Recent reviews by Reiker Forge

This is probably going to be the most detailed review of Enlisted on Steam, for a while at least. I'm going to cover the stuff that I haven't seen come up in other comments, particularly how the "Pay2Win" works. TLDR, you can play the game for free without any problems, and unlock 95% of the content without spending money. Unlike every other game you SHOULD buy the battle pass, as you unlock enough gold by simply grinding the pass to only have to pay for it once ever if you play at least a couple times a week.

Research: The game features a research system in which you slowly upgrade one of four factions (Axis, Allies, Comintern, GEACPS) across 5 tiers. You can mostly upgrade whatever you want and in whatever order, but you need a minimum of things researched to get to the next tier, to prevent you from having tier 5 SMGs and tier 1 everything else and hurting your gaming experience.
This system is baity, because the first tiers take 5-10x less time to research than the last tier does. This also applies to tier 3 infantry taking much longer to level up vs tier 1, and tier 5 guns costing much more to upgrade than tier 1 guns. The first games will have you leveling everything like a breeze, with it getting progressively more grindy the more you play. For context, it took me about 400 hours playing Axis to unlock their entire tree, and I am a "good" player, so "average" players will take longer. Pro-tip, always upgrade squad EXP (Blue Tree) first to make every other upgrade for that squad 2x faster.

Pay2Win: There's 5 paid elements in the game. The first is the battle pass. This cost me 15$ two years ago, and I've never had to buy it since, as you get exactly enough gold grinding the pass to buy it again the next month. Each pass lasts about 4 months, so you have an abundance of time to grind them. You can also still get about 20/75 rewards on the pass without buying it, so this isn't completely irrelevant for F2P players.
The second is the Gold weapons/vehicles/troops. You can buy these with real money, or with gold passes you earn from the battle pass, events, and a couple from achievements. In 2 years I've gotten about 25 of these gold orders for each type, enough to buy one of every gun, plus every vehicle and trooper for 1.5 factions. The gold weapons are not better, they are simply different. A Gold tier 2 SMG might have a higher fire rate than the regular tier 2 SMG but at a damage cost for example. The only outright better Gold versions are ones with a bigger magazine than the regular variant, for example the Kar98K has a Gold version with 25 rounds vs the regular 5, the Thompson has a 100 round version vs the regular 50, and etc. Gold soldiers aren't better either, they just start at level 5 vs 1.
The third is the Paid Tree. Everything here will put you back the price of a AAA game on sale. There's no reason to buy these unless you really want something, and the prices are exorbitant. These Paid Tree weapons/vehicles are also mostly just different to regular things in their tier. The only things you absolutely cannot get in this game without paying are flame tanks, paratroopers (for now, free ones have come out in an event), armed troop transports (same) and rocket tanks. Not having these won't ruin your experience. On the plus side, if you do buy a Paid Tree thing, there's a special slot just for them so you don't use up your other slots.
This brings us to four, the slots. Every faction starts with 3 infantry slots, one vehicle slot, and slots for motorcycles (Axis/Allies only) and APCs. You can boost the available slots for money. This cost doubles for every slot you unlock, and only unlocks one slot for one faction. It's up to you if you think it's worth it.
5th is the Premium status. This gives you two free slots for every faction, bringing you to 4 infantry and 2 vehicles without buying any slots outright. It also doubles your EXP for everything you do in game, so you decide if that's worth it for you. If you do get it however, it's much more efficient to get a year of it vs a smaller amount.

Beyond that, this is my favourite shooter for a reason. It's got arcade elements, but mostly takes itself realistically. Bodies will ragdoll from explosions, bolt actions under 100m are one shot kills, there's no crosshairs on the screen so you actually have to iron sight to aim guns.

The thing it does different from other shooters is the squad mechanics. You can bring a whole squad to battle at a time, and swap between any of the soldiers at any time. Swap to engineers to get things built, swap to snipers to hit the guy pinning your troops, etc. This also means if you die in mid battle, you generally have a second chance to get into the fight, unless your whole team blew up or got gunned down, which happens.

You can command your squad to a limited degree, including telling soldiers where to go, individually or as a team. Place soldiers all over a house; command 3 guys to assault a position while you flank with 4 more. People don't seem to capitalize on this as much as they should, and I blame the lack of tutorial for that element.

The in-game tutorial is okay, but the video tutorials on Youtube will really teach you how to play.

Teams can be up to 15 players each. If everyone brings infantry squads with 10 soldiers each, that's a potential 300 soldiers on the field simultaneously, but usually it's closer to 100-150 as players will also use planes and smaller specialist squads, and players must lose all individual soldiers before respawning whole new squads in, so they usually roam around solo a bit before being wiped out completely.

