Gravitational Reviews

3 parts here: -- Review at 5.4 hours playing -- A comment, which was my review at 1.8 hours playing -- Another comment, which are my "clues" and "pointers" for this game. --------------------------- Review at 5.4 hours, having completed the game, AND I REALLY LIKED IT: You can trust the puzzles in this game; after solving each one I said "oh, that makes sense," and NOT "wow, that was arbitrary." In a comment on this review I provide clues/pointers if you are having trouble. That is, not solutions, but just nudges about what to look at if you are getting frustrated rather than having fun. I did NOT receive this game for free, nor do I have any relationship with the game developers. This game is a *proverbial* "walk in someone else's shoes." Or, if you are a brilliant gravity scientist, a black man, and/or are in a wheel chair, it may be refreshing to be yourself, having your *own* experience reflected in VR, in some aspect. Also, it's native language appears to be Portuguese-from-Brazil, from which it has been translated to English, so if you hear English this still has flavor/experience from another culture as well. This game is far from perfect ... but it gave me what almost no other VR games have given me ... a very deep sense of "what if" I were this person? I'm not solving problems that are like he would be solving ... but the puzzles I have to solve do give me a sense of working at something like he would be doing, and seeing it through. There's an odd, stark contrast in this game: The setting is intense -- life or death, plus coping in the wake of a much earlier tragedy -- and yet the gameplay is casual(!), and you have all the time in the world as the person playing it. It is a *puzzle* game with short passages through neutral-gravity fields, which are physical problem solving. So that's also a contrast. And yet it works; one mode is a nice break from the other. No fights. The puzzles gradually get more interesting, and new colors of puzzle pieces work in new ways. It keeps you interested without being so hard it isn't fun any more ... in my experience anyway. There's a game this reminds me of: Machizzle. It's an odd comparison because that (very good!) game is about puzzles at table-scale, with a light theme to give you some purpose (saving your dog's life). Gravitational is about room-scale puzzles, which when solved give you floor to roll over. I found out later in the game it's also about "circuit" puzzles, having to do with balancing electrical flow by observing numbers and triggering on things to adjust them in increments. Between puzzles, as mentioned there are the neutral-gravity fields, and those, too, have real danger in-game, fitting with the theme. Each one also eliminates your disability for a short while ... 'cuz ... you can float as well as anyone! The game makes a GOOD effort to explain what controls you have, and what to interact with, in game. It tries not to leave you hanging. (If it does, see the comment on this review which is my "clues" and "pointers.") Some translation quirks may be a reason the in-game direction does not work as well as it might. Here are limitations of the game which I accept, and which, I feel, enhance the experience: - You can't look around very much without seeing the start of "tunnel vision" and colors fading, and a red icon reminding you to push a button to re-orient. I accept this because a person with paralysis mainly turns their head, not their body so much, and might be more limited than a temporarily-able-bodied person, even in turning their head. In real life, such a person has to make big adjustments just to see in a different direction. Yes, it's annoying, and holds you back. I accept it as simulating part of what it feels like to be this person. At least I only have to move my head and press a button! And ... the start of "tunnel vision" when moving is an aid to people who suffer from VR motion sickness. Helping those with a "disability" is right on theme ... right? - As with the majority of VR games, there are a limited number of objects you can interact with. Forget pushing off walls -- your hand goes right through them. This game is not worse about this than many other VR games, so I accept it. - The story telling feels amateurish. I imagine it may sound way better in the original Portugese. But it still sets the tone. And the story does unfold ... and gradually reveal why the AI voice and "you" are so chummy even in a crisis, and how that helps "you" a lot actually. I just think of the intermittent story telling like I think of the background-music, continuing to immerse you in the situation, reminding you of the theme. You can think yourself about what *your* story would be, were you in this situation. I wish this part were better, but since "being there" is the main thing, I accept that the words around it are a little clumsy. - I accept that there is junk on the floor, and my wheels run into it. Navigating in a wheelchair is part of why I'm here. - I accept that there are many ways to die ... especially because the game doesn't send you back very far, to try again. Here are limitations of the game which do detract from it, for me: - I didn't do a lot of manually pushing my own wheelchair, but the times I did it was just too hard, and didn't work very realistically. I was fine, though, using the clever virtual controller to move the wheelchair, which allows just enough freedom of where your hand is to use it, that it actually feels kinda genius. - Pressing the shut down button at the end baffled me for a bit ... see "pointers" at bottom of this review if it baffles you. - More spoken story / conclusion is the only big thing you get to at the end. It's OK, but don't go in thinking there's something extra amazing once you've "won".

