The newly announced Budget Cuts Ultimate, which combines both Budget Cuts (2018) and Budget Cuts 2 (2019) stealth action games into a single experience, is set to launch on PSVR 2 and Quest 2 next month.
Budget Cuts Ultimate is set to bring both games to those respective platforms for the first time, launching on June 1st.
Originally released on PC VR and the original PSVR, Budget Cuts makes use of a unique portaling system that completely rethinks teleportation in VR as we know it. Not only can you pop around corners like a ninja, but also throw knives through portals, making for some compelling encounters with the world’s armed security robots.
Here’s a description, courtesy its developers Neat Corporation:
As your last human co-worker is hauled away, a mysterious briefcase from someone on the outside is delivered to your desk. You need to get to the bottom of what is going on at TransCorp.
Sneak around enemy robots by climbing through air ducts and service tunnels, or embrace violence by unleashing a fistful of knives, quivers of arrows, grenades, and coffee mugs onto their unsuspecting circuits. Once you’ve completed your mission, test your skills in the arcade with multiple modes, difficulty levels, and scoring.
You can wishlist the game on PSVR 2 here, and on Quest 2/Pro here.
Budget Cuts (2018) was originally slated to arrive on PSVR back in May, and due to the global slowdown it also fell victim to another delay in June. Starting today though, PSVR users will finally be able to step into the stealth action game that was so highly anticipated on the PC VR platform.
Budget Cuts is now live on the PlayStation Store, priced at $30 and $24 for PS Plus members. North America has physical copies as well; Europe is said to get them starting October 23rd, with pre-orders opening on the Perp Games Store next week.
We reviewed the game back at its PC VR release in 2018, and while we gave it a resounding [9.2/10] at the time, some users did notice pesky performance issues at launch that prevented them from enjoying the full unfettered fun of sneaking around office corridors and ganking robot guards.
Although those perf issues on PC VR have since been ironed out, it was still uncertain whether the game would actually fit all of its physics-based interactions onto the more modest PS4 platform. It appears though Neat Corp and Coatsink have done an admirable job porting the game for PSVR.
While we haven’t had an opportunity to test it on PSVR yet, YouTube channel Shugghead Gaming has a video review (linked below) that drills into the game’s specifics, noting that performance is a non-issue.
Shugghead Gaming highlights in the video that one of the sticking points to the game is the snap-turn control scheme, which is necessary due to PSVR’s front-facing PS Camera sensor. According to him, the game also feels somewhat dated in comparison to subsequently released titles on the platform, which is in part owed to the teleportation-only locomotion style.
Still, for what we can gather, Budget Cuts on PSVR is basically the same experience you can have on PC, albeit with an extra PSVR exclusive level in addition to the previously released DLC. We’re still waiting to see if Neat Corp/Coatsink will bring the game to Quest, which would be the next logical step for a title that’s already been slimmed down enough to fit on PSVR.
Budget Cuts (2018) was originally slated to arrive on PSVR back in May, and due to the global slowdown it also fell victim to another delay in June. Starting today though, PSVR users will finally be able to step into the stealth action game that was so highly anticipated on the PC VR platform.
Budget Cuts is now live on the PlayStation Store, priced at $30 and $24 for PS Plus members. North America has physical copies as well; Europe is said to get them starting October 23rd, with pre-orders opening on the Perp Games Store next week.
We reviewed the game back at its PC VR release in 2018, and while we gave it a resounding [9.2/10] at the time, some users did notice pesky performance issues at launch that prevented them from enjoying the full unfettered fun of sneaking around office corridors and ganking robot guards.
Although those perf issues on PC VR have since been ironed out, it was still uncertain whether the game would actually fit all of its physics-based interactions onto the more modest PS4 platform. It appears though Neat Corp and Coatsink have done an admirable job porting the game for PSVR.
While we haven’t had an opportunity to test it on PSVR yet, YouTube channel Shugghead Gaming has a video review (linked below) that drills into the game’s specifics, noting that performance is a non-issue.
Shugghead Gaming highlights in the video that one of the sticking points to the game is the snap-turn control scheme, which is necessary due to PSVR’s front-facing PS Camera sensor. According to him, the game also feels somewhat dated in comparison to subsequently released titles on the platform, which is in part owed to the teleportation-only locomotion style.
