Boneworks, the highly anticipated physics-driven VR shooter from veteran VR studio Stress Level Zero, is finally here. The game is underscored with a rich, physics-based interaction system which aims to make VR more interactive and immersive.

Boneworks Details:

Developer: Stress Level Zero
Available On: Steam (Index, Vive, Rift, WMR)
Reviewed On: Valve Index
Release Date: December 10th, 2019
Price: $30

Editor’s Note: Boneworks is pitched as a “narrative VR action adventure” by its developer, but also contains a substantial sandbox mode (unlocked by playing through the narrative component). This review is primarily about the title’s ‘game’ elements (the ‘authored experience’). Accounting for the game portion alongside the unlocked sandbox mode would bring such a broad scope that we don’t feel the review and score would be meaningful for players primarily interested in the raw sandbox experience. We encourage those players to seek out other analyses which explore the game from the sandbox perspective specifically.

Gameplay

Boneworks’ fundamental gameplay consists of physics-driven puzzling and combat. Though the developers call it a “narrative VR action adventure,” the narrative turns out to be extremely light—bordering on mere lore and setting—with tidbits delivered as brief but well produced live-action videos that play on monitors in the virtual world.

A minimal narrative wouldn’t be a bother if gameplay had its own compelling arc, climaxing in a fusion of mechanics and concepts taught throughout the course of the game. But it’s here where Boneworks stumbles; despite a rich and often quite immersive set of underlying systems at work, the game struggles to find its stride.

It wouldn’t be fair to call Boneworks a mere tech demo considering the length of its campaign mode (it took me about 9 hours to complete) and the addition of the Arena (waves) and Sandbox (playground) modes, but it’s clear that the game’s core tech got most of the attention, while the actual game on top came by way of necessity.

The game serves up something of a meta-narrative, mixing concepts from today’s non-fiction VR with a heaping dose of fictional VR wrapped up in a company called Monogon Industries, makers of the virtual world ‘MythOS’.

Boneworks is heavily influenced in style and structure by Half-Life 2 (2004) and Portal (2007), right down to the inclusion of an orange crowbar, motion sensing turrets, and cryptic text scrawled on the walls by an entity of unknown intention. And it starts out strong; a significant portion of the beginning of the game has players walking through a “museum” which is a thinly veiled (but entirely effective) introduction to core mechanics that’s suitably engaging.

Here you’ll learn to move around, jump, shoot, interact with objects and more. By the time you start to get the hang of the idea that almost everything is interactive (thanks to a deeply physics-driven foundation), it can feel refreshingly immersive to find that most things act like you expect them to at a glance. In far too many VR games I’ve had my reality shattered when reaching for an object with an obvious real-life function that doesn’t live up to that expectation in VR. In Boneworks I was delighted when I found a small hanging bell with a rope dangling from the ringer, and by God it not only moved when I smacked it, but it actually freaking rang.

Not every object holds up to this much detail, but more often than not I found my interaction expectations satisfied rather than disillusioned. While not everything does what you expect (non-functional vending machines were a bit of a miss), pretty much every object in the game that looks like it can in fact be moved, leading to strong bouts of immersion. When things go wrong though—and they definitely will—the physics get wonky fast, leading to frustrating moments where the physics system feels far more encumbering than freeing (more on this in the Immersion section).

The shooting and gun mechanics in Boneworks have clearly received a lot of attention. You’ll need to insert a magazine with a fair degree of accuracy, charge each weapon in a slightly unique way, and holding guns with two hands for optimal recoil control. If you pull the bolt back when a mag is loaded, an unspent cartridge will pop out of the chamber; if you fire a round, a spent case is ejected (as the bullet itself has gone down range).

These great details and solid interactions are unfortunately put to poor use against a rather small and bland set of contemporary weapons: AR, SMG, and pistol. There’s a few permutations (a laser pointer here, a scope there) but all ultimately boil down to ‘long range’ or ‘short range’, with the choice of single fire of automatic for each. Boneworks introduces some much more interesting physics-based weapons and gadgets (like a gravity gun) but not until the game is almost entirely over, giving them hardly any playtime in your first campaign run.

The bland guns are compounded by bland enemies which in the latter stages of the game feel more like a nuisance than a fun challenge. There’s but three enemy types—zombies, headcrabs, and dudes with guns—and they all die just the same when you point your gun at them and pull the trigger a few times; none of them demand any real thought from the player, not even so much as what gun to use. The only half-interesting enemy was one of the zombie types which shoots a slow-moving projectile at you which at least gives you the option to physically dodge with your body.

Boneworks combat can be fun, but only if you make it fun. On top of the nondescript weapons and enemies, the game fails to set up interesting scenarios for the player. This leaves it up to the player to be creative and stylish with their weapons to add some intrigue to the combat. This is made much easier with the unlimited-use slow-motion button, which otherwise unfortunately doesn’t actually synergize well with the overall gameplay (in fact, it makes basic combat far too easy).

That’s especially true for the game’s melee weapons which include blunt weapons like bats and hammers, and short weapons like swords and daggers. In slow motion they can feel quite satisfying, but at normal speed it often feels like you’re swinging sponges around because of the way the weapons tend to slop around against enemies rather than connect and transfer force or dismember. Stabby weapons, which can penetrate enemies with enough force, generally fare better at doing what you hope than the blunt weapons, but (just like the game’s guns) they aren’t very compelling to use unless you’re just going for overtly stylish slow-motion kills.

The state of melee combat makes it that much more perplexing that an important part of the game is presented out as a wildly anti-climactic and wholly unsatisfying fist fight.

Boneworks unfortunately doesn’t transcend the sum of its parts; it fails to find any compelling interplay between puzzles and combat, and misses the opportunity to build a set of core concepts which lead to a climax in mechanics, gameplay, and story. Instead it feels like piecemeal gameplay scenarios strung together atop a novel technical foundation with a sprinkle of narrative.

For those that are compelled by the technical foundation, Boneworks will make a fun combat and physics sandbox; the game clearly has this in mind with its Arena and Sandbox modes, both of which are unlocked only after finding hidden items in the campaign. Arena serves up wave-shooter like scenarios, including Survival (which tasks you to live as long as possible) and Trials (which challenge you to kill enemies under certain conditions or with certain items). Sandbox makes the game’s objects and physics-tools available for freestyle play and experimentation. Anyone who enjoys Blade & Sorcery or messing about in Garry’s Mod will feel right at home here.

