As the first Genotype information dropped and leading up to release, I was very excited to see what Bolverk VR would do with such an ambitious project for the Meta Quest.
SAVE YOURSELF, SAVE THE PLANET
You are Evely, who is working at a weather station in Antarctica, soon a snowstorm hits and your partner crashes into Snowdrop Initiative’s research facility, which unfortunately kills him on impact. You are soon introduced to William who is the only survivor in the facility. He informs you that you have been infected by airborne spores that will eventually kill you. The question is can William help guide you to not only a cure for yourself, but to stop it eventually destroying the planet?
EXPLORE, SHOOT, UPGRADE, REPEAT
Genotype is a story-driven FPS single-player game, something that I love to see being released, as this is probably my favourite genre in the VR space. Not long into the game, it starts to feel like it has pulled a lot of inspiration from the brilliant ‘Metriod Prime’ – but it also left me feeling was this taking more that just inspiration? As the explore, adapt, survive tag-line for the game, falls perfectly into the mold of what you would do in Metriod.
The aim of the game is to explore the facility and find the nine DNA samples required to make the cure, and to do this you are going to need to explore the large facility to do so. I was impressed with the size of the actual facility, but the map does come in very important – which will show areas you have explored only. The reason this become so important is because the facility all looks very similar, so you can easily get lost if not looking at the map.
While doing this exploring you will come across a number of different enemies and what I believe should be classed as boss fights, but to me they just seemed like larger mutations with more health… over something that should feel more threatening and grander in design. To take on these enemies, you get as number of weapons in the form of 3D printer mutations that are attached to your glove, meaning you need to find the blueprints to print them around the station. This system is great and uses the pull-cord systems in Bonelabs, to switch weapons – which isn’t a bad thing. However, it does come with the caveat, that in battle it it can be a bit fiddly changing weapon, as you try to get the correct weapon and avoiding the enemies attacks (if there is larger number).
When it comes to the combat, despite a variety of mutations you can find, I found by about half way through it did start to feel a little stale, as the enemies came with two distinct attack styles – these were projectile and ramming. With this in the mind, the combat became strafe out the way and then attack, and all enemies could be defeated using this simple tactic.
Bolverk VR have tried to mix it up a little, as what will start as just exploring corridors will turn into transferring yourself in a skill called Brainlink – that will put you into a tiny mutation to explore things like vents and getting through areas that seem like dead-ends. Then later sections will introduce swimming, that mainly consists of the threat being your oxygen levels, so you need to find the all important air-bubbles. The Brainlink does allow for some puzzle elements and you need to find your way into the locked off areas. However, it never really pushes the boundary in this element and in the most case its find controls panels and bio-metric profiles you inject into your gloves.
Finally you have an upgrade system, that will use a number of resources found around the station. This will allow you to upgrade your favourite mutations and the same terminals will be used for 3D printing health and ammo. I found that I never managed to fully upgrade everything in my playthrough, so I found myself just upgrading my favourites first. Which unfortunately means that I was using the same few weapons throughout and not really deviating to the others – adding to the aforementioned stale feeling.
PUSHING THE LIMITS
Visually you can see that the team have pushed the Quest 2 to its limits with Genotype. With this in mind it does look fantastic, from the look of the facility, the varied monsters and the infection growing around the facility. The areas where you move outside, it is hard to see as the snowstorm gives you limited visibility – and this makes sense given you are in the Antarctic. With being a native Quest game, it does lack little touches like real-time shadows and lower detailed textures. But, I would say outside of Red Matter 2, this is the best looking Quest game I have played.
The sound design does the job, but doesn’t excel in anyway. The voice acting is done very well, but at times it seems the emotions that should be portrayed are missing or when trying add some humor, the pacing is off to make it not hit as it should. The environmental sounds bring the facility and outside of the facility to life, and music is there in the background but doesn’t really take centre stage, which given the overall feel and setting of the game this does make sense on a design side.
COMFORT/CONTROLS
PLENTY OF TIME EXPLORING
The game took just short of eight-hours to get through and I think this is around the perfect length for a game of this type, although this did seem to suffer by the end of this time. Meaning, unfortunately I would not play through it again and think in most cases one playthrough gives you enough of what Genotype offers – but, this might differ per player.
REVIEWED USING META QUEST 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 judgment of the product.
NOT QUITE Samus Aran
I am not sure if I went into Genotype with too high of expectations from what I was seeing leading up to release. But, where the game started off strongly, by half the way through it all started to feel a little stale in regards to combat, and for every positive about the game there was a negative in most areas, outside of the great visuals. I just feel like there was much more potential hidden within the facility and what the title could have offered. Be it a great narrative path or each enemy making you face new challenges in how to have to kill them. With sometimes having to use set mutations against them, to stop you just sticking to your favourites – for me little things like this would have pushed to game to the next level.
GAME DETAILS
Release Date: October 12th 2023
Developer: Bolverk VR Games
Publisher: Bolverk VR Games
Price: £24.99
