Seems like a really interesting and fun game to play... That is, until you start encountering random insta-deaths for no reason whatsoever.

Walking along minding your own business? Dead.
Riding your horse? Dead.
Walk near the coastline? Dead.
Walk on a mountainside? Dead.
Mining a rock? Dead.
Going back to pick up your gear after randomly dying for no reason? Dead.

I know it's early access, but for ♥♥♥♥'s sake, this is just ridiculous.

Zero Caliber is shaping up to be a great VR shooter, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it will develop over the Early Access period and into full release. I've played for several hours now and have a pretty firm grasp of the game. It definitely has touches of old-school Call Of Duty, before it got too carried away with itself, with straightforward FPS gameplay that most people will be familiar with. You definitely need to have earned your 'VR legs' prior to playing this, as movement is primarily controlled with smooth locomotion on the thumbsticks. Having played and enjoyed Pavlov first, I picked this up afterwards because what I REALLY wanted was a proper single-player shooter. While this is definitely still a work-in-progress, I have not been disappointed! :)

In terms of weapon handling, both Pavlov and Zero Caliber are very similar in concept. However, where Pavlov is basically Counterstrike in VR, ZC has proper single-player missions that are based around a storyline - set on bright and colourful maps that are more 'realistic' and less 'cartoony'. These missions can also be played co-op, so your friends can join in too! There are a fairly good amount of levels so far, with a new one just recently added a few weeks ago. At the moment, most of them are separate skirmishes, but there is one mini-campaign consisting of 4 missions. I hope the future brings more mini-campaigns (or even a full campaign!), and possibly a slight overhaul of the storytelling to better link each of the separate missions (just something to help tie them together a little more). A series of mini-campaigns could allow for multiple different sub-stories that can be wrapped up into the main plot. The overarching story is reasonable, with plenty of room for expansion and a more in-depth narrative in the future.

One of the main selling points of this game is real freedom to create YOUR weapon of choice. Want a 10x scope on a golden Deagle? Go for it! Fancy a close-range one-shot-kill sniper rifle? Well, you can have one. Shotguns with laser sights? Yup! xD There are also 'special' skinned weapons which can either be unlocked as you level up or found hidden throughout the levels. You have a whole range of different sights, scopes, grips, suppressors and other accessories which you can add to your gun, with the vast majority being totally mix-and-match. You can even put a bipod on an Uzi if that's your thing Lol

I very rarely experience any crashes or serious bugs, no significant frame drops, haven't noticed any major texture or rendering problems. Standing too close to a wall or object can push your gun around a bit (there's collision detection to stop your gun disappearing into the wall) which can be annoying at times but is probably for the best, and you soon learn to stand at a slight angle or take a step back from the wall to compensate. The AI could do with some improvements, friendlies often walk through you or directly into your line of fire while you're shooting, while enemies are often seen uselessly bum-rushing your position or straight-up gangbanging you. Would be nice to see enemies enter the battle legitimately (APCs or helicopters occasionally dropping them in, or paratroopers, for example) instead of just spawning behind bushes. The only tracking issues I've had can mostly be put down to the fact I only have 2 front-facing sensors, and no third sensor behind me.

Overall, the game runs great and I have no performance issues when playing. It seems like the core of the game is pretty much finished, and just needs to be filled out with content and some polishing - more missions, more story, better voice-acting/script-writing, smarter AI, that kind of thing. I hope it continues to grow and mature over time, as FPS games and VR are a perfect match and so far this is a great example of how the two can be combined!

Oculus Rift CV1 (2 sensors, Touch Controllers)
i7-6850K
32GB RAM
RTX 2080Ti

P.S. I should also note that the devs actually added me on Steam and asked me to provide them with some honest feedback (which I've e-mailed to them) - this is something I have *NEVER* experienced before! I've seen Discord group chats and Reddit AMA's, that sort of thing, but never had a dev personally ask me for my opinion. This gives me hope that they are actively seeking to improve the experience by asking people what they think is good or bad about their game. They are nice guys too! :) However, this communication has NOT affected my review - if the game was total ♥♥♥♥, I would have told them it was ♥♥♥♥ to their faces! :p

Counterstrike: VR. I ran out of bullets so I threw my gun at a dude's head, but it just went through him. Still good though.

In short, this is a proper little gem for VR! It's not a huge game but what it does, it does well, which is taking you for a flight around some pretty islands at a pace of your choosing, whether you just want to glide around and relax or rush like a madman for the high score! This is one of those super simple titles that you can learn quickly and take turns on with your buddies, meaning it's a great option for VR cafes/arcades. At less than £6, or just a tiddle under tree-fiddy on offer, you really can't go wrong!

