For years, an ambitious game called Boneworks has hovered in the periphery of the VR enthusiast community, inspiring equal parts drool and confusion. It's made by a scrappy-yet-experienced VR team (makers of quality fare like Hover Junkers and Duck Season). It revolves around realistic guns and a complicated physics system—thus immediately looking more ambitious than other "VR gun adventure" games in the wild.
And it so strongly resembled Half-Life in its preview teases, both in aesthetics and in physics-filled puzzles, that fans wondered if this was the oft-rumored Half-Life VR game after all. (It's not.)
Now that Boneworks has launched for all PC-VR platforms, does the gaming world finally have an adventure game worthy of an "only in VR" designation? The answer to that question is a resounding "yes"—but that's not the same as saying it's a good video game.
The trouble with “git gud” in VR
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When Boneworks enemies get too close and you're short on weapons and ammo (a rarity, but still), just use your real-life hands to virtually shove them away.
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Boneworks' similarities to Half-Life don't start and end with this headcrab-like creature, which is terrifying to encounter in the middle of combat.Stress Level Zero
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Though the game doesn't emphasize its two-handed melee as often as I'd like, the feeling of intentionally slow-swinging a mallet into a foe's skull is unique to the Boneworks experience. It's killer stuff in action.Stress Level Zero
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Every firearm in this game needs to be manually loaded with a magazine and cocked before you can fire. There's also no UI to say how many bullets you have; you'll need to eject and reload guns' clips manually.Stress Level Zero
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One-handed weapons like this lead pipe will do in a pinch.Stress Level Zero
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Why are these helmet-clad soldiers shooting everything they see? And why do they ride spinning balls, like futuristic unicycles? We're not sure on either count.Stress Level Zero
At its worst, Boneworks had me bellowing in agony. The game, which has you escaping and battling your way out of a mysterious research facility, revolves around a philosophy of "realistic" physics interactions. Everything you see can be touched, pushed, lifted, and manipulated by your hands and body according to their real-life size and weight.
But the results can be an utter mess of virtual body parts glitching through or getting stuck on top of stuff in the game. Since your real arms and legs are not so constricted, the disconnect of game and reality is some of the most severe I've ever seen in VR software.
To break this down, I'll start by addressing a brief, "experts-only" notice that must be clicked through upon every boot of the game. Now that I've played the game, I would have rewritten the notice to be more specific:
WARNING: Boneworks operates with the assumption that you're comfortable with VR experiences that push the limits of comfort and nausea. You must walk using a joystick, as the game doesn't offer any "teleportation" options for comfort's sake. You must press a button to virtually "jump," and your virtual perspective will fling and fall great distances throughout the game. And you must press against firm virtual objects, which will thus "push" your apparent grounding point in VR while you remain still in real life. If you've never played a VR game before, this should not be your first VR rodeo. Maybe not even your second.
The above issues are no accident. Boneworks' battles and puzzles revolve around intentional movement and the position of your body and hands. If the developers at Stress Level Zero had their way, they would have built a massive, real-life amusement park to emphasize gunplay, melee, running, jumping, and climbing—in ways that can't be replicated in a flat-screen video game.
But this means you're doing things like looking down and jumping between platforms—a first-person traversal system that sucks enough in traditional games, let alone VR ones that yank your virtual perspective wildly. You'll also occasionally use your hands to push through massive objects or climb and clamber over complicated geometry by lifting yourself with your hands. Both of these can result in some bizarre glitching, especially since the game renders your virtual arms and legs at all times, which can get caught in the game's risers, ladders, and other geometry for no good reason. And sometimes, these glitches mean you'll fall from a great height, which is both uncomfortable from a VR perspective and annoying from a gameplay one. The game forces you to walk, climb, and jump at a real-life pace through large zones and puzzles, and a single fall can drag your progress down enormously.
Great times with two hands
And yet! When I stumbled upon a perfectly executed Boneworks moment, whether because the game neatly telegraphed it or because I cleverly "broke" the game's weirdness and rules for my own benefit, I felt exhilaration unlike pretty much any other immersive, sense-filling VR fare I've ever played. That's no small praise; longtime Ars readers know I'm equal parts VR freak and apologist.
The first unique thing about Boneworks is its insistence on "realistic" manipulation of VR objects. Want to pick up something small and one-handed in the virtual world, like a coffee mug or a hammer? Reach for it and press a "grip" button on your VR controller of choice, and you'll pick it up and wave it around. This is common VR-game stuff. Boneworks' twist comes from larger, heavier, and two-handed objects. You can't easily pick up and wave a sledgehammer, ax, or 4-foot-tall crate in Boneworks with a single hand; try doing this, and its VR motions won't match your real-life ones. With only one hand, your powerful new implement will instead flit about like a useless foam sword.
Instead, after grabbing a bigger object with one hand, reach your second hand to another spot on its shaft or side and grab on. Then adjust your hands' positioning. Then pantomime moving and swinging this object a little more slowly, with more intention. Then find something to wallop.
Whether it's slow-and-intentional slamming of a sledgehammer, or crisp-and-smooth swings of a baseball bat, or a mighty-and-heavy drop of a battle ax, Boneworks has it where it counts: in the resulting, crushing impact of these weapons against the bodies of the game's faceless, creepy monsters. Get the motion wrong with these weapons and you'll only hear a light "pffdd" as your attempted attack rolls off worthlessly. Get the motion right, on the other hand, and the enemy's body will crumple beneath the loud crack or slice of your successful bludgeoning.
