VirtuaVerse - cyberpunk pixel point & click adventure

[/QUOTE] I get specfically triggered by ridiculous downvoting on a store with a review starting with "I love point & click adventures" then complaining about puzzles, there's no way in hell this kind of review is made by someone who enjoyed Day of the tentacle or a similar game. The game succeeded at being what it should be and the review complains about this very thing, that's unfair, misleading and depressing.[/QUOTE]

You said it all in 2 sentences... I can't agree more. It's especially depressing when you know that the last good adventure we got was Thimbleweed Park in 2016 and after 4 years we finally got a game in a similar spirit and and a bunch of butthurts downvoting it for being the thing that it's aimed to be. Seriously, I don't get those people, the market is flooded with casual adventures for them to enjoy and then suddenly a little smarter game appears and it's like the end of the world for them.
I was a meany in my "response/review", I know, but stupidity has its limits as I do. I'm curious are you going to write a review? You seem more even tempered than me

 

I don't think I've ever written a review or GoG or Steam, maybe I will.

 

...or you could do another RPGCodex one

 

I'll think about it whenever Lurking III or some awful-looking but good blobber gets released, but given the time it took me it's not sure I'll ever write another Codex review. My English and my writing skill at all are too low level to make something in a reasonable amount of time.

 

You've never struck me as a non-native speaker. Either you're putting a lot of effort into your posts, or you're over-estimating the bar for a review on this site.

 

But how much story is there?

 

I'll say this. I always thought "rebuttal" reviews are retarded. It shows a review really, really triggered whoever wrote the rebuttal.
Usually those are done by shills or fanboys. Imo GoG was right to remove your review...keep your comments in review comments and your review should be a review and not a response to another review.

As much as I think the gamers dumbed down over the years, they still have a right to their opinion.

 

I only played for like 30 mins before going to sleep, but so far the puzzles are somewhere in between Technobabylon and Primordia. So not even puzzle-heavy, really.

The writing is slightly wacky (sometimes hits the right notes, sometimes falls flat), the atmosphere is dead on what I want in cyberpunk games, the music is 80s synth-heavy goodness. Im listening to vhs glitch today https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX3F1annunI&list=OLAK5uy_lHZKB8E2c41_b-EsGEt0lq7X1bcRuuq94 to get in mood for this when I inevitably play it at night.

 

A lot, I guess? A few parts don't involve a lot of story and dialogs but most parts do.

 

I'm pretty stuck right now and I don't want the solution or even a hint I just want to know if I've hit a bug or something.

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I'm trying to get the impaled robot to hold the antenna. I've combined it with the board and duct tape and he still won't hold it. Is that supposed to be the solution? I've talked to everyone else and checked around to see if I'm missing anything.

 

nvm i figured it out

 

There is no "review comments" on GOG that's why I wrote this response in the first place and secondly the retarded user was private, I couldn't massage him privately.
Don't make me repeat myself. If idiots have the right to say any shit they want then my nerves have the right to break too once in a while. As I said, I'm not even tempered as CryptRat. Unfortunately it's a Mediterranean common trait, you can take it or leave it...

 

Finished the game and I really enjoyed it. The puzzle difficulty continues to ramp up until ramping back down a bit toward the finale which I think is a smart move. You don't want too many roadblocks when things are coming to a head. There are some moderate BS moments due to either pixel hunting

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(the branch on that one screen with literally two hotspots/having to click on that guys jacket)

or solution bottleneck

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(why couldn't I just tape that antenna to the robot?).

But for a somewhat open ended, puzzle heavy adventure the BS is minimal, especially from first time devs. For the most part the puzzles are fun and there's a good variety.

Story wise the plot satisfies, it starts simple and ramps up naturally to something a bit more complex by the end. The dialogue might rub some people the wrong way. It reminds me of late 90's comics like Preacher or Transmetropolitan, where the author is clearly ranting through their protagonist. That style of writing is hard to pull off without seeming douchey and it's hit-or-miss in VirtuaVerse. There are some particularly bitter rants where Nathan will bitch about how nobody listens to full albums anymore or other similarly banal complaints, which are eye-roll inducing. It also doesn't really jive with the main narrative of a guy desperate to save his girlfriend

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/the world

, having all these bitchy trivial conversations. The fact that the game is very goofy and irreverent throughout does soften the blow. Personally I found the writing mostly good but occasionally on the self indulgent side.

