The Assembly

I played this in VR only. It is a short game, and old, but still very interesting. I really dislike the fact that smooth locomotion is not an option, but since this isn't an action game that can be overlooked. Teleport movement works just fine. The graphics are decent, especially when considering it's from 2016. It seems there are likely multiple endings, so it has opportunity for replay. I just ran through it once so far though. The logic puzzles are not overly complex, and there are some choices to be made that I'm assuming will affect the epilogue dramatically. I guess I have to play again to find out!
Do to the very short length of the game (my first run was 3 hours), I suggest waiting for a sale.

Didn't lunch... Crashing all the time in vr

Totally not for VR.
No motion controller support, you have to teleport everywhere, or walk by making ONE step per button pressed (?!)
No ability to interact with objects manually. If you want to open the door, you can’t take the handle and open it, you have to point at the door with the laser and press a button. If you want to take an object you need to, again, point at it, press the button, then it hovers above your controller and then disappears in your chest somewhere. You can’t actually “take” or “hold” anything.
The game itself is good, story is pretty engaging, but I expected more VR-oriented gameplay since, well… it supports it at all. This is the first time I see something like that in a VR game, and that was an unpleasant surprise. So unpleasant that I actually wanted to refund it, but decided to keep it for the story. I mean, no controller motion? No taking anything in your hand? Why bother making it VR at all, if even these things are not there? It simply kills the immersion completely, what's the point then? Like come on, even small and cheap games like Ok, Bob has direct object interaction!
So, if you are planning to play this in VR, my advise here is don’t. The experience will be annoying and disappointing.
Non VR users - wait till the sales and go for it, it’s not brilliant, but still pretty good.

Impressive graphic quality, but the story is confusing and gameplay is slow and dreary.

Didn't get very far into it. The story and gameplay seems interesting enough, but really needs support for index controllers. Some other QOL changes would be nice, too. Like, being able to recenter the camera view. Made it very frustrating to play.

Keeps you mildly entertained for a short time. The credits surprised me. Other games like this are way better in story, world and gameplay fun.
I got it at a reduced price and sadly that was still too much. Really, don't.

- short
- not deep
- world makes not too much sense and feels very graphically dated
- No graphics settings, requires editing of unreal config ini.
- English voice acting is good. German voice not so good. Imagine your dad making up voices for a bedtime story
- Changing voice to english required a secret start parameter from the developer mentioned in the discussions.

It's quite pretty with fairly simple puzzles and seems fairly linear. It is quite short and there only seems to be a little bit of replayability I might go back and discover the other Adam options

The controls are fairly well done and the story isn't bad. Feels a little odd that in a high security secret lab, almost no-one locks their PCs, they leave confidential files in plain sight and leave incriminating evidence on memo recorders but then the entire story is a little contrived!

I think it is worth the sale price but there's nothing hugely new or memorable in it.

I give up. I really wanted to like this game, but the autosave system is worthless. It saves once per chapter... which if you're a completionist like me, might take you 20 minutes. So, combine a save once every twenty minutes with a buggy game that can't tolerate losing your headset and you're going to find yourself repeating entire levels... A LOT. it's happened to me no less than 4 or 5 times.

Almost to the end of a level and I accidentally teleport into a wall... game freezes.... crashes... and I'm back at the start of the chapter.

My Vive wireless battery goes dead... normally not a big deal with most games. Pop on a new battery and your back in business with most games pausing and letting you jump right back in. Not this one, you lose your audio, completely... no way to recover without restarting the game. 15 minutes into a level and I'm left with no audio or way to load a recent save.

It's not like the game is all that challenging.... why isn't there a more frequent save system? Maybe save with every collectible I pick up? Save with each minor accomplishment within a chapter. Or, sin of all sins, let me save my progress on demand.

If you like first-person exploration games with a slight touch of puzzles, this may be worthwhile when on sale. Otherwise, it'll probably feel lacking. It's not a Myst or Obduction or Talos or Quern. It's more like Firewatch, where there's not many puzzles and it's more about taking in the atmosphere and story than it is exploring worlds and solving puzzles.

The game is essentially wandering around a few different floors of a secret research facility. There are a few puzzles, but not many, and they're not difficult either. Most of the gameplay is akin to wandering a floor, finding a key in a locker or a passcode on a computer, then using that to enter an area that was previously locked.