Honestly, the ONLY thing wrong with this title is the lack of players - there's a competitive element to the game with a prize pool, but sadly there just isn't much competition :( If you have a VR headset you absolutely should get this, even if you're only gonna demo it to your mates because it's a fun, colourful experience which is easy to pick up at a moments' notice.

P.S. The developer is working on a glider simulator (as opposed to an arcade title), which is available to play as a beta through this game :)

10/10 almost puked in my mate's face handing him the Rift :D

The first VR game I've played in 5 years that's made me want to projectile vomit all over myself and my surroundings xD I suggest taking turns with a friend who doesn't sweat too much(!), playing a wave each then swapping, until you've got your 'VR legs' and can manage to play for half hour to an hour at a time. Then you'll be flying! Or, uh... Stabbing. I also recommend a large-ish standing area of 2x2m or more - my area is 1.5m from left-to-right and I struggle to use some of the larger two-handed weapons without smacking the wall on one side or my desk on the other! Smaller weapons are just fine as long as I don't physically move around.

This is an Early Access title, and not so much a game as a fully-fledged, slightly tongue-in-cheek melee combat simulator. As such, the combat is horrendously good and often funny as all hell! You can grab weapons at any point along the handle, pick up and throw objects, people, weapons, and even interact with a few pieces of scenery. You can hack, slash, stab, poke, prod, slice, dice, and do all things nice with a decent selection of medieval weaponry ranging from daggers and maces to spears and axes. Yes, even bows and arrows ;)

It's not particularly buggy which is great, although there are some collision issues especially when one of your weapons gets stuck in something/someone. Usually these are more funny than annoying! Sometimes your virtual arm will stretch across the map to maintain grip on a stuck dagger, or you'll drag a guy (or several) with you after having stabbed them (both of these can be an issue for motion sickness). Corpses occasionally start janking around, and if you get stuck in a spazzy gap then try to climb out using your weapons, you'll get slingshotted across the map! :p

Magic is fun to use, with Lightning being the only 'spell' currently available (though the spell selection menu clearly has space for more to be added), however you are also equipped with the power of Telekinesis. This allows you to pick up and throw objects from a distance, or even pull a weapon directly to your hand! Throwing telekinetic daggers at people is AWESOME. Despite only 2 magical 'powers' being available, there's actually quite a lot of mix-and-matching you can do with them, which really opens up the gameplay to allow you to fight pretty much however you want.

There are 4 distinct areas with another 3 or 4 locations shown on the map which aren't currently available. There are no missions or levels and no story, however I *strongly* recommend to the devs that they eventually include a 'campaign' of some kind to give a sense of purpose/completion to the game. Apparently the devs come from a modding background and intend to keep the game 100% mod-compatible - I haven't tried any mods yet but this is ALWAYS a good thing!

This game is brutal in every sense. Do you send children to work in the mines? Do you let your people freeze in the Arctic winter? Do you harvest the dead for their organs, or even for food? You're going to have to keep your city running with minimal resources and not enough people, scraping by 'til the next break in the harsh weather, and passing laws which are just as likely to cause riots as they are to placate the crowds.

It's gonna be tough. Stay frosty.

Theme Hospital, but remade for the modern era. Everything that was awesome about the original, but made better with an improved UI, better control over construction, staff and patients, and a good dose of silliness with new diseases and some ridiculous in-game radio presenters :p

The music is horrific though (it's not *bad*, just really annoying), turn it off and play your own lest you be stuck with god-awful elevator music in your head for THREE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ MONTHS AND COUNTING,

Generally speaking, I hate pixel-art games. But just like the first Hammerwatch, this looks fantastic.

Generally speaking, I *REALLY* hate procedural generation. But this pulls it off brilliantly.

While the first Hammerwatch was based on beating fixed levels, HoH generates a new map each and every time you play. This is a rogue-lite rather than campaign-based game, where death is the end of your run, but not a complete loss. If you bank the gold and ore you've collected it will go back to your town, which acts as a lobby for purchasing upgrades on your characters. Although the game is indeed pretty grindy to begin with, once you've got your characters and town levelled up a bit you'll be able to progress to ever higher levels, which present a greater risk for greater rewards - more gold means more powahhh! ;)

There are a nice handful of classes including melee, ranged, spellcasters, and healers, each with their own strengths and weaknesses - all derived from the original game but expanded upon to give them more skills, which you have to choose carefully to maximise your play style. Do you play carefully, or rush into battle like a manic barbarian? Do you play solo, or team up with other adventurers? Are you a crowd-controlling tactician, or a tanky powerhouse? There's a bit of something for everyone! But be prepared, you will need to up your game to progress - play smart, avoid traps, don't get backed into a corner, and most of all, LEARN TO DODGE!!!

