Every weekend VRFocus gathers together vacancies from across the virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) industry, in locations around the globe to help make finding that ideal job easier. Below is a selection of roles that are currently accepting applications across a number of disciplines, all within departments and companies that focus on immersive entertainment.
Don’t forget, if there wasn’t anything that took your fancy this week there’s always last week’s listings on The VR Job Hubto check as well.
If you are an employer looking for someone to fill an immersive technology related role – regardless of the industry – don’t forget you can send us the lowdown on the position and we’ll be sure to feature it in that following week’s feature. Details should be sent to Peter Graham (pgraham@vrfocus.com).
We’ll see you next week on VRFocus at the usual time of 3PM (UK) for another selection of jobs from around the world.
Lies Beneath (2020), the Oculus-exclusive survival horror VR game from Gunheart (2018) creators Drifter Entertainment, launched late last month on Oculus Quest. Now Rift users can get into the fun too, if you can call being slightly traumatized “fun”.
We generally liked Lies Beneath on Quest, giving it a solid [7/10] in our review for its intense graphic novel visual style, interesting hand-drawn enemies and environments, and serviceable action.
While Lies Beneath a pretty bare-bones shooter at its core, this gritty standalone adventure has a lot going for it though. The level of fear and violence in the game’s dark and foreboding universe is a big standout for us in general, although melee fighting and object interaction don’t really shine as much as we had hoped.
Although clearly built with Quest in mind first, Lies Beneath made some interesting design decisions which give it a look more befitting of the PC VR platform, namely its dark, claustrophobic levels and cool cell shaded environment. This, even if it’s a 1:1 port, shouldn’t put you off, or feel overly ‘mobile-y’. That said, you’ll easily sink in the 6+ hours to complete, and maybe come back for more on a higher difficulty level.
Newly revealed survival horror game Lies Beneath is now available for the Oculus Rift and Rift S through the Oculus Store. The game was developed by Drifter Entertainment and published by Oculus Studios, with an exclusive pre-Rift launch on the Oculus Quest at the end of last month.
Drifter previously worked on the Quest port of Robo Recall, and developed co-op shooter Gunheart before that. The team first teased Lies Beneath in a mysterious trailer earlier this year, and now that it’s been out on the Oculus Quest for two weeks, it’s available for the Oculus Rift as well. However, if you already purchased the Oculus Quest version and want to play it on Rift, don’t fear! The title is cross-buy across the two platforms, so one purchase will give you access to the game on both platforms.
We reviewed the Quest version of Lies Beneath on release and David was pretty happy with how the game panned out. While it’s not the pinnacle of VR scares and horror, it carries a tense atmosphere and stylish art style throughout:
While Lies Beneath doesn’t pack enough true terror to be considered a new peak for VR horror, it does manage to craft an intriguing story in a stylishly formed world with mostly satisfying combat and palpable tension. It’s exciting to see a developer that was so previously rooted in the fast-paced action shooter category branching out to something more slow-paced, narratively-driven, and visually unique.
Lies Beneath is a single-player survivor horror from Drifter Entertainment, the studio behind Gunheart (2018), Rise of the Gunters (2018), and the Quest version of Robo Recall (2016). Departing somewhat from its previous VR titles, Drifter has delivered a gritty, stylish standalone tale that serves up equal doses of violence and fear, making for a unique offering in Quest’s still fairly demure library of games. A few issues keep me from truly loving it, but Lies Beneath still proves to be a super stylish and serviceable shooter.
Lies Beneath Details:
Developer: Drifter Entertainment Publisher: Oculus Studios Available On: Oculus Quest (Rift coming soon) Reviewed On: Quest Release Date: March 31st, 2020 Price: $30
Gameplay
Playing Lies Beneath was a pretty daunting task. At the beginning, the game sets the stage by suggesting users wear headphones for complete audio immersion. It’s not a bad idea if you want to shut out anyone else in the house who’s idly bumping around, because after a while you’ll begin to tune into every directional audio signal for signs of your imminent demise from the game’s ghoulish creatures.
While keeping out those random outside jostles can be important to maintaining your sanity, I still opted to go with Quest’s default audio because I kind of instinctively wanted some semblance of separation from the game’s gritty melange of vibes, which felt like equal parts Tales of the Crypt, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Sin City.
