While good for a VR game as the majority of VR games have set the bar very, very low, I am going to review this as it compares to Boneworks and that is a 5/10. Many things are improved in this game. Climbing is less bouncy, mantling is more reliable, some graphical aspects are an improvement, and the avatar system is very intuitive and interesting. That's kind of where the advancements end though. The physics are mostly the same or even worse depending on the situation and not what I expected for a 2.0 of SLZ body physics. My biggest gripe with the game is the Campaign or rather, the lack of. I can barely call this a campaign. There are a couple of early levels followed by a level for each main avatar which is mostly a tutorial/gimmick for that character not an actual Boneworks level. and then shortly after the game is done. Don't expect any impactful or interesting ending like Boneworks had. No grandiose here. There is so little in the campaign it just really saddens me. The puzzles were mostly not that creative or inventive over the last game and many things were rehashed from boneworks like seeing a turret and then seeing a garbage can next to you. "Oh boy, wonder what I should do with this garbage lid?" Even the Avatar system, they spend more time introducing you to the different avatars than they do giving you a second half of the game where you get to use them all together. And even when a situation calls for a certain avatar, it's so obvious so there's not even a brain aspect to it. It's just brain dead puzzles.

Another let down was the music. Now, there are a bunch of tracks and i've not sat down and listened to the whole album outside of game yet, but the music did not have the same effect on me as boneworks for a few reasons. For one, the mix in game is pretty bad. If you increase sfx it decreases music and vice versa so you can't really enjoy both like in boneworks. The triggers in levels that tell the game to switch tracks are all over the place and abrupt changes in music happen quite frequently. Theres a new radio song which is like a 6/10 if the boneworks radio song was a 10/10. But then they went and added OST bg music for the main campaign that has lyrics and it takes away from the boneworks identity for me. There's no real standout moment like the dancing headcrab zombies in boneworks when that epic track plays. Everyone remembers that moment. There's no such moment in this game, it's all more on the bland side this time around.

A lot of things actually take away from the identity imo. The music having lyrics and souding "modern" rather than "sci fi and mysterious", then there's the graphical downgrade of the nullbodies to be solid objects instead of transparent ....null.... things (idk). and there's all these other avatars that don't line up with boneworks style of gameplay and take up a good chunk of the story and by the end you have a game that just doesn't really feel like boneworks.

People will defend the game for its mod support, but Boneworks also has mods. you can download avatar mods right now, there's just not a cool elbow thing to switch between them.

A boneworks dev once said that they hope boneworks feels outdated in a few years after its been out. And I can say that boneworks does not feel outdated. Someone would have had to expand upon the ideas in boneworks enough to make boneworks feel outdated, and SLZ haven't done that.

Reviewed on a Rift CV1:

This is a Launch day review and should be treated as such. If my review is not up to date, move on and read reviews that are.

The fundamental issues with Larcenauts that restrict me from having fun are thus:
1. not supporting most steamVR headsets, (had to pull out the CV1)
2. Automatic reloads with animations that suck your hands out of your control (button activated)
3. One handed aiming, despite two handed grabbing. Basically how two handing a pistol works in other games. you only aim with your dominant hand.
4. Scale. The scale of bodies, guns, etc are too large. Even within a cartoony artstyle, things can be sized properly. everything is comically large and takes this game from what could be BOTW type art to Fall Guys type art. (speaking in terms of age appeal, it's not a kids game just because of the art style, but the scale makes it feel very kiddish)

Outside of these issues, and a few weird bugs, you can tell that this game would be a blast with friends to play both casually and competitively. Lots of visual polish here and very nice features like good UI and good voice acting. It screams quality, but suffers from poor design choices.

This game also launches with a litany of gameplay options. The type of things other games have left out at launch. Simple things like smooth turning, turn speed, support for left handed play, swapping stick controls, and others. It has just about every option i expect from a vr game menu at this point.