You'll lose 8-10 squads on average per match. The matches last no longer than 30 minutes, and unless it's a curbstomp, most average at 15-20. The matchmaking is generally fair, stomp games tend to be an outlier. That said, every match will have "good" players matched with "average" and "bad" players, so someone or a few people are generally going to dominate on both teams while everyone else supports them.

Tiers 1-3 and 4-5 are matched together, so someone bringing the tier 3 equipment will generally outgun the tier 1 players in every way, same with 5 on 4, skewing the balance heavily towards "good" higher tier players in the match deciding the outcome of the battle.

There's surprisingly little toxicity from the community itself, it's only in 1/50 matches that one person on the team starts complaining or being a turd. This probably stems from the fact the game has no ranked mode, so the game is rather casual.

There's almost always an event going on you can grind to get cool free stuff, including gold orders and unique weapons/troops/vehicles (As mentioned, Paratroopers and APCs have been big rewards in the past), usually with their own conditional questlines, which help spice up the gameplay so you're not always monotonously playing a single playstyle all the time.

There are daily quests you can grind for free at a rate of 3 per day, or 9 if you go Premium, each giving you their own rewards while also grinding up the battlepass. These can be easy (Kill 8 people, play for 10 minutes, etc), medium (Get 25 headshots, get kills with X weapon type, etc) or hard (Be first place in the team, get 5 melee kills, etc). You can reroll ones you absolutely abhor, but there is a limit and the new quest might not be better.

Something this game does especially right is making sure you never waste time while playing, as you're always progressing something, be it your soldier levels, your squads upgrades, the research tree, making currency, or grinding achievements.

Feel free to comment anything I missed if you're a vet and think I left something important out. The goal here is to give new players the full context and let them decide if the pros (Gameplay) outweigh the cons (Grindfest with many paid elements).

This game is fun in the same way forgetting your 4 number bank password is fun, that is to say, not at all unless you like smashing your head into the wall doing the same thing over and over hoping that the numbers align and you can progress.
Literally everything is RNG based in this game, so you will keep dying to random numbers not being in your favor, going back and repeating the same days over and over and over until the RNG DOES go in your favor. Every single thing in this game affects your survivors negatively, except for, once again, random RNG loot you can "maybe" find that will "maybe" help fix the things your survivors are dying of, or "maybe" you instead get items that heal a stat they're not even affected by yet, and your 20 disease medications don't matter because your survivor jumped off a cliff from depression instead. Your characters are always tired, but somehow don't sleep at all during the entire ♥♥♥♥♥ night. Your survivors are hungry, but somehow can't find random berries in the woods while exploring. The devs understand how much of a garbage system this is too, because they've enabled an autosave after every "turn" in the game, allowing you to go back to that specific day, reroll the dice again, and hope for a better result. There is no strategy here, you can have the best strats and go in with all the previous knowledge of previous playthroughs and still lose uncontrollably to the RNG. Similarly you can win on your very first playthrough without even understand how things work yet. There's no fun here, there's no strategy here, you're just praying on luck.

Utter garbage
At least Battlefield 5 was only controversial for bionic legs and British wielding katanas, this is just not fun or entertaining at all. Back to 1 it is.

15 Critical things AOE2 and AOE3 players need to know going into AOE4

1. Resource drop points are back from AOE2, which means resource upgrades were moved from the market back to the stockpile buildings. You'll be building wood camps, mining camps, and granaries again.
2. There are now super boars on the map that give a ton of food when hunted, but need a bunch of gatherers to take down.
3. No more batch training unless you're the Mongols or the Russians. Build more barracks, archery ranges and stables as a result.
4. All civs age up the same way the AOE3 Asian Dynasties do: You pick one of two wonder options (You can only pick one unless you're the Chinese), you build the wonder, you age up. The only exception is the abbasid, who add upgrades to a wonder they start with in age 1 instead.
5. There's a new influence mechanic that boils down to something similar to the Hausa: If you build certain buildlings in proximity with one another, you get bonuses. Farms near granaries are an example.
6. AOE2 Wonder Victory is back, where if you build a wonder (Not the age up wonders, a bigger more expensive one) and hold it for a set time you win the game. With this, turtling is now a viable strategy again.
7. AOE3 Trade Monopoly Victory is now Sacred Site Victory, where if you can capture all the sacred sites with monks and keep at least one unit on each of them until the 10 minute timer runs out, you win the game. This is mostly a counter strategy to 6, valuing aggressive play and map control. (Stack villagers on the points to hold them longer if you're going for the final countdown)
8. Markets are different, where you build trade caravans and have them cross the map going to specific trade buildings rather than town centers to make gold.
9. Walls are actually awesome now, and you can stack ranged troops on stone walls to deter enemies. Any archers on walls get 2/3rd damage reduction. You actually need siege equipment to take stone walls down too, adding extra layers of strategy to siege gameplay.
10. Farms don't cost anything to reseed anymore. No more wasting a bunch of wood on farm regrowth.
11. Animals don't decay now, so don't worry about your villagers killing a bunch of sheep by accident anymore.
12. You can't wall with buildings anymore, as your units and enemy units can go between them. This means no more units getting stuck, but this also makes walls even more important than before.
13. No more infinitely burning buildings, as they will eventually burn down if lowered to around a quarter health without being repaired.
14. Siege weapons are no longer dragged by horses, which is a big regression on their aesthetic from AOE3. I hope they end up changing it eventually. They do still have AOE3 setup times though, so you can't kite with them like in AOE2.
15. Sheep will now follow scouts around, but move extremely slowly and have barely any vision without them. No more sheep scouts in the early game.