Still, for what we can gather, Budget Cuts on PSVR is basically the same experience you can have on PC, albeit with an extra PSVR exclusive level in addition to the previously released DLC. We’re still waiting to see if Neat Corp/Coatsink will bring the game to Quest, which would be the next logical step for a title that’s already been slimmed down enough to fit on PSVR.
Much like Camouflaj’s Iron Man VR which was beset with delays until today’s launch, Neat Corporation’s Budget Cuts has been pushed further and further back. A new date has been revealed today for the PlayStation VR version, now taking place in September.
The main reason the PlayStation VR version seems to be taking longer is that Neat Corporation is adding a bunch of new content to the two year old PC VR title. There’s going to be an Arcade Mode built within a “fully modeled and intractable arcade machine” and a competitive mode.
Most of the new details the studio has released relate to the Panopticon level. This is a whole new area built with specifically for PlayStation VR. “With Panopticon we wanted to put the players journey and the importance of choice at the core of the levels design,” notes Olle Axelsson, Game Designer, Neat Corporation. “We wanted to encourage the player to pave their own path forward, either through brute force and action or through stealth and sneaking their way around in order to reach the centre of the level.”
A very circular level to challenge those navigational skills, Panopticon aims to be a little different from the rest, playing with ‘space and form’ to really challenge players.
In any case, Budget Cuts will still retain that stealth gameplay it is known for, exploring the expansive office network by using whatever vents, ceiling crawl spaces and other areas to remain hidden. Get spotted by a robot guard and you’ll either have to be quick on your feet or take them down with some office stationary.
VRFocus will continue its coverage of Budget Cuts for PlayStation VR, reporting back with further updates.
A couple of months ago Neat Corporation revealed that its first virtual reality (VR) title Budget Cuts would finally be making its way to PlayStation VR in May. Alas, that is no longer the case, as like many developers the studio is feeling the effect of the coronavirus pandemic lockdown.
We’ve got some good news and some bad news to share with you about Budget Cuts coming to PSVR this summer. pic.twitter.com/c2I82YtDof
Neat Corporation released the above statement this week on Twitter, noting that the difficulties working from home have impeded porting the title in the desired time frame. As people have expressed on the social media site, it’s better to take longer creating a polished project in the process rather than rushing things.
And by the sounds of it the PlayStation VR port of Budget Cuts should greatly benefit from the teams experience creating the sequel. The studio mentioned last week that ‘significant advancements’ were made regarding performance with Budget Cuts 2, in turn helping Budget Cuts.
Designed as a stealth experience where you can hide in the ceiling or pop out of air vents as you infiltrate a mega-conglomerate called TransCorp. You’re not a spy, merely a former employee who has found out everyone is being replaced by robots. So as you duck and dive through the hospital clean hallways you’ll need to either avoid or take down hostile robot guards with anything to hand, from knives to scissors.
One of the most notable features of Budget Cuts was its teleportation system. Rather than casually hopping about the place, you have a teleportation gun which fires a blue orb through doors or narrow passageways. Before moving you can scope the area for hostiles, great for looking around corners, cancelling the move if the area isn’t clear.
If being stuck in your home all day has any benefits then its the excuse to play new videogames or revisit previously played ones. Neat Corporation and Fast Travel Games only released Budget Cuts 2: Mission Insolvency in December 2020 and whether you have or haven’t played it, today’s performance update and sale may make the title an enticing one.
“During the development of BC2 we made significant advancements regarding performance compared to BC1. Despite this, some users were reporting bad performance, so we started digging even further for this update. The primary problem has been CPU performance, so we’ve reworked a couple parts entirely in order to bring CPU usage down further, as well as utilize a rendering feature we had previously overlooked. We did also fix a few bugs and add a couple new mutators along the way,” notes Fast Travel Games’ CMO Andreas Juliusson in a statement.
If you’ve not played either, the Budget Cuts series is a comedy infused stealth experience involving knives, a unique teleportation gun, squeezing into ventilation systems (and other small spaces) and a deadly bow. While being sneaky is encouraged you can still opt for action if you so wish.
Budget Cuts 2 changelog:
New Mutators!