Image courtesy Drifter Entertainment
Firstly, Lies Beneath is a Quest game that’s punching above its weight class. It cleverly hides its mobile roots with a hand-drawn, cell shaded style that plays out in an extremely dark and super claustrophobic swath of environments. As a result, loading new areas is invisible and instantaneous, enemies are always lurking around each corner, and you’re left with very little break in pacing as a result. Pressure on the player to move forward is at a near constant, which in part justifies the game’s singular gauntlet; there’s little exploration to be had outside of the main pathway, but you may easily be fooled into thinking otherwise with how long and truly winding the game’s levels are.
The game’s constant pressure is relieved only momentarily at generic rest stops, which oftentimes includes the same set of ammo supply crates, weapons, food for mobile health regen, and a fire that cures any wounds you may have. Outside of these periodic stops, there are also save points scattered throughout the game in the form of lightable lanterns.
Image courtesy Drifter Entertainment
These stops add a much more ‘gamey’ feeling than I would have preferred, as you’re basically fed all of the kit you need (or accidentally drop along the way) at painfully obvious moments, and in the same predictable format. There are some tiny bits of exploration as you run across found items that allow you to find more loot at your rest stop, but like I said, you’re basically funneled through a very linear pathway.
As for making your way through the narrative, you’ll find a modest variety of weapons along the way, including things like pistols, shotguns, and bladed weapons such as axes, butcher knives, and machetes. Shooting, I think, is purposefully meant for mid to short-range kills; there are no iron sights, and virtual recoil makes shooting feel a little unpredictable at longer ranges, which puts most of the action a few meters away at any given time. Ammo is rare on all but the easiest of the three difficulty settings, making your shooting skills especially relevant as you default to keeping baddies at arm’s length.
Image courtesy Drifter Entertainment
Melee is a big part too, but it feels more like a simplistic last resort than a true alternative to shooting, as you can’t appreciably block or dodge incoming attacks, leaving you to swing frantically and hope for the best.
In all of this, your lighter provides you with a dim light as well as a constant hint as to where you need to go next, as the flame waves in the direction of your next objective. Not only that, but it also injects a simple reticle for your pistols, and also reveals enemy weak points for one-shot dispatches. The reticle helps cover up some of my shooting woes, but I’d rather have functional sights personally.
This, as you’d imagine, using all of these items keeps you on your toes, as you need to quickly juggle between bladed weapons, pistols, food, and two-handed weapons such as shotguns. The inventory system is minimal, relegating you to holsters; two points on your hips, two on your shoulders, and a single one on your chest reserved for the lighter. Playing seated can be a pain in the ass if you have arm rests, so you should either play standing or on a flat surface like a couch so you can easily reach down to holster and unholster items.
Image courtesy Drifter Entertainment
One of the bigger gripes I have with Lies Beneath is variety of enemies; it’s functionally on the low side even despite a dozen or so different character models. The game’s 20 levels are littered with interesting-looking baddies, although they’re effectively variations of weak or strong bullet sponges with a few weak spots sprinkled for good measure, which is underlined in a few wave-style battles that show them for their true colors. There are boss fights however to break up moments when complacency inevitably sets in, and thankfully a majority of bosses felt like they were designed with the expectation of the player using a previously learned skill. There was one in particular that threw a complete one-off curve ball which was an interesting turn of events.
In the six and half hours it took me to finish, I never ran into what I’d call a puzzle. There are obstacles, sure, but nothing that didn’t take some instruction that I’d learned only a few minutes prior. That doesn’t really bother me, although I think Lies Beneath could have gone the extra mile and inserted some interesting brain teasers to chew on amidst the never-ending howls and gnashing of teeth.
Immersion
Where combat fails to truly impress, the atmosphere takes the reins. It’s like stepping into a graphic novel, replete with comic book text bubbles littering the game at key points to tell the lion’s share of the story. The drab, unforgiving color palette reminded me of Sin City, albeit without the pop of pure momentary color among the game’s grey, black, brown, pale blue, and dirty shades of red. Some may accuse it of being repetitive and maybe too dark, but in the same breath the art style does an admirable job of suffocating any hope of reprieve.
Image courtesy Drifter Entertainment
As a result of the comic book motif, at times I felt the story was a bit difficult to process. The word bubbles seem more artistically driven, and not necessarily what the player would actually need after they’ve just been chased through a maze by a machete-swinging demon. I personally would have liked voice overs here to reinforce the narrative at key points when reading what essentially is a floating sign board, although to each their own. Although it’s not the most deep, or engaging of stories, it is undeniably stylish.
