The fact that he made the soundtrack too is astounding, his aptitude for art is beyond me, to think one man can put together so many cohesive ideas in such a neat way. This has to be vr game of the year
It's hard to call Zach a developer for me. He's a creator, and a creative genius at that. I genuinely believe he was robbed of GOTY. It comes as high praise considering I love Alyx so much for me to say Vertigo 2 is just hands down better. Zach is going places and I'm joyfully along for the ride.
I 100% agree! Vertigo 2 SHOULD absolutely be VR game of the year, or at least be one of the choices... Like why is Gorilla Tag up there? That game came out a few years ago and is one of the worst games I have ever played *smh* Vertigo 2 kept me occupied and kept me coming back for more in terms of its gameplay and level design. The maps were absolutely fun to explore and felt as if you were exploring another galaxy/dimension finding odd creatures/enemies on your quest to get back home. Again, I agree with you that V2 is better than Alyx in terms of gameplay. What I did not like in Alyx is its lack of interesting guns and the levels start to feel repetitive by the end of the game. Alyx is a great game, but Vertigo 2 just did everything better in my opinion - especially with its arsenal of interesting weapons. ALSO, the game has multiple paths and is WAY longer than Alyx. On top of all that, this game had one of the most awesome updates recently giving players access to a VERY unique level editor in VR and game modifiers that change up the gameplay to a whole new game. AND again, this all comes from a single developer... one of the most all time fascinating feats.
Gorilla Tag was eligible because it left early access between the last nominations and this one. It's by far the most popular VR game besides VRChat so in a popularity contest like the Steam awards it's going to perform well.
It is a warcrime that it didn’t even get to the finalists, i experienced a glitch part way through the game that deleted all of my weapon upgrades, and yet i still loved the game and finished it all!
I love the vertigo series, AND I HAD NO IDEA IT WAS MADE BY ONE MAN. That is actually crazy, and shows how video game companies no longer put love and true effort into their work. One person with the time and dedication made in my opinion, one of the best vr games to ever come out. I totally agree, that Vertigo 2 deserves GOTY.
There are people that forgive indie titles having bugs, issues, or areas where they just don't work very well, with the excuse that there is only one (or few) developers working on the project. Then Zach comes along and shows what someone with talent, but more importantly, someone who is willing to put the care and attention required into a project can really do. Showing that there are really no excuses. This game is hands down brilliant.
By the way, you were rolling chairs around about 8 minutes into the video - you can actually ride these. You DO need to enable the setting to allow it though, for which you need to find the setting in the config file (it was removed from the settings menu) for it to work. It was hidden to protect it from people thinking things are broken when they stumble into it, as it does differ a lot from the rest of the locomotion, and can be a little violent.
I have two problems with this game: 1) The scientist's voice actor is unfitting 2) If you die right after Nami, you have to listen to his long winded fetch quest again. And that's it. That's the entirety of my complaints. Game's fun as hell.
Yes Brian’s voice age is, I did get used to it eventually and now it weirdly seems to fit him, I feel like having an age-appropriate voice would remove from the comedy of his character. I’m obviously biased/acclimatised though 😅
After stumbling upon Virtigo:Remastered (which I loved), I bought this on day 1. Definitely a top 5 VR game for me (almost never play flat games). You describe my sentiments so well, and mostly for me it was the wonder aspect that made me wander and linger in places after the action was over because you never knew. With sea of shallow and mindless games out there, it's great to find this "honey hole".
Omg I had no idea. This guy will likely be one of the greatest game devs of all time at some point. This is beyond impressive especially when u factor in the kids age.
In terms of people using the number of developers as a way to excuse criticism, I have to agree, because if a developer or small team is skilled enough they can make something extremely polished, and even more polished then AAA games imo due to their scale (although I may be showing some bias to be fair). Look at Lucas Pope (the developer of Return Of The Obra Dinn and Papers Please) or Dennaton Games (the two man developer studio behind the Hotline Miami games).
Some of the enemy designs reminded me of what ACE team creates(Clash:Artifacts of Chaos, Zeno Clash, Eternal Cylinder) with how out there and abstract they are.
Thank you for beeing such a lovely human and Artist. I just watched your essay on why 6dof should be utelized more in Vr and i Loved it. All of it, it is so refreshing the way u struckture your videos and wish you find a good balance between beeing happy with your Work and having Fun. Happy new year.
