October '19 Play Log II

Definitely an unusual game. I’m not good at platforming so I had quite a bit of trouble with the harder sections. They took away from the game for me, but overall I still enjoyed it.

Pros:

• Unusual concept
• Music is decent
• Puzzles are neither too easy nor too hard

Cons:

• I found the platforming sections quite difficult in the second half
• Have to replay at least part of the game to get all achievements despite no replay value

Verdict: 7/10

I highly recommend this game, particularly for people who enjoy games with story. Really great game both for people who are more interested in story than shooting, and for people who enjoy challenging gameplay. Replayabilitiy is mixed. At the end of each act there’s a choice you get to make that influences the story a bit. Making different choices is not hugely influential though. It has more of an effect on things like cutscenes and collectible emails/notes/etc than it does on gameplay. Doing another playthrough to see the effects was interesting, but ultimately not much different.

Pros:

• Brilliant voice acting
• Good actors for the ‘show’ that occurs between acts, including some I recognized
• Really good story with some twists and emotional moments
• I found all of the abilities useful in some various circumstances rather than just relying on one or two
• The choice you get to make at the end of each act is really neat, and sometimes has you choosing between what’s right and what’s easy. Personally I really like those moral choices in games.
• Finding or not finding some of the ‘ripples’ during the game can affect the show you see between acts, which is a neat addition.
• I don’t typically play hard difficulty in games, but managed to for this one. It’s definitely a challenge but for the most part you don’t need superhuman reflexes to beat it like I find a lot of games require on the highest difficulty.
• Potential for a sequel. Sadly there doesn’t seem to be anything in the works.

Cons:

• Different choices you get to make have next to no effect on gameplay
• I had one crash on my second playthrough
• Be very careful around unstable objects. Somehow you can be caught and killed by an unstable sliding door when you’re still 10 feet away from it.
• Sometimes when transitioning from cutscenes to gameplay you can’t control the character until you’re meant to, which is fine. Sometimes though you can move the camera a few millimetres until it snaps back, resulting in a weird stutter effect.
• You can find optional collectible information in levels, but you can tell from cutscenes and conversations between characters that they are not aware of the information collected. This seems to be fairly common in games, and is understandable given the potential complexity of adjusting the story based on what was found and what wasn’t. I still find it immersion breaking though.
• Very occasionally the camera & controls would go weird, almost like it was adjusting my view so that I’d notice something. The result was that I couldn’t control my character properly (both had trouble going straight and couldn’t see where I was going). This resulted in my death more than once.

Verdict: 9/10

Experienced on Oculus Rift without biofeedback

Overall I had mixed feelings about this. The first two patients were quite interesting, the second two were not. Unfortunately there are too many flaws for me to recommend it. There’s definitely potential here though, and if the developers were willing to address the flaws this could become a very good game.

Pros:

• Some parts can be scary due to the atmosphere
• For the first 2 patients, as you go through their mindscape you learn more and more until the end when you can connect the dots. The stories keep you interested without being too obvious.
• Potential to add new patients, expanding the game (though it doesn’t appear to be in active development anymore)
• Voice acting was reasonably good
• The advanced neuromapping collectibles unlock more memories, filling in the details in the remembered memory. Unfortunately this doesn’t add to the cutscene, just gives you a text blurb.

Cons:

• The second two patients suppressed memories were obvious right from the beginning
• Default VR graphics are horrible and made reading text difficult. Thankfully they can be improved.
• The default walking speed is very slow. It made me avoid exploring the way I normally would until I increased it.
• I wasn’t a fan of the ‘blink’ type effect used when turning
• The advanced neuromapping shouldn’t require a second playthrough - all the things you need to find can be found on the base playthrough, so there’s no replay value whatsoever.
• The cutscene had picture and text but did not show it in front of you, instead making it appear at a random point anywhere in 180 degrees, which was weird, confusing, and pointless
• In menus you cannot point to an option with touch controllers to select it, instead you have to use the control stick. I very nearly dismissed this game as fundamentally broken in VR before I accidentally discovered this.

Verdict: 5/10