The game has an interesting theme but played more like an interactive story than a first-person puzzler.

I'm surprised this game has so many good reviews. The story seems like it has a lot of promise as you go along and I expected some sort of epic finale after all the endless exploration, build-up of the story (which got way more convoluted at the end without much added interest or real conclusion to the main storyline) and annoyingly simple puzzles, which were also very few and far between, bookended between repetitive and pointless exploration of endless dull offices. Makes VR uninspiring and requires an eye-straining amount of play. A waste of time.

Great game, In a world of games with little depth for the vive this one has a really interesting story.

It starts off a bit slow , I actyually lost interest until I did the first trial, and saw how the story was going to unfold. It is also something you can sink 6 to 8 hours on without repeating any content, which is super rare on the vive right now. This game is really wortht he 30$. if you want and there are multiple endings.

Pros:
-great length especially for vive game. not too long or short.
-Fully voice acting, really good job
-multiple endings based on choice
-Story is not too difficult to follow while still being told in an interesting way.
- The puzzles keep the game interesting and flesh out the levels
- movement system good for people prone to nausea

Cons:
-Puzzles are pretty simple, but hey, at least you dont have to exit vive to look up answers
-All of the human models are like 4 feet tall what was up with that?? They look like dolls from the proportion
-Game advertises making choices, which you do, but many of these choices only arise very late in the game.
-Lighting could have been better (not big deal)

I played this with the HTC vive.

Pros:
-Story driven with great voice acting. I played the german version. There is not much story driven VR content but this would be good without VR too.
-Graphics. While probably not groundbreaking they are good enough to feel like you're there. Playing with a Titan X Pascal at 1.8 SS it looked great.
-Sound, Music, Voice acting - just great

Cons:
-The added motion controls are just that: Added. You'll never need to actually duck to find something. You can feel that this was designed for the xbox controller. It is still better to play with the vive controllers though. Could've been done better though.
-Lengh: Played through in about 3.5 hours. I has a bit replayability with multiple endings and achievements though.


I would buy it again and reccoment it to anyone who owns a Vive or Rift.

I tried this with both the xbox controller sitting and Vive controllers in roomscale and was disappointed with both interfaces. Sitting with the controller felt like it should have been a roomscale game but forced a controller on it. Using roomscale it felt like an interface designed for a controller. Worst of both sides. I would recommend playing it sitting with a gaming controller

In Vive controller mode the interact button is also the same as the teleport button and often I found myself teleporting through walls on accident because I tried to interact with something near a wall.

Other than the clunky interface it's not a terrible game and I liked the ambiance, settings, and puzzles.

I believe the rule is if you can't say anything nice,. say nothing,. So I will start with the good things about this game. The graphics are great! really some of the best I've seen in VR yet. The Voice acting is really good and the sound is great.

So now with the problems I have with this game. First off it's painfully ovbvious it is a port into VR from your standard point and click computer adventure game. When I'm playing VR I want to feel like I'm really there. I want to be able to pick up and manipulate everything, like in the Gallery, or SVRVIE or Chair in a room. It really takes away from the immersion when you can only kind of interact with items that are highlighted with certian icons when your pointer from your motion controller passes over it.

Speaking of Motion controllers. the locomotion system is terrible. I cannot tell you how many times I would teleport into the middle of a wall. It feels like the developers were like, "Dang, we put all this time into this game and no one likes the locomotion so lets through in a quick teleport patch and not test it out to appease the masses." Also they don't work well with the puzzles.

Speaking of puzzles or game play,.. you spend your time in this game as two different characters. The male characters game play, which is the bulk of the game, consists of opening drawers and lockers, reading emails and answering phones. seriously,.. that's pretty much it. the voice overs tell you everythiing you need to do and it's linear as hell and just boring. I do all of those things every day at work. The female's part of the game is a series of "puzzles" you need to solve. One in particular involves moving these large floating cubes around with this joy stick,. only you don't actually grab the joy stick,.. you are supposed to use your thumb pad which is maddening because no matter which controller I used trying to get the cubes to move to the right was down right impossible. or trying to move a highlighted number to the right on a key pad. Did I mention the controls were just terrible in this game. There was one puzzle where you had to walk around and solve this who done it type of murder mystery by listening to tapes opening drawers and reading emails... Ok now that I think about it it wasn't that great either.