Pet peeve incoming: force grab is the only way to interact with objects, which at times can be a bit unnerving when you simply want to grab a nearby magazine, box of ammo, what have you. This is a pretty minor issue in the grand scheme of things, but I firmly believe you should be able to grab something if your hand can ‘touch’ it. To that effect, reloading is pretty much a constant pain. Running out of bullets auto-ejects your mag and replaces it with a new one. Snapping the revolver closed or shoving in the mag into the pistol can be done one-handed, but it’s not super intuitive since both the mag and revolver’s chamber aren’t physics-based. More often than not you have to holster an item in your non-dominant hand to reload a gun in your other, which in the heat of battle may leave you flailing around and cursing.
My last sore point: guns don’t double as melee weapons. No amount of flailing with an empty shotgun or bare fists will do any damage, although you can technically block incoming objects thrown from baddies.
Comfort
I found Lies Beneath to be a bit challenging comfort-wise in my standard default playing style, which is free locomotion and snap-turning. Everything is so twisty and turny that I found myself rushing around past gads of near-field objects, stopping, turning, and basically making myself feel queasy in the process.
Thankfully you can teleport and look around naturally, although you’ll really have to overcome the primal urge to get through to the next save point as fast as possible. I don’t hate teleportation, but free locomotion is so much easier and immersive, so I tended to stick to my preferred movement style and just take the game in smaller chunks.
If you’re a smooth turning fan, Lies Beneath has you covered too, although you should be aware that only a minority of players seem to be unaffected by what essentially is one of the least comfortable locomotion options.
At some point every virtual reality (VR) developer needs to do a horror title, whether it’s purely psychological or filled with jump scares, the genre is such an easy fit for VR purposes. Drifter Entertainment (Gunheart, Robo Recall: Unplugged) has done just that with its latest project Lies Beneath for Oculus Quest, offering a middle ground between those two whilst laying on plenty of action for an enjoyably terrifying experience.
Lies Beneath instantly grabs you thanks to its comic book design and story layout. It puts you under no illusions that you’re not in a realistic world and that doesn’t matter or make Lies Beneath any less suspenseful. What the videogame does, it does really well but there are a few little things here and there which stutter the experience.
One of the best aspects of Lies Beneath is its narrative and the way Drifter Entertainment lays it all out. That comic book style runs through the entire title, introducing the story of college student Mae and her father returning to the quiet Alaskan town of Slumber. There’s no narration, you have to turn the comic’s pages to uncover the story every few levels, a nice touch to keep a player’s attention as to what the hell is going on and what’s happened to the residents. Throughout the levels you’ll spot story snippets along the way, most of which are Mae’s internal monologue remembering her home town whilst trying to make sense of it all.
And this is one hellish landscape. Starting in the outlying forest before venturing into the town, the paths are winding yet fairly linear to keep you on the story track. There are the occasional offshoots which can reward you with useful resources but these tend to be dead ends or filter around to the main path. Not that you want to go exploring in the darkness as Lies Beneath has some monstrous creatures to deal with.
Most of these tend to be of the humanoid variety, shuffling around screaming until they spot you, coming tearing forwards like they were out of World War Z. In true monster fashion, there’s no subtlety to their attacks, it’s all about closing that distance to you. So you can attack and defend yourself in several ways depending on whether you prefer close or ranged combat. Lies Beneath suitably caters for both, with pistols and shotguns offering decent stopping power whilst knives, hatchets (a personal favourite) and other spikey objects can be used to remove heads and even thrown.
The studio has gone for a little VR realism with the weapons to help ground you in the world, but not too much that it hampers the experience. You don’t have to manually reload the guns but you do still need to pop the chamber open or use the pump action on the shotgun. Likewise, the blades are super useful if ammo is low – there’s usually enough around – but they can become wedged in enemies’ heads and bodies which can leave you scrambling for another weapon.
Which leads onto the fact that Lies Beneath is a very mild horror in comparison to others. Now some may find it truly petrifying when the odd jump scare happens yet for those well versed in VR terror Lies Beneath won’t really prove to be too alarming. Actually, it’s the sections in between the action which can prove to be the tensest as the audio is superb, just the right mix of distant shrieks and groans combined with horror movie violins, so use some good headphones.
It’s a shame then that especially in the early stages the draw distance is so close, either with pure darkness or fog. If it was done for atmosphere then it’s not particularly effective, more annoying. If it’s done for technical reasons then why does it occasionally jitter, like the odd frame is being dropped? This darkness can be somewhat illuminated by the lighter but once again the reach isn’t great. Unlike most videogames the lighter proves to be super useful, activating checkpoints, burning effigies and highlighting enemy weak points. The pistol/lighter combo is one of the best in Lies Beneath.