I've also noticed a trend of "solo dev" or "small dev team" being used to excuse crappy games, and it's probably a means to have people still buy their game and play it right through without enjoyment, which kinda makes no sense from a consumer perspective. The guy who made the Vertigo series is testament to what can be done if you are creative and know what you're doing, and that guy is still really young as well. He probably has a very promising career in VR if he keeps up his skills. It really needs to be said that a solid singleplayer story driven experience has a much better chance of lasting the test of time, than a cookie-cutter pooped-out roguelike or an attempt at an fps forever-game like we are seeing a lot of currently. Every VR title to leave a lasting impression on me, have been single player story-driven games, with Lone Echo being my favourite.
vertigo 2 was a whole lot better than I was expecting. when I went in I didn't know who made the game but simple judged by the price tag. vertigo 1 and 2 for just 50 dollars was a steal. virtigo 2 was probibly my favorite game of 2023 as a whole. thank you for spotlighting it I think it doesn't get enough praise
Honestly, I'd say Vertigo 2 is by far my favorite VR game, and one of my all time favorite games in general. There's this unique feeling it gave me that very few games have ever managed to. Half Life Alyx is great, but at the same time also felt a bit underwhelming, if that makes sense. Half Life 2 VR felt like a more interesting experience overall, which is a great achievement in of itself, considering it's a mod for a flat screen game that managed to feel more native VR than many actual native VR games.
Half Life 2 mod is excellent, and implements a 6dof feature better than any other I’ve played. Physical grenade throwing for example, works perfectly for me in this mod, whereas most other native VR titles I’ve tried are a janky failure with throwing. Ironic.
@@MrVRVoiceIronic, sad and great all in one. I consider it a VR milestone, but at the same time, it's sad that most VR games aren't nearly as well implemented. The fact that they even managed to do a proper native bhaptics support is just the cream on top.
I liked the game as you get to around chapter 7 and up but my gripe is the guns felt too weak for the enemies especially the bosses, I think the level ups should of been more frequent I hate bullet sponges. Aside from that yeah I agree it might just be goty. Also kudos to you for your first play through on hard. I must’ve died at least 50 times for some of those boss fights on medium I must just suck.
I completely agree. The fact that such an incredible and fun game was made by a single person. I didn’t enjoy it at first but after about 2 hours I really started to love it and by the end I was in love.
Omg you played on HARD ? 0_0 I really loved it (actually not completed yet im in the last chapter I think) but the bosses are so hard I had to reduce difficulty from normal to easy for a lot of them.. In fact I felt there are a lot of difficulty issues. Sometimes it's way too easy and other times it's way too hard. I like a challenge but I felt that sometimes it was too much and got me frustrated. Also some parts are a bit repetitive like when you are on the boat and boats with bots just wont stop coming. I also didn't like how the guns have some kind of movement smoothing, it feels jank especially when trying to aim with the gun sights. You can't rapidly change target because you have to wait for the gun to get there. Still, small issues compared to how good this is.
Fun fact: I playtested this game in closed beta for months. Most of the bosses were significantly reduced in difficulty during that time. 😅 Zach basically just made them old-school hard, where you had to learn their attacks and then try over and over again. I think what he ended on now is actually pretty good. Certainly not too easy, but still doable. The very first patch for the game introduced a save state in the middle of a boss fight with the winking comment "proof that I have a heart". 🤣 But yes, dying in boss fights, strategizing and playing over and over is definitely a thing in this game.
This game was awesome. I only wonder why he went with the head and hands instead of a body. Sure, it's more jank, but I like it if the inverse kinematics are decent.
Similarly, praise should be given to Eric Thullen for his work on Ancient Dungeon, which apart from the sound design and some writing was done entirely by him as a single developer!
Ancient dungeon has a magic formula that needs to be expanded upon by its Dev now that he has something great! ..imagine adding a high res graphics mode to the existing game to attract more players. Cute voxals are okay but now that he has found the magic formula for dungeon crawler addiction, he just needs to hire some artists to make the game even better with an optional DLC high res graphics mode selectable at start up, so players can play both. he can sell the game to even more players with great graphics for those gamers who just cant buy games with retro looks like Ancient dungeon has. Ancient dungeon original retro and a high res optional DLC both old and new can exist simultaneously. I would pay him another $20 for a DLC that made his same game with high-res skyrim style dungeons art. Im sure im not the only gamer who loves it but would love it more with high-res realism. :) win win.
I can't answer that but I do know he had started conceptualizing and working on Vertigo while he was still in high school. Really talented young lad to be sure. Hope he continues to have opportunities to use his gifts.
