Well, OK, that's not exactly what the game's about - but it might as well be!

My aim this year is to play more co-operative games with my wife. So she picked up the controller to play as the shrewish May while I steered the lug-headed Cody. Both have been shrunk to the size of toy dolls and have to navigate their house in an attempt to regain human-form and comfort their daughter. The game is a series of puzzles which can only be solved if you work together. Only by working together can you escape the quagmire you find yourself in. A sentient marriage guidance book continually reminds you that you only beat the last level because you worked together.

And then you murder a toy elephant who pleads for its life after you brutally mutilate it. That isn't an exaggeration. It is easily the most traumatic media moment I've ever experienced.

Unlike Unravel Two, the world is fully 3D and the quests are delightfully varied. Some are the usual "you jump there and I'll do the thing here" - others are more complex. There's logic, timed jumping, beat-em-ups, flight simulators, and a couple of dozen more inventive twists on familiar puzzles. Every single level seems to have a different game mechanic - and each level also has a unique æsthetic.

It is refreshing to play a game actually designed for adults. I don't mean "Rated 18 for blood and gore"; more like "grapples with the complexities of being a modern couple trying to raise a family". It's also great fun to collaborate on the puzzles, while also exploring the intricate world around you.

I don't know whether the game saved our marriage. There was certainly lots of working together to achieve a common goal.

The voice acting is excellent, the story isn't too cloying, and the animation is sumptuous.

I hate playing competitively; it's rubbish to achieve victory at the expense of someone else. So I asked for recommendations and picked the cheapest thing that looked reasonable.

Unravel Two is a little gem! It's a 2D platform puzzler dressed up in a 3D engine. You and your friend play little string creatures and have to work together to swing between points, lift objects, and pull each other over the lush scenery. It's the sort of physics-based game which could have been made for the 16-bit consoles of my childhood.

As befits a game this cheap and simple, it's fairly short. Once you've got the hang of the mechanics there are only a limited number of ways to solve each section. But it is great for shouting "No! Go left and pull!" or "We've got to time our jumps together" or "You stand on the button and I'll try swinging". It's also possible to temporarily switch to one-player mode - if one of you doesn't want to do the jumping puzzles, the other player can carry you.

Weirdly, the game is deeply portentous in a rather pointless manner. There's a story going on in the background about some kids who are either being abused, chased, or getting into trouble. It is utterly superfluous and detracts from the fun of the puzzles. Similarly, the level titles all have subtitles like "In which we find our way out of the sullen darkness and are redeemed." WTF? This is a silly game of string puppets - not every indie game needs to be "Life Is Strange"!

There's some replayability. You can see how quickly you can do the levels, there are some hidden collectables, and some extra challenge levels. Which, for £3.51 at time of writing is more than reasonable.

A good casual co-op game - just ignore the vague story playing out behind the action.

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Ah. I appear to have spent the majority of the night playing World Of Goo. What an addictive little game.

---

Fifteen years later... and I spent all night playing the sequel!

Yup! World of Goo is back, baby! And it is just as good as you remember it.

In truth, there's nothing much which has changed. There are a few new Goo types, but the puzzles are all ostensibly the same - build a structure using limited resources. Use lots of triangles.

The art is gorgeous, the story is snarky, the puzzles are all solvable with various degrees of frustration. If you haven't played the original, you probably should - it's only an extra $10 in a bundle.

There are various challenges for every level - which does give it some replayability.

The soundtrack is delightful, the Goo are a silly mix of Lemmings and Minions, and the graphics are gorgeous. Chapter 4 is... different. I liked it - but I didn't think the voice acting was particularly good.

Perhaps it is a little short, and perhaps it isn't much more than an expansion pack of the original. But, you know what? I was just happy to be transported back to 2009.

There's no microtransaction or lootboxes. No online gameplay - so no tweens screaming obscenities at you. Just pure gaming fun.