Feel free to comment anything I missed

There are dozens of games just like this on mobile for free with in game purchases, and I feel like this game should have taken the same route. That said, provided the playerbase increases to the point it doesn't take 20 minutes to find a match, this game is good enough to be worth picking up on sale. Can't recommend it at full price until they add more content, however. What you see on the store page is exactly what you're getting, so if it's enough to interest you then by all means try it out. It's free weekend, but even beyond that you can get two hours out of it before you no longer qualify for steams refund policy, so there's no reason even in the future to not see if it's your style.

Short version, good game that's at its bare bones right now and can/will improve in the future through updates and new content

This will probably be the most detailed review of this game out there, so if you want to know exactly what you're paying for, come take a read. If you want the short version, unless you hate RTS as a genre, buy the game.

We'll start with the gameplay. What is Final Assault? Well, if you've ever played a MOBA before (League of Legends, Heroes Of The Storm, DOTA 2, etc) then it's that but with a bunch of vehicles rather than a champion and you can skip this part, but if not I'll explain. There are two sides across the map from eachother, and based on which of the 14 maps you're on you can have either 1, 2, or 3 lanes to send troops down. Your main base spawns basic infantry by itself in waves of 6, and you can use the cash you gain passively over time to buy various vehicles and abilities to turn the tide of the fight. The goal is to take down the enemies defensive towers in their base (Complete destruction isn't required, but helps your soldiers) and then push in and take out the main base, resulting in victory.

Now here is where we stray away from the traditional MOBA gameplay. You play by spawning units and abilities out of your deck. Each unit in the deck has a price, and a tier. Tiers higher than the second are locked at the start, and you will need to unlock them with money in order to obtain the next tier. You gain money over time, and occasionally a transport plane will announce its arrival on the map, and then proceed to drop off a cargo box at one of a few predetermined locations (They have a big red X, impossible to miss) where the first unit to stand on the cargo gains some instant cash for its owner. There are two decks, the Axis deck and the Allies deck, each with a tier 1 Scout, Tank, Troop Transport (Spawns infantry over time when parked), tier 2 Fighter, Artillery, and tier 3 Anti Air unit. Past this, there are so far six "Commanders" you can choose from, each with their own playstyle and unique units/abilities that really create a large variety in your deck choices. Do you want to have many bombers and fighters maintaining air superiority? How about plowing down the lane with King Tigers? Do you want to wear the enemy down with a variety of troop transports sending waves of troops to overwhelm the enemy? Maybe you just want to drop tactical missiles on the enemy all day. Regardless how you want to play it, there should be a commander that fits what you want to do.

Infantry do their own thing, but besides that, every single unit you spawn is controllable by you. The controls are super basic, which frankly is a necessity for a VR RTS, but essentially all you have to do is point at a unit and drag a line where you want it to go, which it will follow faithfully. This is especially fun with planes, as you can make them do crazy loops in order to get behind an enemy fighter and take it out. Speaking of fighters, you can drag them along the ground in order to get them to perform strafing runs, which can kill dozens of infantry in one go. If you want it to attack a particular enemy you simply drag a line to it. Spawning units is as simple as selecting it and dropping it somewhere on the map. You can drop it directly on an enemy to have that unit go directly to attack it after spawning. Dragging a circle back to a units start location will cause it to patrol the area in the circle you selected. You can also drag a unit to a lane, and it'll move down the same path as the infantry on its way to automatically destroy the enemy base, saving on having to manage all your units at once. Moving around the map is done by holding grip and dragging yourself where you want to go. Weapons penetrate as you would expect, with guns doing barely any damage to tanks, and artillery doing heavy damage in a great area, making every unit valuable in their own way and nothing being never picked.

