I've still yet to be convinced by VR. If I wanted to slap physics objects around rudimentary rooms, I'd just play Garry's Mod - which doesn't even require you to wear a radioactive death box on your head that melts the brain and churns the stomach.
Boneworks, however, acts as a showcase for the future potential of VR, a fully immersive museum designed around its myriad gimmicks. Your character is fully rigged with an IK collision solver, lending you a sense of physicality as you climb ladders, run into walls, smash open crates with hammers. It's technically very impressive, but I never found it any fun, in fact it just made me feel violently sick. How the hell do I articulate why something clearly very innovative and forward-thinking just isn't working for me?

The closest comparison I can think of for Boneworks is when you switch to the first person camera while driving a car in a game. Yeah, it's more immersive, but,,, why the fuck would I ever do that. The less is more approach; omniscient camera, invisible player character, and floating disembodies hands is a nicety that eliminates the laborious "realistic, immersive" elements and allows me to focus on the game. If you focus too hard on the game part of Boneworks, it's just some toys strewn around barren environments. We've been talking about the "potential of vr" for fucking years, do something good already.

Reviewed on Dec 25, 2020


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