The Gallery - Episode 1: Call of the Starseed
^ - if you haven't played it and don't want it spoiled, don't watch the vids on that page - or any others - it gives away far to much imo.
Finally got around to playing this and so glad I did.
Yes it's too short and many will complain it is over priced for the length and not having a lot of replay value but I thoroughly enjoyed it. And boy, what an ending! Can't wait until the next episode to see where it goes.
It's probably one of the more polished and complete bits of software I've tried on the Vive and definitely feels more like a proper game.
Saying that though it definitely gets elevated by being in VR, most of the play time is just exploring, taking in the environment and playing about with the objects in it. So I'm not convinced I'd have liked it as much if it wasn't for the fact that it is in VR. There's only really a couple of what could be called puzzles but they're fairly easy and if you look around and check things they are pretty well sign posted to the point of almost telling you what to do.
There's also the usual suite of VR type bugs/issues that seem to plague most titles. The physics can be a bit twitchy with objects just randomly pinging off for no real reason. And it suffers from the same issues that things like Budget Cuts and Vertigo both suffer from, which is the ability to stick your hands through things and teleport to places you're not meant to. Ok this is a bit of a choice to try and break the game like that but in Budget Cuts and Vertigo you can cheat by doing this and in the The Gallery it really doesn't handle it well, leading to having to close the game via Steam.
Devs really need to come up with a way of handling this better.
I also had it mess up between check point loads a couple of times, causing me to have to force quit and replay a section. On one bit it seemed to be rather annoying because I wanted to have the torch in my hand, doing it again for the third or forth time with out anything in my hands and it loaded fine. The silly thing - to me at least - about that is that it is something I'd naturally do irl in that situation. I'd want the torch in my hand !
So yeah, it's too short, probably wouldn't be as good if not in VR, has game ending bugs and is arguably overpriced but yet despite all that I'm glad I played it and would recommend everyone with a Vive also plays it.
I'm really looking forward to the next episode partly because I want more of the same but also I'm interested to see where the story goes. I'm hoping that they've made enough money and got enough interest that they make the next episode longer and a bit more involved, definitely want some more NPC interaction. But it is going to be interesting to see how they price these going forwards. Because at this rate it's looking like spending over £100 on five episodes that you could speed run in less than five hours.
Really hoping someone does something along these lines but does a full 15 to 30 hour plus AAA game. Mix this and The Climb (Oculus) and give me a 20 hour Tomb Raider please !
^ - if you haven't played it and don't want it spoiled, don't watch the vids on that page - or any others - it gives away far to much imo.
Finally got around to playing this and so glad I did.
Yes it's too short and many will complain it is over priced for the length and not having a lot of replay value but I thoroughly enjoyed it. And boy, what an ending! Can't wait until the next episode to see where it goes.
It's probably one of the more polished and complete bits of software I've tried on the Vive and definitely feels more like a proper game.
Saying that though it definitely gets elevated by being in VR, most of the play time is just exploring, taking in the environment and playing about with the objects in it. So I'm not convinced I'd have liked it as much if it wasn't for the fact that it is in VR. There's only really a couple of what could be called puzzles but they're fairly easy and if you look around and check things they are pretty well sign posted to the point of almost telling you what to do.
There's also the usual suite of VR type bugs/issues that seem to plague most titles. The physics can be a bit twitchy with objects just randomly pinging off for no real reason. And it suffers from the same issues that things like Budget Cuts and Vertigo both suffer from, which is the ability to stick your hands through things and teleport to places you're not meant to. Ok this is a bit of a choice to try and break the game like that but in Budget Cuts and Vertigo you can cheat by doing this and in the The Gallery it really doesn't handle it well, leading to having to close the game via Steam.
Devs really need to come up with a way of handling this better.
I also had it mess up between check point loads a couple of times, causing me to have to force quit and replay a section. On one bit it seemed to be rather annoying because I wanted to have the torch in my hand, doing it again for the third or forth time with out anything in my hands and it loaded fine. The silly thing - to me at least - about that is that it is something I'd naturally do irl in that situation. I'd want the torch in my hand !
So yeah, it's too short, probably wouldn't be as good if not in VR, has game ending bugs and is arguably overpriced but yet despite all that I'm glad I played it and would recommend everyone with a Vive also plays it.
I'm really looking forward to the next episode partly because I want more of the same but also I'm interested to see where the story goes. I'm hoping that they've made enough money and got enough interest that they make the next episode longer and a bit more involved, definitely want some more NPC interaction. But it is going to be interesting to see how they price these going forwards. Because at this rate it's looking like spending over £100 on five episodes that you could speed run in less than five hours.
Really hoping someone does something along these lines but does a full 15 to 30 hour plus AAA game. Mix this and The Climb (Oculus) and give me a 20 hour Tomb Raider please !