The game has its own tutorial but honestly, if you read this review you already know how to play, it's literally that easy to pick up. There's Skirmish mode, which is a single map played out between you and an AI. Campaign mode is a bit harder to explain, but it is absolutely amazing and the replayability value is huge. To start off, you pick *So far only one, but all of them in the future* commander, and are then transported to a sort of hexagonal chess board. You and your opponent will play in turns, and each turn you may move your unit to a new square. If it hasn't been claimed yet, it'll be taken instantly, otherwise you'll have to fight over it. You'll face all three enemy faction commanders in a single campaign. There are specific "Story" tiles you need to conquer along the way, which play out much different than normal skirmishes and are very fun. Taking five of these tiles wins the campaign, losing all your tiles loses the campaign. I'm only two story tiles down and I've already fought a good 12 battles in my campaign, with lots more to come. Each battle also has its own modifier, such as certain unit types being less or more expensive, or less/no infantry spawning unless you build some transports.

Now we get to the negatives. Unfortunately I couldn't even get multiplayer to start, as it would either tell me Steam wasn't working or I failed to connect during the various times I tried to boot it up. This might be a problem on my end (If so, I'd love for the devs to tell me how to fix it) so I can't get mad at the game for it, but I have to bring it up because it means I can't review the multiplayer yet. (This has been resolved, I'll add my experience of multiplayer at the end) Also, there is a bug where a lot of the subtitles for the campaign are missing and show a generic file path where I imagine the subtitle info is supposed to be. Given that this game is still early access, I'd consider it a huge plus that I can only find this very minor easily fixable bug, as everything else in the game plays well, even the AI is challenging and doesn't mess up pathing, but it is a bug nonetheless and must find its way into the negatives. My one true gripe is that during the campaign, at the start of every battle the sergeant will have a witty one liner to get the battle started, which would be great except that he only has two of them, and they get old and even annoying after hearing them 5+ times an hour.

I've played RTS for almost twenty years now, and I've played literally every base building RTS on the planet, because that's my very specific niche and I can't get enough of it. However, despite the simple gameplay Final Assault offers compared to games like Age of Empires and Starcraft, I can definitely see myself putting another 25-50 hours minimum into the game. My rule for a game to be good value is whether or not I spent more hours in game than dollars on it. Considering I'll be putting at least twice the games price in game hours, this is definitely great value even at its current state, and it only gets better from here. I 100% recommend everyone pick up this title, as its probably your best bet for the foreseeable future if you're trying to scratch that RTS itch in a VR environment.

Other notes
Played on an HTC Vive so I can't comment on how the game plays on Oculus Rift
You can play the game in any position you want, even lying down, as long as your sensors can pick you up
33% off until April 28 so you might as well pick it up now to save some money

Edit: Having been able to try out multiplayer, there isn't that much to discuss on it, as it plays the same as skirmish does vs bots, just with more unpredictability and the sense you're putting your skills to the test against another human opponent. I didn't experience any bugs or lag throughout a full match, though I was slightly disappointed that I don't get to see the enemy moving around the map as the trailer would imply. On top of being able to wave hello or shake your fist at people, it could also provide tactical info on where your opponent is focusing their attention.

This is probably going to be the most in depth review of the game out there, so if you want to know exactly what you're paying for, take a read through here. The short version would be buy the game now, unless you have physical problems when it comes to swinging your arms around and exerting a lot of energy. You're going to have a bad day if you have say, asthma and want to play this for any amount of time. However, barring health conditions, you have no reason not to pick up one of the best games for VR out there.
The longer version is as follows.

I've been playing this on a friends headset, and finally got myself a copy when the much anticipated update 5 released and made the game 10x better. I've got about 15 hours in game, and that's more than enough time to experience everything, but still nowhere near time to get bored of it all. Given the game is barely alpha state, for the small amount of stuff actually in game, there's still a ridiculous amount of things to do and fun to have. You're going to spend hours upon hours doing the coolest Melee Matrix you've ever seen and actually feel like you're there doing it firsthand.

On to weapons.
So far, for defense we get
~ A small metal buckler, a wooden targe shield, and a large kite shield.
~ No armour/clothing customization implemented yet, though this seems to be coming in Update 6.
For offensive weapons, we get
~ A bow and 12 arrow quiver for ranged weaponry (Arrows can be used to stab people as a last resort)
~ A dagger, a rapier, a cutlass, a shortsword for one handed swords
~ A bast(Censor)ard sword, a greatsword and a claymore for two handed swords*
~ A hatchet for one handed axes
~ A spiked mace and the completely useless mage staff for bludgeon weapons
~ A bardiche, corseque, double sided short spear and danish axe for polearms*
~ The lightning spell for sorcery. The lightning spell can stun enemies (But not you), and if prolonged kill them, but weapons and shields will deflect the spell, helping balance it when being used both by you and enemy mages.
* All two handed weapons can be wielded one handed, albeit with much less effectiveness. The Censorsword is the only exception, as it is designed to be used both one and two handed. You can also place your hands anywhere on the hilt/shaft of said weapons, allowing freedom of grip and how you use it.

