Vampire: The Masquerade - Justice

wanted to love this and support this from the bottom of my heart but i couldn't even get past half an hour into the game because if it's ATROCIOUS freezing for minutes and minutes on end you're just left standing there in steam vr background for 6 minutes whenever the game decides to load right when you suck someone off or eat a rat or whatever

Played on Meta Quest 3 via Link cable (which ran into a really prevalent crash-on-launch issue). Let me preface by saying I'm not the most staunch VtM / World of Darkness fan, so I'll skip commenting on the game's faithfulness to the lore in this review. [b]This game is at 64% "Mixed" rating on Steam right now -- I'd really like to give it a yellow Mixed review myself. Alas there isn't such a thing on Steam.[/b] First of all, it's was a massive pain with the issue of constant crashing on attempting to launch the game (UE4 engine error). I could luckily work around it by taking off my headset first and [b]only[/b] launching via my Steam Library page - seems to not work either if I launch via desktop shortcut. This is the first game I've had such an issue on, and I'm absolutely unsure as to what exactly is the cause, but I've not tried playing wirelessly with the Steam Link app. Alas I haven't managed to find a solution online to this problem. Otherwise, I've also encountered gameplay impairing bugs during my playthrough. Equipment count not reverting properly on reload from checkpoint; alert enemies never returning to their previous patrol nor losing their alert level; and some other slightly less annoying problems. Other minor less critical problems (typical jank) are also present: hassle with the hand-gesture UI for selecting ammo-type; Alyx-style hand flick-and-grab not being responsive; weird rubber-banding at times when trying to strafe (I don't know if it's my controller, actually); and so on. [b]However - as a stealth-focused game, I think my biggest gripe is with the game's level layout and enemy placements.[/b] I like a bit of challenge myself, and I can't say there was absolutely zero "skill issue" on my part, but I just feel like the game has way too many sections where enemy patrols overlap, leaving me very minimal space to manuever. It was particularly frustrating earlier on when I was putting in utmost effort to succeed on the missions' side objectives that include Zero Detection and Zero Kills - which led to many, many reload-from-checkpoint. A couple of segments even seemed impossible to get past without running into one or more guards' line-of-sight. Add the bugs with enemy alert states and not responding to thrown objects' noise on top of that, and I had myself many an annoying moment. These issues peeved me off less once I'd resigned to giving up certain side objectives (forgoing their XP rewards) instead of trying to maximize my rewards on each level. On the outdoor traversal sections, the game does provide little nooks and crannies you can explore, but so many of them seem to simply be empty rooms that don't seem have been intended as alternative sneaking passages either. I just feel like they were a distraction and I'd wasted my effort combing through the maze-like flooded Venician back alleys. ...but, despite all these misgivings, at the end of the day I didn't absolutely dread playing through the story and did somewhat enjoy the storyline. I'll leave my review as Positive given the current score the game is at.