Mutator: Smooth turning (replaces snap-turning when enabled)
Mutator: Unarmed Supervisors
Mutator: Fragile knives and arrows
Mutator: Translocator launch force
Mutator: Stealth Translocator (brings back stealth translocations from BC1)
Windows Mixed Reality controller mesh
Distance grabbing improvements
Some distance interactions (swipe cards at a distance and more)
Multithreaded AI vision system rewrite
Single Pass Instanced Rendering
Multithreaded custom physics force calculations
Conductor scene significant performance improvements
Skyscraper scene savegame bugfix
Flattened hierarchies in scenes for performance boost
Controller optimizations
Physics optimizations
Spectator screen no longer has a border and takes up the full screen
Items no longer pile up at world origin on load (in certain scenes)
Checkpoints now immediately save the status of the game, fixing various save game bugs
Inventory stability fixes, no more invisible items
Unarmed state improvements for Supervisors
More accurate shot leading for Supervisors when using higher Aim skill mutators
Unity updated to 2018.4.21 (brings draw call optimizations and more)
Supporting Oculus Rift/Rift S, HTC Vive and Valve Index, Budget Cuts 2: Mission Insolvency is available on Oculus Store and Steam, with both platforms offering a 45 percent discount for a limited time. For all the latest Budget Cuts 2: Mission Insolvency updates, keep reading VRFocus.
Neat Corporation’s stealth experience Budget Cuts arrived for PC-based virtual reality (VR) headsets back in 2018, with a PlayStation VR version revealed to be in the works the following year. Since that announcement Budget Cuts 2: Mission Insolvency has been released but the console version hasn’t been forgotten. Today, in collaboration with Perp Games, Neat Corporation has revealed that Budget Cuts will finally be coming to PlayStation VR this May.
Budget Cuts is a stealthy videogame designed for physicality as well as comfort. You play an employee at mega-conglomerate TransCorp who finds out their job is in danger with everyone’s roles being replaced by robots. A mysterious package arrives with a prototype stealth device which enables you to head out and hopefully save your job.
This device is a teleportation gun which not only allows for comfortable exploration but also check for guards around corners before deciding to move. You’ll need to make full use of the expansive offices, sneak around the facilities using whatever vents, ceiling crawl spaces and more to remain hidden. These small areas do mean you’ll have to actually crouch or neal down because of the tight headroom. Should you be spotted by any of the guards then it’s time for a more direct approach, using any implements that come to hand, from knives to scissors.
“We are so excited to see Budget Cuts coming to all you awesome Playstation VR players out there! We’ve been huge fans of how creative and approachable the audience for PSVR has been throughout the years, and are really looking forward to seeing everyone meet Bob, Amber, and all the other Robots in Budget Cuts,” said Jenny Nordenborg, CEO of Neat Corporation in a statement.
While Rob Edwards, Managing Director of Perp Games, adds: “One of the most popular VR games is now coming to PlayStation VR. Budget Cuts is one of the most beloved VR games of all time and we’re so honoured to be working with NEAT Corporation and Coatsink to bring a physical edition to PlayStation VR at retail.”
Budget Cuts is scheduled for launch on 15th May 2020, simultaneously via PlayStation Store and at retail locations. For further updates on the franchise from Neat Corporation, keep reading VRFocus.
Last month Neat Corporation and Fast Travel Games launched stealth sequel Budget Cuts 2: Mission Insolvency for PC VR headsets. Having received a positive response from players the developers have now dropped the Mutator Update, adding a bunch of options to customise the experience plus one major feature – smooth locomotion.
Budget Cuts 2: Mission Insolvency’s movement is based around its teleportation gun dubbed the ‘Translocator’, great for moving between surfaces, small gaps and sneakily looking around corners. But it wasn’t great for those action situations where accomplished VR players want to move fluidly, strafing or quickly evading danger. So the introduction of smooth locomotion will be welcomed by many fans.
“Yes, we finally added Smooth Locomotion to Budget Cuts 2! Let’s just say there’s been one or two requests for this…”, Neat Corporation’s Designer Olle Axelsson says in a statement. “This custom setting enables you to move around in a traditional FPS style. You will still find the Translocator useful when moving between surfaces that are unreachable using smooth locomotion movement though. The ‘Mutators Update’ allows players to tweak a variety of mechanics in the game, such as adding Aim Assist when throwing knives or to enable a slow-motion effect that kicks in when you get shot at, and much more.”