Bullet time is also a thing in this game. While optional, should you desire, you may slow time for a few seconds every so often, allowing you to Melee Matrix and pull some crazy fantastic kills off.

For maps, we have a total of four now, and there are at least two others planned. We get a wide open market map where bandits lurk, a dark cathedral map where cultists practice their dark arts, an Egypt-y map made with the newest update in mind to feature areas to climb and swing across, and an arena map where you can brawl with the best and come out the sole survivor. Each map also has its own unique ways of ending the lives of those who stand before you, from spike walls in the arena to a well you can "THIS IS SPARTA" someone down in the middle of the market square. Each map also has its own unique "missions", for example the market can have you and some allies fighting bandits, while the Arena can have a free for all. The maps have some "missions" in common as well, such as warzone where multiple factions square off in case you want massive bloodshed, or 1v1 combat where you face gradually tougher enemies one at a time in case you just want to duel.

The enemy comes in only a few flavours for now, but there are definitely plans for more. So far, we get to fight enemies with one handed weapons, enemies with various combinations of the one handed weapons and shields, archers with bow and dagger, and mages with mage staff and dagger. You will not face enemies who dual wield one handed weapons (This was removed for an unknown reason in update 4), nor will enemies come with two handed weapons, but besides that every combination you can think of will be trying to kill you. Through the book on each map, you can choose between 5 difficulty levels, and different waves that spawn different enemy types, to get the difficulty and experience you want out of the game every time you start a fight.

With weapons, enemies and maps out of the way, how is the gameplay like? Well, absolutely fantastic. Even at this stage, the swordplay steamrolls over anything else VR has to offer in the melee genre. Even Gorn, in all its glory, still looks like a childs cartoon after you come into the world of B&S. Not even Skyrim VR can come close to the realism and immersion being put out by this game. With update 4 the enemies came to life, dodging your strikes and lunges, carefully planning their attacks before delivering swift pain and an untimely end to your Skyrim-level customizable character. They became smart, they adapted, and now they are such a challenge you feel like you're actually sword fighting people to the death.

However, the big update is yesterdays Update 5. With this, the realism reaches a new peak. Your slices leave blood trails across skin, your stabs penetrate through shield and flesh alike, and enemies heads and limbs will go flying when a skillful blow has been delivered. You can dismember and decapitate as you please, maybe even create a message in the sand out of the limbs of the fallen, or mount some heads on a spear to remind the next foes they will not have an easy time finishing you off. Climbing and ziplining have also been introduced, though they are still experimental and definitely don't always work as they should. However, what you should really be excited about with the coming of this new update is the official mod support. The game already had a few mods, but now that modders have full access, I give it two months before we see hundreds of custom weapons and armour, and maybe even new gameplay mechanics thanks to the incoming modding communities support of an already fantastic game.

I do want to point out that this isn't a multi-billion dollar AAA company making this masterpiece, it's one guy, with a small team having been brought on to help now. This small group is going to put more work and effort into this game than you're used to, and are helping to bring back the 2000s era of paying a fair price for a game that is worth every penny. I try to scale games on a basis of "If I spent 1$ per hour of game time or less, this game is worth the price". And considering I'm already seeing another hundred hours with what's already added, this is 100% worth the price. 60$ games won't give you this experience, but you can pick this up for less than half that right now and have zero buyers remorse once you boot it up.

I hope that one day this game becomes the Hotdogs, Horseshoes and Hand Grenades of melee combat, with every weapon under the sun being used to battle hordes of enemies in your path. I 100% believe this game will get there, and that's why I bought it at the current state, and why you should too.

I'm also providing this feedback from a friend who got to experience the game on my headset today, who went to bed late because he couldn't stop enjoying himself.
"This game is great. I've been watching it being developed for awhile and this recent update made me purchase it. The climbing albeit experimental as hell, is fun as hell. I had a lot of fun trying to do wall jumps with my swords.
I have a fear of heights, and initially had issues with the rope climbing. I'd be nauseated from fear, but after jumping off a few times and hugging the couch with my lower torso for dear life, I'm happy to report I can go full speed down.
The decapitations feel so satisfying with a sword, and cleaving a head clean off, slowing down time and catching the head to throw it at the person behind you? Phenomenal. This game is such a good stress relief and a great workout, will definitely be including this to my daily VR library"

This is probably going to be the most in depth review of Wardust out there, so if you want to know exactly what you're getting right now by buying this, read my review. If you want the short version, it's Battlefield VR. If you like battlefield, you will like this, and vice versa.

I'll start with the problems the game has, so we can get it out of the way and save the good stuff for last.