Considering the scope of its technical foundation, it’s a shame that Boneworks does nothing out of the gate concerning user-generated content; the door is clearly open for the game to become something like Garry’s Mod (which has hundreds of thousands of user-generated maps and add-ons) for VR; not pushing toward that end feels like a missed opportunity.

Immersion

Image courtesy Stress Level Zero

Boneworks’ physics-driven gameplay is a double-edged sword. When everything is working, it can be downright magical and offer a rich sense of immersion that few other games achieve. When it isn’t working, it can be a nightmare of clunk and frustration.

Boneworks is a game for hardcore VR players, and Stress Level Zero makes no question of it, stating right on the game’s store page: “This game demonstrates advanced VR mechanics and concepts, players are recommended to have previous VR experience and understanding of common VR gameplay principles before proceeding.” Indeed, the key here is that you need to learn how the game wants to be played in order to find those magic moments, otherwise you’ll get only the nightmare side.

Because Boneworks aims to rely so heavily on physical simulation, it pushes the player’s body around a lot. While most other VR games are very good about maintaining a 1:1 connection between your real body and your virtual body, Boneworks considers your virtual body just another part of the world and this can lead to significant disconnect between your real-world pose and your virtual pose. The game attempts to rectify this disconnect with corrective forces which often lead to a feeling that the world is made entirely of springs.

For instance, if you pick up a large object and try to lift it over your head, it’ll waggle its way there slowly as the game attempts to simulate a certain amount of strength in your arms and the weight of the object. This approach makes sense, and looks fine from the perspective of an observer, but the mismatch between the player’s actual movements and their virtual movements can be, at times, very unsatisfying and also quite uncomfortable.

There was more than a handful of times in the game where frustration sets in due to the game’s commitment to physical simulation over satisfying gameplay. Figuring out the solution to a puzzle is supposed to be the challenging part, but some of the puzzles in Boneworks had entirely obvious solutions that were exceedingly tedious to execute—Index’s finger-tracking capabilities were put to good use as I occasionally extended my middle finger to the physics-gods responsible for my plight. Frustration was exacerbated by distant checkpoints which sometimes required of minutes of sprinting in order get back to the location where I died.

Objective interactions in Boneworks generally feel pretty good; guns in particular are satisfying and responsive to the way you grab and interact with them, though they can be oddly picky about the exact way that you insert a new magazine.

Though the inventory system (which offers shoulder, chest, and back inventory slots) brings strong design fundamentals to the table, a few missing details leave it with a degree of frustration that need not be present. The game makes no effort to tell you when your hand is in the right position to holster an object, nor to alert you if the reason you keep dropping an object is actually because there’s another object already in that holster.

Accidentally dropping important items in Boneworks is all too easy, and while a largely successful force-grab system helps a lot, it’s still frustrating to reach for your chest slot only to mistakenly grab the item from your back slot, or to find that you accidentally dropped your pistol on the floor three rooms ago when you thought you had holstered it.

An optional ‘inventory view’ can be called up fairly quickly to see all of your slots and their contents right in front of you, which is nice, but it feels like a band-aid for a holster system which, with a bit more attention, could be very good.

Comfort

Boneworks clearly prioritizes its dedication to physical simulation over player comfort; from big freefalls to roller coaster-like slides down sewer pipes, this is an intense game and those who are among the highly sensitive may want to skip it outright. For those in the middle of the sensitivity spectrum (where I seem to fall) you should be able to get by as long as you don’t push yourself too hard and take breaks if you start to feel discomfort creeping in.

The game is built entirely around stick-based movement and expects players to make regular springy (virtual) jump motions (even over minor edges and curbs). Comfort options are minimal; no alternative to smooth locomotion is available, but there are options for smooth or snap-turning, seated or standing, and head or stick relative movement.

Though it regularly moves the player in ways that are aggressive compared to other VR games, I found that climbing in Boneworks constitutes the worst combination of functionality and comfort. When you grab onto a climbable surface, there is a persistent springy-shakiness to every part of your movement as you slop your way up the wall. Especially with the wall right in your face, this shakey movement is particularly unsettling to the proprioceptive system. The clip below only barely captures how significant this shakey movement feels when you’re actually in the headset.

After laying down to sleep following several extended sessions with Boneworks, I could actually still feel the shaking motion in my head in a very similar way to feeling the motion of waves when laying in bed after spending the day on a sailboat. I’ve never experienced this lingering sensation from other VR games. Definitely pay attention to how you’re feeling when playing Boneworks and take breaks the moment you feel off.

REVIEW OVERVIEW
Overall
6
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Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • alboradasa

    Very strange and damaging choice to review the campaign and sandbox separately.

    • Brian (Suitch)

      I agree. This review.is brutally honest though. I kinda expected the campaign to feel tacked on for months though. So I am not disappointed, and I will still enjoy the game.

      • aasdfa

        yeah and the story is lacking but the gameplay during the story is amazing. It also has great replay-ability cause of how many things are hidden in the game that when you find you get to use in sandbox

    • benz145

      It was a tough call to make but I think it was the right one. I disagree that it was “damaging.”

      There are players who no doubt will sink their teeth into the sandbox portion of the game, but there are also those who primarily want the ‘authored experience’, as it were, which Boneworks presents as the thrust of the game. Trying to score to both of those ends would have led to a review that was too broad to be helpful, IMO. We included the Editor’s Note to make the limitations of this review clear.

      • alboradasa

        Damaging because thousands will come to this site, see the review score, not read enough to realise you are bizarrely not reviewing the main component of the game, and go away thinking VR is as over-hyped as ever. Nobody was expecting this to be a new standard in story telling. So why are you reviewing it on that basis? It’s like giving a game like Rocket League a low score for lack of narrative.

        • asdf

          this 100%%%%% road to vr is too influential to just stamp a low score on the front of something and assume everyone will understand its reasoning.

        • benz145

          Did you actually read the review?

          A minimal narrative wouldn’t be a bother if gameplay had its own compelling arc, climaxing in a fusion of mechanics and concepts taught throughout the course of the game. But it’s here where Boneworks stumbles; despite a rich and often quite immersive set of underlying systems at work, the game struggles to find its stride.

          Underwhelming story/narrative was not why the game didn’t get a higher score, it was the underutilization of the sandbox elements to build compelling gameplay scenarios.

          Every game, to an extent, is a sandbox. Great games hand their sandbox tools to game designers who figure out ways to use them in scenarios that create compelling gameplay for players.

          I have played many, many games which feature little or no story, but which include great game design and are therefore fun even without a narrative (Fez and Hyper Light Drifter, and even Tetris Effect come to mind at the moment).