Im so upset frigging gorilla tag and 2 screen games with vr support made it instead of gorilla tag, pc games should not be allowed in the awards, pc users without a VR hmd will just pick them because they like the PC version.
i agree. Steam shouldnt add flat screen games to vr awards.. the only game on there that might make sense is gorilla tag. but vertigo 2 needed to be there and if people in valve thought about that it would be better.
@@bartun2010gaming Gorilla tag was also kinda unfair, the game had lots of time to get attention due to it being in "early access" for a long time, so the game just "launched" that year but it was out for way longer, was able to get a lot of attention unlike vertigo. The launch was more like a small update.
@@bartun2010gaming They are, but Gorilla tag was still really unfair due to the game having grown a massive community over like 3 years. Just because the game was in "early access" doesnt mean it released this year, it released with a tiny update. It is an unfair advantage just like the screen games.
The fact that he made the soundtrack too is astounding, his aptitude for art is beyond me, to think one man can put together so many cohesive ideas in such a neat way. This has to be vr game of the year
Vertigo 2 proved that it’s not the amount of people working on a game that matter, but the competency of the people work on a game that matter.
Vertigo really deserves way more attention. definitely the most overlooked VR series out there.
It's hard to call Zach a developer for me. He's a creator, and a creative genius at that. I genuinely believe he was robbed of GOTY. It comes as high praise considering I love Alyx so much for me to say Vertigo 2 is just hands down better. Zach is going places and I'm joyfully along for the ride.
I 100% agree! Vertigo 2 SHOULD absolutely be VR game of the year, or at least be one of the choices... Like why is Gorilla Tag up there? That game came out a few years ago and is one of the worst games I have ever played *smh*
Vertigo 2 kept me occupied and kept me coming back for more in terms of its gameplay and level design. The maps were absolutely fun to explore and felt as if you were exploring another galaxy/dimension finding odd creatures/enemies on your quest to get back home. Again, I agree with you that V2 is better than Alyx in terms of gameplay. What I did not like in Alyx is its lack of interesting guns and the levels start to feel repetitive by the end of the game. Alyx is a great game, but Vertigo 2 just did everything better in my opinion - especially with its arsenal of interesting weapons. ALSO, the game has multiple paths and is WAY longer than Alyx.
On top of all that, this game had one of the most awesome updates recently giving players access to a VERY unique level editor in VR and game modifiers that change up the gameplay to a whole new game. AND again, this all comes from a single developer... one of the most all time fascinating feats.
Gorilla Tag was eligible because it left early access between the last nominations and this one. It's by far the most popular VR game besides VRChat so in a popularity contest like the Steam awards it's going to perform well.
It is a warcrime that it didn’t even get to the finalists, i experienced a glitch part way through the game that deleted all of my weapon upgrades, and yet i still loved the game and finished it all!
I love the vertigo series, AND I HAD NO IDEA IT WAS MADE BY ONE MAN. That is actually crazy, and shows how video game companies no longer put love and true effort into their work. One person with the time and dedication made in my opinion, one of the best vr games to ever come out. I totally agree, that Vertigo 2 deserves GOTY.
Zach is nothing short of a genius. To have created something so novel, and of such high quality, is truly rare and definitely deserving of praise.
GOATED opinion
There are people that forgive indie titles having bugs, issues, or areas where they just don't work very well, with the excuse that there is only one (or few) developers working on the project.
Then Zach comes along and shows what someone with talent, but more importantly, someone who is willing to put the care and attention required into a project can really do. Showing that there are really no excuses.
This game is hands down brilliant.
By the way, you were rolling chairs around about 8 minutes into the video - you can actually ride these. You DO need to enable the setting to allow it though, for which you need to find the setting in the config file (it was removed from the settings menu) for it to work. It was hidden to protect it from people thinking things are broken when they stumble into it, as it does differ a lot from the rest of the locomotion, and can be a little violent.
I have two problems with this game:
1) The scientist's voice actor is unfitting
2) If you die right after Nami, you have to listen to his long winded fetch quest again.
And that's it. That's the entirety of my complaints. Game's fun as hell.
Yes Brian’s voice age is, I did get used to it eventually and now it weirdly seems to fit him, I feel like having an age-appropriate voice would remove from the comedy of his character. I’m obviously biased/acclimatised though 😅
ALL OTHER DEVELOPERS take note. Yup those camera settings are gold for sharing content
Steam Awards for VR are a joke.
Vertigo 2 is also my 2023 GOTY.
