Just completed the game. Wanted to share my thoughts on what the game does well and what it has room to improve on. Short version, is the game good? Mostly yes, but with some substantial caveats that keep it from being a great game. Allow me to explain... Firstly lets get all of the good stuff out of the way, the core mechanics are all mostly pretty good. The input options are generally solid and allow you to configure the game to be played mostly in accordance with whatever muscle-memory you've established for VR shooters at this stage. Even left-handed support is mostly solid, so kudos to the team there. V-Stock options feel about right for how they should, and generally most of the weapon interactions were solid so no issues there. Movement's alright, performance was solid, visuals are decent and the length of the campaign was pretty good, so far so good. Onto the critique; There were several pervasive issues that constantly kept me agitated while playing the game which definitely detracted from the enjoyment that was on offer here. First up, interactions with the chest rig. Grabbing ammo in the default position was dubious at best and terribly unreliable at worst. With a bit of shifting around I was able to get it to a usable state, though the default was awful (great that we have the option to tweak this though) I'd still suggest increasing the interaction volumes for grabbing a fresh magazine though. Second issue, if you eject a magazine and grab a new mag to insert into the mag well of your weapon quickly (as most any experienced VR shooter player is going to) there's a decently high chance that you'll simply grab the freshly ejected mag from your weapon and reinsert that into the mag well, why? because apparently the ejected mag takes grab priority over grabbing a fresh magazine, and apparently the ejected mag's interaction volume is large enough for this to happen all the time. This was very frustrating after about the 30th occurance. Should be easy to fix at least, so hopefully someone at the studio gives this a read. Next up, interactions with objects. Now, I am a stern believer in having the trigger of the off-hand for interacting with weapon functions (charging handle, magazine, etc) and grip for grasping the foregrip/underbarrel. Zero Caliber 2 gives you this option, so far so good, but wait, suddenly all interactions with world objects are -mostly- on the trigger, but sometimes (ammo boxes) on grip? And grabbing grenades is always a trigger action and not a grip action? Why is this inconsistent? I realize this is mostly a nitpick as the majority of users will run through the game with the default control config and probably not have this issue, but if the option's there, it should be correct I feel. At the moment, it's messy. Moving along, weapon interactions with the world. Now yeah, it's a little bit nifty to be able to hit buttons and stuff with the physical volume of your weapon, but having the weapon collide with walls, railings, doors and other stuff is just a crap feeling in VR. Better to let the players hands be wherever they are and if their gun's not firing because it's halfway into a wall, alert them, let 'em work it out but don't push their non-physical weapon around when their physical hands are where they are. Lesser of two evils perhaps, but respectfully, Pavlov does this right, so that's the example I'd present for doing this properly. The enemy AI, bleh. Their variety of animations and such was alright. Their accuracy seems to be the same whether thay're 200 yards away or within spitting distance, which detracts from the experience, they're always snuggly positioned in the most annoying of positions throughout the campaign, this wouldn't be so bad if the map geometry made a bit more sense, but oftentimes the rooms you're pushing through make very little logical sense. And then there's their propensity for grenades. Holy shit.. I lost count of how many times I'd pop a corner, see a guy, shoot him and as his health is on it's steady ride towards 0, he's immediately gone for the red glowy nade and proceeded to drop it as his feet on the way down. It feels like one in every 10 or so enemies does this. That might not sound so bad, but the AoE on grenades in this game (and their very long fuse times) means you'll very often get caught in the blast if you're in close quarters (unless you make an immediate and concentrated effort to avoid it) and it'll wipe you to 1hp the instant it goes off. In short, grenades in this game are just an arduous pain in the neck, constantly, not because they're used effectively by the enemy (happens very rarely) but because they just create arbitrary pauses in the gameplay while the player has to step aside and let them do their thing before proceeding, and if you manage not to notice the CoD martydom strats of the guy you just sent packing to Tlalokii, have fun waiting for your health to regen, hope you weren't under fire at the time as that'd suck. :) The less said about the writing for the game's story (or the silly bloody objectives that you're tasked with) the better. It's braindead, trivial and effectively just an excuse to have you run around, shoot people and blow stuff up. Just try to tune out all of the NPC dialogue and the complete lack of any tactical sense in everything that the game has you doing and maybe you won't find it too eye-rollingly bad. Brain off, consume product. Average CoD affair, really. While we're at it, enable unlimited ammo. There's no penalty for it and the game's arbitrary ammo pools + ammo grab stations placed around everywhere are just a waste of your time and a senseless break in the action. Realism can lick my taint on this one, the whole ammo system is just shit here and you're better off without it, trust me, you'll thank me later. Each of the 'riding in a vehicle' sections is annoying at best. My main complaint is that your 'head' is forced to rotate with the vehicle that you're a passenger in. While that might be true for reality, it feels crap in VR. There might've been an option to disable this in the settings (i'm not interested in going back and checking, w/e) but aiming down-sight at a guy and lighting him up, while having to constantly rotate because the vehicle that you're in listing lazily to the left just feels like ass. The mounted MG sections on the humvee also suck, the gun's got next to no lateral movement and you're honestly better serviced by just switching to your primary weapon during those sections. Moving right along, weapon balance is all over the shop and of the weapons I tried, I couldn't make much sense as to the devs choices for which weapons are blessed with decent recoil patterns and which ones are an absolute waste of a weapon slot. Having the recoil patterns be random rather than repeatable is also a rookie dev choice imho, but I'm not here to throw too much shade about it. I'd say they've got plenty of room to improve this, but for now, I recommend going with the Mk18 Carbine, throwing a red-dot or holo optic on it, a laser, a vert grip, extended mag and the best recoil reducing barrel attachment you have access to during the campaign and just rolling with that. Most of the SMGs feel like shit, the AK varients were all over the place, DMRs lack the punch to be worth considering most of the time and pistols are a joke. Shotguns might've been worth a look, but I didn't touch them out of spite. Whoops. I'll mention that the bolt action rifles actually feel pretty decent in this game, which is a plus but on most everything else, I sleep. I haven't touched the multiplayer yet, though given everything I've described above, not sure that I'm much interested in doing so while Pavlov's an option, though who knows. Chances are Zero Caliber PvP actually has servicable hit reg. Pavlov sure as hell doesn't have that, so who's to say? In summation, I am GLAD this game got a PCVR release, but it has room for improvement.
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