The game is a little over priced for the amount of content, it took me 1.8 hours to complete the entire game. however I think it was fun, basically you move around in a wheel chair and solve puzzles mostly placing cubes that make platforms and little electrical power balancing puzzles. The story is a little intriguing but I assume English is not the developers native language (given the São Paulo grants and the developers names in the credits) because of this the dialogue is a little stilted at times making it a bit crude and harder to really get invested. All the puzzles are really easy I really wish the game has like twice as many puzzles and could really get into some more complex level designs. Also the there are some anti-gravity parts to the puzzles but its more of a platforming mechanic than anything else. Between levels there is a room where you go up an anti-gravity lift and its the same each time I wish there was some more variation there. There are no graphics options which is a little annoying even just some AA and resolution options would be nice. Overall all not bad but not stunning either.

The feels and looks like a Quest game, sadly. Even if the screenshots look nice, this game is just a 500MB download and has - by far - no proper ultramersion textures. There're no dynamic shadows at all - like in low-end phoneVR games. But this may more be a game made for the original PS4, which only has like 1.8 tflops processing capacity, while the Quest 2 (XR2 = Adreno 650 gpu) has about 1.3 tflops. So this game has much the same low-end graphics you'd expect using mobile gpus, sadly. I could run this in solid 90 fps using Index SteamVR res 500% with my oc'ed RTX 3090 (about 40 tflops) - but even insane amounts of resolution can't hide the low-res textures and the low-poly environments. Also even forcing res 500% this game still looked kinda blurry. Also, whenever moving devs activate tunnel-vision which cannot de disabled - showing that, unfortunately, devs have no clue how to implement proper VR controls. There are no graphics options at all in the game - just like other low-end Quest games (or PS4) games. Having no graphics option is quite a red flag to me. Otherwise Index controllers are nicely supported. For this game to just remotely qualify as a PCVR game, devs need to redo all textures and increase the res a lot. Proper dynamic shadows need to be added - and do not enable tunnel vision when moving, it's not 2016 anymore. I was looking forward to this game - but I'm greatly disappointed and will refund. My rating 3.5/10. Compared to another puzzle games like DeMagnete, also made for PS4, I'd say DeMagente is way better than Gravitational.

For 17€ I expected a somewhat polished game. What I got was a barebone broken game. Pros If you hate VR you can show this game to your friends and they will hate VR too. Cons So many. Looking at the trailer it might seem like a serious story driven puzzle adventure. But oh no. Almost every voice line is full with jokes even when the god damn station is about to blow up. Do you want to look around? Have fun getting a big DONT F**** MOVE SIGN in your face so put some glue on your head and mount it to chair to avoid this.. The puzzles are extremely hard, not because you need high IQ but the controllers will fight you so hard that every puzzle feels like a dark souls boss. You can not turn off motion comfort so every time you move you will get a 45 fov. If you still manage to progress in the game you will be greeted by running into stuff continuously with your wheelchair, oh and have fun when you have to drive it manually. You will also get stuck in the zero g forcing you to restart the game. This is a prime example of what to not do in VR. Use it ONLY for education purpose.

This was the most underwhelming game I have ever played. The idea is solid but the whole wheelchair is an unnecessary and just an annoying concept. The intro of the game explains nothing, does not have a coherent thought and is broken or buggy as shit the whole time. I had to restart this game like 5 times and for whatever reason it never worked. Not to mention the voice acting. I would be pissed if I got this game for free.

My true "Would You Recommend This Game to Other Players" is actually Yes *and* No. "Yes" because diverse games are sorely needed and the premise of this game is very interesting. It can be played sitting down and still have an interesting storyline. It's not boring, it's not stereotypical, the theme is striking and they visibly put a Black person up at the front (I'm a Black VR gamer, it really does mean a *lot* because of how *little* it is seen). That's where my "Yes" lies. If you want something interesting and different, go for this game. "No" because Steam says I played this game for 82 minutes. The vast 70-80 minutes of the game was me doing controller binding because there is *none*. Every. Single. Control. I personally had to bind. It was a vastly confusing and perplexing experience that made me just about want to uninstall the game. The official bindings from the devs might as well be titled "figure it out yourself". Even after spending all that time binding, I still had to tweak the bindings during game play - all of that being a very not-fun game of trial and error. I still got stuck on the materialize/dematerialize bit because while I like sci-fi lingo usually, it did *not* help in binding because the binding uses technical terms while the game's story telling uses sci-fi/story terms. It's hard to know what is which when you're basically busy doing the dev's job straight from the start. And that, everyone, is *not* a fun game to play. I tried talking to the devs via their website the first time I noticed there were zero bindings for the game but I never heard anything back whatsoever so I guess they abandoned ship or something. The game has potential but the problems get in the way.