While the new Mutators system will add greater gameplay variety players should be aware some will disable achievements. The full list is as follows:
Mutator: Homing knives (aka aim assist)
Mutator: Smooth locomotion
Mutator: Infinite Stabby Crystals
Mutator: Bullet Time
Mutator: Paltkoma (triggers slow-mo when eating)
Mutator: Gravity modifier
Mutator: Enemy aim skill
Mutator: Enemy detection speed
Mutator: Bullet speed
Mutator: NPC animation speed
Mutator: NPC health
Mutator: Starting equipment
Mutator: Guns (guns)
Level select (select which level you start a new game from)
The title continues the story from the original Budget Cuts with more TransCorp office mayhem to enjoy. This time however you’re supplied with bow for an added tactical advantage.
Budget Cuts 2: Mission Insolvency supports Oculus Rift/Rift S, HTC Vive and Valve Index, available on Oculus Store and Steam. Currently, there’s a 15% discount available until 27th January, dropping the Steam cost to £20.22 GBP. For all the latest Budget Cuts 2: Mission Insolvency updates, keep reading VRFocus.
Budget Cuts 2 is the conclusion of the adventure that you started in Budget Cuts, but is also a self-contained game and easy to get into. While you were hiding and narrowly escaped certain death in your familiar office environment in the first Budget Cuts, Budget Cuts 2 is all about charging into unknown territory and taking matters into your own hands.
Read the full written review for more details: https://uploadvr.com/budget-cuts-2-mission-insolvency-review
Budget Cuts 2: Mission Insolvency brings a lot to the table in terms of variety and action, although it edits out some of what made the first an interesting exercise in exploration and intrigue. Adrenaline is still a key ingredient here, and levels a heaping dose of bow-shooting action on top of a slightly more demure exploration experience than the first, which makes it feel a little more generic of a game, but still a good example of a fun and well-realized entry into the stealth combat genre.
Budget Cuts 2: Mission Insolvency Details:
Developer: Neat Corporation, Fast Travel Games Available On: Steam (Index, Vive, Rift), Oculus Store (Rift) Reviewed On: Rift, Vive Release Date: December 12th, 2019 Price: $30
Note: It’s impossible to talk about the sequel without at least mentioning the first in the series—I won’t spend much time recapping, but I’ll be mentioning it throughout for continuity’s sake. If you’re new to the series and are hoping to read a spoiler free look at number one, look no further than our review of the first Budget Cuts (2018).
Gameplay
The original Budget Cuts is very much about using your wits to find key cards, search for door codes, and follow clues left by your missing meat-bag colleagues, who’ve been mysteriously spirited away and replaced with a cast of quirky office drones. Here, you’re basically tasked with finding the thing, moving to the next thing, and sneaking around, all the while hoping to avoid (or kill) as many of the revolver-toting sentinels as possible—lest you catch a single bullet, effectively throwing you back to an earlier auto-save point. Tactically-placed fax machines connect you with Winda for objectives, which leaves you free to figure things out by reading and basically putting two and two together at your own pace. It was fresh, funny, and most importantly took to the medium with a spirit of innovation.
The second picks up where the first left off, however its tone and objectives are much more action-oriented, which effectively strips away much of the constant object-searching and key card-hunting from the first. All of that’s still there, albeit minimized in favor of forward-moving action, making the sequel somewhat of a different beast. At times, its can be a real thrill ride, although I found it lacking some of the first’s unique and celebrated spirit.
Image courtesy Neat Corporation, Fast Travel Games
Before playing, I was prepped to expect more of everything: more action, more weapons, more puzzles, and more intrigue. I didn’t get everything on my wishlist, but Budget Cuts 2 does manage to serve up enough of that in the five hours on standard difficulty to satiate. Still, I felt it could have gone a bit deeper, and offered a few more ‘wow’ moments with its new action-y outlook on life whilst retaining some of the cleverness of the first.
Whereas the first Budget Cuts focused mainly on sneaking through cramped, multilayered spaces, sometimes giving you a few different parallel routes to the same objective, the second in the series tends to be a bit more linear, as it feeds you less options as you traverse through levels.
Image courtesy Neat Corporation, Fast Travel Games
Like in the first, the real choice ultimately comes down to whether you want to engage in combat, or take the time to sneak around by checking if the coast is clear first via your portal gun preview window.
