Now Playing: Boneworks (VR)

I can’t recall the last time I told a game to f**k off as much as I did Boneworks. It’s a game that made me angry and frustrated. Boneworks also likes the smell of its own farts. All the ‘advanced VR concepts’ nonsense is just a lazy way to deflect criticism, as if anyone who doesn’t enjoy Boneworks must not be ‘skilled’ enough in VR. F**k right off. There’s nothing ‘advanced’ about anything Boneworks does. I’ve seen everything it does before and I’ve seen it done far better.

The campaign doesn’t get off to a great start with a self indulgent and irritating tutorial that goes on for far too long. The first few missions, despite the large, expansive environments, are incredibly linear and lifeless. The only ‘challenge’ I faced was trying to wrestle with the game’s fiddly controls and wonky physics. I’d say the levels get a little more interesting when you reach level 4 or so, but it’s a small victory for Boneworks that sadly doesn’t last.

 

As the missions continue they get increasingly short, linear and simple, culminating in a final mission that feels like it was cobbled together in about 5 minutes – which is also about how long it takes to complete. This leads onto a horribly designed ‘epilogue’ section (and absolutely terrible ‘boss’ fight) that I almost didn’t bother to complete because of how awful it is. The game also pretty much forgets any ‘puzzles’ about half way in and just relies on the shoddy combat to keep you engaged. Without it, each mission really is just a slog from A to B with the occasional hunt for a colour coded key.

The ‘story’ is a lame mixture of Half-Life and Portal – they even try to mimic the super gravity gun finale of Half-Life 2 but do so in an incredibly poor and lazy way. And leaving crowbars f**king everywhere in the environment isn’t clever or funny, and neither is the totally pointless ‘MELONS!’ nonsense which is a tragic attempt to recreate the cake memes of Portal.

For a game based so heavily on a physics system, they really needed to make it work at least most of the time. But I didn’t get through a single level or puzzle of Boneworks without some aspect of the game’s physics totally f**king up. And I’m sure someone might say it was because of my controls – that the game isn’t really designed for the VIVE wands, despite supporting them and including them in the tutorial. F**k right off.

 

When I try to move a box and my virtual body glitches me inside of it so I become a half-man, half-box hybrid, barely able to move or free myself so I’m forced to restart, I don’t really see how using the Index controllers would have saved me. Or when my arms glitch though a wall or ladder when I’m climbing and I plummet to the ground. Or when the game’s physics just don’t work in even the most basic of f**king puzzles.

To give a specific example, one early puzzle requires you to position barrels in an anti-gravity ‘leak’ to push a platform up higher and support it so you can safely cross. It’s so f**king simple, but when I started loading up the barrels, the platform above didn’t move. I ran around for about 5 minutes thinking I’d done something wrong, but I then recalled the earlier puzzle I’d had trouble with (and spoke about in my First Impressions post) and realised the problem wasn’t my solution (which was correct) but the game.

The physics were just broken, and I ‘solved’ the puzzle by standing under the platform and pushing against it myself which magically ‘unlocked’ it and it shot rapidly into the sky. At least in this example, pushing actually worked. Most of the time, if I wanted to push anything, the only way I could get something to move would be to charge at it and headbutt the f**ker. That always did the trick.

 

And that was my experience of Boneworks, its ‘puzzles’ and its ‘advanced’ physics system – they all kind of suck. And bloody hell, don’t even get me started on those little forklift things you can use to move boxes. Trying to push or even pull them where you want them to go is an absolute f**king nightmare. But the thing is, even if I hadn’t encountered all of these bugs and glitches, the puzzles – what few there are – would still kind of suck and the campaign would still be short, simple and totally disappointing.

Which leads me onto combat, which also kind of sucks. The gun selection is limited and although I wouldn’t say they handle badly, they don’t handle particularly well, either. Not compared to other VR games. And the melee combat? It’s pretty terrible. Enemies sometimes barely react to your strongest hits to their face with an axe, but flail wildly and die at other times if you so much as brush past them. It’s just shit. And because the combat is dodgy, fiddly and lame, I really have zero interest in the ‘Arena’ mode you unlock upon completing the campaign.

Overall, if it wasn’t clearly obvious, I kind of hated playing Boneworks. Even if I was using the Index controllers and the game’s physics system didn’t regularly shit the bed, the combat, the puzzles, the level design and the campaign are all pretty bad and have all been done better in other games. And that’s why I simply can’t recommend Boneworks. The most positive thing I can say about it is that I mildly enjoyed a couple of levels around the middle of the game. Just a couple of odd levels that were better designed and paced. But that’s all I got. I don’t plan on ever playing it again.

4/10