Recent reviews by Matt the Butler

You and all your friends smoke cigarettes, drink beers, grill burgers, and drive an RV. And you get to use the winch. 10/10 no notes

I really want to like this game, but I'm running into too many foundational issues to give it a good review.

The issue I've ran into from minute one is that you fall through the ground on spawn, whether respawning or loading in a save. I had it happen several times in a row when I was just starting out. It bugged out on the tutorial, and then twice in a row on separate new characters. Eventually I started jumping up onto cars or other objects before saving to get around it. Maybe it was an issue that's less common depending on what area of the map you're in, but it was doing it immediately when spawning in the tutorial. Overall, it was not a good first impression.

The gameplay itself is fun. The looting and exploration feel good, and the combat, while buggy, feels solid. I did run into a glitch where a boss cornered me in a room and then couldn't hit me, though that was more of a happy bug than one I was upset about. The world has a good atmosphere and is interesting to explore.

It also runs well on Steam Deck, which leads me into my next major issue, the complete lack of cloud saves. I game on my PC, and if I have downtime at work I'll pull out my Steam Deck. Most games just work out of the box with no issues switching back and forth, but this one has no cloud saves so I have to either manually transfer my save files back and forth every time I switch devices, or I have to run two separate saves. Neither is an attractive option when cloud saves have been around and easily enabled through Steam for years now. I've never ran this problem on a newer game, and there's really no good excuse to not have them enabled.

Fixing some of the bigger bugs and enabling the cloud saves would probably be enough to switch my review to a positive. It feels more a good game held back by some big issues than anything. Even some bandaids would be helpful. It might be impossible to prevent 100% of falling through the ground instances, but the game doesn't have a backup plan at all for when it happens. You just fall forever. A field just below the map that teleports you back up to ground level would be a good workaround fix.

I got this game from a Twitch drop and I still want my money back

The game isn't perfect, but it's definitely worth the money.

It's a modern single player shooter with two basic modes. A battle mode with four large maps, and an infiltration mode with three smaller maps.

In the battle mode, you spawn in with four NPC squad members alongside an army. You have a series of zones to clear across the map, fighting against hundreds of enemy combatants. You can issue direct orders to your squadmates, with an in depth command system.

In the infiltration mode, you spawn in on a solo stealth mission. The mechanics play similarly to Splinter Cell, with wall climbing and light-based stealth mechanics. Your objective is to kill a target without being detected, and then extract alive. You have silenced weapons, knives, and can drag and hide bodies.

Now for the review:

VR interaction: The VR interaction is top notch in this game, with full physical interactivity. You can prop your gun on a wall to aim better, or even bash an enemy to death with it. This does lead to some issues, namely in that you'll sometimes accidentally catch your gun on geometry, but that's to be expected with a system like this. There's no weapon ghosting through walls like in other VR shooters. This is more Boneworks than Pavlov in that regard. One downside is that grenades aren't interactable once they've been thrown, but I assume that'll be addressed in a patch at some point

Gunplay: The gunplay is solid. Aiming goes where it's supposed to on the Rift S, and shooting is satisfying. Due to the game being fully physical, shooting an enemy has an impact that isn't usually felt in VR shooters. Dead enemies don't just play canned animations. Each bullet impact knocks them back, and they ragdoll in a weighty, realistic manner.

The maps: The maps are well made, with each one capturing a different vibe.
-The Russia map captures the feeling of the old World War 2 games, with you and your army riding a boat onto a hostile beach covered in concrete bunkers.
-Syria feels like a modern era desert warfare game
-Guayana is a jungle map with an almost Vietnam-esque feel to it.
-Taiwan is a city map where you fight your way out of a subway and through a metropolis. It feels like something out of Battlefield 3

Overall gameplay loop: The gameplay loop overall is solid, but in some aspects is a mixed bag. I've put in over 6 hours in just a few days. The battles are an absolute blast. The feeling of running into a hail of gunfire and dragging an injured squadmate behind cover as bullets whiz past you is something that I've never felt in VR. Same with throwing smoke grenades to move across an open area in a heated firefight. The battles really do feel like a war game. It reminds me a lot of the old school war shooters like Black Hawk Down and the like. It's a lot of fun, and unique as far as VR shooters go.

The infiltration missions, on the other hand, could use some work. The objective in infiltration missions is simple enough - stealthily infiltrate an enemy encampment and assassinate a target. In practice, I've run into numerous stumbling roadblocks. The primary one being that there's no indication that I can see of where in the map the actual target is. You have a tablet you can pull out to see the map, but the target isn't shown. This wouldn't be so bad if not for the alarm system. There's an alarm you can disable in the maps, but again, you've got no indication of the location of it. If a body is seen, or if you are seen, the alarm goes off and constantly spawns reinforcements until you disable it. It has also gone off when I haven't been spotted, but that could be a case of me not hiding the bodies well enough.

Overall: Would I recommend this game? Absolutely. There are issues, but those issues are primarily limited to the Infiltration mode and will be relatively easy for the dev to smooth over. The battles alone make this game worth the $20 cost of entry. The overall gunplay and moment to moment shooting gameplay is a blast, and honestly the game as a whole is a unique take as far as VR shooters go.

8/10