          Boneworks has a strong sandbox, but it’s game design leaves much to be desired.

          Also if the Sandbox mode is the “main component of the game,” it sure is a little strange that they made it a hidden unlock that you must find inside the Story mode.

          • D-_-RAiL

            Spot on Review.

  • Caven

    Couple of minor corrections: Half-Life 2 came out in 2004, not 2014. Also, it’s Garry’s Mod, with two Rs.

    • fff0orall

      lol this right here shows the depth of roadToVr game knowledge… Two insanely influential thing to all of gaming and they cant even spell it right.

      • fff0orall

        i might have misspelled things but at least im not a gaming blog misspelling Garry’s Mod …. downvote as much as you want but its clear RtoVR is just here for the ads.

        • fff0orall

          lil babies have nothing to say, just goes to show youre following like sheep instead of thinking on your own.

      • benz145

        Hello internet friend. Have you heard of something called “charitable listening”? It means to give someone the benefit of the doubt instead of assuming the worst. I think “charitable reading” is equally valuable.

        Here you take typos in an article to suggest that I’m ignorant of the subject matter which is, frankly, a little upsetting. I literally own and have played hundreds of hours of the two games in question, but typos are easy to make. There are indeed games I haven’t played and about which I’m ignorant, but jumping to conclusions in this case doesn’t do either of us any good in my opinion.

        I’ll fix the typos, thanks to @disqus_3tORKxDdLb:disqus for pointing them out.

        • Thanks for being respectable in the comments, Ben. the angry, offensive and irrelevant forces of the internet will not stop the kind of us! You keep doing you, thanks for bringing us the VR news, even if there is a typo every now and then. ^w^

        • Gus Bisbal

          Benz, adults look at what you were saying and forget the nicks and cuts that your writing may have. Children giggle at small issues because that is their world. Small. Next week not he or anyone else will remember these issues. Now why would that be? Keep doing what your doing. Your doing it right.

  • JesperL

    I dont get the hype.
    This is a glorified enhanced demo of the VR potential.
    But no depth in gameplay or story, and no real AI – I see nothing real to do, than to walk around and interact with things – seems really boring.
    Great interaction and physics, does not make a game, it makes a hell of a good proof of concept. So they get my thumbs up, but not my money.

    • gothicvillas

      Haha you haven’t even tried it but form an opinion. This is great VR title in my books and certainly lots of hours fun. What else you need? Oscar nominated performance, edge of the seat story? We knew what is Boneworks before and it delivers exactly what I wanted. Some people these days……

      • aasdfa

        exactly, this game is mind blowing if your in tune with vr possibilities and where other games cut corners. like i said above, when you think back about gameplay in BW you remember your physical presence in the world and that connects you to that world a million times more then passively walking through as a non-physical ghost with guns.

      • Trenix

        I just tried it because I was asked to before forming my opinion. Guess who was right? Not you. The game looks like it was started as a tech demo and then became some boring experiment. I had more enjoyment in Blade & Sorcery. There is nothing fun, enjoyable, or interesting about this game. It does not offer anything that other games don’t.

    • MeowMix

      Yup. I’m 8 hrs into the campaign, and I hate to say it (w/ respect to the campaign) it very much plays like an expanded tech demo.

      The story is essentially non-existent other than the bad ‘Aperture Labs Corp’, and you need to survive environmental puzzles and enemies to progress. But the story is still very thin in substance. (and what about the story being told using 2D videos ? like wtf ??? this is a VR game!)

      Great physics (although very clunky), great gunplay, and I’m still having fun. But if ppl are buying into the ‘hype’ that THIS is a system seller of a game, they may be disappointed.

      As long as ppl go into Boneworks knowing it’s flaws and knowing this game is about having fun with the physics and guns, then they’ll have a fun time! and that’s ok!

      • aasdfa

        game is about having fun with the physics

        everyone diving into it n not having a story are just barking up the wrong tree. anybody who followed BW for even a day would see that its about having fun with physics.

        • MeowMix

          I can see where you’re coming from. Yet, it has a 7+ hour ‘narrative’ campaign, which was touted by the devs as a key aspect.

          If I only play the campaign then am I playing the game wrong ? If the sandbox physics is the correct way to play the game, then it really does fall more into the ‘tech demo’ mold. Like I said above though, I’m still having fun with the game.

  • timmy

    this game is insane… there are a few flaws but its still a whole era ahead of any other game. 3/5 just proves that if you dont pay road to vr theyll give you a bad score

    • Steve Biegun

      It’s almost like a review is a subjective opinion about a product.

      • kuhpunkt

        That’s a silly argument.

        • but it’s an argument!

          • kuhpunkt

            Yeah, but a silly one!

      • timyy

        its almost like they ignored the best aspects of the game and just pointed out things that were never meant to be the center of this game.

        reviews shouldnt be subject to ones opinion, they should follow guideline so that they are consistent.

        • Zantetsu

          Ben is consistent. Everything I read sounded like a reasonable criticism. Some of us have limited time and appreciate knowing what to expect from games without sugar coating bullsh** so we know where to put our limited hours of gameplay.

          • timyy

            even if they tookt he story out 100% id suggest, cause thats all i can do, that you try this out. the physics and body presence are something you really need to experience and then its hard to go back to being a ghost like character in games

          • Here’s the real problem though. I would have paid 10, heck, even 15$, JUST FOR THE SANDBOX. But that’s not what this is. Boneworks is advertised as a narrative action game, built on a foundation of realistic physics. But the game doesn’t deliver a compelling story. It’s a couple of TV boxes with videos and a cool looking, but honestly unfinished city. You can’t even take weapons with you between levels. Like, what game does that? No game I’ve ever heard of that’s a narrative story game does that, unless there’s a hard reason for it. Not just “we didn’t want to, so throw it in the garbage”. I should be able to take an axe with me from level to level. It pains me to no end to spend 3 minutes at the beginning of a level shoving ghost mags into a machine to re-equip the same knife from the previous level. Just let me keep it!

            This kind of design choice follows throughout the entire game. Enemies have at max 3 variations (some not even that), most of the game is a meta game that you’d have to have played Duck Season to understand, and there are no friendly NPC’s to interact with aside from the dust bunnies.

            Dust bunnies kinda sums this game up well. A lot of good ideas rolled up into a mess. Iron it out, and you may find a compelling story, but your face is shoved into the dust ball, not a t-shirt.

          • aasdfa

            if you followed bw at all youd know it was being pushed as a new physics engine sandbox and the story was tacked on in the ends. but hey lets just not do any research and just make assumptions thats fun.

