Recent reviews by Neosun

How have I not written a review for this sooner??? This game is spectacular. Many people say that BONELAB is the "Garry's Mod" of VR but allow me to beg to differ:

BONELAB might focus on being a sandbox environment that lets you spawn and do whatever you wish (with a fairly okay campaign tacked onto it) but it's not a particularly great experience.

H3VR on the other hand is a firearms simulation in a sandbox environment that also lets you spawn and do whatever you wish. While it may not have a campaign mode (Return of the Rottwieners, WurstWorld, and MeatGrinder are going to the closest you get. Most of your "Gameplay" is going to come from Take & Hold). The base game on its own is LOADED to the brim with countless modern and obscure firearms throughout history. This alone is an exceptional experience, and this does not even begin to touch where mods take this game.

The modding scene for this game is just as active as the vanilla game itself. There are mountains of content already available and even more coming out every week. A popular choice among the masses is "ModulAR", which is a system that lets you customize an AR-15 (and any other weapon platform that is supported by ModulWorkshop) down to its most granular parts (such as triggers, barrels, handguards, even the castle nut of all things).

BONELAB is a decent sandbox with admittedly shoddy firearms. If Garry's Mod to you is about screwing around with firearms and customizing them, H3VR is going to be more your speed. Give it a go, this game is dirt cheap and content is only going to continue to be added.

Another thing to note is that when you purchase this game, you're also joining a community. It's important to follow the devlogs of this game as this is primarily where they teach you how to use the new content in the game. They also have a Discord server. I'll link both here for your convenience.

https://www.youtube.com/@AntonHand
https://discord.gg/3Sv9kNUmQh

Thank you Anton for this WONDERFUL game.

Rest in peace, Vince Zampella (1970 - 2025).

Left this world too soon. Even if you weren't involved in this game, it was still your series. Countless memories were made from this era and I'll never forget them. Thank you.

Rest in peace, Vince Zampella (1970 - 2025).

Left this world too soon. I'll never forget the wild memories I had with the games you gave us. Thank you.

Rest in peace, Vince Zampella (1970 - 2025).

Left this world too soon. I'll never forget the wild memories I had with the games you gave us. Thank you.

I'm writing a review for the Valve Index as a whole rather than Half-Life Alyx (it's a fine game, go play it. It comes free with your Index) and it's more of a memorial for a lovely piece of hardware than anything. My review is a positive one but my vote is negative to stand as a protest for various changes posed by the Steam Frame and Valve's decision to discontinue the Index.

Rest easy, Valve Index. You might have been an older dog but you were the best of the best and did not go gentle into that good night.

It was originally released in 2019 as a successor to the Vive Pro, offering many features that debuted with that headset in a (then) more affordable consumer-friendly format while offering features that even surpassed the Vive Pro. Its off-ear headphones were delightfully crisp and made for a very unique listening experience that felt like Valve's usual black magic. The Index Headset was, in of itself, an amazing upgrade from the original black Vive but what truly stood out was its controllers.

The Valve Index Controllers (also known as "Knuckles" during their prototype stages) were and are a revolution in VR interactivity. Their most prominent feature was the ability to fasten them to your hands directly and achieve a truly free-floating connection. This inspired countless aftermarket upgrades to different VR platforms such as the Meta Quest 2 & 3. This did not stop here, they went one step further and implemented a Grip system which made holding and interacting with objects extremely naturalistic without requiring a full finger rig for your hands. Its finger tracking was a bit rudimentary but serviceable, but the ability to naturally hold objects by organically picking them up made them a killer feature. Interacting with objects in Half-Life Alyx, Hotdogs Horseshoes & Handgrenades, and many other VR games felt like I was actually picking them up instead of pushing a button. In classic Valve fashion, good is not good enough. They even let you apply pressure to squeeze. HLA is really the only game I've ever seen this feature utilized by its presence set a precedent that they truly did care for the immersion of VR at the time. To add even further onto this, the controllers' battery life was the stuff of legend. My VR sessions are often in the ballpark of 8-9 hours and even with the current age of my controllers their batteries still held up without a single break for recharge.

Not all is sunshine and rainbows for the Index controllers however, the biggest pain point was their joystick. It was tiny and admittedly a bit flimsy. Its "touch capacitor" was unique at the time and was even the predecessor to the Steam Deck's joystick touch sensors. On the Index, it didn't really do much beyond indicating where your thumb was. In games that offered finger tracking like VRChat, it was a decently neat feature (albeit one that wasn't missed when that capacitor gave out). The true elephant in the room, as in the *actual* issue was that these controllers were very subject to developing Stick Drift. The problem was caused by clicking in the sticks as this would slowly wear out the connection between the stem and the stick itself, causing it to drift. It was very common for content creators to warn other Index users to avoid clicking their sticks if they could help it. Fortunately, it seems Valve did a minor hardware revision that addressed this issue as my last two sets of Index controllers did not have issues with Stick Drift (instead, their issue was related to battery failure and in one case physical damage- both lived very long and healthy lives and just gave out from natural wear & tear).

On that note, I shift my focus onto the Steam Frame. I don't have one, and obviously it was announced only just today but for the longest time we had plenty of unofficial glimpses into what was to come. My first issue is the removal of the hand-fasteners that allow for free-floating controllers. This is a huge blow to me and is further compounded by the removal of the grip capacitor, opting for a Quest-style grip button. That type of button isn't terrible but it feels alienating to the sensation of getting to naturally pick up an object (and *hold* an object naturally). I'm not a naysayer of Valve Hardware and I even consider myself a bit of a chump for their products... So this is doubly baffling to me.

