izigame.me

Thank you Vertigo! Really good game! Not perfect but is a good step in quality VR Games. A SOLID 8/10!

I recommend this to everyone, specially if you are a Metro fan.

Here are some points I have to the game, I hope Vertigo employees also sees this feedback (also I'm a game developer, maybe this count something):

The good:
- Amazing atmosphere: I've got a lot of goose bumps just by the ambient itself, the sound of the environment in general is really good;
- Good story: If you like previous metros games, you probably will like this one. Not as good as the other games, but close enough;
- Amazing weapons: This and the atmosphere were the most well made parts of the game, they are amazing, well made, very janky looking, they belong to the metro universe (I loved the shotgun, crossbow and blowpipe);
- Scary monsters: this is something from someone who played Half Life Alyx and Walking Dead S&S, they are scary! Different from the other two games, they are fast enemies with a terifying eye looking. I play a Onward, I'm very tactical with VR weapons in general, but I've shit my self and couldn't aim properly in the first encounters until I've got used to the game. This got me thinking in a lot of movies a person not hitting a creature who is really close hahaha;
- Very good Human combat: I've played in the hardest difficulty and if you stay in the open, you die really quickly. You need to take cover, not expose too much and the AI in general is descent, but not amazing. I think the only game with better human AI is Half life Alyx;
- Almost perfect Inventory: The way you guys did the inventory is amazing, congratulations! Honestly there is only one problem, which is the angle the bag stays in your hand. You guys could give 20-40 degrees of rotation because I always have to really stress my pulse for the bag faces me or to get items in the left, like the power generator. Some good points is the way you generate power by rotation the crank is really good, using to open doors or power the train cart. Also the gas mask gets blurred and you naturally use your hand to clear it, noice.

The Bad:
- Lighing: The metro games are supossed to be dark, but even some envirronmnets that should be clerer to see are too dark, I've played the game with full brightness in the settings for the game become at least visible. The worst aspect by far is the headlight. OMG. Is too short! The light barely iluminate something in 3 meters of distance, is really frustrating. I understand that probably this was done to avoid performance problems with a light casting multiple shadows of the objects, but this is a central piece of the game, and I think you guys should have done a way to significantly increase the range.
- Shadows Enemies: Affect the vision in VR is something that needs to be made moderated, and this one is really messed up. The shadow NPCs are a really good touch for the story telling, but this one that makes you vision dark, I believe they don't do anything to it, just annoys the player (at least to me and my other two friends);
- Gun damage (I've played in hard mode): It makes no sense. From what I took notice, the pistol and AK do practically THE SAME DAMAGE. Blowpipe kills Nosalis creature with 2 hits max, but a human you need 2- 3. AK kills a human in the body with 4-8 shots but you need 15+ to kill a Nosalis. You need two arrows to kill human with cross bow, 3 for the Nosalis. I think the damage is really messed up, maybe this is something only in hard mode, but even if it is, doesn't make any sense. From my perspective hard mode should affect only the damage you and your enemies does or changing their behaviour to be more dangerous, making mistakes being more unforgivable (much better then sponge enemies). Quick note, the spiders are too tanky for their appearence, you need 4-5 AK shots to kill it, should be 1, max 2;
- Environment interactivity: Maybe this was also a constrain of performance (half life alyx disables shadows of objects in movement if I recall correctly), but you barely can do anything with the environment. You guys tricked me in the beginning, with the room being full of objects to interact but in the game you can't even open a drawer (only very specic cabinetes and two or 3 types of containers). I wasn't expecting half life alyx levels of interactivity (because valve has unlimited money) but at least a middle of the road between what you guys delivered and Alyx. This breaks a lot of the imersion of the beautiful and threatening scenarios you guys created;
- Forced Camera angled: you guys do this in a lot of cutscenes. I don't think I've ever played a game that makes you facing and angled view, and I hope I never see again. This is really disoriented. If you have to make a player stay in a lower position, only make it lower in the ground to mimic the crouch, if I want to look in the face of the NPCs, let this be my choice, this is VR a game.
- Long intro: From listening developer comentary of half life alyx, you understand that you can't let the player too much time without doing nothing. I think all the intro you guys did is really good to make you feel in the environment but since you barely can interact in the game, is basically watch a 20 min video standing. You could maybe made the gun tutorial in middle of it, shorten some paths and let the player interact more with the environment, turning this intro closer to what alyx did until you grabed the gun.

Improvements for an update or next games:
- Gun interaction: Since I play a lot of Onward, I tend to interact with the weapon in a quick and intuitive way. I've talked with some other friends and they didn't have this problem, maybe because I'm the only one who plays competitive shooter: Use the trigger button to interact with the weapon, for things like charging it. I lot of times I tried to quickly grab second hand in a weapon and charged the weapon by mistake. also other time I was moving the hand to check if there was a bullet in the chamber but because the game moves the charging handle of pistol and AK without pressing any button(just by quickly movie the hand there), I've thrown away bullets.
This could be at least an option in the game, to use the trigger button to interact and disable the automatic charging of weapon by passing the hand quickly in pistol and AK.
- Increase headlight range: As I stated in my "Bad" section, this is something you guys could figure it out to do, because is a crucial part of the game and the light barely illuminating at 3 meters range is to me something urgent to fix.
- Mounted machineguns: I'm 178cm, and I can only aim the machine gun straight, I always have to be in my toes to shoot the creatures in the cart parts or just shoot and follow the bullet trail. My friend is short and he had to play the game in sitting mode because he felt as a dwarf not being able to interact properly with anything. You guys could made something to ajust the height for the player to make it more inclusive. this feels like the game was made for 190cm people.

Thank you Vertigo Games for listening to the urgent problems the game faced in launch weeks (like guns angle and two hands handling) and I wishes the best for you guys. Really good game, I'm waiting for then next one!