REVIEW UPDATED TO REFLECT POSITIVE CHANGES. I'd really like to leave a detailed review here, as this game series is one of my favorite ever. I hope all criticisms and suggestions are taken in the spirit they're intended. This is an early access VR game made by a small indie team. I'm incredibly happy with the game, how it plays and what I paid for it. These devs are not abusing the early access system or moniker in any way. In fact, the devs are model examples of what successful early access development looks like. But as such, I want to give my honest and overly detailed feedback as a huge fan of the series. First off, the good. And by that, I mean these things do not need changed, like at all. These are the systems that just work outright. S+ tier work. * The game runs great. Though this was planned to be a Quest game from the jump, this is to be expected. However, the game runs great. * Significantly less jank in general. No more clips falling through maps. No items getting lost in the ground. No more wonky hitboxes and geometry. Almost all the mechanics and systems are excellent. The new vest systems, holsters, customization, guns, backpacks, carabiners, clips, etc is fantastic. Chef's kiss. No notes. A marked improvement in almost every manner in terms of feel and player control. * Inclusion of co op, if a bit janky, is absolutely fantastic. It honestly makes me wish someone would mod the first game to be co op as well. It's just such a natural fit for the series, so good on the devs for listening to all the demands! I'm sure it's a ton of dev time allocation as well, but it's worth it. 4 player would be cool, but honestly the maps and mission structure isn't really built for it. * New locations are quite cool. UPDATED: Visuals and maps have been greatly expanded and improved * Gunplay feels crisp. No real friction imo. * Customization of difficulty settings is quite in depth for early access and makes runs after your saves wipe easier. * Much more robust auto save feature. Save scumming is still helpful if you're really stuck but autosave is a lot more generous than ITR1. * Love the base and the walls for organizing your weapons. * In general, this game is still the OCD heaven it was in the first installment. Making your base feel lived in is such a cool vibe. As such, in it's early state, I would say there is a solid 15-20 hours of content. And this is quite good content at the moment. I would easily recommend this game in its current state. Now, for the 'needs improvement' section. * UPDATED: Visuals are vastly improved and the orange ski goggle effect in Forest is now gone. Lighting in Outskirts is *perfect* and gives the vibes of the original game. * NEW ISSUE: The new foliage is peak, but it's reeeeeally hard to see enemies now. I'm basically shooting at tracers. And of course the foliage does nothing to hide you from enemies. It's a one way mirror. Had to turn it all the way down unfortunately. Especially with the pixelated magnifier/acog combo * UPDATED: Some new artifacts and baubles added, but nothing too fancy. There still needs to be more to collect. Still no tapes, no lore pages, no writing on walls, no cool collectibles really. Now this is something I assume will be added soon/eventually, but this is a big reason I don't put more time into this game. Take the patches for example! You get two sick patches you can put on your vest or your backpack and... that's it. And these sorts of things are fairly easy to implement. Just give us more stuff to hoard and search for! * UPDATED: Enemies now have much less predictable spawn, but it's still an issue imo. Still lots of 'checkpoints' and expected hot zones, which is probably unavoidable, but I'd prefer patrols and such over simple spawn areas. * As well, enemy AI is one of the weakest points of the game. Enemies, seemingly, have two modes: completely unaware, or instantly alerting every enemy in a mile radius and then cracking nonstop headshots across the map. Silencers are for vibes and aura only, I have seen zero practical improvement to stealth. And as well, stealth isn't practical or necessary when a mass of enemies is placed in a small area every time. Enemies should have varying states of alertness, and if they do already, they need to be much better defined and obvious to the player. Right now, every encounter is taking a town's worth of enemies down like Rambo whether you like it or not. And then trundling through an empty map to your next known enemy spawn. Rinse repeat. * UPDATED: The game has much more random encounters and I get spooked a lot more often. I still think a random shot ringing out when you least expect it is way scarier than "I hate you" but that's just me. * While I do enjoy the maps somewhat, only three locations is really disappointing, even in early access. They are quite small as well. I know this is a compromise to make it run better on mobile hardware, but in this case, we need much more smaller locations. UPDATE: Outskirts is a bit further out there and more demanding. Still needs one or two locations. Even some creepy underground spaces? Caves? Just a little variety. * Scopes and sights are rough. There really isn't much utility to them and the scopes themselves are painfully narrow. Magnifiers are kinda clunky, I'd prefer a normal 2x4 Acog. Most sniper scopes are like looking through a pen tube. UPDATE: The level 3 scope actually looks good, so it's a mystery why all the other sights look so bad. I understand 'more money = better scope' but the only usable scope right now is the adjustable sniper one. * Story is nonexistent but I'm sure that will be fixed. Just missing those lore pages and diaries and such. * Missions don't really vary. It's 'grab this item' and kill a wave of enemies. Or 'check these three locations and grab the item.' Some of the story missions are a bit more involved, but they're few and far between. * UPDATED: Weapons have been expanded and a weapon build system added. We still need gadgets, explosives, and more consumables. Quite a limited selection, but again, I'm sure this will change. * Bring back ITR1 consumables. Red Bulls and tins of pineapple slices please! I'm always running out of sprint. * UDPATE: Artifact hunting has been improved, but we still need two or three more ways to hunt artifacts. And artifacts *really* need to have buffs/debuffs and be part of your loadout. Some artifacts give 5% bullet damage, 10% faster healing, etc. TLDR: This is an amazing game that simply needs more content and more varied content. The game loop is still there and fun, but it could be greatly extended by having more collectibles, lore, guns and locations. HOWEVER, most of what this games needs can be fairly easily implemented. And in terms of modding - the sky's the limit. The base game here would make for an amazing Tarkov style game, or a battle royale, or for modding in older games and maps and... it's such a promising start! Big Takeaways: * FIXED Needs visual clarity and less orange, please less orange (I'd kill for it to look more like ITR1 in terms of lighting and color palate, seriously) * Needs some more 'low effort' content (patches, tapes, collectibles, etc) * One or two more decent sized locations, or even underground exploration within the maps as is * Enemy spawns and AI need badly reworked, inclusion of more robust stealth mechanics * Varied missions and quest systems, basically anything other than 'kill enemy, get item, come home' I hope this unnecessarily long review/essay provided some insight! I'll be waiting on every update.
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