Budget Cuts Ultimate Review

June 6, 2023

Although PlayStation VR users got the experience the first Budget Cuts, they never got a chance to play the second Mission Insolvency. Neat Corporation now has PSVR2 users covered with the release of Budget Cuts Ultimate, which includes both the games in one package. I have now played them on the PSVR2 hardware, what did I think?

STORY

In Budget Cuts you are the last human worker at Trascorp, a company that is looking to replace all workers with robots. You received a phone call at your work booth in the office, this mystery voice explains they need you to discover whats going on in the factory, escape and most importantly save humanity – but, can you do this?

GAMEPLAY

Mainly Budget Cuts gameplay revolves around stealth and trying to get through the floors and rooms undetected. However, the team at Neat Corporation have handled this in a way that still seems innovative and perfect from Virtual Reality.

You will be provided with the Translocator Gun, which is an experimental piece of equipment that will you allow to fire shots and then use as a portal to check out that room. The shot you fire is also small in size, meaning if there is ventilation into the room you want to check out, keep your distance, fire them through the vent and check out the area safely.

As you are trying to make your escape from Transcorp, you will of course come up against a rather aggressive robot workforce that want to stop you. This brings in some combat, if you feel it is required and you can’t make a hasty escape, but sometimes ducking and dodging your way around the shots fired in room with robots can be the best part of the game.

If it comes to needing to use combat, you are going to have to find sharp items that can take down these robots, be it letter openers or scissors – with a bow become part of the game when you move into Mission Insolvency. Meaning you are going to be limited to how much space you have in your inventory. A change they have made is making these one use, meaning if you remove them from a downed enemy, they will be broken, bent and no use.

The final element of gameplay is some small puzzles, that will normally see you trying to locate things like key cards to get through set doors to continue with your game. Where it the first these sort of puzzles usually mean just trying to find where someone or something is located in the office, the second aloud them to make them more thought out and seem naturally placed with stepping out of the office environment.

In the options you will find mods, but enabling these does mean you wont unlock any trophies. But, these include things like homing throws for those having issues with the throwing. Within the mods there is also the option to pick up the robots guns and use them, which left me feeling why wasn’t this included as a normal feature.

PRESENTATION

When it comes to presentation, there really hasn’t been any improvements made to how it looked on PSVR and PCVR on the games original release. The environments are all still pretty bland in colors. The lack of updates on the new hardware, really did surprise me, I thought we would maybe see some improvements in areas like the overall resolution and lighting.

Things will slightly improve as you move into Budget Cuts 2, although there is no clear indication you are moving in this as they have pieced it together as one whole story, you will notice from this slight improvement. Although, again it seems no enhancements have been made from the PCVR version of the game that is now over three-years old.

With the audio, each environment is portrayed well with the ambiance of the audio used in the game, and the noise as you get spotted is always clear and alarming. But, the standout part of the audio is the humor used in the game and the voice acting is up to scratch to make the humor hit better. However, this does not come without it’s issues, as you will get repeated lines and where they were funny the first few times, they can soon become old.

COMFORT/CONTROLS

I found Budget Cuts Ultimate really needed to be played standing, but the lack of the crouch button in a stealth game, does mean this might not be suitable for everyone. They have however included the option to use full locomotion in Ultimate and not only the portal gun – which does help the game feel less dated. But, if you can not handle this due to motion sickness, the portal movement still stands up today as a viable movement mechanic.

Budget Cuts Ultimate can only be played using the PlayStation VR2 Sense controllers, which do a decent job with the haptics that have been included. However, at points I did suffer some drifting, which doesn’t seem to be the case with other games in the same lighting. One thing the team have implemented from the new hardware is the use of headset haptics, these will activate when shot by the robots. Where this is now becoming common ground in games when you take damage, it is still nice to see it being implemented, when so little else has changed.

LONGEVITY

My playthrough of the game took me around nine-hours in total for both parts, which is a decent amount of playtime for the price being charged. The question is would I play through them again? Unfortunately the answer is no, as it doesn’t do enough to warrant and second play. There is a score-based arcade mode included, but this really didn’t grab me personally – and I really wasn’t bothered playing it after my first run.

REVIEWED USING PLAYSTATON VR 2

For the purposes of transparency, this review was created using a review code provided by the company or their respective PR company. The use of a press code does not affect my judgement of the product.

REVIEW OVERVIEW

Personally for me Budget Cuts Ultimate does not do much in that way of improving on the previous releases – making it seem more like a simple port, than wanting to make the improvements needed. Where I understand the visuals are made to be plain in design, but they just seemed too bland, which is not helped by the lack of resolution boost and no improvements in the lighting. With so little changes, the games age really shows and although the second section does improve slightly, it just outlines how the first has aged badly. Add this to minor tracking issues it all becomes immersion breaking – meaning where the game still shines in some areas, they are overpowered by the issues at hand.