Lies Beneath might not be one of the scariest titles on Oculus Quest but that doesn’t stop it being intense and suspenseful. Drifter Entertainment has created a dark and twisting journey which has wonderfully atmospheric moments supported by a strong storyline backbone. If you’re looking for perfect synergy between classic horror movies and VR on Oculus Quest, Lies Beneath is worth a peep; just don’t look behind you.
Now is most certainly the season for new titles on Oculus Quest with Down the Rabbit Hole, The Room VR: A Dark Matterand Covertarriving. For those who like their virtual reality (VR) experiences with a few more scares and gore, Drifter Entertainment has now released Lies Beneath for the standalone headset.
With an eye-catching visual style similar to that of vintage comic books and some nasty looking monsters Lies Beneath tells the tale of Mae, a college student returning to the sleepy town of Slumber, Alaska with her father. An accident occurs and they become separated, so Mae needs must fight to save her father, encountering the terrifying townsfolk and creepy creatures infecting her hometown.
Only revealed a few weeks ago, Lies Beneath offers players a heart-pounding experience where they can use an assortment of weapons to survive. From ranged weapons including shotguns and pistols to knives and spears for close combat, players will be able to dual wield their arsenal for maximum damage. Like any good horror Lies Beneath can get a little dark and creepy so players also come equipped with a lighter to illuminate those corners – plus it comes in useful when lighting checkpoint lanterns and fires which can heal.
If you want to delve a little deeper into the narrative Drifter Entertainment has created two pseudo websites dedicated to Slumber. The first is a tourist style ‘Visit Slumber, Alaska‘ site with a nice version about its history while the second takes a far darker turn by the Slumber Historical Society.
Available now on the Oculus Store for Oculus Quest, retailing for £22.99 GBP, take a look at VRFocus’ initial gameplay video ahead of our review. Lies Beneath will also be coming to Oculus Rift shortly, scheduled to arrive on 14th April. For all the latest Oculus Quest news and reviews, keep reading VRFocus.
Lies Beneath is an action-packed single-player survival horror game published by Oculus Studios and developed by Drifter Entertainment, the same team behind PC VR co-op shooter Gunheart and Robo Recall: Unplugged on Quest. Read our full Lies Beneath review below for more!
The Oculus Quest has a great selection of VR games. But what you might notice when browsing the Store or looking through your Library of content is that there is certainly a lack of narratively-driven single player titles. Other than Vader Immortal, Apex Construct, Moss, Virtual Virtual Reality, Journey of the Gods, and a handful of others the vast majority of content on the Quest is designed to be briefly picked up and played for a few minutes or focused on multiplayer. Thankfully Lies Beneath is here to help alleviate the issue a bit.
Lies Beneath tells the story of a young woman that gets into a car accident while visiting her family in a small Alaskan town. She’s driving in a car with her father when a mysterious figure steps out in front of the vehicle, causing her to swerve off of a bridge and crash, getting flung from inside. By the time you make your way back to the scene, your father is gone with nothing but a trail of blood leading away.
Thus, the mystery begins.
It’s a good hook for a story and the way Drifter Entertainment unravels the threads is very interesting and well-done. Everything in Lies Beneath is presented as if it were a dark, noir-style comic book. The beginning of each “Issue” has you flip through a giant, floating comic complete with panels, descriptive box out text, dialogue bubbles, and more. After getting up to speed, you essentially live out the events of the book.
The art style feels just like a comic come to life. It reminds me a bit of Mad World on the Nintendo Wii, or the similarly-styled VR shooter Dimension Hunter. The main difference here is how well the overall package sells the window dressing. It’s more than just a superficial coat of animated paint. When you do things like hit boxes with your axe, tiny sound effect blurbs like *crack* pop up for a split second and clicking things in the menu show a brief *click* sound blurb. It does a great job of further selling the aesthetic.
As stylish and pronounced as it is, it takes a while before the environments feel very interesting. You spend quite a while lumbering around in the snow where everything looks extremely samey. The foggy blizzard restricts your vision so the game rarely renders anything in the distance and darkness requires using your small lighter to see just a foot or two in front of you. This all helps build suspense, but ends up making it feel truncated in terms of actually being immersive. Hopefully the Rift version that releases in a couple of weeks can sidestep some of these issues.