The story was also just boring as hell. a bit preachy at times. There is just no way that this game is worth 30 bucks. I bought it when it was on sale for a pretty substantial amount after they "fixed" the control and locomotion issues. seriously maybe 5 bucks,.. there are just so many other games out there that are miles above this one. pretty graphics just don't cut it when virtually everything else in the game sucks.

OK I didn't really go into the reasons I found this story so terrible for the whole spoiler factor for any one that didn't heed my warning and want to play this game any way so if you are reading and don't want the whole thing spoiled stop reading now.

First off,. aftter 8 years of med school and 20 years of private practice this story certainly did not go over my head. It was just that the whole "evil greedy corporation bioenginering pathogens to spread to an unsuspecting population through natural vectors like birds, monkeis, bugs, zombies, you name it" has be done to death and if you are going to use that narrative at least make it interesting. there were never any consequences for this and all you did was walk around and dig through file cabinets and read emails. there was no suspence, no action, you would think that at least the security cameras that followed you around would alert the higher ups that you were up to something,.. messing with there "amazing" artificially intellegent main frame and all. but no big deal there. Carry on.

Second,. What the hell was up with those terrible, simplistic puzzles? I mean really. If this deep cover operation that employs only ninjas,.. (ok maybe they were some kind of filtration mask,. that eveyone wore every where,. or maybe a cheap way to not have to animate mouths) really wants to test their applicants to see how smart they are,. why woud they give them a bunch of easy grade school level test to perform? And another thing,. why for the ever loving fuck, did this corporation build these GIANT freaking rooms do to test that could easily be done on a laptop? That is just not a very good use of resources for your evil plans. Speaking of giant stupid rooms,. the impossible outbreak puzzle??? really?? yeah that totally needed a big ass freatking room just so we could for some reason get a 30 year old argument about the dangers of irresponcible antibiotic use. I totally see how that is relevant in this story.

Third,. if you want to make me feel like there is some big moral choices to make at the end of the game, maybe they should have done a better job at getting me to know that character than "I experimented on my mom and my dad is a dick" Take the money, exicute the old man, and why can't I just kill the baby now?

I'm updating this review after ending the game. 6.2hrs with 22/29 achievements, I was quite sure to reach most of achievements to be honest, it's a good surprise (especially the achievement for collect all dossiers). Could be surely finished in the half of the time, if you jump away to dialogues or exploration, but with a such mood could be better an action game than an adventure.

Great story, extremely geek oriented, moral choices during the game and well... I'm sad the game is ended to be honest, not because it's short (to be a VR game it's quite long) but because I was totally involved into the story and honestly I hope in sequels or DLCs, so many side stories inside.

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Bought it after the handtracking support update, as I'm a Vive owner. What a game and what a graphics! It's basically a sort of point and click adventure, but for VR. The story seems extremely interesting, with good dialogues and voices, and english subtitles are activable if needed (please, consider to translate at least subtitles in many languages).

The roomscale use and the whole button assignment for Vive wands need some work, as the game was built over sitting + pad interface. But it's very easy to forgive this, with a such quality! Lots of interactive objects, pointing and activating instead grabbing like Job Simulator, but you can open any door or drawer.

Finally a real adventure for VR, and a good one.

About negative reviews until yesterday (quite a lot!) almost all of them came from Vive owners frustrated for the lack of handtracking. This is no more an issue.

DONT BELIEVE THE OTHER REVIEWERS!!!!!

The game looks nice and has an intruiging framework with this mystical organisation. The puzzles are demanding and interesting as well.

NONETHELESS: the game takes like 2 hours to play through and the story is a HUGE disappointment in the end without any real implications for the planet or something, like i wouldve expected since the assembly is such an allmighty organisation...

The disappointment will be complete if theres no sequel... which i wouldnt buy for 20 Euro anymore tho...

I guess this whole game is just some sort of VR-Gag and wasnt supposed to offer a deep story.

I think that, as a Vive owner, I was a bit disappointed by the lack of motion controller support. I think when the Rift also has these, every game that involves walking about will absolutely *need* this capability - and I would guess The Assembly will get that in time. (If you want a good example of this, look to Vanishing Realms, a much lower visual fidelity game perhaps, but one that wins hugely in terms of immersion from its control method).

