The shared-screen twin-stick design is fine, but Arrowhead has been doing it since Magicka. This feel like them getting their shot at making a wider-appeal, bigger budget game. Hopefully they stick the landing and managed to keep the feel of the original while expanding the gameplay.
Yes the issue with these L4D clones is that they have to improve upon the L4D formula, or have an interesting take on it. Vermintide and Payday succeeded on their own merits even though the core gameplay loop is very close (and it took each of them two games to get there).
I have tried both Back 4 Blood and the Anacrusis (in early access), and was pretty much over them after a couple of rounds.
It’s okay not to like it of course. As you have seen it’s nothing like the Trine games, sharing only a bit of lore with them.
It’s basically a very pretty arena-based top-down shooter reminiscent of Magicka (which I also loved), with a good difficulty curve. There is not much of a story to carry the game forward, so it hinges on whether you like the gameplay and the challenge it offers or not. I for one really enjoyed Nine Parchments, doing multiple runs in single player and co-op with friends (even a “hardcore” one, which we usually never touch).
Counterpoint: Game Pass frees you from sunk cost bias and you do not feel compelled to keep playing a game because you invested money in it. That’s mostly how I feel about it. I have noticed 3 patterns in my own usage: “full on playthrough” (actual loss of a sale), “couple of hours and call it quits” (would have been a candidate for refund), “20 minutes then uninstall” (basically a demo). It’s likely Jusant here will fall in the middle category since I already played the demo during Steam Next Fest.
The early times of this wave of VR (which really started with the commercial launch of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive) were very exciting. Lots of “experiences” back then: sometimes mindblowing, often half-baked, always interesting. After a couple of years people realized there was no money in it and lots of them moved on.
7 years in, I’m pretty much over early access promising prototypes and flat screen games being modded to support VR. I want VR-native games-ass games of the caliber of Half-Life: Alyx, or Moss. I want VR support to be a standard feature of any new cockpit-based driving or flying game, not an afterthought. We are not getting the former, and slowly maybe getting there for the latter.
Elite Dangerous is the perfect illustration of this cycle: Frontier started supporting VR very early. My first VR experience was Elite Dangerous on a loaned Oculus DK1. It was mind-blowing ! It was also very very puke-inducing ! Then proper hardware came with the Rift and Vive, Elite had full VR support, and it was fucking great. And now, well VR support is still there, but it’s no longer first class, and slowly decaying.
The lack of VR support for in Odyssey, on top of numerous issues at launch, soured me on the whole thing. I know VR is a niche that did not take off so it likely did not make sense for them to prioritize it ; but Elite was the quintessential early killer app for VR, so it stings. Shame, I spent hundred of hours in Elite and would have liked to spend more.
Friend and I were looking for our next co-op game after Remnant 2 (very good btw) and were somewhat eagerly awaiting this one. Turns out it has the same PvP invasion mechanic as the Souls game unless you play offline. That’s a deal-breaker for us unfortunately.
Honestly even the very best VR-only games are only interesting because they are in VR.
Half-Life: Alyx is IMO still the best of those and it can be played outside of VR thanks to mods… But in that case it’s a curiosity, not an actual good traditional game.
HLA in VR is incredible though and I wish there were more games like it.