After stumbling upon Virtigo:Remastered (which I loved), I bought this on day 1. Definitely a top 5 VR game for me (almost never play flat games). You describe my sentiments so well, and mostly for me it was the wonder aspect that made me wander and linger in places after the action was over because you never knew. With sea of shallow and mindless games out there, it's great to find this "honey hole".
I wholeheartedly agree ❤
Omg I had no idea. This guy will likely be one of the greatest game devs of all time at some point. This is beyond impressive especially when u factor in the kids age.
A really awesome VR title, played it through twice back to back.
Great vid - commenting for algorithm!
In terms of people using the number of developers as a way to excuse criticism, I have to agree, because if a developer or small team is skilled enough they can make something extremely polished, and even more polished then AAA games imo due to their scale (although I may be showing some bias to be fair). Look at Lucas Pope (the developer of Return Of The Obra Dinn and Papers Please) or Dennaton Games (the two man developer studio behind the Hotline Miami games).
I've gotta get back to playing this. I'm so bad about starting games and never finishing them.
Some of the enemy designs reminded me of what ACE team creates(Clash:Artifacts of Chaos, Zeno Clash, Eternal Cylinder) with how out there and abstract they are.
Thank you for beeing such a lovely human and Artist.
I just watched your essay on why 6dof should be utelized more in Vr and i Loved it.
All of it, it is so refreshing the way u struckture your videos and wish you find a good balance between beeing happy with your Work and having Fun.
Happy new year.
ah yes, David Attenborough. Good day sir.
I've also noticed a trend of "solo dev" or "small dev team" being used to excuse crappy games, and it's probably a means to have people still buy their game and play it right through without enjoyment, which kinda makes no sense from a consumer perspective.
The guy who made the Vertigo series is testament to what can be done if you are creative and know what you're doing, and that guy is still really young as well. He probably has a very promising career in VR if he keeps up his skills.
It really needs to be said that a solid singleplayer story driven experience has a much better chance of lasting the test of time, than a cookie-cutter pooped-out roguelike or an attempt at an fps forever-game like we are seeing a lot of currently. Every VR title to leave a lasting impression on me, have been single player story-driven games, with Lone Echo being my favourite.
vertigo 2 was a whole lot better than I was expecting. when I went in I didn't know who made the game but simple judged by the price tag. vertigo 1 and 2 for just 50 dollars was a steal. virtigo 2 was probibly my favorite game of 2023 as a whole. thank you for spotlighting it I think it doesn't get enough praise
I really like your reviews. I hope you make some psvr2 reviews in the future. Cheers
Loved your video from the start till the end. Thanks 4 bringing back the memory of this awesome game
Have to admit I didn't know about this game, but will surely be buying it now.
Can’t believe it didn’t win, literally my new favorite game campaign of all time.
Could not agree more! Vertigo 2 was f****** awesome \m/ It is my personal GOTY and Zach is the VR GOAT =D
Honestly, I'd say Vertigo 2 is by far my favorite VR game, and one of my all time favorite games in general. There's this unique feeling it gave me that very few games have ever managed to.
Half Life Alyx is great, but at the same time also felt a bit underwhelming, if that makes sense. Half Life 2 VR felt like a more interesting experience overall, which is a great achievement in of itself, considering it's a mod for a flat screen game that managed to feel more native VR than many actual native VR games.
Half Life 2 mod is excellent, and implements a 6dof feature better than any other I’ve played. Physical grenade throwing for example, works perfectly for me in this mod, whereas most other native VR titles I’ve tried are a janky failure with throwing. Ironic.
@@MrVRVoiceIronic, sad and great all in one. I consider it a VR milestone, but at the same time, it's sad that most VR games aren't nearly as well implemented. The fact that they even managed to do a proper native bhaptics support is just the cream on top.
I liked the game as you get to around chapter 7 and up but my gripe is the guns felt too weak for the enemies especially the bosses, I think the level ups should of been more frequent I hate bullet sponges. Aside from that yeah I agree it might just be goty. Also kudos to you for your first play through on hard. I must’ve died at least 50 times for some of those boss fights on medium I must just suck.
I completely agree. The fact that such an incredible and fun game was made by a single person. I didn’t enjoy it at first but after about 2 hours I really started to love it and by the end I was in love.
the story is so crazy lol
Omg you played on HARD ? 0_0
I really loved it (actually not completed yet im in the last chapter I think) but the bosses are so hard I had to reduce difficulty from normal to easy for a lot of them.. In fact I felt there are a lot of difficulty issues. Sometimes it's way too easy and other times it's way too hard. I like a challenge but I felt that sometimes it was too much and got me frustrated. Also some parts are a bit repetitive like when you are on the boat and boats with bots just wont stop coming.
