I’m going to comment how unimpressed I’m with Boneworks. I will praise the attempt of doing a game experiment/prototype to do a full physics based experience, of going farther than other people have tried and being bold, but as a finished game… ugh. First I will say I haven’t finished it, I’m around 2:04 in this video.
Literally for every cool moment or idea with the physics system, I have seen 3 other moments where it wasn’t working as it should or it was super mega janky. You see, it has the big problem of the physics engine being exactly as glitchy as other physics engine in games in the last 10 years. In the first minutes I got stuck my hand on a locker geometry. Or seen boxes flying around because the collision system glitched, etc. In general terms, praising Boneworks as the role model for future VR interaction, where things work like in real life, is hilarious as right now, it’s the prime example of how a bad idea is. Almost every action that should be easy and trivial in real life is an enormous pain in the game. Moving objects with precision, turning objects in place without moving their location, moving objects while also walking without hitting anything on the sides, controlling how extremes of something long is touching the ground, it’s all a bothersome pain in the ass, when not a Sisyphean task. Maybe people actually mean the role model of future VR interaction is the idea shown here, not the implementation. But right now, it isn’t good at all.
A separate section has to be put for the idea of doing full body collision physics, up to your feet, despite the reality of the game only tracking your hands and head, and putting puzzles or obstacles where and what your feet are doing is important. Great idea, yep…
edit: Oh, the control themselves are not at good as they should. This is only a feeling, but I think the game was designed for Index controller first, and it shows, if you don’t have them. I had more problems with the controls than with most other VR games, with moving when I didn’t want to or how comfortable taking or throwing stuff, and I suspect it’s because I don’t have the Index.
Now, unto the game itself, you have the story, the puzzles and the action. There isn’t a lot of story in reality, it’s the fairly typical ‘implied worldbuilding in lore bits distributed through the environment’, with a fair share of ‘let’s make it obscure to disguise the fact there isn’t a lot there’. It uses a ‘VR world in VR game’ setting where things seem to have turned wrong ™ and well, it isn’t very interesting. It’s all an excuse to have levels looking like they look, with textures like protoypes in a 3d level editor. The puzzles are perhaps the most interesting part of the game, there are few smart bits or are well mixed with environment exploration and I like how they have alternative ways of solving them, usually one through ‘brute force’ climbing stuff or using more advanced physics and another the ‘intended’ way. Although let’s be honest, I think they did it like that because they knew they always needed something to fall back on as shit is glitchy af, as explained.
The action is pretty meh. The work in the weapons, how they handle in VR, how they sound, etc is good, but combat is more than the weapons themselves. It lacks in enemy variety, the encounter design is nothing to write home about, the basic enemy design (nullbody) isn’t very fun to fight against in terms of hit reaction or face expressions, and the AI is mediocre to bad, with pathfinding issues where the enemies get fairly close and then stop near a corner never advancing.
Oh, at least it has a nice sound design, reminiscent of the Half life series.
