Narcosis

Narcosis isn't a bad game, but it shoots itself in the foot by both requiring [i]and[/i] disincentivizing exploration. It's required to locate all 40 collectibles, each providing flavor text fleshing out the 20 underwater residents, but disincentivizes it by making locomotion slow and cumbersome and navigation confusing, while limiting camera mobility and providing limited oxygen to counter a rapidly depleting 02 meter. If you're interested, just watch a playthrough.

Its a good, short atmospheric game to finish in an evening. Movement is clunky at times or key inputs are not responding right, but overall it conveys the cramped and claustrophobic feeling of being trapped in a diving suit and the dangers of deep waters: Your FOV can only move about 60 degrees, at that point you have to move your body to face the right direction; like you would have to if actually being in an EVA suit. People complaining about slow movement never bothered to pay attention to the tutorial, as self-refueling speed boosters are integrated in the suit and O2 is widely available if you want to explore the levels slowly. Don´t expect anything Lovecraftian or actual horror aside from a few mediocre jumpscares though, or the depth and weight that SOMA had.

Very good mix of walking, horror, and dread. Love the mechanics and the story. This game is an experience I recommand, with a great sound design as you slowly explore the deep in search of your only escape, in that walking coffin or yours.

This is a great game with some peak atmosphere at times. I really like it but as the game went on, I sort of felt that missions got more and more confusing with puzzles that seemed sort of out of place when looking at the previous levels of the game. I really like it but that is my one negative I guess.

I thought it would be similar to Soma but what I got was a janky underwater platformer with terrible pacing

2/10 - I never get motion sickness in VR. I have had solid VR legs for 5 years without a single issue, but Narcosis got me. I tried to play it three separate times, but the forced head-bobbing, input delay, and heavy suit momentum make it physically unbearable. I originally picked this up because it was recommended as a game to play after SOMA. Let me be very clear: this is nowhere near the level of SOMA. Even if you can stomach the terrible VR movement, the gameplay becomes incredibly boring after an hour. It is just a painfully slow walking simulator. To make matters worse, the narrator's voice acting is not good at all, which really drags down whatever atmosphere the game is trying to build. I will not be finishing it. If you want a great deep-sea psychological thriller, keep looking, because this isn't it.