despatch: Entity Astray Reviews

[h1]Experienced on the Oculus Quest 2[/h1] You can view my review & gameplay here: https://youtu.be/wA_Tf2MRfHI I bought this game on the Steam release sale (10% off). While I can't say that I feel I got my money's worth, I also can't quite give a negative review. Consider this a neutral recommendation. There's lots of things to like about this, but there seems to be an equal amount of things not to like. This is a sci-fi escape room. If you're expecting a puzzle experience like in The Room VR: A Dark Matter, then you will be sorely disappointed. This game lacks the production values, polish, & the amazing puzzle design (along with good hint system) in the The Room. Instead, you have puzzles that are open-ended and you have to find the right item or the correct code and figure out how to use them or pair them with another clue. The game is running on the Unreal Engine. On my RTX 3080, I was getting a steady 90 fps on Ultra settings. You do have full locomotion and smooth and snap turning options, as well as teleportation. Interactions are of the kind where you hover near an item, it is highlighted, then you can pick it up, almost like magnet hands. The game is very pretty and makes good use of darkness and lighting. There's a good atmosphere to this game. I found the puzzles challenging and satisfying to figure out. Unfortunately, I also got stuck on one of the puzzles with no ability to get any hints, or even being able to find solutions online. It seems multiple people are stuck where I'm at. It seems like something should happen, but nothing does. Thus, I can't say if the game is bugged or if there is a solution that I (as well as other people) am simply not seeing. As such, I couldn't recommend this game to casual puzzle fans or beginners. This game would only be for puzzle veterans. Also, I did experience some crashes during my gameplay. My saved progress was also lost after every update to this game. I spent 5 hours in this game and it seems about 3 of those, were just trying to figure out how to progress on the part that I am stuck. I have officially given up. [b]Rate 5/10.[/b] [quote]Please consider joining my Steam Curator Group. You can join here: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Oculus_WMR [/quote]

Got stuck on the second puzzle and with no clues = immersion breaking. The item handling is quite bad. It only works when they are highlighted

On balance, I did enjoy this game. The visuals are fantastic and some of the puzzles work well. There are severe design decisions. For example: One of the puzzles can only be solved if you chose particular locomotion options. Otherwise, you could be scratching your head for hours over it. This led to me distrusting the puzzles and completing the rest of the game with a walkthrough. Puzzle games need to be less obtuse. At times an objective marker would have been really helpful, or a voice over "I need to...". It is also way too short for the price. At less than 2 hours (less than 8 minutes if you have a walkthrough), this should be less than £10.

More hype in the description than actual game play. Using Vive Pro wireless (OLED). Very poor optimization, no instruction on using controllers at the beginning, limited movement direction, story beginning is lacking and VERY VERY DARK. My Computer (high-end PC); Windows 10 Pro 64; CPU: I7-8700K; NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti; and 32 Ram. No Clues,,,,scattered puzzles with no sense of direction...took me an hour just to figure out the very first puzzle.. And NO, I do not agree with the Dev.... ...these are not AA graphics...graphics are OK, but far from AA. Not trying to be mean or rude and I really hate giving negative reviews as I wanted to like this game...and I enjoy games like this...may be after some updates it will become a much better game..but right now it is not worth it. Very frustrating to play...not fun.

Dark, confusing, prodding game. I believe they were aiming for Red Matter, and maybe Lone Echo, but fell way short. Barely any interactivity. Your hands go through pretty much all objects you are NOT supposed to interact with. With no walk-thru videos online, I'm already stuck at the start. Going to try to return the game.

The Devs have listened to feedback and added smooth turning and other control options, very good. The game itself consists of a quite a few puzzles that are difficult to understand or outright confusing unless you've done them before. I don't feel rewarded for finishing them, rather annoyed at the solution. I often found myself making progress only to be faced with yet another puzzle, and thinking "What was the point of that last one?" or "Why am I here?" It lacks direction or explanation for why I'm doing any of the things I'm doing. Am I supposed to be doing this? Is the game glitched or have I just not found the correct solution? There's just no indication of what I should be doing. Can't recommend, as you may, as I have, end up stuck with no visible way to continue. Perhaps there is some reward at the end, but I don't enjoy walking about not knowing how to continue, where I'm supposed to be going, or why I should bother. There's no mystery that I want to explore, there's no interesting area just out of reach, there's no given goal to my actions. I'm just doing things and about 20% of the time those things lead to other things. TL;DR it's vague. It's got no save system. It takes ages to work out the puzzles. And it has no motivation for continuing to play. If you like tough puzzles, this might be right up your alley. But I would call them more confusing than tough. A particular red herring near the start really screws up that puzzles solution.

It's not a bad game, but gpu demanding (=lacks optimization). As suspected the game supports native Oculus drivers - I furthermore suspect that this game was developed using the Rift CV1. It's so dark you can notice the spud (oled mura), but not so dark that the spud is easily seen and annoying - thus devs seem to have found a nice balance between darkness and spud, lol. Not sure I'll bother checking this game with a lcd hmd (I have the Valve Index), I believe this game profits a lot from oled. I tested the game using a GTX 1080 and i7 7700K with 16GB 3200 MHz. Graphics settings are either medium, high, epic or ultra. Using CV1 ss 2.0, Ultra might require a RTX 3080 or similar for 90 fps. I chose High, and that's fine thanks to my great buddy, Mr. ASW 2.0 ;-) I get 90 fps from time to time with those settings. The game seems to have an interesting story - not sure what it's about yet - but reminds me a lot of Red Matter without any Russian themes, lol. Graphics did remind me of Lone Echo, but it's still slightly below Lone Echo quality. Devs said graphics were AA quality - I might not necessarily disagree - and that's judging using High settings (and ss 2.0, which might be a lot more demanding than Ultra + ss 1.5). Lighting and shadows are great. Controls are a problem, there's only snap turning and controller directed movements - thus no hmd directed movement. You do get full locomotion though - but no choice for left or right handedness. Feels old school and like made by devs who have been sleeping for the last 2 or 3 years - and thus have no idea of how modern VR controls should be. For the price this is a nice experience, although controls need more polish. I've only tested using CV1 and Touch - might be much worse using a lcd hmd and non-Touch controllers, because I'm convinced this game was made for the Rift CV1.

Hi, I'm Terry Sober. This game looks very nice and moves well, but for the lack of no tutorial, hints or help in any way I can not recommend it. I spent about an hour trying to solve the container moving puzzle right at the beginning of the game, before deciding to look it up online (which was just as hard as the puzzle itself and something I rarely have to do). After some time I found in a Steam discussion that you have to use teleport to get passed this section and it was nowhere near as difficult as it looked. I use full locomotion in all VR games and nowhere does it tell you that you should use teleport in the game, (I think what happen is originally it only had teleport, so when they added full loco they didn't think it would be a problem). After that one section I never needed to use teleport again. I played for another hour, solving puzzles and getting through, before coming to something that seems like another dead end. I don't have the energy carry on, or care for matter. I might come back to this game one day, but for now this is where my journey ends. One last thing that's not a negative, but it's all pretty much set in one room, a cargo bay, with a couple of different areas within it.