Groundhog Day: Like Father Like Son Reviews

You can tell that it was an early VR game. But with that said, it's still a pretty good game. It has a good story and most of the minigames are fun.

[h1]Love it, such a charming and endearing game and story[/h1] At first you'll hate it, you're such an asshole about everything and everyone but just like the movie everything starts to change until you just start to aim for that one perfect day. There's really no shortage of nice things I can say about the story, it's such a heartwarming tale that you really just need to experience it. Especially if you have, or will have, a family of your own. For the gameplay, you move by teleportation to certain spots. I played with Index Knuckles which are supported but holding things can be janky as the positioning you hold them by default can be an issue. You can't skip dialogues till later so some you will hear often and they can be somewhat long. The minigames fit the game and they're fun and varied. I did have issues with a couple of them though, the first is the spray paint game, I have 4 base stations to help prevent issues in my play area but the can would randomly jump yet basically guaranteed every attempt and ruined most attempts at clearing it. The second is one other mention, the dance minigame. You have to just play until you get a feel for how you make, at least enough, motions to clear it. I found that doing the motion then shaking my hands seemed to help on some of them. Make sure you use big motions as it detects them better than. Definitely a must-play game for VR players and a staple for your library!

I've played this game using Oculus Quest 2 over Virtual Desktop. As a fan of the movie, I would recommend this game to other fans. It follows a similar plotline as the film, where you have to repeat the same day over and over again until you get it just right. Fortunately, as the days go on, you receive critical hints on how to do better the next day. The game itself is ok, you progress mostly by completing minigames which can be a bit hit or miss. Think Job Simulator with a Punxsutawney twist. If you haven't seen the movie, I'd you recommend you go watch it first. If you liked it, then get this game. If not, I would give it a miss.

So far it is obvious this game has good production value for a VR game. It is fairly polished especially when it comes to graphics. So far I'm finding it fun and looking forward to really digging into the puzzles some more. The only real negative of this game is the terrible attitude of most of the people you meet, not to mention the main character. It doesn't bother me much, but if noisy family yelling and fighting bother you, don't pick up this game. If you want a good VR experience from a reputable VR dev this game is for you. In some ways it reminds me a bit of The Invisible Hours from the same dev so if you enjoyed that like I did give this one a serious look. 6 hours in: Haven't quite beat the game yet. It is a very touching story. Strongly recommend for a pretty chill experience. Some of the mini games can be tough but they are still pretty fun. Great game.

Played on a Oculus Quest 2 via Link. Okay, lets get the bad out of the way. First, there is a spray paint mini-game. Some say you must do it three times to beat it which was my experience also. So just jack it up the first two days you encounter it and try your best the third day. You've been warned! I spent 1.5 hrs doing that in total. Next, the main character is unjustifiably mad at his Dad. It is a bit off-putting in the beginning but still an engaging story. Finally, if I screwed up a day, I normally kept going and didnt replay the scene. This is required a lot of the time. I had no issues with this but some people kept redoing scenes b/c they failed and then couldn't get it right. Well, you have to fail sometimes. It's Groundhog Day. The Pros: It's fun. And just the right amount of challenge. I liked the voice acting and the cut scenes. I also prefer teleportation movement which this has, and it helps keep you focused on what needs to be accomplished. Kind of surprised it doesn't have more reviews. But then again, it is based off a 30-year old movie.