I also noticed some performance issues on Quest in the form of stuttering here and there, most commonly when approaching comic panel narration in between level sections. For example, every Chapter has comic panels positioned as sign posts inside the levels that articulate your character’s thoughts rather than using voice over dialogue and each time I approached this (every handful of minutes or so) there was usually a brief jitter of frame drops.
Since your lighter can be used to point you in the right direction if you look at where the embers are pointing off the tip of the flame, you’ll never get lost — not that you would have anyway since Lies Beneath is a pretty linear game. Most of the time you’ll walk from one end of a chapter to the other, interacting a bit with objects as you go, running from big bad guys, and shooting your way past ghouls.
In terms of actual scares and building up a sense of horror, Lies Beneath is one of the lighter efforts in its genre. Since you almost always have weapons on-hand there is a lot more combat here than in something like The Exorcist: Legion VR, Face Your Fears 2, or other recent horror games. Rather than forcing you into a state of helplessness you can and will fight back in Lies Beneath quite often.
All told the game is about 6-8 hours long depending on your play style spread across 20 chapters. It takes a while to reach some environmental variety, but once you do the art style becomes more pronounced and visually pleasing. I’m really not a fan of sticking players in a snowy blizzard for the first chunk of the experience, it was a bit of an underwhelming opening for that reason.
There is a good assortment of weapons here from revolvers and hand axes to shotguns and more. When you have your lighter fully lit and out in one hand you can see an aiming reticule where you point and weak spots on enemies are highlighted. It’s a cool system that adds some strategy to tense fights.
Coming off of weighty PC VR games like Boneworks, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, Half-Life: Alyx, and even Asgard’s Wrath and Stormland, combat in Lies Beneath doesn’t feel very reactive. Most objects in the game are static, not physics objects at all, and melee attacks usually pass through enemies and objects without making contact. Even gunshots result in mostly canned animations it seems, which is a bit of a bummer.
The scariest moments in Lies Beneath are purely atmospheric. Hearing the sounds of beasts in the forest, just beyond your view, feasting on corpses. Spotting red, glowing eyes peering at you from around a corner only to disappear once you reach the next area beyond the trees. The constant feeling that you’re being watched, at all times, everywhere you go. It’s tense and unnerving and slowly builds over the course of the game.
There were a handful of jump scares, but they’re not super common. Instead, Lies Beneath relies more on a sense of stress and anxiety to justify its horror label. The atmosphere is foreboding, the narrative is dark, and the imagery is often creepy, so when you get overwhelmed by enemies and are fumbling to reload or running low on ammo, that’s when the hairs start to stand up on your neck and arms or you flail in desperation right before death.
Trust me, I speak from experience.
Lies Beneath Review Final Verdict
While Lies Beneath doesn’t pack enough true terror to be considered a new peak for VR horror, it does manage to craft an intriguing story in a stylishly formed world with mostly satisfying combat and palpable tension. It’s exciting to see a developer that was so previously rooted in the fast-paced action shooter category branching out to something more slow-paced, narratively-driven, and visually unique. The gameplay certainly leaves plenty to be desired in the wake of Half-Life: Alyx, but in terms of its story and setting there is enough here to make it worth a recommendation — especially in comparison to similar experiences already available on Quest.
The virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) industries are wonderfully diverse when it comes to the job roles available, always looking to hire the best talent to work on exciting projects. Whether you’ve been an avid fan of the tech for a while or are already involved in some way, today’s VR Job Hub has plenty of new roles which can help you become more involved and shape VR/AR’s future.
Don’t forget, if there wasn’t anything that took your fancy this week there’s always last week’s listings on The VR Job Hubto check as well.
If you are an employer looking for someone to fill an immersive technology related role – regardless of the industry – don’t forget you can send us the lowdown on the position and we’ll be sure to feature it in that following week’s feature. Details should be sent to Peter Graham (pgraham@vrfocus.com).
We’ll see you next week on VRFocus at the usual time of 3PM (UK) for another selection of jobs from around the world.
VRFocus brings you another list of virtual reality (VR) videogames for users of all leading headsets to enjoy over the next week. Make sure to check out the accompanying video for a preview of each title’s gameplay and make sure to follow all our social channels to get further updates including reviews, re-releases and possible expansion packs.
Orders Of Magnitude – Ouroboro Soft Inc.
In this educational virtual reality science experience, learn about the whole observable universe at multiple scales. Explore everything from a tiny atomic nucleus to the whole Milky Way, all there to be explored. Featuring data taken from various scientific databases, users can visualise galaxies and stars as well as delving deep into human brain and DNA atoms.
