Now Playing: Budget Cuts (VR)

If Arizona Sunshine was a ‘low budget Left 4 Dead’ and Pavlov VR a ‘low budget Counter-Strike’ it seems only fitting that I play Budget Cuts AKA ‘low budget Portal 2’. Okay, so that’s not entirely fair, but it’s clear that Budget Cuts has taken inspiration from the Portal series in terms of its tone, humour, style and presentation.

Budget Cuts is a stealth / puzzle game in which you must escape from your office or risk permanent ‘retirement’. The human workers, one by one, are disappearing, replaced with friendly and presumably more cost efficient robot employees. Beginning at your desk, you receive a telephone call and a fax providing you with instructions on how to escape and what tools you’ll need to do so.

You soon collect a device that lets you teleport from one location to the next by firing a targeted, but bouncy, ball of energy. You can use this tool to line up a shot, ricocheting the ball from a wall or object to go around corners or through openings in the ceiling. You don’t teleport to your destination immediately, however, as a ‘preview bubble’ appears, allowing you to peer into the local surroundings.

It’s a clever way of combining VR teleportation motion with a game mechanic. It’s always best to survey an area before you teleport, just in case there’s an angry robot waiting for you on the other side. Because whilst most of the robots you’ll encounter on your journey are affable chaps, there’s also a force of security robots with orders to shoot you on sight.

The story based campaign of Budget Cuts took me about 5 hours to complete on the Standard difficulty. In terms of overall production quality, it’s one of the best VR games I’ve played with sharp and colourful visuals, solid, well considered mechanics and some good VA. As I said, as far as tone and style goes, it’s very reminiscent of Portal 2.

Each level has a clear objective, usually involving dodging (or killing) security robots and collecting the necessary key card in order to progress to the next area. It’s a simple, but effective gameplay loop, but it’s a shame it never evolves beyond a rather basic level of complexity.

If there’s one thing I like about puzzle based games, it’s how they evolve over time, introducing new mechanics and concepts as you progress. The Portal games are a perfect example of this. Every new section introduces a new twist on old concepts as you’re forced to solves puzzles with increasingly elaborate solutions, often combining previous mechanics in new and creative ways. 

But Budget Cuts, sadly, never quite does this. It does begin to, but only when you reach the end of the game. It’s a real shame, because if Budget Cuts had offered a longer campaign with a more elaborate progression of gameplay mechanics, it really could have been considered as good as, say . . . Portal 2. The basic systems are already in place, the game just doesn’t explore them to the degree that it should.

You can choose to avoid combat, but it’s often easier to kill the security robots by tossing sharp objects at their heads. A head shot will drop one instantly, but a body or limb shot will slowly cause them to ‘bleed’ oil and they may still get their own shot off at you. That’s why it’s best not to confront them directly, but from the safety of vents or ducts, dropping or tossing knives or scissors at your foes as they pass, unsuspecting, below.

Though your combat options are limited, it does work quite well, and it’s always kind of disturbing when you hit a robot in the leg and watch them stagger about, leaking oil all over the floor before collapsing in a heap. You almost feel kind of bad about it. That said, combat can also be tricky because it involves tossing small objects – and because there’s no real sense of ‘weight’ when throwing an object in VR, it can be difficult to gauge how hard or fast to throw in order to hit your target.

When you reach the end of the game you’ll find yourself in a clever and actually kind of scary boss type encounter. I won’t spoil it, but it’s pretty neat and I kind of wish the game had more encounters like this that really force you to think and plan carefully on how to proceed.

As far as bugs and technical issues go, Budget Cuts ran perfectly smoothly. Some of the robot characters would occasionally get stuck on scenery, forever locked within a walking animation, but there wasn’t any other major glitches. My main problem was the game’s auto-save system which, on occasion, would reload me into the game but reset enemies I’d already killed prior to the save.

In one case, reloading into the game put me face to face with an angry robot who immediately shot me before I could react. It was a robot I’d killed about 5 minutes before the checkpoint save and I had to restart the level which was kind of annoying.

Beyond the campaign is an ‘Arcade’ mode offering a handful of new levels and challenges but, once again, none of them really push the stealth or puzzle mechanics to the degree that I would like and would elevate Budget Cuts from being a pretty good game, into a great one. And I guess that’s where I should leave this review.

Budget Cuts it’s one of the best VR games I’ve played and a wonderful demonstration of how VR can offer a very unique – and physical – gameplay experience. It’s incredibly immersive as you crouch in a vent or peer through a hole in a ceiling into the corridor below – you probably look like a real prat in reality but when you’re in the game, you quickly forget the real world even exists (which can be dangerous when you’re ‘throwing’ objects – I nearly broke one of my controllers hitting a bookcase).

I know a Budget Cuts 2 is due soon and it’s something I’ll certainly be keeping an eye on. If it can refine, build upon and expand the existing mechanics, whilst also introducing a few new twists of its own and a longer, more substantial campaign, I can see it being a must have VR experience. But in the meantime, Budget Cuts is worth checking out.

7/10