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Look, I may justify this month’s Actuality Bytes in any variety of methods. I may say the VR launch cabinet is just a little naked for the time being, with Steam’s New Releases checklist providing up a number of dour navy shooters, doubtful Early Entry initiatives, and fantasy dismemberment porn. I may say that The Room VR: A Dark Matter has simply obtained a PSVR2 launch, so now appears an opportune second to revisit this acclaimed spin-off puzzler. I may say that The Room VR is the one entry within the collection RPS hasn’t coated but. However to be completely sincere, I simply fancied taking part in The Room VR. So there.
Oh all proper, there was a barely extra particular motive why I wished to revisit a sport that got here out simply three days after Half-Life: Alyx. Upon its launch, there wasn’t a lot else like The Room on VR units, a devoted puzzler with excessive manufacturing values that did not really feel the necessity to throw in a gun to shoot or a melon to cut. Now, there are bunch of implausible VR brain-ticklers swimming within the pond, such because the time-travelling epic Wanderer, the perspective-bending A Fisherman’s Tale series, and the ingenious automation extravaganza The Final Clockwinder.
Therefore I used to be curious to know the way A Darkish Matter squared up in opposition to these newer and arguably extra creative titles. Fireproof definitely know make a pacey, intriguing puzzle sport, and their VR spin on the method provides a couple of enjoyable methods of its personal. That stated, as a VR expertise there are some irksome design decisions that betray the studio’s unfamiliarity with the tech.
Happening in 1908, The Room VR sees you play a police officer looking for an archaeology professor who has gone lacking within the British Museum. Contacted by a stranger calling themselves The Craftsman, you are whisked out of your police station into a number of puzzling eventualities, every of which takes place in a special, lavishly designed location. The primary of those happens the place your lacking professor disappeared, an Historic Egyptian exhibit on the British Museum. Right here, you have to unlock an array of elaborate thriller containers, all to crack open a forbidding sarcophagus within the centre of the room.
![A circle of forbidding stone statues in The Room VR](https://assetsio.reedpopcdn.com/The-room-vr-4.jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
VR video games take various approaches in how they allow you to discover environments, however the Room VR is especially distinctive. It employs a teleport-based motion system, however you’ll be able to solely teleport to designated factors in every space. This derives from, the place viewpoints are additionally preset, seemingly for technical causes partially, but additionally to assist information you thru every puzzle. In VR, nevertheless, the lack to maneuver round freely is far more limiting, particularly given how lovingly detailed the sport’s 3D environments are.
After all, motion is not the primary enchantment of The Room VR. That may be getting arms on with all of its devious contraptions. On this, A Darkish Matter does a implausible job. It is all gears and cranks and buttons and switches and levers and dials and pulleys and knobs and handles and oddly-shaped keys, with each pulled, pushed, turned or twisted gizmo revealing one other layer of its magnificently designed puzzle containers. I’ll say, although, that the sport would profit from stronger “grip” suggestions, as typically it is not intuitive, and you may typically have to have a look at your digital arms to make sure they’re in the correct spot to seize an object.
On high of this tactile tinkering are a few broader mechanical concepts. The sport acknowledges the cumbersome field strapped your face in its personal fiction, furnishing you with a nifty wearable “lens” that allows you to peer past the mortal realm. In its most elementary perform, this lens reveals hidden neon writing overlaying the partitions. It is a neat trick, however I discovered myself distracted by the inelegance with which this imaginative and prescient mode is applied. To activate the lens, it’s a must to open up the stock, after which manually pull a lever on the stock menu. Worse, the lens routinely switches off each time you progress by way of the world, which suggests you are consistently having to reopen your stock to change it again on.
![Some Ancient Egyptian themed puzzle boxes in The Room VR](https://assetsio.reedpopcdn.com/The-room-vr-1.jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
At first, the idea would not actually appear definitely worth the fuss. Thankfully, it turns into extra concerned as the sport progresses. You will rapidly improve your lens to allow you to see by way of particular surfaces, enabling you to achieve into the heart of sure units to entry hidden puzzles. When you attain the sport’s center act, it upgrades once more to allow you to bodily enter the puzzles, crawling inside units and wandering round their seemingly monumental mechanisms. This dramatic shift in scale is the sort of factor VR does very well, and whereas the affect of it in A Darkish Matter is barely lessened by a fade-to-black between areas, it stays spectacular.
The very best a part of The Room VR, nevertheless, can also be probably the most incongruous. After visiting two pretty grounded places, A Darkish Matter utterly jumps the broomstick, transporting you to a fairytale witch’s hut full with effervescent cauldron and crystal ball. Right here, you clear up puzzles by brewing potions, amassing substances and tossing them into the cauldron in change for objects that unlock new areas within the hut.
![Playing a musical puzzle piano in The Room VR](https://assetsio.reedpopcdn.com/The-room-vr-2.jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
It’s totally foolish, but additionally enormously enjoyable, an actual “let your hair down” second despite the fact that the tone stays critical. The entire sequence operates on a special logical plain, swapping out hieroglyphs and clockwork contraptions for arcane symbols and phases of the moon. It additionally consists of presumably the perfect key ever designed for a online game. I would fortunately play a full sport of this. Neglect The Room, Crone Simulator is the place it is at.
That is a joke, clearly. Fireproof Video games shouldn’t, beneath any circumstances, overlook The Room. The 4 flatscreen entries within the collection are among the many finest puzzlers ever made, and A Darkish Matter holds its personal in creativity and goldilocks-zone problem. Is it nonetheless the perfect VR puzzler round? Perhaps not, and it stays pretty costly nearly three years on since launch. However it’s a ton of enjoyable, and never the worst place to begin should you’re utterly new to VR.
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