Moving on, the Steam Frame's controller is meant to mirror that of a traditional game controller but split in two and given tracking technology. On paper this is fine but when you see that they opted for the Steam Deck's D-Pad on the left controller and ABXY buttons on the right, it creates this strange asymmetry. It isn't that big of an issue but for developers this is going to create a headache. According to Anton Hand, lead developer of Hotdogs Horseshoes & Handgrenades, he said as follows (quoted from their Discord server):

----

Anton Hand — 6:03 PM
imagine this control tip:
"Press the B button if held in the right hand or hit dpad right if held in the left hand"
instead of
"Press the B button"

----

Naturally, a D-Pad isn't going to be a horrendous issue but there is a proven way to achieve symmetry without ruining the sensation of a D-Pad. The Nintendo Switch's JoyCons had a D-Pad made of face buttons and work quite well. For a VR controller, this would had been a perfect no-brainer decision. It's puzzling that Valve has opted for a full D-Pad.

Another huge lament of the Steam Frame controller is the lack of the ability to fasten the controller to your hand (at least, seemingly out of the box. I have seen a few pictures floating online where they had hand straps but these are made of *velcro*. More on this in a second). To me, this is a massive dealbreaker in of itself. VR is about being able to immerse yourself and the more things you have to hold onto the worse it gets. The Index's Capacitor-focused design was brilliant and worked perfectly... But now, it feels like it's all been walked back in favor of pursuing Quest-like design principles. I mentioned earlier that you can fasten these controllers to your hands using what I believe are in-house additional straps but those are made of velcro. Velcro is a terrible long-term solution, and especially for something that you're entrusting to not fly off your hand with a flick of the wrist. Velcro is great when it's new but as time goes on from use (and things like hair and dust getting into it) it degrades (and pretty rapidly at that). All the things I love about the Index are absent here and it hurts to see that they discontinued the Index over this, and I haven't even touched on the headset yet.

Speaking of the headset, the most immediate glaring issue is the fact that we have no way to directly tether this to our computers. I'm not a fan of streaming. Even with reduced latency or ease of access, the fidelity loss will be felt at some point. It adds a level of instability even if it is rarely present. I like the certainty of wires, being able to 100% assuredly know that my experience will not be interrupted under any condition. Furthermore, I do not know how long the charging cable is because I personally do not like wireless headsets because they have a battery that I have to keep track of. Take note that I mentioned earlier that I spend very long hours in VR. I don't like battery extenders, power banks, or what have you. Not only is it added weight but I just like that peace of mind that I can truly sit in VR for as long as I please.

As for tracking... Camera-IR hybrid tracking isn't terrible but the fact we cannot set up base stations for a highly accurate tracking area is a huge stab to me. I have a Quad-Basestation 2.0 set up and I'm very happy with the level of accuracy and consistency this gives me. I can move my hands anywhere without worry of them hicupping or flying off into space.

Rest easy, Index... Left this world too soon (2019-2025). I would write more but I've hit the character limit.

Squeaks, I know damn well you read these reviews so instead of writing a proper review, I'm going to leave you a letter:

I would like to start out by saying I had this game on my radar for quite a while, but after finding out that you contributed to the Jermboniation floor on REGRETEVATOR (I'm 26 years old, shhhh) I felt inclined to support the talent behind a game I really enjoyed.

"A little more crazy" does not even BEGIN to describe what I got compared to what I expected coming from REGRETEVATOR.

You sadistic ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, this was absolutely the most unhinged and unsettling wild-ride I have ever been on in my entire life and just until 3 days ago I thought I was totally desensitized to horror games. I am never playing this again, so for that reason you *damn* better be making something that one-ups this one day because I know sure-as-♥♥♥♥ well I'm going to be there to suffer through it all over again when (or if) it comes out.

'Til wherever the hell this crazy-ass adventure goes,
-Neosun.

---

To everyone else,

Yeah. Buy it. It's good. Trust me.

Don't listen to the reviews. Most people here are whiny little babies. There is absolutely fun to be had here, and if you save your money up you can buy weapons that will carry you far in this game.

How have I not reviewed this gem? I'm not here for that (it's amazing and you should totally buy it) but I am here to wish Shutaro Ida the best of luck in his battle against cancer. Castlevania has been a major part of my life and it brings me deep sorrow to hear that the lead director of my most cherished series is going through one of the most difficult diseases known to man.

Much love from the United States.

---

どうして私はこの逸品をレビューしなかったのでしょうか？私はそのためにここにいるわけではありません（これは素晴らしいので絶対に買うべきです）が、井田秀太郎さんの癌との闘いの幸運を祈りたいと思います。 『悪魔城ドラキュラ』は私の人生の大きな部分を占めており、私の最も大切にしているシリーズの主演監督が人類に知られている中で最も困難な病気の一つを患っていると聞いて深い悲しみを感じています。

米国よりたくさんの愛を込めて。

(Google翻訳を使用して翻訳しました)

Sony has reversed their decision to make account-linking mandatory. Thank you everyone (and especially Arrowhead) for working together to make this happen.

Anyways...

Buy this game and spread Managed Democracy. Do your part, citizen. Earn your cape and become a HELLDIVER.

damn she wasn't lying.

that company really IS lethal.