It isn't the longest game in the world. It took me about 13 hours - which included about an hour getting stuck on one (optional) level before caving and looking for a walkthrough..

Linux Instructions

World of Goo 2 is provided as a DRM-free AppImage file. Getting it working on Pop_OS was quite tricky:

1. Double click the file to launch it.
2. Play the game.

Oh.

If you're running something more esoteric, you'll probably need to sacrifice a chicken on the command line.

So I suggest you read my review of the original.

Seriously, there isn't much else to say here. The story is a jumble of ethereal nonsense. The enemies are defeated by rather dull button-mashing. And collecting all the collectables doesn't really do anything. It is gorgeous, and beautifully animated. If you're happy with an expansion pack for the first game, you'll be happy with this.

The puzzles are a little repetitive - but they make good use of the VR system; you'll often use your hands or have to peer behind something.

It's fairly gentle and - although the enemies can be a little frustrating - there are plenty of tutorials. You'll need to remove your helmet to watch them though!

It is like playing with a dolls house. And yet, the scale of it is epic.

Vast castles, haunted forests, arid deserts - it is a wonderland for a platformer/puzzler.

The puzzles are mostly very good. Move the thing, jump on the whatsit, move another thing, back to the start etc. Most of them take advantage of the 3D environment which leads to some lovely designs. And, if you get stuck, the little mouse will mime a clue to you. Get it right, and she'll demand a high-five. It is lovely.

Except for the combat.

Bugs come out to fight you. You hit them with your sword. Repeat. When the enemy can be manipulated to be part of the puzzle, they become interesting. Otherwise, it is just a slog. A couple of the bosses kept me in a death-loop until I'd hit them enough. It wasn't even an interesting "wait until they rear then hit the underbelly" fight. Just button mashing.

I fully agree with Jennifer Hepler and Dara Ó Briain that games need a "Skip Combat" button. I'm here for the story, the puzzles, and the graphics. Hitting monsters is boring.

The story is fun - and set up nicely for a sequel. There's a bit of replayability with a couple of collectables you can find.

Like all VR games, it is expensive for the length of gameplay. £15 for a few hours. You can get 25% off using my referral link

Labyrinth deLux is brilliant. The puzzle is simple enough - point lasers at mirrors, then align mirrors until they point at the target. You've almost certainly played a 2D version of this.

But it has a mind-bending 3D layout which requires you to continually walk on the ceiling to adjust your perspective. The UI is, thankfully, not chunder-inducing. You point and click at a surface and then smoothly float and reorient to it.

The plot is a bit silly - your spaceship crashes and you have a mysterious destiny or some nonsense. But the voice acting is good and you can ignore the story without consequence.

Graphics are lo-fi charming, which helps prevent the usual VR weirdness. Excessive graphics quality just shines a light on how bad the Meta Quest 2 is. But the Minecraft style helps keep the FPS up.

There are 16 levels of increasing difficulty - which took me about 3½ hours to complete:

At £6, it's probably one of the cheapest games on Oculus - and excellent value for money.

I've just completed "Get The Heck Out". It's a fun and free shooter. The twist is, you are expected to die. A lot. You start with a puny pea-shooter:

After every level you can upgrade your weapons - which last until you die. But every few levels, you get the chance for a permanent upgrade. So you restart with more powerful guns, shields, and armour.

Here's how it looks at the start:

And by the time you're fully kitted out, you'll have an experience like this:

It only takes a few hours to complete - and you get a bit of a workout from ducking and diving away from all the enemies.

The graphics, music, and sound effects get a little repetitive - but isn't a blockbuster experience at a premium price. On some levels, the game stutters as it tries to keep up with drawing hundreds of fast-moving projectiles. You do have to exit the VR view in order to see what permanent upgrades you have.

But it is the sort of game which is immediately accessible. There's no learning curve - just point and shoot. You can play stood up or sat down - there's no ability to wander around the level, so you don't need much space to play.

It is brilliant to see just how good WebVR and WebGL are.

There is very little "game" here. It's barely an interactive movie. Walk forward until you step on a trigger, watch a very slow cut scene, wave your arms until something happens, repeat a few times, roll credits. That's it. There's nothing to explore, there are no choices to make, and no puzzles to solve.

Parts of the game are gorgeous. Up close, the characters have amazing textures and animations. The caves are beautifully rendered. Even the Rancor monster is a treat.

On the Quest 2, it's about PS4 levels of graphics - occasionally jerky animation and dropped frames not withstanding - it is quite spectacular.

And then it all falls apart. It might be hard to tell from this shot, but the background is frequently just a static 2D image. It looks like a cheap green-screen effect from a 90's movie.

The plot is pretty good - Vader wants to use a magic crystal to bring Padmé back to life - but your inclusion in it makes no sense. You have magic blood? And Vader trains you? But then fails to kill you? Fine, whatever. I get to use The Force® and a Light Sabre™ right?

Well, ish. The Force is pretty hard to control - vaguely point at something and squeeze the trigger, then shake your hand. There's no real control, you can't easily move things or throw rocks at enemies. It all feels a bit hollow. The Light Sabre is slightly more fun - but it's pretty much Beat Sabre. Move it where you're told to, wiggle it near an enemy and slice them. That's it. There's zero skill involved. Which is fine, because it's impossible to die in the game.

Which, as a tech demo wouldn't be so bad. But Disney have the audacity to split this into three games at £8 each. You'll be able to complete them in under a couple of hours. Which, coincidentally, is about as long as your battery will last.

I is stunning having Vader loom over you in VR. And it is fun to wave a Light Sabre in his general direction. But this is just a lazy game. The cut scenes drag on as if to convince you that you haven't overpaid for a short and vapid experience. Endless rounds of Storm Troopers© attack and you just fend them off by waving your hands.

Considering the price, I was expecting something more. Games like Red Matter show how you can do interesting puzzles and stories, even within a linear framework. But Vader Immortal is an on-rails experience which fails to satisfy.

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.

You can get 25% off Red Matter 2 with my referral code

But Meta gave me £30 in credit for helping people fix their broken Quests. So I bought this much hyped puzzle game. And…

It's excellent! Much better than I expected.

As puzzler, it works really well. Lots of different types of puzzles, some of which make effective use of the VR environment. Items which need careful manipulation, 3D items which need examination, and wandering around a complex interactive world.

The voice acting is superb - although it is reminiscent of Portal's Cave Johnson.

It is spooky - without relying on jump-scares to frighten you. I was worried that I was going to have to get into a fight, or be chased, or have to beat the clock. But, instead, it's an atmospheric puzzler with some very mild peril to keep things entertaining.

The puzzles are moderately difficult - but I didn't have to resort to a walkthrough; they're all fairly logical. It was a great way to spend a couple of hours, and I'm eager for the sequel.

With a few caveats, of course

The first is that it is short. I guess I spent about 6 hours playing before I completed it. You can buy something like Skyrim second hand for the same price and get over a hundred hours of gameplay. Oculus games seem particularly expensive. Presumably because of the small audience.

Secondly, the manipulation can be really shonky. Picking up small items is finickity. Picking up large items sometimes causes unexpected movement in the environment. There are also some severe clipping issues. Your "hands" quite often pass through "solid" objects. As with all VR games, it is fully immersive until something breaks the illusion.

Thirdly, it's impossible to play for long periods of time. I had to stop a few times to recharge the headset. That's not the fault of this game - but of the Oculus. I can't remember the last time I played a PS4 game so long that the controller needed recharging.

Similarly, wearing a VR headset for more than an hour is just painful.

But these are minor nits. Yes, the end is slightly silly. But it is no worse than most modern movies.

I think I'd feel a bit cheated if I'd paid full price for it but, overall, it was a great experience.