Thirith on 16/2/2020 at 10:01
I'm lucky in that I have an iron stomach when it comes to VR. I had some problems early on with Minecraft VR's very slidey movement, but by now I haven't encountered anything VR-related that made me queasy in years.
I've not played Saints & Sinners (yet), but I love arm-swinging locomotion in Skyrim, with the use of a program called Natural Locomotion. It's not perfect: you still need to use your hands to do stuff in the game, which means that arm-swinging locomotion can interfere with doing things in-game. Natural Locomotion has added functionality where you can use mobile phones, Switch joy cons (is that what they're called?) or PS3 Move controllers strapped to your legs, so when you walk in place you move in the game. There are also a bunch of VR gadgets that allow for the same thing without you having to have additional phones or controllers. I've ordered one of those, Kat Loco, but haven't received it yet, and seeing how they're shipped from China, I think there may be a bit of a delay. Nonetheless, while it is a bit cumbersome to strap things to your legs for VR, I am looking forward to trying them out, because especially in games like Skyrim, which are less about ease and speed of locomotion than they are about immersion, it makes a huge difference to me to walk by, well, walking, even if it's walking in place. It *feels* different, because I'm no longer perceiving distance moved as a function of time but as a function of moving my legs. To explain: there's a mountain in Skyrim that you have to climb to progress in the plot. You get to its top by climbing the Seven Thousand Steps. While they are not literally 7000 steps, I experience that climb very differently if I make movements that are reasonably close to walking up a (looooooong) flight of steps than if I just press a stick.
Kit Loco seems to work with a fair number of games. I'm hoping it'll work with Saints & Sinners too, because at this time walking in place is my favourite, most immersive means of locomotion in VR, unless we're talking about special modes like Lone Echo's zero-G movement.
henke on 16/2/2020 at 13:09
I actually looked up the Natural Locomotion page in relation to this, but it seems it's not compatible with Saints & Sinners using Oculus yet.
Here's some gameplay:
[video=youtube;L9Hb7xVoIDE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9Hb7xVoIDE[/video]
When I back away from the zombies there my bat actually gets caught on the door frame and then the pillar, which is a great little "oh shit" moment. :D I've reached Day 8, the game is really starting to click with me now.
henke on 18/2/2020 at 17:34
This was a good shootout.
[video=youtube;N_ucBfA8m4s]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_ucBfA8m4s[/video]
I don't think the video quite conveys it. Mainly because it looks quite janky (hell, at one point you can see a guy running through the wall) but this still felt quite tense and meaningful. Partly because the only two previous shootouts I'd been in I'd gotten my ass handed to me, so I was expecting to die. But also because of how the game frames the action, makes it about something. I had options in this mission, and it was my choices that led to this bloodbath.
henke on 23/2/2020 at 14:23
I know I'm spamming up the thread with vids but damn it if this game doesn't have the most thrilling combat I've experience in a game in a long while.
[video=youtube;a6bOcA8duI4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6bOcA8duI4[/video]
So many moments of being stuck between a rock and a hard place, like frantically reloading a gun behind a kitchen counter while you hear the footsteps of baddies closing in, or your gun jamming as you're about to land a headshot, then having to make a split-second decision of whether to run for cover, whip out a back-up pistol, or pull out a knife and rush in for some CQC.
Thirith on 30/12/2020 at 14:04
Did you ever finish the game, henke? I'm currently in the second area after the graveyard; at least to begin with, I'm using one in-game day for the main missions and one day to go back and scavenge. It's not perfect, but it's definitely immersive and everything seems to have a sense of weight, as you said, without being as extreme about it as Boneworks was.
henke on 30/12/2020 at 14:25
No I never did. But I do wanna get back to it once I get a new GFX card. Glad to hear you're digging it. :)
Thirith on 7/1/2021 at 09:35
It took me a bit to get into the game, and there are elements that I wish they'd done better (especially stealth), but there's so much they get right here. I like that shooting a gun and actually hitting something is difficult - it fits the world and tone of the game. I love the witchcraft they've wrought that makes the act of stabbing a walker in the head and pulling the knife from their skull so tactile and visceral. It's been a while since a zombie game felt this fresh and immersive.
I do wonder how seriously we're supposed to take the message that pops up whenever you sleep ("Supplies have dwindled and the dead have increased"). I like the sense of urgency it generates, but I would hate it if the game actively punished me for taking my time to explore and scavenge, especially since it keeps walking me past the crafting stations and reminding me just how many resources I'll need to upgrade them. I'm hoping that the message is similar to the one in Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice that threatens you with actual death if you lose too many fights but that doesn't actually follow through on this, though obviously this kind of thing only works if you *believe* that the game is telling you the truth.
Edit: One thing I've found essential in this game: I have a round rug of perhaps 1.2m diameter that I put on the floor when I play VR. Since it feels distinctly different from the floor surrounding it, it makes sure that I don't run into or punch the walls, which otherwise would be a genuine risk when a walker gets too close to me. This is definitely one of the relatively few games where my play area of ~1.5m x 2m is only just about big enough.