https://store.steampowered.com/app/616820/District_Steel/
To quote an old movie about The Riddle of Steel
“The secret of steel has always carried with it a mystery. You must learn its riddle [...] You must learn its discipline. For no one — no one in this world can you trust".
This is quite relevant for this game too - especially the answer to the riddle:
"Steel isn’t strong, boy, flesh is stronger!…What is steel compared to the hand that wields it? Look at the strength in your body, the desire in your heart”
Even though you do get to shoot, it's also often clobbering time with your giant steel fist - and like quoted above, you need to learn to use it well. I've run out of ammo a few times, and the steel fist has been a great friend in such unfortunate situations - especially when using the game's slow-motion option, which works like bullet time in Max Payne.
Here I'm using the "Max Payne"-like bullet time
You can only jump using rocket jump - and it's even more fun than doing that in Quake. Did love rocket jumping in Quake, but it's been like 25 years, sigh - then again, it's like riding a bike, once you've learned it you'll never forget how to do it... lol
Rocket jumping in this game is extremely awesome, as you can activate bullet time during a jump and take out quite a number of enemies in one jump. This has never been done before in VR - and I can't remember having this much fun since Alyx.
Granted, graphics aren't like in Alyx, but graphics are still impressive:
Examples of environments and textures - and beware of open spaces, these usually are traps 😉
This game kinda feel more like some Quake and Dark Forces - in the greatest way. You'll be shooting robots and drones - and much more. At first the game may look dull and boring, but it opens up after the first levels - and especially when you get used to rocket jumping with bullet time. Here I'm taking out an enemy by activating bullet time:
Rocket jumping while using bullet time is really something special - I'm not jumping here though 🙂
I'm not that far into the game (my controllers just ran out of battery), so let's say it's a 9/10 for now. This is a must-play VR game. My PSVR2 is arriving next week, but I really doubt that even Call of the Mountain will be much more fun to play. I'm not sure other VR games can beat the gameplay in District Steel. Sure you can get better graphics, but you don't get rocket jumping with bullet time. The music in the game is great too and matches the action.
Ops, it got me - again... 🙂
I'm using Index and an oc'ed RTX 3090 with an i9 10900K (10 cores, 20 threads, 5.3 GHz) and 32GB ram. I'm getting solid 90 fps using res 300% with highest in-game graphics settings (keeping the res slider in-game at default 1.0 though - my res 300% is set using StreamVR to avoid multiplication of in-game and SteamVR res settings). The game looks great using lower settings too, and I think most will appreciate the great performance in this game. Also performance stays up even in the bigger locations, and this game feels nicely optimized. Index finger tracking is supported:
Finger tracking is working 🙂
There's smooth turning and full locomotion, and there's full support for left handed persons like myself. You can choose to hold the weapon in your left or right hand, and choose if you want locomotion on the left or right thumbstick - a setting many devs forget to support.
The game is early access - but it's been in development for 6 years - so it's not really early, lol. This game plays better and feels more complete than many VR games which are no longer in early access.
Armour just like in good ol' Quake 🙂
This already is my favorite VR game of 2023 - and I'm confident it's among the 10 best VR games released since January 1 2022.
This really is an awesome game - 95% positive ratings on Steam - here're a few more screenshots:
Activated bullet time
Some big room
Awesome spider-bots, I died taking this screenshot 😉
Spider-bots do crawl on walls 🙂
They don't see me - yet ...
You - and they - can break the glass - and you can rocket jump through it 🙂
Prepare to die many times 🙂
This is by far the best PCVR game in 2023. I also tried The Light Brigade, but I did not like that game at all (extremely low-end graphics) compared to District Steel. 2c.