There are a few annoying things which can hamper gameplay, most especially for me is that the slightest touch on your gamepad's analog stick moves you at full speed. If you have an Xbox 360 pad, a VERY common issue is that the analogs don't centre perfectly, so you'll stop moving only to find your character starts sprinting straight into a spike trap! Occasionally an archer will shoot at you and miss, but you'll still take damage. With the proc-gen/RNG nature of the game, sometimes your runs will be highly rewarding, while others will be absolutely terrible - you might set out for gathering as much ore as possible, only to receive 2 pieces across 5 floors. Or you'll want to progress as far as possible but only ever pick up crappy items which don't suit your character at all (WHY do I need all this increased spellpower on my melee Paladin?!). Unlike HW1, shared/split-screen isn't available in this game which sucks, however the devs have said they plan to add it in a future update.

At time of writing I have played for 90 hours, and expect to get another 90 out of it by the end of the month :p Heroes of Hammerwatch is a fantastically fun game to play by yourself or with friends, where every run feels worthwhile and progressing to the harder levels, beating the more difficult bosses, feels like you're achieving something good every time. It's a very pick-up-and-play kind of game that you can jump into any time, and even has a mechanic to skip past levels (but lose out on the loot gained from them) if you don't want to repeat the early stuff over and over.

Would strongly recommend, especially if you love old-school games with a dash of new flavour. Very addictive and a great laugh with friends! :)

The game itself is great, but ♥♥♥♥ YOU for cutting half the content out and selling it as Day One DLC, and not only that, but for adding RNG microtransactions AS WELL. ♥♥♥♥ you, ♥♥♥♥ you very ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ much. At the very least, if those RNG loot boxes MUST be included, they should be available for in-game currency too. I already gave you 80 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ quid you greedy ♥♥♥♥♥.

Remove the microtransaction ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and I *might* consider changing my attitude for the better.

NOTE: I most certainly WILL change this review to be positive, but ONLY if Sega come to their senses.

This is absolutely, without a doubt, definitively the very best Sonic game to come out in TWENTY ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ YEARS. Why it took this long, and for a bunch of fans to get together (NOT Sega themselves) and bring Sonic back to his original and top form, is anybody's guess. The quality and attention to detail is simply astounding. I'm honestly gutted to have to give this a negative review, because the game itself is absolutely fantastic. The developers have put so much time and effort into making this the perfect experience, and it has come so, SO close, only to be ruined by the disgusting behaviour & greed of Sega.

Incidentally, this Sonic game is fan-made and NOT developed by Sega, only PUBLISHED by them. Understand that it is ENTIRELY because of Sega that I give this game a Negative review. I have nothing but positivity and love for the developers, and refuse to join the "get a refund" crowd because I want to support them. I will, however, still download a DRM-free copy of the game when available. Also, because I want Sega to stick their failed Anti-Consumer-- uhh sorry, "Anti-Piracy" - policy up their arse. I paid for the game, I should damn well be able to play it without issues resulting from bad 3rd-party software.

POSITIVES

Almost everything simply feels 'right'. The physics, the acceleration, pumping halfpipes, the bouncing and pinballing off objects, character and badnik movement... It's all perfectly on point. It feels natural and fitting alongside the original 16-bit games, making everything smoother, easier on the eyes, with more colour shading and far less jagged lines, which all work together to make the game look new and fresh, while maintaining it's true faithfulness to the original games. Level effects and environmental interactions are FANTASTIC - things like smashing glass, and one thing I'll only mention as "get a fire shield in later levels!" ;)

GURTA GHU FUHRRRST!!!! You can get some SERIOUS speed going, and finally the screen can keep up with Sonic! No more having to memorize the entire zones' layout in order to complete it without ever seeing Sonic on-screen. Which was kind of a big thrill being able to go *that* fast, but it wasn't always the most helpful :p

No more quickly switching controllers if you need Tails to fly you around - you can gain minor control over him using your Player 1 pad!!! :D He doesn't seem as capable of carrying you around in Mania as he did in S3&K, and controller-swapping back in the day seemed to give better/more precise control over the flight model.. But maybe that's just me. The main problem I have with it is having to press Down+Jump to release, instead of simply jumping. It's less accurate and requires fat-thumbing the D-pad if you want to jump directionally.. Anyway, being able to use Tails as an air taxi is and has always been a very awesome thing!