The first major problem is bugs. Of course, the game is early access, and bugs in a game that isn't finished should never determine whether or not you want to buy a game. That said, these bugs aren't the worst I've seen, and have been relatively rare for me. I can't say I'm not just lucky when it comes to bugs, as others have reported far worse, but I'll list off the bugs I've personally seen.
- Everyone on the map becomes immune to death for a few minutes. This has happened about once a day, and is honestly free exp more than anything.
- My character glitching through walls, some vehicles do it too. Very rare though, and it's never resulted in me dying.
- Weapon mags glitching and not wanting to go into the gun properly. This happens rarely, but it can be bothersome to die because your mag no-clipped through your gun rather than reloading.

The second problem is the progression system.
- There are four classes, each with their own set of weaponry.
- A lot of the weapons will re-occur in different classes, so i'd say total there's about 20 guns in game including RPGs
- Each class requires leveling up through earning exp in game (Hits give exp, kills give exp, taking objectives gives exp) and things per class are unlocked at one unlock per level.

Now, normally this would be fine, but then you realize that higher levels start having exponentially longer exp bars to get to the next one. I'll give you my personal example.
I am, without bragging, easily in the top 50 players in war dust. I'm top 5 on the 32 team every match, contributing to objectives and killing dozens of people a match, and even I'M struggling to get one level every 1-2 hours, and I'm barely halfway leveled on a single class, after 25 hours of grinding major exp through my in-game exploits. This means that a regular player grinding through level 30-40 (40 being the max from my understanding) will take an entire weekend to get a single level, and the unlocks definitely don't pay off 90% of the time. At level 23 of support, I'm using the second gun I unlocked (I have five now) because I don't have any unlocks for the newer guns so I stick to the good stuff I got at level ~6.

So with the bugs and the insanely long leveling out of the way, we can move to core gameplay and why this is a recommended as opposed to a negative review.

- There are 6 maps. Two desert maps, one Vietnam map, a snowy Ardennes Forest map, a city map, and a fortified forest map with a train that goes around the edge. The game randomly decides which map comes next, and it isn't consistent or balanced either. I play one of the two desert maps every second game, and haven't seen the snow map in a week now. The week before, it was the Vietnam map I was never playing. Still, the maps are all huge and each one plays quite differently, allowing for enough variety you won't feel repetition,

- There are 7 different vehicles. Each one has a different control setup that the game doesn't explain, but that can be understood within a few minutes of playtesting. They also all support third person, which gives the benefit of checking around corners at the expense of being unable to hit anything without pure luck. You get an attack helicopter with rockets, a transport helicopter with two passenger MGs, a jet with rockets, a tank with a cannon, a dinghy with passenger MG, a jeep/ambulance, and an ATV. The level of quality for each is all over the place however. For example, the ATV is so fun to ride that they could literally create an ATV game built around it, while on the flip side the jeep is absolute garbage and won't even drive half the time as it gets stuck in place on spawn and is annoying to get in and out of even when it works. The other five vehicles are mostly more central for quality, with nothing really to complain about but also nothing that really stands out. The tank could definitely use a MG passenger slot since it already has said MG just sitting on top. The attack helicopter could have a copilot on an underside MG as well.

- As previously mentioned, you get four classes with about 20 guns between them. You've got Assault (AR, Sidearm, Knife, Grenade), Engineer (RPG with target-lock and Sidearm), Support (SMG/Sidearm, can heal teammates and self, can build sandbag walls for cover), and Sniper (Sniper, Sidearm). Each role fills a unique niche and if you don't have some of everyone on your team you'll find a lack of balance. Assault clears the way while Sniper provides cover and Support keeps the team defended and healed as Engineers clear out any vehicles that may pose a threat. However, despite needing every class to be an effective team, there are clearly better all-around classes. For example, unless the enemy brings many vehicles, picking up the Engineer role might as well be shooting yourself in the foot. They can one shot people with a well placed RPG but besides that you're better off going Assault or Support. Sniper rifles also one shot enemies, which is great for balance because it takes a LOT of skill to snipe someone in VR, regardless of the game.

- On top of the 20 or so gun unlocks, you'll also unlock more redundant stuff. Every gun has two attachments (Flash Hider, Suppressor) but I can't for the life of me even figure out their purpose. Nobody in game even knows what the point of these attachments are, and there's no wiki to explain either. I feel like one or the other will block your diamond (When anyone on the map shoots, the enemy is alerted to their location by a diamond over their head) but I can't playtest with a team to find out. You also unlock a couple new paintjobs for each weapon, which are pretty generic and in late leveling definitely aren't worth how much you have to grind for them.

- Even though the teams are 32-32, each individual on a team is assigned a squad to join under, whom they can spawn on at any point as long as they're not in a vehicle. This can either be a huge plus where you coordinate with four others to do some serious damage to the enemy team while having a blast, or a huge negative when a whiny 12 year old starts getting yelled at by his mom while you're trying to enjoy the game.