There are a lot of problems with this game, but it does a few things very well. Movement is teleport via nodes only. In other words, you can only teleport to specific areas, often only to one specific spot. In a "room" or "area" that you visit, you might only be able to teleport between 3 very specific spots, and you may or may not be able to snap turn (although you can look around in any). Teleporting makes the game fade to black and back in again. Every time you teleport. This alone is a deal breaker. The gameplay lets you do a lot of things with the environment, but also seems to unnecessarily (or necessarily for the plot?) restrict you. You can make a smoothie in the blender, but there is no way to pick up the blender or drain the drink from the blender. Instead, you get to listen to day after day of your niece upset about how she can't get a smoothie. The idea of the game is that you're meant to be improving each day, but it's so odd that I'm able to make toast with the toaster, make bacon and eggs with the frypan and stove, but the blender, which the game clearly wants some interaction with, just doesn't work. This might get dealt with later in the game, I don't know, but it's awkward. You shift through different areas in the game arbirarily - the bedroom, the living area, a few outside areas - you don't go through any of these naturally (except bedroom to living area, but not vice versa). They are all carried along by plot. You never go in or out of a door, or leave the park - it just happens. There's a weird social media cutscene in between some of these crossovers. There is a guitar in the game, and judging from the trailers, I didn't get to see the full use of it, but the way you play it in VR is very nice, and is one of the great things in this game that I haven't really seen in any other. The people in the game use an art style that is very creepy. You can actually see what this looks like in the trailers, but it's very different when it's standing in front of you talking nonstop in VR. I did get used to it, but far out. It's no Half-Life: Alyx style NPCs that's for sure. Teleportation and horrible environment interactions aside, if you do what the game wants you to do, it does seem pretty clever. I almost feel like the devs wanted to put together a game based on a day repeating and then realised they could make something like Groundhog Day in VR. There are some weird themes in cutscenes that are out of character that support this. If these kinds of things don't matter to you, there is possibly an enjoyable game here, but I was looking forward to trying this game for a long time, and it didn't pay off for me.

A sequel to one of my favorite movies from the makers of The Invisible Hours? Sign me right up! After only an hour in the game, I must say this is a keeper. Reliving the day over and over does not get tedious, as there's lots to figure out and you'll end up improving each iteration. Some days wish life was like this. There are some small bugs (to be expected immediately after a new release), such as the hand position when using the Index controllers feeling very off and awkward. Wish they would remap to use the knuckles grip instead of the trigger when gripping (I know finger tracking can be hard to implement, but which button does what can't be!). I spent a few minutes trying to get rid of the "Press B to pull up your phone" message, and I don't really know what I did to get past that point (pulling up my phone did not do the trick). Still, some interactions are very refined, such as the guitar mini-game and drawing...your name on paper and such. Tequila Works, I promised myself I would buy the next thing you released after The Invisible Hours, and you did not disappoint! Keep up the good work!

Groundhog Day is one of my fav movies, and I liked this game early on. It had a good R-rated sense of humor, and I liked the mechanics of redoing scenarios and learning what needs to be done correctly to proceed. That was until they started with the mini-games. They were tolerable but pretty terrible. What sealed it for me as a do not recommend was the graffiti mini-game. It requires precision and is very monotonous, and the game makes you do it three separate times. Each time is multiple artworks as well. It's so bad that it made me angry. It ruined the game for me, so I say don't bother bc of that alone. I kept playing and got to more annoying mini-games that I had to attempt repeatedly to further cement my dislike of this game. To its credit, it is like you're Phil Conners, having to try over and over and over again to proceed, but it isn't fun.

