Bonelab is a difficult game to recommend, at least for right now, and is yet another contender in the pool of "I wish steam had a neutral review option". It's also not the simplest to review given it's similar name to Boneworks, as such I'll be labeling the two different games as BL for Bonelab and BW for Boneworks to make it easier to write and differentiate.

BL is a game marketed as a sequel to BW, with updated visuals, content and a whole new campaign to boot. The game delivers on some of these and falls back on MANY others, primarily in the campaign and the content. I'm not so bothered by the visual downgrades in some areas, on the contrary I'm wildly impressed at just how good the game can look on the Quest 2, it's an achievement in that regard.

I played the game on PC with a Quest 1 and a GTX 1070. I suffered none of the crashes or slowdowns that many with far beefier computers than I have, so you're not going to find performance complaints in this review. Neither will you find complaints on the input, as the game was tailored for the Oculus/Meta inputs. However, It is difficult to ignore just how many people are suffering on the PC version of BL, it's astounding that even Index players are struggling to even pick items up with their hands without things falling apart.

Another odd issue with the game is housed in the gameplay itself, the guns. I was a bit of a crack shot in BW, able to pull of some cool shots in and out of slow-mo. In BL something is going on with the guns and I can't really tell what it is, I could be dead on with my aim on an enemy and the bullet will miss entirely, or at the least not hit where I was aiming. This, the physics and the issues above are all things I hope get fixed in a short timeframe, as you can frustrate players with this for only so long.

This brings me back to Oculus/Meta, SLZ, the developers, have stated that their partnership with Oculus/Meta would not have any effect on the PC version or it's development. After the release of BL, I simply don't believe them on that, as it seems most, if not the entire PC playerbase was an afterthought until BL's actual release. Vive is now considered a completely unsupported way of playing BL (though they have been transparent about that for months now, still sucks) which I suppose is understandable to SOME extent, though the fact that Index, WMR and PIMAX players are all suffering unique issues that make the game entirely unplayable is near unforgivable considering how long this game has been in development.

Speaking of the game's development, let's talk about the fruits of that labor, the contents of the game itself. BL is intended as a more sandboxy follow-up to BW, a game in which I love very much. So much so it's my favorite VR game of all time, surpassing HL: Alyx. BW had a pretty lengthy campaign, resting around at least ~10-15 hours on a casual playthrough, the game challenged your critical thinking and ability to manipulate the physics in order to solve puzzles. The game boasted full body physics and a reasonable amount of side content that could keep you entertained for at least a while. BL's approach was almost entirely on the side content, instead of the campaign.

BL's campaign is roughly 4.5 hours in length, 7 if you REALLY take your time. The first chapter of the campaign is the opening of the game, and the rest is somewhat hidden behind this overarching puzzle, which ropes you into playing at least a little bit of each type of side content the game has to offer before you can continue the story. I'm not alone in believing that this approach is terrible, I really did enjoy being able to play the entirety of BW's campaign from start to finish on release day. But stopping me dead just when I was getting interested, to side-track me into playing some side modes for an hour or so, then making me do a tedious puzzle before I could continue your crafted story mode? It's so bizarre it borders on insanity on SLZ's part, I have no idea why they went this route. What campaign IS there is... decent? Most of the levels are pretty fun (go fuck yourself, pillar) but pale in comparison to some of BW's tamest levels. The story wasn't all that hard to follow, and the added lore is nice to see wherever decipherable. I enjoyed the ending sequence of the game more than most, I thought it was a nice way to end things off and a good lore dump. The campaign is really only good for a second playthrough once you have the avatars (mentioned later), so that can bring you to a 7-8 hour campaign if you count replaying to get extra hidden items.

Okay fine, so the campaign itself isn't much to look at this time around, what about the ACTUAL intended content of the game? Well, the game boasts a handful of new guns, 2~ new pistols, SMGs, Rifles and a new type of weapon, shotguns, something that was actually going to be in BW back in the day (just look at their old pre-release videos for BW on the Node channel). The new side modes are mostly fun, Arena got some new maps as well as some revamped old ones, you have Tac Trials, Sandbox makes a return with one or two new maps. Then there's the final 2, Parkour and the ever useless Experimental. My running assumption is that experimental is intended for modders to put new game modes into that don't exactly fit into other categories, but its current existence is questionable at best. Parkour is fun if a bit frustrating at times with newfound physics bugs and my hands seemingly trying to clip into every surface imaginable, an issue not often present back in BW. The final unmentioned mode isn't even a mode, it's just a station to install and manage mods that have yet to be made for the game, so right now it's a glorified space filler until a month or so from now.

The final, potentially biggest original piece of content to this game the avatar swap, IIRC it's called holo-mod(bod?) in the game. This system isn't available to you until roughly 50-60% into the campaign, and you spend most of the remainder of it collecting the rest of the avatars, and are then thrust into the game's finale. Each avatar has a unique look, height, weight and set of stats that can include speed and strength. I guess the intent with the avatars is for all the side content and modding, because the moment you've collected them all, the game is basically over. One of the selling points of BL is this system however, part of the appeal is the ability to port over your own models through unity, directly into the game with it's own tailored stats. This would be much cooler if it were easier for ANYONE to do this, but you'll have to download Git, a specific unity version, multiple SDKs, follow a relatively lengthy guide and to top that all off, a PC. Quest players and PC players who don't want to go through that trouble will just have to wait for others to mod the game, as well as wait for SLZ to even put the mod browser online, as right now no one can upload their models directly into the game yet.

I'm not alone in believing that it wasn't in good faith to charge the community $40 a slice (compared to $30 for BW) for a game that isn't even half as long, and doesn't have enough side content to keep you hooked for long, especially if you've already played BW quite a lot. All the while leaving a majority of that price tag up to the community. Unpaid, passionate players are going to be the only ones bringing this game even close to being worth $40 in the future. That's not to say that the mods won't be good, Unity is a rather moddable engine and the SDK SLZ provided grants near unrestricted access to put whatever we desire into the game, whether it be a code mod, simple avatars, weapons, maps or modes. Despite this, I still can't defend charging this much for a game so bare in it's current state and leaving most of the future development to those who paid for it. BW came out near the end of 2019, coming off of a 2-3 year devcycle. BL is a game built on the base of BW with at least 2 years of added development time, so it's not entirely unreasonable to be somewhat confused that no true innovation or even a substantial amount of content has come from this release. Was most of development spent on creating a functional version for the Quest 2? These are questions only SLZ themselves have answers to.

I'm going to continue playing BL, as I do find the game itself pretty fun, and I wish to exhaust all the pre-made content before some real mods start to hit the scene. Another thing that makes this release troublesome however is that because of this shaky release, people are either dropping the game or refunding it, which makes it all the more likely players are not going to return to this game once it is actually worth playing and spending money on. I foresee the game having a small but dedicated modding community on PC, with a pretty Quest reliant playerbase, as things are NOT going well on PC by comparison.

TL;DR: Bonelab is a game that is, while fun, pretty bare in its current state. Barring the lacking physics compared to the previous and major game breaking bugs for PC players, it's a hard sell. Wait at least a few months for further fixes and for the community to provide content worth playing. For now, buy Boneworks instead and experience that bit of majesty.

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Pub: 01 Oct 2022 19:17 UTC

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