Game Review: Red Matter 2 for VR

I thoroughly enjoyed the first Red Matter VR game, so I leapt at the sequel when it was on offer.

What's it like? Exactly the same as the first. Lots of creepy corridors, a range of puzzles, and a sedate-ish journey. You're exploring an abandoned space-station, looking for clues and trying to figure out what happened.

It's a completely linear journey, and consists of a series of locked-room puzzles. The developers have made sure not to repeat the same puzzles over and over. The story, such as it is, makes very little sense. But it has a great feel to it - you are always learning a little more about the characters off-stage.

There are a couple of things which I found annoying. The developers have introduced a fighting element to the game. It is totally unnecessary in my opinion. You're happily trying to solve a puzzle and then, without warning, there's a jump-scare and you have to point your gun at killer robots.

I get it. The Oculus store is populated with tons of these sorts of games because it feels very natural to point your hand at something and "shoot". I'm not a big fan of those games as they prioritise dexterity over imagination. It feels out of place to have a puzzler descend into "shoot-the-robots-before-they-shoot-you" territory. There's a setting to make combat easier, but it is still a chore.

There are one or two bugs. Try as I might, I couldn't adjust the walking speed - which meant it took a while to move around. A few graphical gliches caused objects to appear in the middle of the surfaces they were resting on. But over all it was a great experience.

Well, it was a short experience. Maybe I've been spoilt by all the multi-hour games you can get for a similar price. Puzzlers like the Broken Sword series are 5 - 8 hours long if you follow a walkthrough. I think Red Matter 2 took me under 5 hours for me to complete. Of course, the Meta Quest 2 needed to be charged 3 times while playing, so perhaps I ought to count that?

Anyway, Red Matter 2 is an excellent sequel.

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