Recent reviews by Echo

I quite like the idea of virtual tourism in VR, but while photogrammetry or lightfields can recreate many spaces fairly realistically, they never quite feel right because they are just static scenes. Luke improves upon these static scenes with realistic water, which goes a long way toward making the places feel more alive. The video and audio of Luke discussing each location is quite nice, although I did run into some issues with the audio (most voiceovers seem to end abruptly, and in scenes with music it drowned out the voiceover). The experience is sadly rather short, but the quality is honestly better than many experiences I've paid money for, so I can definitely recommend you give this a shot for the low price of free.

The photogrammetry is good, the voice over narration and facts are good, and I appreciate the manually added dynamic content like water, birds, grass, and interactable rocks. My one big complaint is that the content not generated by photogrammetry (stuff far away), is lower quality than I would expect in some scenes (kind of blurry), and is on a flat photo sphere (so you lose depth). If you like this genre of experience in VR, this one is pretty well made, and I think you will enjoy it, but there is still some room for improvement.

If you like escape rooms, you will like Abode. Of the escape room games I've played on the Vive, this is by far the best. I beat it in about 45 minutes, which isn't terribly long, but I would consider it well worth the price. Additionally, the acheivements offer some other objectives outside of advancing the puzzles which is a welcome addition. Overall I definitely recommend this game :p

Counter Fight is a simple game that starts slow and increases in speed until you eventually can't keep up. It has a simplistic aesthetic that works well for it, and I think it does what it aims to do pretty well. Although I would recommend the game as is, there are a couple of issues I hope the developer can address:

• The in-game tutorial fails to explain how to deal with the robber (throw stuff at him). It also fails to explain the energy drinks that the cheerleader/attendant provides.

• The frying pan has a tendency to clip into the stove, making it diffult to cook without holding the pan.

• The dumplings sometimes interact with each other and/or the pan, violently. This makes cooking dumplings much more of a pain than it should be.

• The beer bottles have a tendency to fall over when placed in the fridge, emptying themselves.

• Bad collisions/physics, especially with the beer in the fridge can lead to repeated clipping sounds, which gets annoying fast.

• There's no way to undo a mistake. If an uncooked dumpling falls onto the plate, or you place the wrong item in the ramen, you can't remove it. This requires you to throw out the item and start again from scratch.

• Items can be selected easily from their respective containers, not so much for picking up items from elswehere. Dumplings in particular seem to get stuck on the counter with limited to remove them.

• The fridge door can be opened with the handle, but closing it via the handle doesn't seem to work very well.

• Sometimes customers seem to ignore the food placed in front of them. Picking the food up and placing it back down usually fixes it, but if the timer is low, this can mean the difference between success and failure.

Despite these issues, the game is very much playable, and it is quite fun.