I really couldn't recommend Effie. The world seems mostly empty and uninspired, the writing is... bad. Go here, collect McGuffin, kill witch, repeat. The boss fights are uninspiring and repetitive, at least from what I've played, and the combat is worse. The combat is just mash light/heavy until all enemies are dead, but I guess you can throw in one other, objectively inferior bonus move if you feel like it. The surfing mechanic shown in trailers was the main draw for me, but it's disabled everywhere except the overworld, which is empty save for sparse time trials and small unrewarding outposts. The narrator speaking over all actions gets old really fast as well. Every chest, and nearly every collectible is paired with ONE voiceline. Said voiceline also does not make sense for the context of the action. Lots of stuff in the game is reused just as much as the voicelines too, and the game just feels unpolished overall.

What a strange game. What begins as survival as a necessity... actually, never really leaves that part behind, really!

Rain World is gruelingly punishing. It has a fairly long play time, not because the content available is massive, (although it is considerable in size)but because you will die MANY times. By the end of my playthrough I was encroaching on 110 deaths. Still, the breadth of things to do and discover in the game result in a rewarding experience I have not seen replicated elsewhere. Entire regions are simulated at a time, leading to complex emergent behavior that you must identify and potentially exploit if you are to trick your assailants and progress. It's an expertly crafted game that does a good job at always pointing you in the correct direction, and does a terrible job at letting you know it is doing so. I got "lost" and looked up a guide many times, only to discover I was 2 rooms away from my destination and if I had just persevered, I would have made it just fine.

Be quick, be witty, stay determined, stay alive.

Gameplay? Bullet hell fun with some neat twists with later bosses.

Soundtrack? Bangin.

In conclusion, well worth the price.

Alright, first off, I would consider this an overall good game with some big flaws that either might not emerge until hours into the game, or will turn you off right away. Getting right into it with what most negative reviews (rightfully) complain about: the bugs. The bugs in this game are not graphical, sound based, or physics based. In fact I saw none of these bugs and can heartily recommend the game on the quality of these parts alone, not even mentioning the game's unique concept and execution. Instead of these normal bugs, the bugs I encountered were all softlocks, forcing me to purge my save each time I encountered one (about four times). Each time this happened was disheartening, but it only set me back a little because of the game's chapter system.

I was a little confused and weary of this feature at first, afraid of what it might do to my carefully laid out base, but after I was forced into using it I was pleasantly surprised. The chapter system provides "checkpoints" at every major milestone in the story, and places important items you have collected prior in easily spotted and well organized places in the hub area. So, although these bugs really shouldn't be in the game at all, they can be resolved with these chapter saves without putting too much effort into repeating content.

One more complaint before I get into what makes this game good; I really don't like how they've implemented grabbing. Wanderer uses the standard "if you're far away, gesture your palm towards it and force grab" method of interaction, but they add something different; the same rules apply to drawers and ALL interactables. You don't need to be near something to interact with it, and as much as I would like to put some well thought out reason as to why it affects gameplay negatively or whatever, I really don't have a reason why I hate it so much except that it feels bad. Eventually you will get more used to it of course, but it just leaves a bad first impression and then keeps feeling weird for a long time.

OK, now the good stuff. Wanderer has great graphical fidelity and solid immersion through its entire 7-ish hour story. I have an i-9 and 3080RTX, so I was lucky enough to play on the highest settings and wanderer feels like its just under Half Life: Alyx in its setpieces and individual detail. Most things in the game can be picked up, interacted with, stored in your inventory, and taken back to base all in the span of 10 seconds with how much freedom you are given. These devs know the value of letting people mess about in their downtime.

The puzzles ranged from okay to good, but my opinion on them might be swayed the fact that I broke them and repeated them a couple times. The story was confusing, but it's meant to be, it's time travel. You don't really need the story anyway, if you treat the whole game like one big escape room. It's kind of like bonus to put all the story pieces together while you solve the real puzzles.

TLDR: I guess to tie it all together I'll say this: Wanderer struck a good nerve with me with its creative environments and fun ideas. It's a good game for all experience levels of VR gamers, but its not without flaws. Its small problems and sometimes big bugs can put a hamper of your fun, but I implore you to either wait until it's fixed up or push through the issues to experience the game. It was worth it for me, so it might just be worth it for you.

Really great game. A good atmosphere paired with good shooting gameplay makes me happy anyday. STALKER has an intriguing story, varied gameplay, and a good range of difficulty. You start wearing nothing but a leather jacket and a pistol, and end wearing an exoskeleton with two rail guns strapped to your back, mowing down an entire military force. I might recommend some overhaul modding to fix up some side quest completion bugs, but otherwise the game is very playable from start to finish vanilla. I really recommend this, it's a classic that you'll really regret missing out on.

Really quite a fantastic game. It's got huge SCP vibes, with the same concept of hidden paranatural events being covered up constantly. This game manages to keep the characters human though. The game manages to keep you feeling uneasy the whole time with just how anomalous everything is. Within the first 10 min (before you get the first gun) there's a moment that completely disoriented me but it's hardly mentioned by the characters. I don't know what else to say here, but if you enjoy slowly feeling out a new expansive world, then this game's writing does it pretty damn well.

Oh, but the DLCs are not good.

I am... not good at this game. The connections and actions that you create in The Nation seem so paralyzing and permanent. I felt panic when everything flew out of my hands. The very hands that I had seen with my own eyes put entire nations into choke-holds. Orwell gives the player so much power and confidence in their Godlike ability to oversee all, but it cannot account for human error. You cannot perfectly predict the future or how someone may act, and so Orwell shows you through your own actions why this age of information that we have all come into is so scary. That the human elements of power and control are faulty, and that no one is worthy of control. Especially not you. A good game with a damn good message.

Shorter than I thought it would be, but very deep. Every action has deep ripples through the story. The game is clever about its mechanics, and never once forced me to suspend of disbelief. I was thoroughly hooked by every part of the story, and it does a lot to place you in its universe. Some examples include letting you put your real email in at the start so you can receive emails updating you about in-world events, or giving you designated points to "log off" from the network if you'd like to stop playing for the real-world day. (Of course, you can still quit the game whenever and your progress is saved)
I really enjoyed the game.

You can continuously pump water directly into someone's throat, causing them to asphyxiate to the point of unconsciousness, then throw their limp body into a (pit of spikes/incinerator/large body of water) to have them die a long and painful death. And the game doesn't tell you this in the tutorial, so it's a pretty good game.

In addition to all the basic stuff feeling good right off the bat (particularly the weight of the characters), Wildfire excels at player driven comedy. In my playthrough, I found myself playing around with the weaker enemies to try to manipulate their "unaware" states. For example if you pop up right behind someone, they will always jump backwards, startled. Yes, that means off cliffs and into wildfires. Top notch stuff, and the situations that you can create are just great.