A VERY fun game, especially with friends, with an amazing dev studio behind it that actually listens to community feedback! Beautiful controls, beautiful graphics, and a beautiful Super Earth that I would gladly die for, hundreds of times throughout the galaxy! It's genuinely my favorite shooter to play right now, though for some critique, I wish there was more to actually do. More mission types, the Illuminate front, SOMETHING.

There was a face-hugging bug on the ceiling. My friends and I had a plan. We bait the bug onto one of our faces, someone else hits it off their face. The plan worked. We bested the bug.
We reveled in our victory. We kept beating the bug on the ground just to make sure it wouldn't get back up. Spirits were high. Voices were loud.

We weren't alone, and it took advantage of our sparse attention.

If I could play Elden Ring every day of every year I would but this mortal form is limiting.

I wish I could mark a review as mixed instead of one of two sides because I really want to recommend this game, I do, but this review is for the game, not my experience with it. There's a TL;DR at the bottom, but I encourage you to hear me out in full.

The VR UX being better than FO4 doesn't justify the price in the slightest. If this was a $10-$20 add-on for Special Edition then it would be more than worth it and $25 to maybe $30 standalone would make the most sense if they really wanted your money, but no, you pay full AAA price for the bare minimum of a VR experience whether you own every single other version of the game or not. I'm not exaggerating when I say it's the bare minimum; there's motion sickness settings, gameplay supports 6DOF with touch controllers, and a new main menu where you can walk around and adjust settings. That's it. Everything else is identical to SE, the worst offender being the UI. It's insulting that they believe VR makes up for the blatant laziness/cash grab attempt.

The biggest issue is the lack of interactivity. The whole point of VR is to truly be in the world you've entered, but Skyrim VR does everything possible to go in the opposite direction. The Half-Life: Alyx floating hands aren't as charming when they serve as a deceptive illusion instead of a deliberate game design choice. "Grabbing" items still functions like the cursor in flat mode and the dated combat is made infinitely more apparent when you're physically swinging your giant warhammer into an unresponsive foe. The only thing they nailed was archery and magic (probably a happy accident from the 6DOF support), which leaves dedicated stamina or spellsword players (me) with the worst experience.
If all these glaring issues are so bad, why did I put as much time as I did into it, and why am I playing it immediately after posting this review?

Mods. You already know this. Why it should've just been an SE add-on is one of the reasons it's so good. Since it's literally just Special Edition in VR, 99% of the Special Edition mods work no problem. Download the Vortex mod manager[www.nexusmods.com]if you're a casual like me, download VRIK[www.nexusmods.com]so you can actually see the dragon armor you worked so hard for, then download HIGGS[www.nexusmods.com]and PLANCK[www.nexusmods.com]so the VR game you're playing plays like a VR game. This is what the bare minimum should be, but unfortunately you've got some mods to set up.

As of the release of Anniversary Edition, modding Skyrim VR got a little harder, mainly because of the Unofficial Skyrim Patch no longer supporting Special Edition, which is what VR runs on. You HAVE to download an older version of USP that still supports Special Edition, so here's a link to the most recent Special Edition version,[www.nexusmods.com] a seemingly impossible task that the developers refuse to do but one that took me 3 minutes. I would also recommend its compatibility patch.[www.nexusmods.com]

Because of this, there's unfortunately some conflict with mods if they're expecting the Anniversary Edition of USP instead of Special, but the bigger mods usually have a separate download for SE/VR versions, a privilege I'm sure they have to fight multiple Frost Trolls a day to keep up for us.

Whether it's vanilla or modded, you can't deny the atmosphere. The trees of the Rift, the sound of a calm stream with the harmony of crickets in Riverwood, the night sky cutting through the mountainous vistas of the entire region, all of it is gorgeous in VR and is the most enlightened you can become when playing a video game. I climbed the tower of Faldar's Tooth and just sat and listened to the ambient music as I looked upon a setting sun nestled in the valley of two mountains, its reflection on the nearby lake. I'm surprised I remained mortal.