    • tiberius99

      Can someone please revoke the internet allowance of all you ADHD medicated children? For social hygiene’s sake, please kindly remove yourself from this platform at the very least! Just go wank off to another one of Node’s uploads, but spare us your inane commentary here.

      • benz145

        Please keep the ad hominems out of the discussion. I understand the spirit of your comment, but I’m sure you can find a less insulting way to articulate it.

        • tiberius99

          And what “discussion” would you like to have with someone who’s insinuating butthurt due to lack of bribe money as the cause for a “negative” (i.e. non-rave) review, or the next one calling into question the right to voice a dissenting opinion in the first place.
          I don’t argue with people who are not susceptible to reason. Maybe if you gave me a piece of two-by-four (unless designed by Boneworks) while keeping them on a diet of a couple hundred calories a day for a month, then I’m sure I could straighten out their thinking. Otherwise sort it out on your own.

          • benz145

            I hear you, and trust me I understand the frustration. But I’d like to think it’s possible for people to change their minds (including me). Having a real conversation is the only way to do that; verbal attacks just put people on the defensive, and it’s extremely difficult to have an open mind when they’re in that state.

            I know you were not the instigator but rather the responder in this case, but sometimes responding with compassion to someone’s hate/hyperbole (rather than throwing it right back at them) can break through and lead to actual consideration of your point instead of a mere shouting match.

            There’s a bunch of places available to us for shouting at each other, but at least on this little slice of the internet I really hope we can have a slightly higher bar.

    • benz145

      I know this may not be the case on the rest of the internet, but we don’t ever accept payment for reviews or any editorial content.

      When all was said and done, this review probably took me about 20 hours and 2,400 words to put together. Even if you’re just saying it in jest, it’s a little upsetting that you would come here and suggest this is just the work of a shill just because you and I have different opinions on the game.

      • timmy

        its more the fact that you reviewed a physics based game and gave it a mediocre score for its story. like we all know what boneworks is so it should be reviewed that way. this games great for its physics but now is being diminished for not having a story. its just sad

        • benz145

          The technology a game is based on does nothing to excuse its game design (game design is the ‘game’ portion of the experience). For those just looking for sandbox fun, we specifically said you should look to other reviews.

          • Immersive Computing

            Quality, compelling content is king…in any medium, VR is no different.

            The oldest trick to compell the viewer is to make them care by giving them something to care about, the basis of any good story.

        • HELLO

          Half-Life 2 is a physics based game that is praised for it’s story.

          The game also has lots of janky physics interactions. The internet is filling with clips as we speak.

          • Yeah, I think the worst part is making your body not move 1:1. Knocking over objects is great, but when you try to climb a wall and the game makes an assumption about how strong the player is, making you bounce up and down like a spring pony on a roller coaster, the game loses my appreciation for it’s dedication to simulation.

        • johann jensson

          Nowadays most gamers expect a good story in a video game. We’re not living in the ’90s anymore. I think it’s fair to subtract points for a weak (or even non-existing) story.

        • Alextended

          He gave it a mediocre score for its gameplay, it even has example gifs of many of the issues he mentions, or do you think those show story telling?

  • Trenix

    Why am I not surprised? With all the gameplay footage you could easily realize how rugged the game looked. The whole purpose of the game was to show off what you can do with the knuckles and VR headsets. You can see it hasn’t been perfected as they state and that there are other games out there with similar mechanics. I’m sure it’s a good title, might even pick it up in the future. But lets be honest, this isn’t the game, it’s probably the first game with advertising and insane hype. Half-life will wash this game out of the water and it will be left as a memory. Hopefully other titles follow.

    • aasdfa

      dude try the game. its sets the bar for vr interactions to a whole new level. When i think back about playing boneworks last night i dont think of myself as two points holding guns. I see myself as physically present where im aware of my body and arms and thats just insane compared to other games. plus the story is lacking in story but not lacking in fun things to do and replay-ability.

      • aasdfa

        getting down-voted for saying try the game before you talk so badly about it. Sums up RoadToVr and its user base pretty thoroughly

        • Zantetsu

          I upvoted your first post and downvoted your second. Now you know which kind of post is worthwhile and which is just drivel. You’re welcome.

          • aasdfa

            why did you downvote the second though?

            that one was about how people should try a game before forming an opinion…. if you dont agree with that then we have a problem.

          • Zantetsu

            The post I upvoted is the one in which you gave a very good account of your experience with the game and I have no idea why anyone would downvote that post.

            The one that I downvoted is the one where you got mad that your post got downvotes and then insulted the entire RoadToVr readership, of which I am a member. I understand not liking being downvoted for a good post, but I don’t understand why you have to extrapolate that to everyone on this site.

  • Alextended

    Thanks for not falling for the hype. It’s a nifty indie experiment but it falls flat in the implementation. The guns are worse than Onward or any competent FPS, the melee weapons worse than Blade & Sorcery or any competent melee combat game, the campaign nothing to write home about and the sandbox itself limited too. It’s a shame but this is more an example of how not to do and prioritize things and how one should always look at other games for better implementation ideas rather than pretend and insist it’s the first game ever to do this or that, all to become a jack of all trades and master of none. That it’s full of innovative or never been done before physics or whatever buzz word doesn’t mean anything to the player if the climbing is a janky unintuitive mess and the melee combat with no purpose as enemies don’t respond in kind but are mindless drones and the gunfights super easy to cheese with an infinite supply of slow motion and so on. Basically no real good design to any aspect, just features and bullet points it seems.

    • adf

      if youre holding blades and sorcery above ad your favorite then somethings wrong with you. thats a hella fun game but thats really is just a tech demo while BW has a ton more to offer.

      People like you are why things progress slowly. Cant ever be happy always bitching about how it could be done better yet doesnt even contribute to helping get there. its a process, we cant just jump to the end.

      • asdf

        I’d rather have people point out honestly what their issues are in VR games so that devs can know how to improve their games, rather than sugar-coating everything as “the best thing ever.” Nobody is expecting the games to be perfect. But people should be allowed to express their opinions and criticisms without being accused of “just bitching.” People like you are what makes us VR enthusiasts seem like blind fanboys.

        • asdf

          no people bashing people trying to push the medium are the issue. you think you know better? then do it better otherwise shut up

          • tiberius99

            Piss off, you grovelling sperg. Just because you fell for the whole “dudebro” bullshit of these hyping wankers does not take away from the fact that what they have delivered is mediocre at best, in spite of their incessant self-marketing these past two years.

