Of Lies and Rain

shame there is no quick save or game difficulty options which would put it up with Half Life Alyx

This game feels like a Half Life Alyx custom campaign but somehow less polished. The combat is fairly uninteresting and none of the few enemies I fought felt any fun to shoot. The story so far was pretty generic and didn't really have any kind of hook to keep me interested. You even have the same three guns from HL:A. I also really did not like the dataworld sections, they felt tedious to do and wasted your time if you died in them since they were so slow and unfun. Just download a random campaign for HL:A and you'll probably have a better time there, you'll save $40 too.

Giving this a thumbs up because it's a unique experience and I enjoyed playing the first 6 hours or so but towards the end I found it a slog due to the ramping up of the difficulty. I didn't really like the data world sections and I never completed it. I might come back and revisit another time.

In short, it was really boring. It failed to enthrall me in the 2ish hours I played it before I dropped it. Visually, it seemed to have a cool visual style at first but it got very monotonous. The pacing was very slow. The pacing is very slow, combat is sparse and I was still bored when I got the second weapons, the shot gun. And the combat itself was very boring. By this point, I had found wandering spiders, laser-shooting flowers, and flying squid. Not my idea of a fun time. About the only think I found interesting was the digital world you jump around in but this far and few in between. In summary, you'd be better off playing Half Life Alyx or something. This game clearly tried to emulate greater gamers and failed in the execution.

If you like Half Life Alyx and Tron then you'll love this game. Staring at both the gpu cubes when you pick them up and the 3D triangles you shoot in the Data World never gets old. Really enjoyed the aesthetics of the computer/tech infused elements of the real world and everything going on in the Data World. Very cool visually and enjoyed the gameplay and the upgrade system. Only thing I didn't like was having to read all the data disks you find along the way to figure out the whole backstory which I ended up skipping because they were too long and there were too many. Really hope they make a part 2 and I'd love to see more.

Of Lies and Rain is a tough one to review. I will recommend it with some major caveats. First off this game clearly took a lot of inspiration from HL Alyx. I don’t like comparing vr fps games to Alyx but this one took many design choices from it, it’s hard not to compare them. At first glance this game feels like “we have HL Alyx at home” kind of vibes. You’ll notice it immediately from the design choices in the weapons, enemies, atmosphere and game play. It’s all very similar. The sad part is the game doesn’t do any of those things as well as Alyx. Pretty much everything this game has to offer is very mediocre. I will say that the detail on weapons and gear/items is really good. Still not as good as Alyx, but it’s good. I also really liked the story BUT in order to fully appreciate it and understand it, you need to read as many of the memory disks you find. They range in length from 2 short paragraphs to 3-5 longer paragraphs as the game goes on. If I didn't read these I wouldn’t know what was going on. Some of the story is told to the player via conversations over coms with your guide but I don’t think enough of it is told in that way to grasp an understanding of everyone goi…