Recent reviews by Jesoe

Virtual ADHD medication that scratches that idle itch.

Among the many terrible $5 Steam horror games, this is NOT one of them!
This game will give you and your friends around 3-4 hours of puzzles, mazes, and lots of chases.

---

Critiques:

• Puzzles are enjoyable and fun but controls for interacting with the puzzles can be very clunky.
  
  
• The animations could use some polishing.
  
  
• There 100% needs to be some form of a hotbar/item wheel to quickly swap between different items in your inventory.
  
  
• In my opinion, the horror aspect should be kicked up a few notches. The monsters and environment are not scary enough visually/audibly.
  
  
• Once you learn the monster's patterns and behaviors, a lot of the challenge is removed and the thrill drops significantly. I don't want to feel like I can puppet them around in the palm of my hand. I want to feel nearly hopeless and be holding my breath till the finish line.

---

Overall, the game is easily worth the price and I am eager for future updates.

This is an early access title that doesn't even feel like an early access title.
The amount and quality of content is so diverse and extensive that I ended up sinking just over 60 hours into this game over the span of two weeks and I still haven't done all there is to offer.
It's as if Terraria and Stardew Valley came together to give us the best of both along with some new concepts as well.
Overall for the price this game is hugely worth it for fans of the genre.

A fantastic and satisfying VR experience.

Of all the VR titles I've played, this one is definitely among the best.
It's one of the few out there that truly has a "finished" feel to it.
Sure, there's room for improvement but Smashbox Arena is an amazing step in the right direction for VR multiplayer games.

Pros:

- Hillarious and fun gameplay. I found myself booting it up for the first time to just give it a quick try and see what all the hype was about... Fast forward 4 hours and I'm still having a blast at 4:34am.

- The story mode. I think the story mode is a fantastic way to introduce players into the game! The difficulties scale decently well and allow players to get a feel for the game before jumping into multiplayer! It could have a bit more added to it as far as content goes, but seeing as how the primary focus of this game is it's multiplayer aspect, it's really easy to overlook.

- Great community. I guess this really speaks for the whole VR community in general, but I've met some of the nicest people in this game. Hardly any toxicity!

Cons:

- Matchmaking. Just like any multiplayer game, there will be multitudes of different skill levels amongst players. This game does have a sort of ranking system where players can earn badges, but there isn't any sort of filtering along with that.. For example if three veterans join a game with 3 newbies, the veterans could end up all on the same team resulting in an incredibly unbalanced game.

- Bugs. There are bound to be bugs in nearly any VR game. That's just a given. Even so, there's one particular bug that I've seen multiple times now in which players are able to reach through walls. For example if I'm standing on one side of a wall and you're standing on the other, I can reach my gun forward and stick it through the wall in some cases and shoot you. Not necesarily game breaking, but a definite annoyance.

- Bots. The bots in this game, even on their hardest difficulty, aren't much of a challenge. I was able to breeze through all three difficulties in story mode fairly easily. I think some improvements to map awareness for the bots would do wonders as there are times where they get stuck trying to teleport to the same spot over and over. Another thing is that they don't turn in your direction when firing. So if the bot is looking and pointing it's gun to the right, and I'm to it's left, the ball will shoot sideways out of it's gun and hit. This isn't too big of a deal once you get used to it but it can be a bit annoying when a bot is turned one way, making you believe his focus is elsewhere, and then suddenly a ball comes flying towards your face.

- Hitbox. The hitboxes in this game can be a bit inconsistent at times. For the most part it's not a problem but there has been a time or two where I've deflected a ball directly away from me but it still registers as a hit. I debated even adding this to cons because of how rarely it happend, but it *did* happen so I figured I should at least say something.


The verdict: BUY IT! Smashbox Arena is definitely one you don't want to miss out on. It's multiplayer experience is unrivaled and it packs endless hours of multiplayer entertainment.