            And if it weren’t for the crowd of like-minded yapping idiots that they attracted with their annoying youtube shtick, then nobody would care two hoots about this subpar release.

            Other developers have suceeded in the game design department and actually moved VR forwards, while they managed to pull off a sucessful marketing campaign for all the Jimmy Fuckfaces out there, while otherwise adding nothing of value. And congratulations to them, because fools certainly do deserve to get fleeced.

          • asdf

            wtf are you shitting out of your mouth about?

            these same physic systems are what HL will be using. its how vr should be and if you call this evolution of vr mediocre then youre probably just looking at the shit thats up your ass.

          • tiberius99

            “But muuuh physics!” Just because the Boneworks team has a perverse love for spring-loaded mechanisms & the concept of momentum, doesn’t mean it’s on the same level as Half-Life.

            Of course that’s too subtle a difference for a puny mind like yours, so just keep shilling for your youtube duuuuudes, bro.

          • asdf

            what my youtube bros? projecting much ass wipe?

          • Alextended

            No, Half-Life: Alyx won’t be using these shitty physics systems, it will use its own well implemented polished physics systems that don’t get in the way of gameplay but are actually fun and immersing, hence the use of the dreaded floating hands nooblets like you criticize without understanding it’s simply the best way to do things as long as consumers don’t have easy affordable access to full body tracking which means anything more has to be guestimated and have the wrong pose, position and unintended interactions 99% of the time all for that 1% of “hey it’s neat you can do this” or whatever.

          • benz145

            Sorry but ‘if you can’t do better then you aren’t allowed to have an opinion’ is a silly argument. If you eat food that tastes awful, you are qualified to say that it tastes awful even if you don’t know how to cook something better.

            Identifying the flaws in something is literally the first step toward a solution, so shutting people down for a critique on the basis that ‘you don’t know how to do any better’ just isn’t productive.

        • Alextended

          When did I call Blade & Sorcery my favorite anything? Learn how to read and stop fanboying over sub par crap that are a disjointed mish mash of things that came before except done worse all in an effort to be the first that does everything at once and pushes the medium forward, except it doesn’t because it’s all wrong, lol.

      • Alextended

        When did I call Blade & Sorcery my favorite anything? Learn how to read and stop fanboying over sub par crap that are a disjointed mish mash of things that came before except done worse all in an effort to be the first that does everything at once and pushes the medium forward, except it doesn’t because it’s all wrong, lol.

    • Wildtz0r

      I agree with a lot of what you say, and in regards to Stormland, which has frustrated me to no end with mission objectives not registering, abysmal performance and grabbing mechanics that never understand what I try to do, still makes me come back for more. If the devs manage to iron out the kinks, and actually do some proper fucking optimization, then it’s my VR GOTY for sure.

    • benz145

      I criticized Stormland to hell and back for all its shortcomings on release but at the end of the day it was still able to provide hours of engaging nonstop fun, I even played it after some time while waiting for Boneworks to download and it was still the day’s highlight.

      I feel that; it has a good synergy of its core gameplay systems that’s hard to ignore.

      • Alextended

        Hey, please make a news report about Terminal (VR), it looks like a really cool all-out action FPS. I’ve been pimping it on forums since I first spotted it a couple days ago but last I checked their youtube upload of the trailer still had like 30 views only. Here’s the information:

        https://youtu.be/6XBoamJ8U1Q

        https://store.steampowered.com/app/1184550/TERMINAL/

        https://www.indiedb.com/games/terminal-vr

        And yes, I’ve confirmed with the dev from his discord that all game modes utilize free locomotion, it was not perfectly clear and you might think it’s a linear runner like a gory take on Pistol Whip from parts of the footage.

        • Alextended

          It’s coming to early access really soon too (5 days left) and if you read that announcement they have on the Steam/indiedb pages they’re also all about performance optimizations so much that even though their first maps can mostly handle 90fps on the (modest, not a GTX 1080 GPU and i7 CPU combo but instead a lowly i5 CPU and a 1060/480 level GPU) recommended hardware listed they will initially only release maps created later that used better technology and methodology to push even more stuff with better performance as they work to update their old maps to release them as soon as possible too. That’s pretty cool!

        • NooYawker

          stop spamming this shit.

          • Alextended

            You stop spamming shit.

    • I totally agree, Stormland lacked some stuff at the beginning, but post some updates and fixes it’s really becoming a game to beat. Multiplayer could still use some work and maps could use some more variation, but nothing beats flying around and zipping from cloud to cloud. Definitely my VR game of the year. Bonequirks is fun and all, but it’s going to require a lot more work and polish to even come close to where Stormland is now. then again, it is only a day old. Guess the hype worked against a VR game for once.

    • Alextended

      I love how the fanboys just claim the game’s not about the campaign but the “sandbox” mode as if that’s some grand epic thing and not yet more test areas you can mess around in by spawning random wonky shit from the main game and some more extras on top. It’s not even enabled when you start the game, it’s just an unlockable bonus mode yet somehow we’re to believe that’s the game’s whole point. I’d probably score it even less if it only had that mode to offer, it’s still bad.

  • aasdfa

    the physics system feels far more encumbering than freeing….

    yeah so does having a real body compared to a ghost

  • Tikbo

    9000 users on the first day all still satisfied and giving great ratings.

    Greatly contradicts what RtVR is saying here.

    • kuhpunkt

      So?

      • tikbo

        what do you mean so? Everything other then whats on this site, contradicts this article entirely. Even Upload vr praised it.

        • moot

          Upload VR is a website that is run by fanboys rather than giving objective and honest criticisms of a game. Look up their history.

          Also, steam reviews are as reliable as youtube comments. People are riding the hype wave.

          • tikbo

            upload vr is shit i agree. its funded by VR powers so of course its bias.

            so above thousands of people buying and playing and rating the game you believe the one guy saying otherwise.

            probably made this article just to get traffic here by opposing everyone.

          • Zantetsu

            You must realize that the first group of people to buy the game were the ones who were already aware of it, had probably already formed their opinion of it, and were most enthusiastic about it. You must also realize that humans have confirmation bias and a desire to justify their decisions. So there must be some degree of inflation of the rankings of the game.

            I don’t care about this game either way, but every person with a healthy and correct degree of skepticism must realize that early user reviews are not particularly trustworthy. Ben is much more trustworthy because he has a track record of coherent and well thought out reviews, and he doesn’t sugar coat anything.

