I dodged spoilers for 11 solid months to play this game in VR, and although i could rant forever about how steel wool literally handled the VR release the absolute worse they possibly could have, I'm gonna ignore that and just review the game as it is now.
I played through the game from start to end on the quest 3 using virtual desktop to play wirelessly, and as others have pointed out, this turned out to be basically pointless as the game does NOT support physical turning. Or rather, it does, but the data diver doesn't. Turning IRL works perfectly fine for all interactions, it's just that your PRIMARY TOOL is stored on your left/right hip. Problem is, it's attached to your hip when you LOAD the game, and does not move unless you turn using the joystick. Technically you can still turn IRL without issue if you're willing to keep track of the data divers position, but this is obviously incredibly annoying and immersion breaking, leading me to revert to using snap turn instead.
Additionally, the sense of hand presence in the game could be heavily improved. For some reason that's beyond me, you can't close your hands manually. The game has only 3 hand gestures (Idle, Point, Fist) and they're all completely out of your control, simply activating whenever your hand gets close enough to a button or something. This is baffling for a game that was originally advertised/built for VR, especially since steel wool is a VR focused studio. The inability to control your hands is both immersion breaking, and frustrating, since the automated hand gestures not only suck at activating when you need them, but also don't even change your hand hitbox. You'll try to use your pointer finger to press a button, as you would, and find that the button press hitbox is actually closer to your palm, causing pressing buttons/inputting codes to be needlessly difficult. Adding to this, almost 0 objects in the game can actually be interacted with/grabbed. When developing for VR, making the environment feel alive is crucial, and steel wool clearly knows this as in HW/HW2, you were able to grab and throw pretty much everything. This game is much bigger, so i don't expect every little prop to be grabbable, but even things that look obviously interactable just aren't.
And finally, there's the issue of no roomscale support. I'm convinced this has to be due to Devoted Studios, AKA the folks who "ported" the game to VR (even though it was supposed to be VR to begin with) are inexperienced VR developers and didn't bother figuring it out. You may think this explains the lack of physical turning support, but your rotation IS indeed tied to the headsets rotation, i know because certain events that only trigger when you look at/away from something do trigger properly with head movements. They just were too lazy to make your hip holster rotate. Anyways, no roomscale support makes interactions sometimes needlessly hard, though admittedly it does have the cool side effect of enabling you to physically peek around corners without fear of being seen, since your model doesn't move with you.
I've dabbled in VR development myself, as i LOVE the VR medium, and i can tell you that lack of roomscale/hand presence is absolutely not technical limitations. They are incredibly easy to implement, so much so that many flat games that were MODDED into VR completely independent of the developers support it with no sweat.
So with all this fussing, why is this a positive review? Because, to tell you the truth, these 4 issues do not take away from my overall positive feelings about that game. I would be simply lying if i said i didn't enjoy playing through it, and although there are several aspects of VR that could have been executed FAR better, that isn't to say the game is unplayable in VR like many others do. The things you CAN interact with are genuinely well done, such as the wind up mice having to be physically wound, and the data diver having to be physically rotated. Hiding in a locker and peeking through the seams is quite immersive, and some objects having to be held with BOTH hands came as a welcome surprise after the lack of interactivity earlier in the game. The terminals that are simply menus in flatscreen also work neatly in VR, requiring you to actually turn dials and hit switches to interact with them. For all the negatives, i still think that playing this game in VR shows that it was, indeed, designed for VR. There are some genuinely terrifying segments that gave me a good fright, and a specific section in the workshop/near the end was EXTREMELY cool in VR. I won't say what because of spoilers, but you probably know what i mean.
My playthroughs were surprisingly functional as well. I'm not sure if i just got lucky or what, but i didn't experience NEARLY as many bugs as some others online did. Everything (mostly) worked perfectly for me, so i'll have to disagree with those saying that the game is "unplayable" in VR.
Overall, while there are certainly issues, (i didn't even mention the TERRIBLE crouching mechanic in VR) I also can't say that i didn't enjoy the game in VR. I waited 11 painful months to play this game in my preferred medium first, and i'm happy to report, i don't regret that choice. I wouldn't dream of playing the game in flat, as some sections (particularly the one in the basement) work GREAT in the VR medium.
VR should have been handled/executed better. WAY better. I'm not excusing steel wools miserable communication about VR, and the fact they outsourced the VR mode despite literally being a VR studio that ORIGINALLY PLANNED for SOTM to be a VR title, but all of this still isn't enough to make me NOT recommend the game. Though if you're like me and enjoy playing VR wirelessly, the lack of roomscale/turning support is genuinely upsetting, so i sincerely hope they patch the game to add that. It's not difficult in the slightest from a technical POV, but it's steel wool we're talking about, so we'll see how that goes.
TL;DR: Steel Wool is stinky, Game is good, VR mode should have been done better, but it's better than not having it. Enjoyed the game overall.
