Red Matter (2018)

It's a neat short game but nothing special. Basically a series of very easy puzzles inside a soviet-style station on a moon of Saturn. It's got a nice visual style if you, like me, like a retrofuturistic soviet look.

The story is kind of meh. It's got a cute little twist at the end that's not at all unpredictable but it crams too much nonsense in a small little game that simply cannot handle all of it.

Something interesting is that VR games move so fast that this 5-year game is almost retro. It's got a very slow teleportish movement, the character is always holding weird claws that look like Oculust Rift 1 controllers and it's very short. It feels quite primitive.

I saw this game on the Quest store and, even though I was not blown away by it, I thought it would have been a nice experience with a good atmosphere.

○

Sadly, the game is just too generic.

○

The story is shallow, throwing a plot twist at the end just to add a spin to it but without feeling like it belonged there.
It should be one of the main points of this experience but it just never really gets good.
It feels like it only has the main idea for the story the developer had in mind, like the bullet point version, which was never really expanded.
This is also why it feels like it goes on very fast. It's not very kind to say, but it feels like the devs just saw a sci-fi film and wanted to do the same thing themselves but lacked the skill to actually write it.

○

The game is short, but that is not something that bugs me much, the issue is that it felt like I just went through it without even noticing.
The best part was probably the first chapter, just because it was new and I was learning the tools.

○

I liked the idea of the translation tool, and I also liked a lot the fact that the interactions in the game are very "mechanical", so that u have to interact with the environment, levers and buttons, making you feel like you are really in that place doing stuff. This is something very important for a VR experience.
The issue is that the majority of the tools are very clunky to use. Having to switch and wait for the animation every time I need to go from the translation tool to the hand, especially when I do that by mistake, is so frustrating.
Not sure why they included the light tool honestly, it is barely useful.
Also not sure what was the purpose of the yellow floppies, they should have helped translate the text? I didn't seem to have any issues apart for the first one u need to get to advance.

○

At first, I didn't like the fact that the teleport is very slow (even though can be adjusted, but the fast option with the blackout is even more annoying), but in the end I changed my mind and think it was a good way to make u feel like u were really moving in the space and not just teleporting.
Maybe it could have been done in a better way but the idea was good.
What was a very terrible idea was to put the grid on the floor for the teleport, it was not needed AT ALL and was ruining the immersion.

○

Visually it's ok. I played on Quest 1 (maybe on Quest 2 it blows you away).
I'm not really a fan of realistic visuals, in particular on the Quest, since it does not render good, and it just feels like you are doing a worse version of what is available elsewhere, but it's not just this.
The thing is that, like everything else, it feels like the draft of something. It has some good parts, but it feels like it is just the prototype of the final thing.
I liked the sound effects, I can see them becoming sort of an iconic thing for this saga, but the background music got boring fast, it was basically just one track for the whole game.

○

Even the puzzles are like the standard puzzles you could think of after playing a few escape room games.
In the generator room, when I saw the pipe one I almost rolled my eyes, and I think it was the moment I started to feel like the game would have not become better.
The puzzles are also too gamey for a "serious" game like this (from a narrative point of view), so it kinda felt like it was throwing me out of the immersion: "o ok this is a puzzle moment".

○

I don't like to sound harsh, but I didn't really like this.
The sequel is out, and being so well known I got kinda interested in at least trying it, but after playing the first one, I'm not sure about it anymore.

I've anticipated this game since it appeared on Oculus store but I found it cheaper on Steam. The story is sort of like a fictional Cold War of the future, with similar factions and its own, foreign language. The mission objective is to find out what happened in the space facility and return the intelligence to your home base. But things are not as they seem...

The puzzles you come upon are mainly environmental so I find interacting with objects quite immersive, such as analog equipment, manual switches, translations and key combinations. There were a few puzzles that nearly left me stumped (I consulted the forums only once) but the rooms are balanced enough to leave the key objects visible enough for me to figure out.

The graphics are slick and is one of the most good-looking VR games I have played, being made by indie developers. Warmly recommended for adventure fans!