          • ok, I’m sorry, I don’t typically get into these arguments, but what? You just used the fact that “even Upload praised it” as a fact to make road’s review irrelevant, but then when someone comments on Upload’s history, you instantly agree that they’re not an unbiased review site? Dude, no offense but go take a debate class, because you just lost all your footholds here.

          • tikbo

            thats funny cause i did very well in debate competitions but on here i dont care to spell it all out for you. id rather just call you dumb and let you figure out why youre an idiot

          • Unfortunate that one doesn’t carry over to the other.

        • Mei Ling

          You can’t force someone to change their opinion about something just because all of the others have the same opinion. If you don’t like this review then try the game yourself, and then state down something more constructive instead of finding something to complain about.

          • tikbo

            i have tried it its great. this article doesnt do it justice as if its a little school girl whos jealous.

          • david vincent

            “as if its a little school girl whos jealous”
            You are the only one sounding immature here.

        • kuhpunkt

          But what’s your point? Why do you bring that up?

    • benz145

      I’m glad there are people who are enjoying the game, there are parts of it which are enjoyable. That said, only a small fraction of those who have reviewed the game on Steam have actually completed it. I noted specifically that the game starts out strong, but it doesn’t hit its stride. I think most players will see that once they complete the campaign mode.

    • MeowMix

      You can still have fun playing a game rated ‘6/10’.

      • Indeed! A 6 isn’t a failed game, just a game that requires some tough love.

    • Well, I’m certainly not one of the satisfied ones.

  • Jarom Madsen

    Oof. I see your points but wow 6/10??? I do think it should be docked on comfort, it seems unnecessarily rough with the VR camera but based on other reviews this seems about 1 star shy of what I would have expected. It’s still great VR fun and the best RPG shooter on PCVR and this review comes across as overly harsh for a game that took huge risks to push the medium forward. To quote your review rating scale, I personally view this game as “a thoroughly well crafted experience and stands above what’s come before.” It’s not perfect by any means and many more will come to take its place but I think it deserves more credit.

    • JuckRu

      thank you, I couldnt agree more

    • benz145

      6/10 = ‘Good’ by our scale, and I think that’s fair.

      What makes you call this game an “RPG shooter”?

      • Totally agree, Ben. It’s a good game, but I wouldn’t yet call it a “well crafted experience”. It has a lot of hiccups to iron out before I’d call it that. Not that it isn’t fun, but it isn’t blowing my mind either. I’d personally give it a 6.5-7, but on your scale I think a 6 is just the right spot for it.

  • JesuSaveSouls

    The review gets a pass for me.Meaning it passes not to pass up or by.I will buy it.

    • dsadas

      jesus is our lord and saviour, amin

      • Zantetsu

        Off-topic. Ben, please delete parent post if you can. Thanks.

      • benz145

        @disqus_QP53mAZFiC:disqus please keep your comments on topic.

      • johann jensson

        You spelled “admin” wrong.

  • benz145

    Thanks for reading our Boneworks review! Please note the following before commenting so that we can have thoughtful discussion:

    We scored this game 6/10 – ‘Good’ by our linear scale.

    Scores aim to boil down the reviewer’s overall opinion of the experience, even if the text of the review focuses more on critique than praise, or vice versa.

    If you haven’t played the game, understand the limits of your knowledge.

    If you have played part of the game, your experience may differ from those who have completed it in its entirety.

    Road to VR does not ever accept payment for reviews or any editorial content.

  • tiberius99
    • fd

      that doesnt make any sense and thanks for using a mental illness to try to make a point.

      • tiberius99

        I haven’t checked the DSM-5 in a while, so i wasn’t aware that involuntary head bobbing now qualifies as a mental illness. My apologies, and thanks for raising some awareness for this grievous affliction.

  • MatBrady

    Boneworks is the most DERIVATIVE game I’ve ever played. Period.

    It’s derivative to such an EMBARRASSING level that I doubt Brandon will be as free to enter Valve HQ as he was prior to the launch of his game. 6/10 is a fair score from RtoVR, and it deserves no more. When I first saw the BW demo video I wanted to pay for just the demo level, and essentially I just have. It’s sold as a game though, and that’s what RtoVR reviewed it as. Next to Stormland, Boneworks looks like it didn’t employ any game designers at all. The result looks as though it was just a string of ideas from the coders as to what might be cool as game.

    Let’s do a thought experiment… What would have happened if this came out AFTER Valve releases HL:A with their tools for modding? If you put Boneworks up against whatever comes out of the new VR modding community (after HL:A is released) then Boneworks would come across as a bland experience with no new ideas. Just like it does right now. You can’t even excuse it in terms of something that was rushed out before Christmas as a cynical money grab because these game ideas have been worked on for a while. No, this is just a poor single player campaign attached to a very good tech demo. And that’s lazy.

    Hire better game designers. They really are worth it.

    • anony

      ITS A PROGRESSION YOU HALF WIT. of course games coming out later will be better…. this is another step in the process to get there.

      the fact the you call a whole new physics engine in vr thats never been done before lazy just baffles me.

      also you understand stormland is from insomniac games right? they have more then enough game designers.

      also again if you think you know so much about game design then why arent you getting paid to design games? hmm maybe because you dont know shit

      • MatBrady

        IT’S LAZY GAME DESIGN! That’s what it is. Boneworks is a tech demo, with a bunch of Half-Life and Portal ideas slapped together to make a game. You’re essentially buying a tech demo, and because the demo part is unlockable and the save points are so far away, you might not even get that.

        And to correct you, I called the game design lazy, not the tech demo part of it.

        Your point about Insomniac Games vs Stress Level Zero, one having many game designers, the other having what I can only guess is none. Yeah. The result is a crappy experience of a game. Dull. Derivative.

        And to your last point, I could DEFINITELY design a game better than Boneworks, and when HL:A comes out with development tools for modders …I will.

        • anony

          cool ill play it and then shit all over it for any flaws it has. And tell you about how its a waste of time because its not what i personally wanted.

    • DjArcas

      Are you saying this game is less good than a game that’s not released yet?

      Uh. Ok.

  • Here’s my big 3 gripes with Boneworks’ Mechanics:

    1. 1:1 movement while climbing should be an option in settings, as the springy feeling is not realistic to real life climbing in any way, and makes you feel like your arms are a jack-in-the-box. The way you attach to objects to climb, however, feels very good. Haven’t really ever fallen off an object once my hand actually grabs it. SL0, please make climbing 1:1.