The melee combat is laughable, but everything else is sublime. The archery is exactly as VR archery should be. Aiming your Destruction magic at multiple foes at once will activate every dopamine receptor you have. Physically crouching to pickpocket or sneak attack someone will put the dumbest smile on your toaster-head goblin face.

I'm going to dedicate a paragraph to the dragons. Nothing will prepare you for how big they are, and you're the one slaying them, not your avatar being controlled by some buttons. The music, the scale, even melee combat with a dragon makes you long for every chance you get to devour some souls. Peeking your head over cover only to see an enormous lizard incinerate your entire view with guttural noises will, dare I say, feel just as epic as it did in 2011.

Skyrim VR gives me my most conflicting opinions I've ever felt. The vanilla gameplay experience for this price tag is borderline malicious. According to Steam I'm leaving a negative review, but because my playthrough is getting hard carried by mods I'm being completely honest when I say this is some of the most fun I've had playing a video game.

Get the game on sale for $12 and it'll be your best 12 dollar purchase in any possible timeline.

Outer Wilds isn't happening again, and that's okay. I loved every precious second of every piece of it.

There's very few games I genuinely wish I could leech my memories of just so I could experience it for the first time again. If you were a huge fan of the original Flash games like I was then you'll also fall in love with The Henry Stickmin Collection. It features not only the Collection-exclusive final game, but every Flash original fully remastered, and if I could go on a bit of a tangent, is the one example I can think of where I actually believed the newer version really was how the original looked with my young eyes.

My first draft of this review went a bit in-depth about everything I liked -- but in some odd way, it didn't feel like I was doing it justice. This is astronomical units away from a lazy port, and it shows. Fans of the original games will love the Collection, and newcomers will realize why these games are so beloved. At the end of the day, the backbone of the Henry Stickmin games is the genuinely clever but mostly silly humor, and it brings me immense amounts of joy that the Collection-exclusive game kept that and more.

Buy this game. Don't wait for a sale.

I want the first thing you read to be this: if you're on the fence about the core gameplay, you can try the free original, also on Steam! This is definitely the definitive version of the game, but if you at least want to try it before spending any money then that option is there.

I also want to mention that I beat the main game 95% blind, then Karamari Hospital and The Doll House 100% blind, all in VR. I think it's worth a buy even if you've played or seen the original just for a refresher considering it's probably been since 2012. If you're new or still not sure, I go into more detail below. I haven't played Endless Mode yet but I'm willing to bet it'll be exactly like what I think it'll be, so I won't mention it again unless I play it later and I absolutely need to update my review.

Getting this out of the way immediately: the main game is exactly how it describes itself. You're going through 1000 ehhh give or take a few rooms while trying to survive whatever may or may not be in them. If you're expecting/wanting the game to be 1000 completely unique rooms where not even a brick is repeated, unfortunately you will be disappointed. Personally, I somewhat knew what the gameplay was like before I went in, so as a fan of randomized levels with consistent rules (like SCP: Containment Breach), that fact instead excited me. Especially if you're going in blind, the pure truth of "Anything could be behind this door..." is something this game nails perfectly.

Once you understand and accept the game for what it is, hopefully you'll fall in love with the atmosphere like I did. Every room is accompanied with great ambiance from behind every wall, and a fantastic OST to back it up. My first good sign was the addictively-catchy main menu theme, and the icing on the cake was every monster having a unique theme that's just as good.

Yes, I played the entire game in its (infamous?) VR mode and it's.......... fine. It's far from unplayable, but the scarcity of VR-dedicated settings to help newcomers is blatantly apparent. I can't advise anyone who experiences motion sickness to play this game in VR, at least until you get your "VR legs". On top of this, native VR support ends at the headset, so you're required to be tabbed into the game with either your keyboard or preferably a controller. Despite its shortcomings, playing in VR is where you get the immersive spooks, so if you're an experienced VR user willing to put up with it, I think it's worth it.

Fortunately, my only genuine complaints are minor, but they still stuck out during my first and subsequent playthroughs. Staying spoiler-free, I'll keep it quick and broad. My first negative is a certain monster whose core design forces you to slow down for multiple rooms until it disappears, where it can come back later. My second negative is an entire section connected to another monster at the end of the main game. I love and appreciate its inspirations and what it's trying to convey, but its actual gameplay felt boring my first playthrough, and this feeling will only increase with subsequent ones.

Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion has clear passion put into its great design, whether it be lighthearted or horror. If you're into this type of game, it's already worth the value not including the DLC stories featuring completely different gameplay included for free with the HD Renovation. Its VR support is almost bare-minimum, but personally worth the hassle. I haven't even played for that long and it's up there in my favorites.

Also Spooky is an absolute cutie and I would die on this hill

EDIT 8/29/22
Reworded bits and pieces of the review to either be clearer or seem less "my opinion is the right one."

Also, as of this edit, the most recent update was dedicated to fixing VR issues so I strike through'd some parts that may or may not still be true and will fix it to be prettier once I am able to play in VR again.

My overall stance on the game is the same if not better. Buy it.

Normally I go indepth about my pros and cons with the game and my overall experience. Instead, I'm going to give it a thumbs up and list my favorite quotes from me and my friends.

"Let's go back inside - uh oh."

*during a hunt* "I have to pee." "Hold it."

"We got something." "The ghost really didn't like me calling its mother a ho." unanimous screaming

TL;DR at the very bottom
If you're a fan of the original games then it's pretty likely you'll like this one. Seeing the animatronics, well, animated and in 3D depth showing how intimidatingly tall they are was enough to make me geek out and almost die a few times because of it.

That being said - while you can play the entire game in Flat (Desktop) Mode, the definitive experience is playing it in VR, standing up in a decently sizable play-area (it doesn't need to be huge, if you can stand in the "middle" of your area in a T-pose and swing your arms without hitting anything, chances are its big enough). Again, you don't need to be in VR to play the game, but it is a more restrictive and even an easier experience.

So, now that you're through the obligatory "play the game in VR, please" message, without spoilers, no matter how you're playing, what's the game? FNaF: Help Wanted is a minigame collection that spans from faithful recreations of the first 3 originals, to all new experiences (and between you and me, even players that don't like the gameplay of the OG games seemed to like the Help Wanted-unique levels, which includes the entirety of the Halloween DLC).

TL;DR: If you're a fan of the original games, you'll definitely like this one. If you didn't like the Clickteam gameplay, maybe the fact it's in 3D will make it better for you, and if all else fails, the game's exclusive minigames are quite enjoyable (though all of this isn't as amplified without VR).

I'm rescinding my original review that I wrote for the Steam Awards. It's gotten that bad.



The first thing you see on the store page is some AAA MMO praise followed by it being "absolutely free". Well, I guess they're not lying; you CAN install and boot the game for free, but they are deceiving you. What does that "absolutely free" experience get you?



Patrols You're able to explore the main overworld of ALL locations presently* in the game. You can see other Guardians also on Patrol. You can walk up to markers spread throughout the different areas to start a little side mission to distract you and get a small amount of currency. Public Events can pop up in specific areas and all the random Guardians can work together as a makeshift team to complete it and get a bigger amount of currency, then leave and go about their day when it's over.

I really like Patrols. They're a nice way to do some easier challenges. The idea of them is cool in lore and it's immersive. This is probably one of the best ways to do the "seeing other players" thing that isn't the MMO classic of just shoving literally everyone on the server into the same instance and expecting that to not be a cluttered laggy mess.
Patrols are not why you play Destiny. Patrols are a very cool part of Destiny, they shouldn't be the main focus, and if you're playing free, they are the main focus, because one of the only things you can do is run around and do the same odd jobs over and over.

*Not every location is available anymore. Multiple were purged at the same time "to avoid storage bloat". I'm glad they did that or else the game wouldn't be the measly size of 100 GB!



Matchmaking Playlists PvP, Gambit, Strikes, and Legacy Raids. That's what those 4 symbols are at the top of the solar system map. I'll pick these apart separately.

PvP. The Guardian Crucible. Again, it's a cool idea, and at first glance it's done how you think it should be, and then reality sets in. Some people are looking for a casual experience, which is fine. Some people want a competitive experience and are actively trying to win, which is also fine. The problem is that there is a meta, and it's a STRONG one. Even with your Power level being normalized, some guns and abilities are just better than others, and those competitive players will use all of them, even in the casual playlists. It doesn't feel good and is so far from a casual-friendly experience it's almost laughable. I barely played the PvP, and from what I'm hearing, I dodged a bullet.

