dumpin these in groups now
2. Ion Fury
Extremely Duke3D. Like in that game, the real world settings work well, but sometimes it leans a bit much into industrial and sewer settings, which get old. There are some really fun secrets to find in here, and the weapons are particularly fun. I'd say the game is nicer-looking than Dusk, but not as tight mechanically. I'd also suggest not buying the game, to be honest, given the attitudes of the developers.
3. Monster Hunter World: Iceborne
The new monsters are awesome and tough, and I used the expansion to explore new weapons (fell in love with the Charge Blade). Shara Ishvalda is SO GOOD, especially the second phase, and the Guiding Lands is a pretty nice way to structure the post-credits content into something that feels like sliiiiightly less of a grind.
4. Powerslave
Really cool and uniquely-structured early FPS. It's pretty fun to find ability-unlocking items and secrets, and it's a unique feeling to double back and get to new areas in an FPS from this era. The auto-aim combat is a little simple but not bad. The visuals are rough from a pixel art standpoint sometimes, but the tech is INSANE for the Saturn. How'd they do the dynamic lighting?
The only big downsides are a TERRIBLE water level, a kinda disappointing final boss, and sometimes replenishing ammo can be tedious.
5. Half-Life: Alyx
Played on Hard with Continuous motion.
This was actually not much of a surprise to me!
Half-Life's desolate and moody cities, gross aliens, and combine technology are all as fascinating as they were in the 2000s, and all of these aesthetic strengths of the series get hugely boosted by VR. Mechanically, Alyx synthesizes a lot of the cutting-edge mechanical ideas that have been happening in VR since 2016 with a surprising amount of restraint.
You won't see the crazy physics-based climbing, aiming, or melee in here that you do in Boneworks, but the world is still absolutely stuffed with physics toys (with way more detail and variety) and your hands react convincingly to everything in it. The guns don't demand an H3VR level of steps to reload and operate, but each one is fun to learn and become more proficient in reloading, and some of the upgrades even involve further learning of their own. You won't be darting around like in the flatscreen games, but player's speed is well-tuned to the maps, and the maps never feel hindered by anything related to VR navigation. You have continuous motion if you can handle it and teleportation if you can't, and there are a good amount of other accessibility options in there (single-hand, standing/seated, etc).
The pace of the game is perfect. After being spellbound by the intro you're given gravity gloves and quickly find that scavenging around for items using them is, for the first time in an eternity, really fucking fun. You're then given a pistol and taught how to operate and reload it, and things don't really ever slow down from there. There's a constant flow of new puzzle and combat wrinkles, the games highs get really, really high. Just like the rest of the series the game is probably too easy overall (by the end I found the combat to be pretty solved), but every chapter feels fresh both aesthetically and mechanically.
I don't want to frame this as the first great VR game, because there have been a lot of them and I'm not sure this is my favorite. What I will say is that this is a natural progression from where Resident Evil 7 left off and I'm real excited for the future of this genre.
6. Doom Eternal
Nightmare mode, no weapon wheel. Doom Eternal leans even more into Ninja Gaiden territory than even Doom 2016, which was already a hugely unique game. The way all the mechanics interlock is beautiful: like in the last game you usually gain health via melee "glory kills" instead of picking up items in the arenas, so you quickly learn to treat the weaker enemies as quick health resources by shooting them -just enough- to stagger without killing, and you get such a good feel for exactly how much health each of the fodder types has. You juggle a bunch of supplementary cooldown abilities to do similar things with armor and ammo, but they have wrinkles of their own (chainsaw fuel, for example, auto-replenishes enough to give you ammo from fodder but can instead be piled up to one-hit bigger enemies as well).
And the enemy variety is so good. There's a huge cast here, but more importantly, there's a diverse spread in both the threats they pose and how you deal with them. Some are incredibly aggressive from a melee standpoint, others are nasty to you in the air, others do area denial, and so on. And they have all these little weaknesses that are super satisfying to take advantage of. Particular shoutouts to the late-game drones (they can be dangerous when ignored but you generally want to save them so you can uniquely headshot them to gain resources) and the Mauraders (who block everything and need to be hit at critical Punch-Out moments). Just like in the last game, the designs, animation, and music are perfect during all of this.
The stuff outside of the combat helps flesh the game out into slightly more of an adventure, again not unlike Ninja Gaiden. You'll occasionally take a tiny breather to do a small puzzle, you'll take your time to find secrets (which are more fun to look for in this game for whatever reason), you'll head back to your home fortress and gear up a bit, you'll sometimes be asked to do a slightly elaborate platforming sequence, and so on. It's pretty well-paced.
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