- Voice chat is supported, and you will be able to communicate with your squad while dead or alive, and also anyone within 15 feet of you in-game. This includes enemies, so be careful not to tell the enemy squad where your squad is about to come in from while they surround your corpse, or give away your position when you're trying to hide in a building.

All in all, the main strength of the game is the huge maps and huge teams and otherwise huge feel of large-scale conflict going on all over. When playing at late night and each team has 7 players each, the game loses its core. However, when you've got full 32-32 lobbies and your full five man squad is when the game really shines and you get the most enjoyment. I go by a principle of 1$ per 1 hour of game time is worth the price point, and given that I've already surpassed the dollars I spent on it vs hours played with a good couple hundred more hours of gameplay to go, I'm definitely recommending it for the buy. A lot of really good VR games are coming out which makes it harder for this to stand out, but I'd still definitely say it makes top 20 VR games in it's current state, possibly much higher depending where they go by release. If you're still really on the fence, the game goes on sale every so often and also comes up every now and then as a bundle with Standout (PUBG VR) in case you want to save a few dollars.

I wanted to wait for update 0.13 before reviewing, and I'm glad I waited because this is a dumpster fire.
The game itself is amazing and really fun, but lacks content and it shows. The only reason people are coming out in droves to buy/play this game is because of the modding community, and devs would do well to remember that. The default music in the game, including the ones added in 0.13, will last you maybe 5-6 hours before you get bored with it. The only way this game becomes replayable past that point is with the help of the literal thousands of songs available through modding. And the mods aren't limited to songs either, everything from new sabers to new floors to new note colours can be changed with them. To put things into perspective, the vanilla game is 10% and the modding community is 90%. Without the mods, you lose 90% of the games value. Hell, modders have built MULTIPLAYER into the game while the devs are too busy trying to cash out on song packs.
- There are about 17 songs in game, plus the "Paid content" songs. You know, songs we're supposed to pay 20$ (The price of the game itself) because "All the hard work went into it", when I've literally made better custom songs in 4 hours, for free because I want to contribute to the games greatness and not my wallet, than some of the base songs in game.
- The new campaign is 100%, absolute garbage. Whoever thought "Let's add missions where you have to flail your arms around like a spastic child having a temper tantrum, and also missions where you have to fail to pass the song" clearly has no understanding of what makes a game, let alone THIS game, fun. Nobody wants these stupid conditions. Learn from Guitar Hero, make songs with random bomb notes, do something that is challenging without being straight up stupid and not fun. I had to skip half the campaign just over these two mission types, though admittedly the rest of the (regular) mission types like get this combo or get this score are fine.

This is only a positive review because of the modding community and the fact they believe in this game enough to do for free what devs would have you pay extra for. If the devs ever openly prevent modders from making their game great, watch the playerbase drop by 99% overnight and this game become forgotten until someone else less greedy picks up with a new, similar title.

This is going to be the most in depth review of H3VR out there, so if you want to know exactly what you're paying for before buying, read this. I'm remaking my review from a year ago, because Alyx brought an influx of new brothers and sisters to the VR community who will want to play the best VR has to offer, and too much has changed in the game itself not to. If you want a TL;DR, just look at the 96% positive review rate.

So for starters, this is a gun realism simulator sandbox. This game is, hands down, the closest you can physically get to gun realism in a VR game. Every gun functions realistically. Cocking, slide release, safeties (Which are on for most guns by default, switched off by pressing left on the touchpad), recoil when firing which takes into account calibres, barrel length, if you're holding the gun with two hands, etc. The only thing that isn't realistic is the weight, and the lack of gun jams, neither of which would be possible to recreate properly in VR with the current technology available. If you're not into realistic shooting or sandboxes and want a more game-y game, or a multiplayer experience, this might not be for you, but Pavlov is 100% what you're looking for. Otherwise, you're going to enjoy it for one reason or another.

I'll list every gun that's currently in the game, as briefly as possible due to character limits. If you're only into shooting a specific kind of gun, this will be most helpful.
For handguns, we have 42 unique semi-autos with 17 variants, 24 revolvers with 4 variants, 15 machine pistols, 1 level action pistol, 3 bolt actions, 1 flintlock, and 2 derringers.
For shotguns, we have 9 break actions with 5 variants, 18 tube fed with 6 variants, 11 mag fed with 1 variant, and 1 lever action shotgun with its own variant.
For SMGs, 27 with 10 variants. 8 PDWs as well.
For rifles, 4 lever action with 3 variants, 34 carbines with 6 variants, 20 ARs with 6 variants, 14 battle rifles with 4 variants, 5 anti material rifles, 14 bolt actions with 4 variants, 1 breach loading rifle with its own variant.
For machineguns, 11 with 5 variants.
For RPGs, 15, including a potato gun
1 crossbow
15 grenades (Wouldn't be H3 without them), including banana dynamite and molotovs
Horseshoes, for obvious reasons
Most if not all of the guns you'd find in Team Fortress

No matter what you're looking for, there's a 99.9% chance H3 has you covered. These weapons stretch from the 1700s to futuristic cyber pistols as well, so if you're into a particular era, there's still going to be weapons for you to enjoy. The only category lacking is muskets and bows at this point, though the flintlock pistol does cover the musket era to a small extent. Not to mention, over 100 of these guns would be almost impossible to shoot in real life today, due to costing tens of thousands or being extremely rare.