Gambit. PvEvP. I really like Gambit. It's a cool idea, and actually thought out very well. On paper, they created a flawless mode.
It is FAR from flawless.

Immediately, if you're in solo queue or with a duo partner, and the enemy team is a squad of four clan members, then you lose. Period. Since there's only one Gambit mode, some matches outcomes are already pre-determined because if the enemy team is way more coordinated than your matchmade allies could ever be, then there's nothing you can do. This isn't even an infrequent occurrence.

OK, that's fine though because you're either playing with your buddies or the opponents aren't sweating trying to dominate every match they enter. You still won't have fun because you need to fill a bar. That bar is only filled by killing enemies. Your player opponents can stop you filling YOUR bar by killing you. That's where the second "P" comes from in the PvEvP.
Bungie thinks it's balanced because you're not 2 teams clashing directly, it's just that sometimes someone on the enemy team can "invade" you with overshield. It's supposed to be a "cat versus mouse" game of the solo invader outwitting you, being the better player, or die trying. What it ACTUALLY ends up being is the solo invader coming over with a rocket launcher, or a Super ability, or whatever other meta weapon will kill you just by sneezing in your general direction. Every. Single. Invasion. And yes, that's plural, because they can do that multiple times; meta team wipe after meta team wipe until the enemy players melt their boss and win the last round in 30 seconds. I WANT to love Gambit and I WANT to sing its praises, but that alone kills the mode for me. I can't imagine being a new player with no weapons, no experience, and no reason to even play it.

Strikes. I'm not really a fan of these. They're a randomly selected PvE story mission. They're not necessarily bad I guess, they just get so old so fast. It's a linear experience that your matchmade teammates might be competent at. They also HAVE to be randomly selected, you can't pick which mission you play, even in a full fireteam with your friends, so if you have a challenge to do involving a certain enemy type or location, well, no smart strategy here, you gotta hope you get lucky.

Legacy Raids. This is supposed to be the big one. THIS is why you play Destiny. Team coordination. Game sense. These aren't the activities you play with randoms, in fact, until some time ago, it FORCED you to be in a full squad. This is the proving grounds of all 6 of you, the culmination of all your time and effort put into this game.
Good luck actually getting to do these.

Not Raids in general. Even if you have no friends, there's an unlimited amount of public groups, clans, and even some built-in mechanics to help you play Raids. I mean Raids very broadly, because no one wants to do the Legacy Raids. My favorite Raid in the game is VoG, and it's a Legacy Raid! It's "absolutely free"! The rewards are TINY. You get currency and some exclusive Raid gear that CAN BE A DUPLICATE. There's also what feels like a negative chance to get an exclusive Raid weapon, which means everyone else but you will get it multiple times (and no, there's no way to trade gear). It's not just a Legacy Raid problem. All the shiny pretty stuff is in that season's new expansion, REALLY incentivizing you to buy the DLC. But remember, you're not doing that, because the world's greatest MMO is "absolutely free".



Story ...What story? Are you expecting a campaign? Something to jumpstart your interest in this universe that begs for your further attention? If you're playing free, then you don't get any. The most amount of story you'll get is from the Strikes, but they're outdated, and they're assuming you did play through the story, so they're full of names and terms you've never heard of before.
There's not much else to say, because as a free player, it straight up isn't there.



Dares of Eternity It's a charming side mode that they made for the anniversary a bit ago and they probably kept it. It stuck around while I was still playing, so that's something a new player can do, I guess. It's as side mode as "side mode" gets. A nice distraction, but not a reason to keep playing.



That's it. That's the free player experience. Frustrating PvP, Legacy Raids you need people for (and those people won't want to do it), throwaway side content, and no story. This experience is BEGGING you to buy some DLC so you can get to the REAL content, but that's not worth it either. I could make another mile-long list of improvements I'd love to see for the free player experience AND the paid player experience, but according to the devs that were fired last month, Bungie won't listen anyway.