From White Door Games, the studio behind Robo Recall: Unplugged and Gunheart, this new horror survival videogame is set in the town of Slumber, Alaska. College student Mae is on a mission to save her father from the townsfolk and creatures who have infected her hometown. You must fend off hordes of these monsters with your arsenal of various weapons, including shotguns, knives and explosives while solving various puzzles along the way. Also coming to Oculus Rift 14th April.
In this wave-based arcade-action title, you play as a weaponless gentle giant who has woken from a slumber and must defend himself using any surrounding objects. Throw, catch and dodge any obstacles thrown at you in this storybook-style comical world featuring a full campaign.
Quick thinking is essential in this World War 2-themed action title, where you must command your troops as they enter into massive battles on land in tanks and in the air with dog fights. Previously released in 2019 on other leading headsets, VRFocusawarded the PC edition a 4/5.
Supported Platforms: PlayStation VR
Launch Date: 31st March
Guns’N’Stories: Bulletproof VR – MiroWin
This action-packed western-style shooter fully immerses you into a Wild West setting as you encounter and fight off a series of cartoonish enemies. Duel wield various classic and modern weapons and move quickly avoiding incoming bullets in a series of detailed and varied locations.
A couple of weeks ago Drifter Entertainment revealed its latest virtual reality (VR) project was a scary first-person shooter (FPS) called Lies Beneath. Even more surprising was the speed of the launch, first coming to Oculus Quest at the end of the month. Naturally, the studio has begun releasing several gameplay videos to highlight some of Lies Beneath’s features.
Like any good horror (or shooter for that matter) the ever faithful shotgun is at hand to protect you in close quarters. Great for making heads disappear, the shotgun in Lies Beneath is your standard pump-action affair with the video indicating a six shell capacity for maximum damage. You can even use the gun to knock away incoming projectiles which is handy.
The next video is simply called ‘The Lighter’ and features a lighter quite surprisingly. Great for seeing in those dark scary corners of Lies Beneath, the tool can be used to light save point lanterns and campfires, revealing enemy weak points, highlighting traps and burning effigies whilst revealing how many are left to find.
From what’s been revealed so far Lies Beneath looks to be one heart-pounding ride, with Drifter Entertainment going for a terrifying art style and some horrific-looking monsters. This single-player survival horror takes place in the sleepy town of Slumber, Alaska where you play as returning college student Mae. The town has quite literally gone to hell so Mae needs to find her dad and try to get out alive.
You’ll have a range of tools and weaponry other than those just mentioned, from pistols and axes to knives and explosives. There will also be puzzles to solve and hidden secrets like the effigies to find. The studio has really committed to the lore of the town, creating a couple of tourist-style websites about Slumber and its history.
Lies Beneath will see a split launch with the Oculus Quest version arriving on 31st March while the Oculus Rift version is scheduled for 14th April 2020.
It was supposed to the Game Developers Conference (GDC) this week but with that closed developers will be looking at other means of announcing their latest projects. Don’t forget to watch the Facebook: Game Developers Showcase later today. For further updates, keep reading VRFocus.
Lies Beneath instantly grabs you thanks to its comic book design and story layout. It puts you under no illusions that you’re not in a realistic world and that doesn’t matter or make Lies Beneath any less suspenseful. What the videogame does, it does really well but there are a few little things here and there which stutter the experience.
Most of these tend to be of the humanoid variety, shuffling around screaming until they spot you, coming tearing forwards like they were out of World War Z. In true monster fashion, there’s no subtlety to their attacks, it’s all about closing that distance to you. So you can attack and defend yourself in several ways depending on whether you prefer close or ranged combat. Lies Beneath suitably caters for both, with pistols and shotguns offering decent stopping power whilst knives, hatchets (a personal favourite) and other spikey objects can be used to remove heads and even thrown.
It’s a shame then that especially in the early stages the draw distance is so close, either with pure darkness or fog. If it was done for atmosphere then it’s not particularly effective, more annoying. If it’s done for technical reasons then why does it occasionally jitter, like the odd frame is being dropped? This darkness can be somewhat illuminated by the lighter but once again the reach isn’t great. Unlike most videogames the lighter proves to be super useful, activating checkpoints, burning effigies and highlighting enemy weak points. The pistol/lighter combo is one of the best in Lies Beneath.
Orders Of Magnitude – Ouroboro Soft Inc.
Good Goliath – Knocktwice Games
Guns’N’Stories: Bulletproof VR – MiroWin