Similarly, when you conform to Boneworks' rules about what you can manipulate and grab onto, the resulting sense of discovery is wicked. Does a set of ridges against a wall resemble a ladder in the slightest? Go on, fake like a spidermonkey with a climbing system that (thankfully) errs on the side of "your hands are out of position, but you can climb, anyway." If you see a platform close to a wall with wheels at its base, climb to its top, then use your hands to push against the wall—and you'll slide the entire platform on the wheels' path.And what about an apparent bonus key at the very top of a room, which you noticed after climbing up an awkward tower of boxes but then realized you couldn't physically reach? That's OK. Shoot the key with your gun, and it'll fall to the floor below. Should you arrange that climbing tower successfully without your virtual arms or legs glitching, the sensation of building your own path to success is fantastic. (Should your makeshift tower suffer from your VR body glitching through it, on the other hand, get ready to scream until your lungs get sore.)
Memorable content, not necessarily paced well
Speaking of guns: you'll find a substantial variety of nicely modeled, military-grade guns hidden in the game's mysterious cities and catacombs, which you can either shoot in one- or two-handed fashion. The reload-aim-and-recoil experience of each weapon is distinct and satisfying once waves of enemies stumble in your direction, while later-game scoped rifles are a treat to hold up to your real-life gaze for sniping's sake.
All of my praise for this game is about discrete moments in isolation, by the way. Cool gun combat. Cool melee combat. Cool "solve it yourself" moments where players maximize the game's complicated physics system. The freaking balloon gun, which eventually opens up crazy traversal and combat options by launching and attaching helium-filled balloons to whatever you aim at. (Good stuff there, SL0.) Where Boneworks disappoints the most is in how these separate, praiseworthy bits fail to gel as a cohesive experience.
The devs have created an incredible engine for a captivating VR adventure.
An average puzzle requires a lot of low-speed traversal, unclear guesswork, and glitchy physics manipulation between the clever "a-ha" solution moments. An average battle leans heavily on Boneworks' firearms, since the campaign doles out a ridiculous amount of pistols, Uzis, rifles, and ammo, and these are all remarkably effective at clearing out the game's waves of slow-and-stupid enemies. Thus, players are usually better off ignoring the game's unique and fascinating melee system, and levels haven't been designed to require or emphasize it.
And the time spent between each highlight is often wasted on lengthy traversal through massive levels. Admittedly, many of these zones are impressive in scale and designed to attract your eyes and attention to hunting for beautiful details and potential secrets. But the payoff for picking through the levels' every corner—again, at a somewhat sluggish running-and-climbing speed—is scant. Either you score a redundant weapon or run into a red-herring corner of a level, bereft of useful items or interesting lore.
One particularly brutal reality of Boneworks is that its "plot" consists largely of mysterious, unclear graffiti. SL0 is clearly trying to recall Valve's glory days of plot nuggets scattered around the likes of Portal or Left 4 Dead, but this new game lacks the kind of running commentary or dialogue that might answer what the heck is going on or why we should care. An amusing opening level that revolves around a "museum of virtual reality" is never paid forward with connections to specific characters or a plot that reaches beyond the sci-fi cliche of "unfeeling corporation must be stopped."
The shadow of Half-Life comparisons
I say all of this because SL0 has clearly created an incredible engine for a captivating VR adventure. The years the developers spent honing their chops in other software have paid off in melee insanity, firearms mastery, and climb-and-shove puzzle highlights. I will likely remember Boneworks' best moments as must-play VR experiences for a long time, and even with the aforementioned lulls and issues, I would already call Boneworks one of the best VR gun-adventure games on the market, soundly surpassing the "just shoot zombies" drudgery of fare like Arizona Sunshine.
But those hints of greatness make Boneworks' lulls and weaknesses jump out even more, and they make me wish this engine could be repurposed for a more cleverly designed campaign. (At launch, Boneworks does not include plans for mod support, which is a shame.) Worse, many of the campaign's physics manipulations push the "uncanny valley" of VR interactions. Every time a leg or arm gets stuck in geometry or every time walking too close to something makes every nearby object—and your own perspective—get stuck in a barf-inducing way, Boneworks is really pushing its players' patience. (This reminds me: the game shipped without any ability to manually save campaign progress and doesn't warn players of this fact. Since each level requires no less than 25 minutes to complete, with some stretching into 45-minute territory for first-time playthroughs, that's a lot of annoying retreading for anyone caught unaware.)
If you're the kind of VR enthusiast who ponied up for a pricey Valve Index after getting hooked on the format, you're a likely candidate to endure Boneworks' lowest lows in order to savor its highest highs. VR is a chicken-and-egg sector, in that fans want polished, feature-length content, but larger studios are holding back on making it until there's a larger audience. The small team at SL0 has stepped up to make arguably the biggest VR-exclusive adventure yet, and its mix of polish and modesty—of passion and limitations—is worth a deep dive for anybody who reads the game's introductory warning and says, "Yes, I do have VR 'sea legs.'" (And the game's $30 price point is reasonable enough for a brand-new, 10-hour VR adventure, complete with a sandbox goof-around mode that we hope gets more content before long.)Conversely, if you're a VR novice who is excited about the upcoming Half-Life: Alyx and sees Boneworks as a Valve-loving stopgap to play while you wait for the real VR deal, stop and wait. Multiple sources have confirmed to me that Half-Life: Alyx has been designed with the VR uncanny valley in mind and will likely avoid many of Boneworks' biggest sins of comfort, pacing, and narrative. If you're new to VR, you've got plenty of cool software to test for the next four months before Valve potentially does this kind of thing better. And if you're a VR vet, top up on Dramamine and spend the next four months tooling around with this uneven-but-fascinating stopgap.
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December 12, 2019 at 06:45PM
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Boneworks review: An absolute VR mess—yet somehow momentous - Ars Technica
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