to a bullet train in no time.

The final act is 100% action, back to back boss fights.

This is after about 25 hours of build up.

So it just felt a little jarring after the way the rest of the game played out.

When Spider-man really shines though is in the game design. The city traversal is top notch, from web swinging to wall running, the game is just fun. And that is a key element here.

We have had a lot of open world games, that by the 40hr mark you are absolutely sick of running on rooftops or diving into haystacks.

Spider-man never loses that feeling of wonder though, There is just something cathartic about swinging around the city mindlessly. Stopping to take down the occasional thug squad.

As the game progresses you get more and more swing abilities as well, from doing fancy flips in the air for bonus xp. To the ability to drop from the sky like a bomb on a group of enemies.

The only part that falls apart a little is in the later part of the game when you unlock the challenges.

2 of these types of challenges will have you racing after a drone or chasing down bombs in a limited time frame. Completing them requires little effort for a Bronze medal, but if you are trying to unlock all your gadget abilities and suit add-ons, then you need to hit gold on every one of the 14 challenges.

This becomes an issue due to the traversal mechanics.

Because you have to go as fast as possible, the system starts to show its flaws. That nice leisurely swinging, now becomes a frantic button mash, with Spider-man gabbing onto things you do not want.

Like swinging into a wall and now he is crawling up it. Totally breaking the flow, and blowing your chance at a gold medal.

Now the good news is, you only need enough challenge tokens unlock all his suits to get the Platinum trophy, so you can pretty much get bronze on all of the chase challenges, and still end up with enough tokens from the other 2 types, a combat and a stealth challenge.

Those are still timed and tough, but without much effort I was able to get gold on most of them, giving me enough medals to get all the suits, plus some left over to upgrade some gadgets.

Lastly we have the graphics and sound.

The sound is Spider-man is outstanding. The entire theater was filled with New York, from sirens whining in the distance to the bustling crowds. Every little detail fills your room with a Atmos setup. Helicopters whirring overhead, to thugs tossing taunts, I don;t know that I have heard a better sounding game in terms of environmental ambient noise.

When closing your eyes, you would be hard pressed to not know you wern’t in NYC.

The graphical side of things were a sight to behold as well in glorious 4k/HDR.

While I had to adjust my normal HDR levels a bit due to the overall darkness in the game, it was all in all one of the better looking HDR presentations so far.

They really knew how to milk the power of the PS4 Pro to its fullest.

Aside from the HDR, the game overall looked amazing. The trees swaying in the wind in Central Park, the towering video screens in Times Square. All of it looked outstanding.

Another cool little feature Insomniac added in was interior building details.

Most games will show lights and such in building that give you an idea the city is at least awake at night.

BUt here, Insomniac actually added in 3d looking images into windows. So you could see furniture, sinks, offices, you name it.

Now it was all a clever trick as they were all just flat 2d images, but they felt deep, like you were peering into people private spaces. This is just another little nuance that added to the realism in the game, gave it a sense of reality we do not often see.

All in all Spider-man is a masterpiece, you can see the love and care that went into making it in every little detail.

So hats off to Insomniac for a brilliant job, and here’s to hoping we don’t have too long to wait until Spider-Man 2 swings onto our consoles.

A web-tastic 9/10 and a high recommendation for anyone who loves open world games, or NYC.

One last thing, this is hands down the best costume in the game: