Return to Boneworks (VR)

I reviewed Boneworks in March 2020. You can read that review here. I concluded that review by saying: ‘I don’t plan on ever playing it again.’ Boneworks wasn’t a game I enjoyed. In fact, I thought pretty much everything about it was kind of bad – the campaign, the story, the level design, the combat . . . ‘I can’t recall the last time I told a game to f**k off as much as I did Boneworks.’

So why did I decide to give the game another shot? I guess it’s because, looking back, I was wondering if I’d been too harsh on the game. I mean, Boneworks remains one of the most highly rated VR games on Steam with (at the time of writing) a 91% positive All Reviews score, and a 93% positive Recent Reviews score.

People really like Boneworks, it seems, both old players and new. But not me. I could barely stand it. Was I just in a bad mood when I played it? Was it the VIVE wands I was using that gave me a bad experience?

So, armed with my new Index controllers – that the game was clearly designed for – and with several new updates and patches, I figured I’d jump back in and see if my opinion on Boneworks had changed.

…

F**k no.

I know not everyone will love or hate every game in the same way I do, but when my opinion on a game may not necessarily reflect the majority view I can usually understand why. But Boneworks really has me scratching my head.

How can anyone like this?

I didn’t finish the campaign this time around. I just couldn’t be bothered. The only good thing I can say about it is that I didn’t have so many issues with the wonky physics totally f**king up the puzzles. But all the other problems I spoke about in my original review remain. The level and puzzle design is poor and the story aspects are a complete joke.

Also, as I suspected in my original review – ‘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.’

I was right, the Index controllers didn’t help. I still glitched inside objects and got stuck. My hands, when climbing, would glitch out causing me to drop. My virtual arms would often get caught on scenery, sometimes wrapped around an object, trapping me in place until I was able to wiggle them free. I gave up a few levels in when I realised everything was just as bad as I recalled. But what about the combat? I decided to give some of the Sandbox modes a spin and see.

Oh no.

The combat is bloody terrible. The melee combat in particular is just awful. It’s even more noticeable when I was just playing some Blade & Sorcery the other day. There’s no sense of weight to weapons. Sharp or blunt, weapons just awkwardly bounce off a target with no sense of impact.

Half the time when you grab a weapon via telekinesis it won’t automatically switch to facing the correct direction, so you end up with an axe head pointed back at you and not the enemy you’re trying to fight.

And gun combat? Gun combat, whilst not as bad as melee, is still pretty bad. The reloading system is awkward as f**k and none of the guns I used seemed to aim properly no matter how carefully I lined up my shots. Once again, there’s no sense of weight or impact to your guns or to your shots.

I returned to Boneworks hoping that, even if I still didn’t like it, I might at least come to understand why the game has such a positive following. Instead, I leave the game even more confused. I can’t honestly think of a single thing the game does well.

The story sucks. The campaign sucks. The combat sucks. The sandbox modes suck. The visuals are . . . fine, I guess? The music sucks – oh god, I forgot how f**king irritating the music is. The whole game is janky as f**k.

How can anyone like this?

I’m really sorry if you like Boneworks but I’ll never understand you and we can never be friends.