    2. Inventory is garbage. In all the let’s plays I’ve seen (plus my own time with the game) having the inventory slot actually on the back versus on the shoulders is a terrible design choice. I am CONSTANTLY dropping items, sometimes losing them to grinders or pitfalls that then leave me without a weapon I desperately need. The controllers need to vibrate A LOT more when in the drop zone for an inventory slot, and the sphere’s for the drop points need to be A) on the shoulders, not the back, and B) A LOT BLOODY BIGGER. We’re moving things around at lightspeed, SL0, swapping from melee to guns on the fly, we don’t need to be constantly worrying about dropping stuff.

    3. Gun handling is a major mixed bag. While using all 3 classes of gun in the game, I have to say the pistol is the best, the smg second best, and the rifle is the worst. Not only is holding the rifle with the second hand cause for some of the strangest hand poses I’ve ever seen in a VR game, but half the time, I’ll try to reach for the barrel of the gun to hold it only to accidentally pull out the mag. Actually, this happens constantly too, on all 3 gun classes. The gun mag pull point and the second hand grab point are wayyyyyy too sensitive and close together on all the guns (especially the pistol, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve pulled out the mag when trying to hold a gun with two hands.) And at least on Oculus, SL0 made no attempt to ease up the controls by allowing us to actually click the menu button to bring up the menu, and then allow us to drop clips by using the top two buttons on our controllers (something almost every VR shooter does at this point, and something THAT WORKS). Please, SL0, if you can, adjust it to make it easier for us to two-hand weapons, because it’s SO frustrating right now.

    I love the story though, even if it is a little light on narrative I love what I’m seeing in the environments.

    • And I’m not 100% sure, but if someone could tell me, because I’m still not used to fire the rifle in this game… is there a virtual stock? Because it needs it, bad. I cannot line up the sights half the time, and I shoot guns in real life from time to time. Might be a resolution problem too, I’m on a Rift CV1, but I can line up sights easily in Pavlov and this game makes me struggle with sights all too often.

      • Kimj

        there are different types of guns in the level and some have different front grips that work better. the standard one is just that pretty standard and not as good.

  • Bruno Margetić

    According to Bulgarian-French philosopher Julia Kristeva, humans learn through storytelling in its’ many different forms. Storytelling is a very human thing to do, and we are obviously very used to it. Sandbox games offer the opportunity to create worlds or to simply ‘play’ with playable elements, however, storytelling is implicit even to such free formats since we create our own little narratives by pure ‘playing’, no matter how aware or unaware we are of this core principle behind playing. So I get your review, I appreciate it, and I do get your points regarding the lack of depth in authored experience of Boneworks. Getting physical reality into VR is very hard since medium of VR isn’t about physics or ‘reality’ as we know it, VR is more about virtuality but that’s just another discussion. However, thank you for writing openly and honestly about your impression of the game. I think the hype around it actually contributed to this final score, but in a negative way. Reminds me of Magic Leap somehow. I hope the devs of BW will learn something out of it rather than just being hurt. I also feel like some of the comments under this article come from someone who is a part of the BW team, but that’s just guts feeling and is completely irrelevant for the discussion.

  • Immersive Computing

    After playing Boneworks for the first time this morning, I can’t form any reasonable opinion because I only got through The museum and to what I guess was the start of the actual game.

    Afterwards, a strange sort of motion sickness centred around my stomach, not felt that before? My tolerance is very good (Aircar regular) but there’s something weird going on with physics and proprioception in this game. Climbing felt physical and rough with weird springy jitter.

    Reaching for an item on a shelf only to have the entire shelf attach itself to my hand and get dragged around… physics need some work, no doubt. The shooting range was fun though.

    I’ll keep playing tomorrow

  • tiberius99

    To be fair, you need to have a very high IQ to grasp the ingenuity of purposely adding ragdoll physics & parasitic motion to the player camera in VR. Without a solid understanding of the theoretical physics of spring-loaded mechanisms, most of the game’s design decisions will go over the typical player’s head (or just move it involuntarily).

  • tiberius99

    To be fair, you need to have a very high IQ to grasp the ingenuity of purposely adding ragdoll physics & parasitic motion to the player camera in VR. Without a solid understanding of the theoretical physics of spring-loaded mechanisms, most of the game’s design decisions will go over the typical player’s head (or just move it involuntarily).

  • asdf

    oh wow you have to be conscious of your body thats terrible thatss just like….real life.

    • Kimj

      this made me chuckle. I love that my body is present in the game it really helps my immersion and even post immersion when im thinking back about gameplay i think of myself being physically there now compared to being like a ghost/camera in the virtual world.

  • Kimj

    alboradasa benz145 • 10 hours ago
    Damaging because thousands will come to this site, see the review score, not read enough to realise you are bizarrely not reviewing the main component of the game, and go away thinking VR is as over-hyped as ever. Nobody was expecting this to be a new standard in story telling. So why are you reviewing it on that basis? It’s like giving a game like Rocket League a low score for lack of narrative.

    this sums up why RtoVrs review is such an issue. Nobody came to BW for the narrative and if you did you clearly didnt do any research on the game. So to review it almost solely for that rubs a lot of people the wrong way.

    • benz145

      Did you actually read the review?

      A minimal narrative wouldn’t be a bother if gameplay had its own compelling arc, climaxing in a fusion of mechanics and concepts taught throughout the course of the game. But it’s here where Boneworks stumbles; despite a rich and often quite immersive set of underlying systems at work, the game struggles to find its stride.

      Underwhelming story/narrative was not why the game didn’t get a higher score, it was the underutilization of the sandbox elements to build compelling gameplay scenarios.

      Every game, to an extent, is a sandbox. Great games hand their sandbox tools to game designers who figure out ways to use them in scenarios that create compelling gameplay for players.

      I have played many, many games which feature little or no story, but which include great game design and are therefore fun even without a narrative (Fez and Hyper Light Drifter and even Tetris Effect come to mind at the moment).

      Boneworks has a strong sandbox, but it’s game design leaves much to be desired.

      • Kimj

        did you read my comment?

        its about people who see your score and DONT read through the article because the whole point of a score is a quick display of overall thoughts.
        They just see the score and dont know that you only rated it on an aspect that doesnt matter.

        dId YoU AcTuAlLy ReAd ThE ReViEw????

        • benz145

          You:

          Nobody came to BW for the narrative and if you did you clearly didn’t do any research on the game. So to review it almost solely for that rubs a lot of people the wrong way.

          Me:

          Underwhelming narrative was not why the game didn’t get a higher score….

          I’m trying to understand how we’re having a communication disconnect here. When you say “narrative” do you mean ‘the story that the game tells’ or do you mean ‘Campaign Mode’? Because those are two very different things.