That said, plug in a 360 controller and it doesn't take long to become emersed in this title. It is clearly a big step up from much of the early bird stuff we've seen until now - an actual games studio producing a tentative step into the VR world. I still think it's only a first taste of what is possible, but at the very least a good first sip nonetheless.

UPDATE: Vive motion controllers are now supported, and - for me at least - this made a huge difference, moving around the game world is now so much better. Thanks to the devs, and well done!

I just finished playing through the non-VR version of the game.

PROs:
Interesting storyline
Noticable attention to detail in modelled game assets
Clever adaptation of the puzzle/sleuth genre into the intended VR format

CONS:
Short game!

I'm quite impressed with what nDreams has been able to create. And while the game is rather short, it has some replayability. I look forward to playing this again when I have an HTC Vive!

Oh, The Assembly...

Well, for a "walking simulator" it's quite serviceable.
As is usually the case in these games, you spend most
of the time walking around, inspecting different items while looking
for the handful of specific ones that will let you move on to the
next area. It's par for the course and works like you'd expect.
The game also has some simple but neat puzzle solving sprinkled in
to break up the monotony, which is a welcome distraction when it occurs.

Presentation isn't bad, with clean graphics and some "hit or miss" voice acting.
The story is interesting enough, relatively speaking, if somewhat slow.
It's nowhere near as profound as it presents itself as, but - given what else is out
on the VR platforms right now, it could have been a lot worse and still came out
better than most of it's competitors.

As a VR game on the whole, however, it's not much to celebrate.

For the most part, it uses a crosshair in the middle of your sights to target things,
much like you would choose a scene in Oculus Dreamdeck.
Sadly, there is no way to decouple the HMD movement from your virtual body,
so moving around never feels natural.
There is also no support for VIVE motion controllers, even though the simple 3-button control
scheme could easily have been mapped to one of the wands.
The developer cites "VR parity" as the reason for this, and have said that they will not be
implementing support for those controllers.

Which brings me to the elephant in the room, of course.
nDreams have received plenty of feedback (most of it bad) regarding
their pricing model on the Steam forums - and while the company servbot, JennyB,
keeps rehashing a canned response (when she should have been apologizing instead)
about how the higher priced VR bundle is actually the base game,
that doesn't change the fact that we are charged a de facto premium
compared to playing the game in 2D.
This looks especially poor given the engine the game is built on,
and how the bare-bones VR implementation suggests that they've
simply just unticked the "VR checkbox" in Unreal4.

So, you know. The day a publisher makes a game's "ultra" graphics settings a paid DLC (since that's
something not everyone will be able to enjoy) you'll know who to thank for setting that precedent.

More detail can be found in the developer's official reply here:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/373650/discussions/0/359543951713952090/#c359543951714277675

Almost insultingly simple puzzles, story is very cliche and extremely slow paced, and is full of "pseudo-intellectual" nonesense and so-deep moral dilemmas. Not worth the money VR or no VR.

The game was also 3hrs long, and I took quite a lot of time examining every room (for seemingly nothing mostly.)

UPDATE: (I wish there was a maybe button, but I'm recommending anyways)
This game is great. It works as a standing experience or as a sitting one in VR. I've not tried non-vr but I'm sure vr is where it shines.

Pros:
-wonderful graphics and voice acting. It's very immersive.
-interesting puzzles and locations
-very polished for a vr game
-interesting story
-5-6 hours of playtime.

Cons:
-no motion controller support
-you must exit steamvr BEFORE launching the game. It caused a lot of problems for me, as you can see in the later end of this review.
-costs extra for VR.


(OLD REVIEW)The following has been fixed:

Unplayable mess on my Vive. I meet more than the system expecations and I'm getting nothing but missed frames. I've tried on two systems so far.

I'll hold on to the game and change my review if it is fixed within a reasonable amount of time. But for now, no go.

I also don't understand why I had to pay $10 extra for VR support when it's supposedly a VR game.

I understand if it was a game like "The Vanishing of Ethan Carter" which was origninally a non-vr game. I'll gladly support that and pay extra since they put in EXTRA work to port their game over. If this was built from the ground up, there is no reason to nickle and dime us.