I also didn't like how the guns have some kind of movement smoothing, it feels jank especially when trying to aim with the gun sights. You can't rapidly change target because you have to wait for the gun to get there.
Still, small issues compared to how good this is.
Fun fact: I playtested this game in closed beta for months. Most of the bosses were significantly reduced in difficulty during that time. 😅 Zach basically just made them old-school hard, where you had to learn their attacks and then try over and over again. I think what he ended on now is actually pretty good. Certainly not too easy, but still doable. The very first patch for the game introduced a save state in the middle of a boss fight with the winking comment "proof that I have a heart". 🤣 But yes, dying in boss fights, strategizing and playing over and over is definitely a thing in this game.
Algorithmen comment
Convinced me to pick it up cheers!
I cant believe it didnt win !
Cool I will give this game a try :)
This game was awesome. I only wonder why he went with the head and hands instead of a body. Sure, it's more jank, but I like it if the inverse kinematics are decent.
Thank you for the spoiler warning. I do want to go in blind, but I wanted to see what aspects about it you enjoyed the most to make it your VRGOTY.
Vertigo 2 is also number one for me. Followed by Asgard's Wrath 2
The genius and talent of amazes me. A shining star in game development.
nice
Similarly, praise should be given to Eric Thullen for his work on Ancient Dungeon, which apart from the sound design and some writing was done entirely by him as a single developer!
Ancient dungeon has a magic formula that needs to be expanded upon by its Dev now that he has something great! ..imagine adding a high res graphics mode to the existing game to attract more players. Cute voxals are okay but now that he has found the magic formula for dungeon crawler addiction, he just needs to hire some artists to make the game even better with an optional DLC high res graphics mode selectable at start up, so players can play both. he can sell the game to even more players with great graphics for those gamers who just cant buy games with retro looks like Ancient dungeon has. Ancient dungeon original retro and a high res optional DLC both old and new can exist simultaneously. I would pay him another $20 for a DLC that made his same game with high-res skyrim style dungeons art. Im sure im not the only gamer who loves it but would love it more with high-res realism. :) win win.
it is indeed a great game but he needs to add more content
@@janchan2258 i hope so, hope he finishes his multiplayer patch already, so we can get new content patches soon after. :)
I have a 3060 but I’m not sure Vertigo 2 it will run on this laptop.
probably will, it's pretty smooth on my 2070
I run it just fine on a 1660 super you should have absolutely zero issues running on a 3060
Idk about game of the year
Maybe after a few patches🤔
Hey could you make an Honest rewiev about bonelab sometimes?
ua-cam.com/video/haKrx8dyFPc/v-deo.htmlfeature=shared
I wonder how he got so talented.
I can't answer that but I do know he had started conceptualizing and working on Vertigo while he was still in high school. Really talented young lad to be sure. Hope he continues to have opportunities to use his gifts.
@@c.g.vonhagenstein7576 me too
I just got a refund for this game on PSVR2. That port is garbage. I hope they fix it so I can buy it again on sale. It sounds like a good game.
Im so upset frigging gorilla tag and 2 screen games with vr support made it instead of gorilla tag, pc games should not be allowed in the awards, pc users without a VR hmd will just pick them because they like the PC version.
i agree. Steam shouldnt add flat screen games to vr awards.. the only game on there that might make sense is gorilla tag. but vertigo 2 needed to be there and if people in valve thought about that it would be better.
@@bartun2010gaming Gorilla tag was also kinda unfair, the game had lots of time to get attention due to it being in "early access" for a long time, so the game just "launched" that year but it was out for way longer, was able to get a lot of attention unlike vertigo. The launch was more like a small update.
@@Crispy_CornFlake yeah but gorrila still is a vr only game.. id say the flat screen games are the bigger problem
@@bartun2010gaming They are, but Gorilla tag was still really unfair due to the game having grown a massive community over like 3 years. Just because the game was in "early access" doesnt mean it released this year, it released with a tiny update. It is an unfair advantage just like the screen games.
999th viewer 💯
Doesn’t the developer’s dad work at Valve? Not to detract by any means, but I mean c’mon that’s gotta help.
This is spoken about in an interview I did with Zach a while ago: ua-cam.com/video/f9efFexge7I/v-deo.htmlfeature=shared