          The game didn’t get a higher score because its game design (the authored experience/creative design/gameplay scenarios) was lacking. It had very little to do with the story the game tells because, as you say, that was not the main draw of the game.

  • @benz145:disqus I think it’d be positive for you guys to do a short article about unlocking the sandbox mode, because I didn’t figure it out until looking at stuff online and a big news place like you guys adding in an excerpt or a short tutorial article showing people how to unlock the sandbox would help a lot of people out. Seeing that there are lots of people who just want to mess around in the sandbox. XD

  • Asdf

    https://www.reddit.com/r/boneworks/comments/e9uupf/climbing_works_perfect_you_just_have_to_practice/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

    For all those complaining about climbing and hands not working right. You probably either skipped the tutorial or you’re going faster then what’s realistic

    • benz145

      Neither of those things were true in my case.

  • Luke

    its hard to criticise a game that is groundbreaking in the genre, the issues i have with boneworks are the same issues I have with VR as a whole.

    we dont have much better than this at the moment; on that note i think some people need reminding that blade & sorcery is early access and far from finished. kospys put out some amazing updates and has incredible vision for it, dark messiah fans get hype.

    • david vincent

      It’s not hard to criticise, it’s just that a relatively “groundbreaking” gameplay is not enough to make a good game.

  • Kimj
    • Alextended

      Still waiting, and they even admitted it’s a half-measure, far from ideal, just slightly better than the current bs they have in their non-game, because a real good solution would take too long. Talk about great game design.

  • dsjasd

    yo, mates who are talking about how terrible Boneworks is compared to HL:A, i just want you to realize not only is HL:A not out but HL:A wasn’t even planning on having PHYSICS; physics which is what revolutionized the gaming industry via HL1. luckily due to SLZ and its connection to valve, they saved it.
    and to dem mates who are saying i’m bias, i am, also i got a source; straight from the youtube channel “Valve News Network” proclaimed “BONEWORKS is a secret Half-Life game” and those who want a link
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anY-RBVbtzw

    • asdf

      lol youre right yet still getting downvoted…. just shows how much rToVr fan base is shit. you guys are CANCER and ruining this site

    • Alextended

      Yes, we’re to believe Alyx would not have physics, when its direct predecessor, Half-Life 2, had emphasised physics more than any game in its time because the VNN troll said it. Just because that guy gets one or two pieces of legit info a year that you can sum up in 3 words and go “neat, but I could have guessed it” yet he manages to stretch it into 10 minute long videos that somehow mean something bad for Valve doesn’t mean everything he says is fact.

      Just like he was wrong L4D VR is coming and Valve shot it down hours later when interviewed saying that no they’re not working on L4D VR (even if they did once).

      Just like he was saying Alyx wasn’t at The Video Game Awards because free locomotion wasn’t ready so it would look bad compared to Boneworks (lol) then less than a WEEK after the VGAs we got the Tested video (meaning they had the game days before in order to produce said video) showing off free locomotion and they also confirmed on reddit it all worked wonderfully.

      Just like he was claiming Mark Laidlaw told him he had a falling out with Valve (obviously because Valve is evil and incompetent according to VNN rants, lol) only for that to be shot down during the AMA where Valve denied it and said that they even had regular correspondence with him about Half-Life lore and background that he was willing to answer with 40 emails at a time (even though he doesn’t even know what kind of story Alyx has as they’ve not discussed that). That AMA was also the first time VNN’s bullcrap about them being on bad terms came to Marc’s own attention and he also denied anything of the sort ever happened between them on his social media.

      Dude has way more misses than hits for anyone to keep drinking his cool aid, he’s made a business out of trashing Valve, twisting every detail into something negative with the craziest theories, and fanboys fall for it just because Valve doesn’t directly comment on his bullcrap, as if they should legitimize him or any other random online troll gullibly people fall for by even mentioning him.

  • NooYawker

    Until arms can be properly tracked it doesn’t add to immersion. The bizarre arm movements takes away from immersion.

    • n00dl3s

      Couldn’t agree less. I’m 7 hours into the game and it’s the most immersive game in VR IMO. It’s just staggeringly good fun.

  • Maxx

    Lol at this review. I read through the posts and wow, this place is terrible. I’ll kindly see myself off of this site, and I’ll find another one to get some VR news.

    • david vincent

      Thanks, we already have enough toxic fanbois here.

      • kimj

        thats why hes leaving…. lol jesus and hes right

    • Kimj

      couldnt agree more
      Everyone sharing their experience just gets shit on by people who assume they know what it will be like.

  • Konsole

    I wish I had read this before I bought the game.

    Quite simply, I found the game to be mostly underwelming and honestly, quite frustrating. Part of the joy of vr is your ability to extend beyond the confines of the physical world, but in its current form, it feels very restricive.

    – Climbing and general locomation is slow and clunky. often having arms be in places they should’nt or getting stuck between things. I have phased through objects and gotten stuck many times. ( Meaning I have to do the level all over again)

    – Holstering and unholstering weapons is a test in its own right. The amount of times I’ve tried to holster something over my back to have it drop to the floor.

    – The save points are so few and far between that if you need to leave the game between any levels, prepare to do it all again.

    I feel like this game could have really benifitted fom taking a step back and keeping it simple. Too little, spread thin. Hopefully some updates will fix the major problems soon.

  • namekuseijin

    wow, why did I miss this review? Lol

    we all know you’re not fond of locomotion in VR games and the note would surely reflect that. Physics-based this is not only in terms of objects you interact with, but also the fact your avatar is a ragdoll with hard limbs connected by joints and your head is connected to that ragdoll – that’s why the camera shakes as you climb, because there’s intertial forces upon these joints. I think they could have at least offered a comfort mode for that virtual neck, many people complained.

    that said, this always looked to me like yet another physics playground more than anything else. The lack of challenge and actual substance is what I don’t like in most of all these ragdoll shredding simulators trying to pass as actual games – VR being still niche and still trying to find its idiomatic mechanics is full of that due to experimentation, but I hope actual games come out from that eventually.

    • benz145

      we all know you’re not fond of locomotion in VR games

      Um. What?

  • Jason D.

    I don’t think you guys realize, BONEWORKS has a metric shit ton of lore. It’s also in a series with Duck Season. Maybe do some research on that bit.

  • Yeah, this about sums up all the problems I have with the game. There’s a lot of potential there, but the clumsiness and clunkiness of all just stops me playing after half an hour of faffing around every single time. I’ve honestly never made it past the first hour or so. That’s not a good sign.