October '19 Play Log I

Apparently the Rusty Lake series is quite popular, but I don’t understand why. Personally I found it stupid. The puzzles never felt satisfying and the story fell flat.

Pros:

• Some puzzles with OK difficulty
• Easy to get all achievements, and you can reset individual chapters if you miss some in that chapter

Cons:

• What passes for a story isn’t creepy or suspenseful so much as vaguely nonsensical and somewhat stupid
• Most puzzles are either too easy or too hard
• Several puzzles rely simply on trial and error, or memory

Verdict: 3/10

Experienced on Oculus Rift

First things first, I only recommend this if you’ll be playing it in VR. The atmosphere, while great in VR, doesn’t translate well to non-VR gameplay.
This game is a bit of a mixed bag. It has some flaws, but it does other things very well. There is room for improvement but overall it’s very good and quite scary. It relies mostly on atmosphere, but there are some surprises that’ll make you jump. I wouldn’t describe these as jumpscares though, as they’re not an enemy jumping out from behind a door yelling “BOOO!” type scares, but are more subtle. They wouldn’t make you jump in a non-VR game, but in VR the effect is more intense. For a while I chickened out and played out of VR, but ended up going back in. I don’t consider myself a horror fan, but I have played and enjoyed some games in the genre like Outlast and Rise of Insanity (VR).

Pros:

• Mirrors actually have reflections in them, complete with accurately reflecting head movement, which is rare even out of VR
• You actually have a body! Most (all?) first person VR games I play the character has no body when you look down, which I find immersion-breaking. In this game you actually have a body. It’s not done perfectly - I was sitting whereas the character was standing, and there were times when my view started clipping into the character, but it’s still an improvement over the standard invisible body.
• You find documents, letters, newspaper clippings, etc, as you go that help you figure out what’s going on, give you background, and hint at what to do next.
• Every so often your character stops to review what she knows, which is a good way of making sure you’re keeping up with what’s going on (which you wouldn’t if you ignore documents found).

Cons:

• As previously mentioned, there were a few times when my POV was a bit inside of the character. Though this may not have been an issue if I were standing.
• Poor voice acting. There are only a few voice-acted sections that serve to provide background and motivation for why your character is there, but the voice acting is very flat and lacks feeling.
• At the very end of the game you can’t open your notes again. This is a particular problem given what you’re supposed to do.
• After figuring everything out when you really stop and think about the story it starts to unravel a bit, in a ‘why would that person do that though?’ kind of way. Not a big deal since most people play this for the experience, just don’t think too deeply about it.
• No rotation controls, it must be played in 360 degrees. In my small room sitting on a swivel chair this resulted in frequent wire tangles.
• Touch controls seem to be designed for Vive. Not a big deal, but they could be improved for Oculus.
• At the start of the game you can choose normal vs comfort mode, but it’s not clear what the difference is (teleportation based movement apparently) and you can’t change it later.

Verdict: 7/10

Very unique and definitely worth playing. Yes the story is short, but if that’s all you play then you’re missing a massive chunk of the game, so ignore the negative reviews that complain about the length.
I’ve beaten the campaign and played a few challenges, but haven’t tried endless mode. I’ll try and remember to update this when I eventually get to it.

Pros:

• Unique concept that is very interesting, making it as much puzzle as shooter
• Unique art style that works very well
• The story is strange and enjoyable, and even extends into the main menu which is neat
• Many challenges and an endless mode to play through once you’ve finished the story so there should be plenty of playtime
• You can cut bullets with the Katana, though I find this difficult for some reason. I think I just haven’t gotten the hang of it though.
• The story isn’t relevant to the gameplay. This could be perceived as a con, but it means if you abandon it for a while you won’t be very confused and tempted to restart when you come back.

Cons:

• Being able to see the number of shots left in a gun would be very helpful, but I understand why they didn’t in order to keep the interface clean
• The story mission is very hard. There are so many enemies that, while I managed to find a good pattern for the first half of the last phase, by the time I got to the second half I wasn’t consistent enough to find a pattern. I ended up beating it mostly by luck.

Verdict: 9/10

Absolutely phenomenal game. Much better than the vast majority of FPS games these days as it has both good combat and a genuinely amazing story. I’m really hoping there will be a sequel to this, and if there is I’ll be first in line to buy it. The biggest weakness is the number of issues - both crashes and glitches - which is unacceptable this long after release. If it wasn’t for that, I’d probably give it a 9/10.

One piece of advice: don’t look a lot into this and learn a lot about the game. If it looks good to you, just buy it. For one thing I somewhat over-hyped myself for it. For another, I suspect this is the sort of game where you’d really benefit enjoyment-wise from going in blind.

Pros:

• Good weapon variety, and enemies have genuine strengths and weaknesses which are noticeable and will influence which weapon you use
• I didn’t use stealth much, but from what I can tell the system is quite good
• Has an actual explanation for upgrading and getting new powers/abilities
• NPCs have noticeable reactions and feeling when you’re conversing with them
• NPCs have backgrounds and between talking to them, the occasional side mission for them, and finding audio logs/emails/notes/etc, they have genuine personalities that you get to know
• Excellent voice acting
• Wide variety of side missions that can influence the main mission and how you play

Cons:

• Long load times for transitions between areas, especially considering it was on an SSD
• Crashes. There was one specific area that crashed when I tried it. Took four tries to get past it.
• Multiple glitches, including ones that impacted side missions. Getting past one involved playing with the save files to reset an area. Some of these may be ‘you did something to make this side mission/etc impossible’, but I don’t think so. If that was the case it needs to be more obvious why it wasn’t possible.
• As much as I like the Gloo gun, it could have been better. Specifically, under some circumstances it only formed a tiny gloo ball. I suspect that was due to me being too close to what I was shooting at, not sure though. Maybe if I’d upgraded the handling more it would have been better, but I’m not convinced.

Verdict: 7.5/10