The bosses are interesting and provide a nice mix-up to the gameplay, and it's especially fun to have two "running/racing" bosses. Many of them combine the appearance and/or actions of previous bosses with new ideas, a couple of which are hilariously funny to play against! CATERKILLER!!!!! xD I think it's a pity the Stardust Speedway boss isn't more similar to the Sonic CD version, but the 'multiple stage boss fight' thing is brilliant.

Experiencing the thrill of speeding through a huge underwater section and JUST breaking the surface as your Docky-Docky counter reaches zero!!! Holy crap, I made it! xD

NEGATIVES

So, why the hell am I giving it a Negative review? Let me make that abundantly clear with just one word: DENUVO. We accept that we're already in DRM Hell when buying games on Steam, and there is one reason and ONE REASON ONLY why we accept this: Steam DOES NOT NEGATIVELY AFFECT GAMEPLAY. Many people, like myself, begrudgingly accept that we're pretty much forced to use Steam these days if we ever want to play a new release, but given the choice would much prefer all our games to be Standalone without other parties pouring custard on your roast beef dinner.

And if it wasn't bad enough to add an unnecessary component to a game that doesn't need it, Denuvo comes with it's own set of problems, most notably the severe input lag and occasionally even total disregard of button presses. On the Blue Spheres stage, I have literally ran in a straight line while repeatedly pushing, releasing, then again pushing the Left button, and nothing has happened (it's not the pad, it works perfectly on every other game)... Just ran 8 squares straight into a red sphere... LOL. This means that "sailing the red sea" with timed jumps is practically impossible, while it could be done fairly easily on S3&K. The input lag isn't usually as noticeable during general gameplay (at some points it is, like quick-jumping multiple obstacles), but in the Blue Spheres and UFO special stages it is EXTREMELY apparent - especially when you have to jump in order to make that tight corner, but instead end up powersliding off the map due to the jump not registering.

Now onto issues with the game itself - these are mostly little ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ rather than game-breaking, launch-the-pad-across-the-room problems... Things that could have been done differently but aren't seriously detrimental to gameplay:

Some of the level designs are a little questionable, particularly in the middle-late stages where you spend most of the time just watching Sonic roll around and not really having much, if any, control. There are lots of points-of-no-return which is disappointing as Mania is supposed to encourage greater exploration, but hardwalling off earlier parts of levels severely limits this.

Hitboxes are weird on a lot of things. I have clearly stood *next* to a rising/falling platform, and been insta-crushed by it. A few of the badniks seem a bit funny as well, either destroying them without a proper collision or surviving when they've obviously been hit. The Rollers and the Dangos ("Pill Bug", the green woodlouse things) seem to be a bit funky when you're both balled up and bouncing into each other.

Some of the bosses are far too easy to beat by simply taking a hit then smashing them 4 times whilst trying to grab one of your dropped rings, then repeating. Some don't seem to have a viable attack pattern to defeat them without getting hit yourself, while others are so vulnerable that you barely have to do anything to beat them.

The fact that they added in different unlockable move sets from previous Sonic games is awesome - things like Sonic CD's super peel-out and Sonic 3's insta-shield. So why is this a bad thing? Well first, you can ONLY use them if you choose the 'No Save' game file, you cannot use them on new saved games OR cleared saved games. Second, there is no move set that integrates everything into a single play-through. Why shouldn't Sonic have access to the insta-shield while also being able to use the peel-out? This IS a Sonic game after all, and it's not like you can use any of those moves in 2-player Versus or Time Attack, so why CAN'T we use all those moves, and/or use them in saved games?!


Some of the negative issues I have mentioned could potentially change/be fixed in the future as updates start coming out, particularly the previous paragraph. As far as the game itself is concerned, the Positives outweigh the Negatives BY FAR. I reiterate that the developers have done a FANTASTIC job and I FULLY support them.
However, I do NOT support Sega's decision to add intrusive 3rd-party software to the game. Moreso, they should feel ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ASHAMED OF THEMSELVES for delaying the game by an entire fortnight to add this ♥♥♥♥ that NOBODY wanted or asked for. Sega can go ♥♥♥♥ themselves with a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ big dildo-shaped stick. I hope they get splinters, too. If, IF they finally decide to remove the DRM from this title, I will be more than happy to alter this review to be more positive.