The style and aesthetics of the game are rock solid throughout what ended up being a much longer adventure than I initially expected. There's a lot of variety to the locations too. VirtuaVerse builds up a decent world for itself. Not as good as this years god tier world building MVP, Beautiful Desolation, but it's certainly enjoyable. Soundtrack is obviously fantastic.

IMO this game is an easy recommend. Especially for people who want a challenging old-school adventure game. I'd put it in that Dropsy, Thimbleweed Park, Resonance tier of difficulty. Hard for sure, but fair (mostly).

 

Jeez, man, you were not kidding. I'm only in the third location and I'm already feeling like this Nathan guy is the biggest jerk I've ever played.

 

Unless the puzzles start really ramping up, I dont see it reaching Resonance level of difficulty. Puzzle solutions are certainly more obscure than Thimbleweed park though, where to me the most challenge was usually trying to solve a problem that would only be solvable after a trigger.

I can actually see how the puzzles mess with the plot for casuals, in the very beginning. For people not experienced with puzzle-centric adventure games, the first location can probably take an hour or even two, and there is basically no story in there. There is no proverbial hook to reel you in from the beginning. So ADD-induced gamers who maybe arent fond of the world or the setting can get bored.

To me, so far, the game is great. Refreshing to actually have inventory puzzles instead of a walking or talking simulator.

 

It's a slightly different thing, and the only point where I thought MRY's theory that adventure games should not put the cart ahead of the horse may hold some water. It took me some time to figure out how to enter the shop, so I was pursuing the other, more straightforward puzzle chain in the meantime, all the while thinking "Why exactly am I doing that?".

 

Well, that one had animation by the bum and one of the dialogue options with the bum to hint you. But yeah, I also did it backwards like you did, and it also jarred me that the expectation was that people would get to the shop first. It's not that uncommon in adventures though. The story doesn't move much in these first few locations, and even the slight progression of the story is because of your actions. I can see it being a problem with people who play adventures for the story foremost and puzzles later. That question of "Why exactly am I doing that" is probably the one they have, as in why should they care. It's a slow beginning for sure.

 

Yesterday I started to play to Virtuaverse. And what a difference from the beginning with other adventures. Already in the first scenario there is a puzzle in which nobody tell the player what he has to do.

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You have read that there is a code written somewhere. There is a poster taped to the wall with a loose corner. You took a broom in other room. So, remembering how posters tend to stick to a wall and thinking that the broom is the only long object that allows me to reach the corner of the poster, then I use the broom and voila. In other current games, the character will surely have said something like "That corner needs to be pasted."

It's actually a very simple puzzle, but lately I've been used to games where the clues are so explicit that this little difference has impressed me. If the rest of the puzzles are like this and, moreover, more complex, I can understand those who did not like the game because the puzzles “interrupt the flow of the story”. But they are just those who do not really want obstacles to be overcome, but only interactions that simulate puzzles to enjoy a story.

 

Sorry to break the praise chorus, but I must say I'm becoming disenchanted with the game. Granted, it has some clever puzzles and witty jokes here and there but:
- The plot, the "main quest" so to speak, is beyond retarded. I'm hoping for a twist at the end, but given how prone it is to being preachy, I'm not holding my breath. There's not much worldbuilding going on either, beyond "everything went to shit when everyone got chipped and now only the retromaniac hackers can save us".
- It's mindnumbingly, excruciatingly slow. I thought Beautiful Desolation was slow and backtrack-heavy, but this one just takes the cake. Plus the lack of "fast exit". I got to dread being even slightly stuck because it means lawn-mowing a shitload of mostly empty locations at a snail speed.
- No hotspot highlighting. Granted, there are people who prefer it that way, but I'm not one of them. I don't like hidden objects games and I'm not good at them. Two out of three times I had to check the walkthrough were because I had missed a hotspot somewhere. The third time had a little logical leap that made me curious whether the game can have walking dead scenarios:

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Since you get locked out of the starting set of locations after getting to the Blade HQ, I assumed that everything I've picked there and hadn't used yet is useless. So I didn't think to use the holographic statue on the altar. So now I wonder what happens if you don't buy it in the first place.