Right now my review is forced to be negative if for nothing else other than not supporting other headsets (they state more clearly now it's just oculus, they didn't always)

But mainly it's the controls and taking the player body away from the player. These are cardinal sins and I hope their fixes come swiftly and successfully

I'm playing this on a 3800x 1080ti system with 32gb of ram using an Oculus Rift CV1 and dual T16000m joysticks. This game is an absolute blast and a no brainer for any VR user. The combat is fun and rewarding, striking a good balance of difficulty and fun. In any given dogfight, I will be pressing all manner of buttons on my hosas while maneuvering the ship to lock on target or to escape. There's managing power between engines, weapons, and shields. There's managing shield location or for Imperials extra power to engines or weapons. Then there's two equipments you can assign and use.
So i can spawn, set power to shields, charge, switch to engines, zoom over to an enemy, switch to weapons, engage, fire a missile, he zooms out, i switch to engines and chase, cut him off, switch to weapons, get locked on, deploy countermeasures, fire back, then get hit from another direction, hit the target button twice to instantly lock onto my new attacker, engage, switch engines, boost away, drift around, switch weapons, take down new attacker, then return to the chase.

this moment to moment combat is the bread and butter of this game and allows for extremely exciting and at moments stressful fights that feel very rewarding when you manage to get the kill.

Aside from some launch day hiccups, like needing to dial in VR settings to improve framerate and see what each setting does, as well as getting a good Hosas keybind set up, it's been a pretty smooth launch on my end. At the time of writing i've switched my keys around and i feel i'm in a really good place setup wise.

Personally, i've played some of the game with no VR, and i just find it very difficult. It's not, of course, that's just me, but i feel very limited without it. Others will say it's harder to get a lock on in VR. I feel like this game works really well for both sides which is rare.

While i prefer the Imperial style of play with their power systems, you can't deny that the limited cockpit view is a disadvantage for vr users, whereas the new republic ships have much better visibility.

IDK how to end this review but i give it a 9/10
honestly can't think of a thing to remove a star for other than as a vr game, it would be cool to use your motion controllers as hands and control the ships like that similar to no mans sky, but as a Hosas owner, i wouldn't have used that anyway.

A really stellar and polished game. Beautiful from beginning to end. The atmosphere is incredible. It took about 3 hours to beat and that was including getting stumped on some puzzles. The puzzles were actually quite fun to solve and the land deformation showcased was also great to experience in VR. The sandbox is a ton of fun as well and is a good peaceful time when you just wanna chill. There's really no negatives I can say about this game tbh.

This game is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ blast! In case it wasn't obvious, this is an arena style game. kinda like wave shooter, and while that might be offputting for some, you should really give it a try. For one, the graphics are DROP DEAD GORGEOUS. Seriously. the environments and enemies are fantastic, but the best part is the weapons. They really understand that the things you hold in VR should be the things with the highest fidelity. The full body is really good too, better than B&S and Asgards Wrath. That's right, everyones going crazy for Asgards wrath but their body isn't even this good.
There are lots of weapons and armors to unlock in the campaign that can be used in the free play mode. Though i did die a couple times on the normal campaign, its not super hard. it can probably be cheesed, but that's no fun. In general, if you go in wanting to feel like a badass, the game will let you. The dismemberment is also fantastic. limbs can be severed at any point in a fight and there are some awesome secret ways to kill enemies. If this game looked like ♥♥♥♥, was jank, or was too boring to play, I wouldn't be recommending it, but although there's not much more here then sequential levels of enemies and unlocking, with little story, The game is too much fun to turn down. Pick it up now!!!

VR REVIEW:

To start off I'll say that I've put in over 8 hours a day since the vr update launched and have over 40 hours in the past 5 days

To get the negatives out of the way: Performance is really not great ATM and vr has some unfortunate things like hands being too big in general and not positioned correctly. as well as no ability to change fingers with your controllers (basic vr stuff).
It also has a lot of bugs and crashes ATM.

Now the good stuff: regardless of fps i have been having a blast playing this game these past few days. It is quite possibly the best vr game out there. I don't really need to divulge into the details, you know the selling points. It's immersive, full of content, and just dang fun. You want to know if it's worth it and it absolutely is. As far as performance and bugs, the team has been pushing around 2 patches a day and i believe if any team is gonna fix their game its Hello Games.

So for VR users, should you get this game? Absolutely