Of course, all of these weapons also have their own variety of bullet calibres. For example, 9mm can come in FMJ, HP, +P, etc. 12g has over 15 variants, including high explosive rounds.

There's also a variety of attachments, for really customising the gun you want to rock with.
8 iron sights, 21 reflex sights, 28 scopes, 33 suppressors, 8 muzzle breaks, 3 flashlights, 8 laser sights, 14 grips, an all-purpose adjustable bipod, 9 stocks, and 6 under-barrel grenade launchers and shotguns. There's also 10 bayonets, for guns that support them.

Then we have melee weapons. For some reason, there is no advertisement for these, but they're there as well. They won't feel super realistic, but there is quite a lot of realism to them nonetheless. 85 of them in total, from medieval swords to gladiator spears to kitchen knives to farming equipment. A chainsaw, a power drill. There are even shuriken and throwing pencils for when your inner ninja calls, though throwing things in this game isn't the easiest, what with the realism and all. Some game modes are even designed exclusively for melee combat, so these can be put to use if you want.

And that brings the game modes themselves. This being a sandbox experience, there's a BUNCH of modes, enough to have something for everyone. Let's go through them.
We have the sampler platter, a starting mode for testing different categories of weapons, great to introduce people to the game and see what suits your tastes.
5 shooting ranges. A sniper corridor, a desert map, Hickok 45's backyard, an indoor shooting range, and a warehouse range. Hickoks backyard and the desert map also have night variants
2 arenas, for just messing around with sosig enemies
The Gunnasium, in case you ever wanted to do shooting trials while performing acrobatics
A prototype Team Deathmatch mode, or FFA or everyone vs you
Snowglobe, for receiving christmas presents every year and shooting sosigs in the snow
Wurstworld, a whole cowboy town with its own set of challenges around town to complete
Meat Fortress, a work in progress version of Team Fortress within the game
Meat Grinder, a horror themed map for people who are brave or don't mind breaking their headsets in fear
The Cappocolosseum, for all kinds of modes from 100 bun Battle Petite to fighting Metal Gear to just using it as a roman colosseum
A wave shooter, where flashing orbs come at you from all directions and you must shoot them before they touch you
A Breach and Clear house based on the developers house
A Grenade Bowling map, because why not
Return Of The Rottweiners, an RPG roguelike game mode. It took me a good 15 hours to beat it, but I'm also a completionist so your time may vary.
M.E.A.T.S, a casual/competitive shooting mode where you can compete on leaderboards for various tests of skill, or just practice your shooting on all kinds of targets near and far, moving or not, armored or not, many variants including unlimited ammo and quickdraw.
And finally, the bread and butter of H3, Take & Hold. This is the most repeatable mode, and where most people will spend their time once they've enjoyed the other experiences. The purpose of the mode is as simple as the title, go through various maps (3 in game, but over a dozen more through mods) securing objectives, and then holding them from waves of enemies who come from multiple directions. The fun from this mode however is the roguelike aspect and the randomness, as you start with random weapons and earn random weapons throughout each playthrough. There are 8 starting characters that all play differently too. Regular is the default, random is very random, Gordon Freeman plays with his own Half Life weapons and enemies, On-site starts with just a knife, and then we have 4 era characters, for Midwest, WW2, Cold War (70s), and Semi-Modern (90s) who fight enemies from their respective eras with weapons from that era.

As far as system requirements, nothing to fear. If you turn the graphics down to the minimum, you can even play the game on a PC that isn't made for VR. You won't get the optimal experience, but you won't be unable to play this game either. I've tested the game on a system that can't even run Beat Saber or Superhot, but plays this reasonably enough at Potato settings.

You are getting such a ridiculous amount of content in this game that it might as well be the first AAAA title. Combine that with the price tag, and this is almost highway robbery. There are lots of people in the community, myself included who would pay for a Patreon for this game because of how much of a steal it is. Anton, the developer, does almost all of this by himself, and deserves plenty of credit for it.

There's a big bonus for people who go to the range often too, as this will save you lots of money in the long run.

The game, despite the realism, is relatively easy to pick up, even if you know nothing about guns, due to the descriptive in game tutorials. You can also check out the youtube devlog here https://www.youtube.com/user/TheRustyFist to look up anything in particular or see any updates to the game as they come.