An enjoyable romp through the Groundhog Day movie, set in a different time. Solid voice acting, while a bit let down by the bobbleheads, nevertheless carries a reasonably well thought out story that even lets you care for the characters. Playthrough took me a solid five hours, though I did not attempt to divine all the little secrets within. Overall, recommended if you liked the movie. If you haven't seen the movie, watch the movie and then see if you'll like the game. If you haven't seen the movie, the game's story, which relies heavily on the movie, will likely fall flat. [h1]Gameplay[/h1] This is a story-based game, generally in the vein of a Maniac Mansion/Monkey Island/Telltale Games story, but placed on repeat, befitting the Groundhog Day premise. The single day has seven possible scenes, of which you typically explore up to six on any given day, depending on your choices. The primary gameplay mechanic is selecting floating bubbles that determine Phil Jr's general intent of what to say. Mostly it aligns, though sometimes the actual script is slightly unexpected. As you play through the day again, new bubbles become available, opening different actions for the scenes. Six minigames pepper the story on occasion: a cooking minigame (think Job Simulator), a shooting minigame, a spray painting minigame, a dancing minigame, a stone chopping minigame, and a guitar playing minigame. A seventh, apparently cut, drawing minigame still has its mechanics in the game, as well as a lampshade about how they spent the effort implementing it. Each minigame is basic, generally works, but is not fleshed out enough to warrant any kind of replay value. The main story requires "passing" each minigame challenge, which typically boils down to replaying the game with slightly increasing levels of difficulty until you succeed. This is supposed to represent Phil Jr achieving mastery over the given skill. An additional control is opened up after the first day, allowing you to select whether to replay the entire day, or just a specific scene. The scene restart in particular is an excellent addition and essentially works as if you restarted the day and made the same choices leading up to the start of the scene. New dialog options may be available, allowing a quick exploration of a particular character's storyline. Controls are similar to Vacation Simulator. You can teleport around the scenes (albeit to very limited areas), and interact with objects to a varying degree. Object controls are workable but not excellent, and especially throwing items or releasing items results in unpredictable behaviour, sometimes requiring restarting the scene. I used the Valve Index headset, and Index controllers to play the game. Headset support was excellent. The controllers had basic functionality (no finger tracking). Crucially, however, the virtual hands did not align with my actual hands, leading to awkward hand bending. [h1]Story[/h1] The storyline is pretty much as expected. Our unlikeable protagonist, Phil Jr, for some reason has a following and is working his way up a career in broadcasting. He hates Punxsutawney, would nothing rather than leave, is rude and dismissive of everyone he meets, and is stuck in the town because of a snowstorm. As the single day repeats, Phil Jr slowly learns to listen to other people and their concerns, becomes less snarky and rude, and tries to make the best of every day. Unfortunately, that means he goes from incessantly snarky to incessantly optimistic by the end. Overall, the story is enjoyable, although it sometimes feels cut short. Phil Jr goes from grumpy to "I have to better myself" in just a couple of time loops, and the game completely misses the ability to wreak havoc on the town. Towards the end though I couldn't help but care a little bit about the characters, especially how they progressed in their own little stories. As you go through major story beats, you're further rewarded with an additional between-day cutscene of memories with Phil Sr, showing the father-son relationship in three disjoint points in time. It is a nice touch, although it is not too substantive. One major unexplored part of the story itself is the time skipping itself. [spoiler]Phil Jr seems more grumpy than amazed or depressed at the reliving of the day part. His mother is aware of the time loops and prods him to become a better person, and, surprisingly, he just ups and does it. There is no moral concern over whether it's okay to use the time loops to pry people's secrets out. Equally unrealistic is the characters' reaction to hearing this story -- which Phil Jr happily shares. Nobody seems to mind that he has seen all their secrets and done things they don't know about to them. This omission takes some depth out of the story. One of the strengths of the movie was that it allowed its protagonist to sink into the darkest depths of his psyche, see the emptiness and loneliness therein, and therefore change and become better. To me this is the primary reason why Phil Jr's change seems more that it's "because the plot demands it" rather than "he realised".[/spoiler] [h1]Sound & Visuals[/h1] Audio design of the game is reasonably good. There are plenty of background sounds, and even background coversations to eavesdrop on, making each scene appear reasonably lively. There are various radios throughout, which thankfully can be shut off as the repetition of any one scene has a tendency to become nerve-grating. The visuals are a bit of a letdown. The characters themselves are unique, but exhibit a bobblehead effect when talking. The characters didn't really capture my attention too much when speaking, which is a bit awkward. Thankfully they don't care that I fiddled with my phone while they're talking. The environment visuals are decent, however, and the environments -- when interactible -- reacted okay enough to it.

the only thing i've done for an hour is play the guitar while singing, draw a penis and watch my sister crash her car through a wall. i have no idea whats going on but i fucking love it so far. 10/10. The story already has me intrigued, the voice acting is top notch as well. Dont let node teleport turn you away from this game, i find im using roomscale (walking around in real life) a lot more and im totally immersed into this world. Its tequila works, buy the game its gonna be great.