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I just finished it and I wrote a more friendly-butthurt GOG review but I was forced to cut some of my thoughts (fucking letter limit).

A "mini" Fate of Atlantis in cyberpunk clothes.
To be honest when I saw the game on GOG I thought, "Just another nice looking story driven walking sim with brain-dead gameplay, meh". And man, I'm so happy that I was so wrong!
An important note here is that it was made by 3 people (coder, artist, musician). As a musician myself it is always a pleasure to see fellow musicians involved so actively in the development progress of games.
And most of the times the result is breathtaking, musicians usually don't go with the gaming trends, as many developers do, and the result shows (try The Norwood Suite by Cosmo D, the one and only walking sim adventure I ever liked).
As for the game itself, it's a beautiful and respectful throw back to the 90's golden era of Point n Click games.
I won't go into details about the story and characters, many reviewers here covered this (plus there's a character limit).
The important thing you need to know about the story is that it supports the gameplay here, not the opposite and this is the reason why the journey feels so memorable.
It feels like an actual journey and when you progress through the puzzles it's very rewarding. Of course it's not as good as Fate of Atlantis, but it has that feeling.
As for the puzzles, they're not very hard but not too easy either and definitely they're not spoon-fed. It has the right balance. And no, it's not necessary to use a guide to complete it.
You only need some patience and observation, 2 virtues that seem to be lacking in newer generations...
It's not meant to be finished in one sitting, it's designed to last. Take a break and play or do something else and come back later with a more clear mind. You'll be fine.

I won't go into details about pixel art and music either (again, character limit...) but as you can see from the screenshots, they're charming, colorful and together with the well crafted OST, they deliver the vision of the setting greatly.
As a final note I want to say to the devs, If you ever consider making another game (which I hope), please don't water down the puzzles!!
Keep the same quality and just include an optional hint system in the same vain of Thimbleweed Park.

 

The only puzzle I solved with trial and error was the question that starts with "Mostly there's men". Didn't get the logic behind it, but whatever, It didn't broke my experience.

 

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The solution is the number of pieces on a chessboard.

 

Holy shit, "preachy" is polite way to put it, because game filled with Luddite propaganda enough to kill enjoyment from game.
I mean game trying to brainwash you in terms "old good, new bad, mkay?" completely ignoring how many tyrannical monarchies and totalitarian regimes existed (and still exist to this day and probably will exist to the future) without being advanced in technological sense at all and staying shitholes that sell oil and other resources to rich neighbors. Authors also barely know anything about technology of our age, let alone of the future (example - electric box outside of building with aux ports connected to robotic tattoo machine, wtf is this shit).
The whole premise "we retro-maniacs use old tech cuz it makes us stealthy and shit" is idiotic, considering how many ways government has to spy on their citizens, starting from listening telephone lines 24/7 (through agents or recording devices) and ending up at backdoors in processing units accessible for special forces. Poverty, hobos, trash on streets? Ad spam on buildings? I can look at it from my window and there no need for fancy tech for country to become like that.
Game portrays main character as moron, who posses danger for any society, free from "evul chips" or not, because majority of puzzles consists from ruining someone's day (or just make them die) to progress and there is no other way to progress.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think Cyberpunk is about "evul machines bad", so at some point I started thinking that maybe the whole game is some kind of elaborate satire about humans thinking that new tech are evil, but act so horrible that even spying AI looks like an angel.

Small review of part that I managed to suffer through:
artstyle & graphics 10/10
music is ok too.
quality of puzzles depends on how horrible person you are.
difficulty of puzzles depends on your logic, not very difficult in general (however lack of hotspot highlighting can make you stuck a bit)

plot & world building - meh

Overall if you don't want to think (in game with puzzles lol) and just want cool graphics and neon lights with techno music - you can play. But if you are allergic on Luddites like me or just deep thinking person - maybe you will be disappointed.

 

Nah, it's just typical "IT guy's philosophy". I've studied IT for a bit, I know the type - coders who believe they're the deepest thinkers the Earth has born, even without reading a single philosophical text (aside maybe from teen-friendly stuff like Nietzsche or Sartre), because who needs humanities. The technomancers scene with its cringy "everything is code" speech is very telling.