Mission Insolvency however has a lot more guards and a few new methods of killing them. It also has a greater variety in spaces, offering up everything from small offices filled with cubicles to large warehouses where you can let your new weapon sing. And at that point, it’s hard to care why you have a bow and arrow when you can gank a robot in the head from 30 meters away.
Image courtesy Neat Corporation, Fast Travel Games
All of this is well appreciated, although I would have liked to see a grander, more elaborate set of ways to accomplish each major task—different routes or different methods of solving an objective, which seems to have been sacrificed on the altar of efficient, uncomplicated action. In the end, it seems Budget Cuts 2 focuses more on providing a greater variety of tasks instead of a greater variety of how to accomplish them. You’re given new baddies, less (but more varied) door puzzles, a singular boss fight, a timed task, and a wave shooter-style interlude at the end—more variety than the first by a fair margin.
The biggest addition, which has forced the developers to offer those larger environments, is the bow and arrow—or rather the bow and ‘any sharp or explosive object you can find’. Introduction of the new weapon is admittedly a bit ham-handed; office drones apparently compete in archery competitions in their time off now? And there’s grenades now too? In a stealth combat game where being detected could get you ganked in an instant? No fear, even the loudest grenade won’t bring baddies running. AI has a very limited field of view, and almost no sense of hearing.
A quick aside: the reasoning for knives was at least plausible in the first, with Winda hacking the supply ordering system and switching out letter openers for throwing knives, however in the sequel you’ll find arrows littered everywhere for no more reason than as convenient fodder for your bow.
Flimsy reasoning aside, the bow works well enough, although it intentionally hobbles you by giving you a two-handed device in a game where your don’t actually have hands 100 percent of the time by default.
Image courtesy Neat Corporation, Fast Travel Games
The unique portaling locomotion scheme introduced in the first Budget Cuts works equally as well in the sequel, adding the bow into the mix does complicate things. Instead of zapping around with the portal gun in one hand whilst carrying a knife in the other, you have to be a little more pensive when you use the bow, and consequently requiring you to switch the tool head on your hands much more often. Until you get the muscle memory down, you may be struggling to quickly switch tools in the heat of battle, leading to many frustrating deaths.
Thankfully the bow eats all sorts of ammo, including arrows, throwing knives, and even scissors, so you should find a few ways to take down robots. That said, archery is still very much skill based, as the projectile is effected by gravity, making it necessary to practice so you can get a feel for how much it will drop (your sights do a good job of keeping you lined up laterally at very least).
One of the new items here is a radar tool, which lets you mark enemies and then see them through walls as they go on their rounds. While it was admittedly much more useful than the tool its supplanted, the looking glass that lets you reveal hidden text, it definitely could have played a bigger part in the game. I very rarely used it, and there were zero missions in which it became vital to success.
Image courtesy Neat Corporation, Fast Travel Games
So Budget Cuts 2 is basically a shooter now, right? Kind of, yeah. There’s a real scarcity of ammo, as it’s both doled out at few intervals and, unlike the first, now ammo self-destructs when you use it—so no more collecting your spent knives or arrows from a dead baddie. You can even knock out baddies now with hard objects, and pull the gun of their hands, giving you a precious moment to flee.
You’ll also have a new enemy type to contend with on top of revolver-clad sentinels and drones, which are now equipped with guns of their own. Curious little boxes labeled with TransCorp’s ‘TC’ logo are littered everywhere, which you soon find out is hiding a super badass inside—and enemy with a riot shield and helmet, protecting him from frontal assaults and from your muscle memory of executing clean head-shots.
Image courtesy Neat Corporation, Fast Travel Games
Budget Cuts 2 offers up its pros and cons in almost equal portions, however there’s still plenty of its core moments, like when you make a mad dash to safety from the red-eyed robotic monsters of the game.
In the end though, I really would have liked to see Budget Cuts 2 longer and more complex than number one, which would be more in-keeping with the spirit of innovation that brought the first to notoriety. It seems a tad shorter and, well, just different—and not in a way I’m entirely sure I personally gelled with. I really enjoyed almost every bit of the first game, save the final boss encounter. Without revealing too much, I was a little dismayed when the credits rolled after going through what was essentially ended on a ‘protect the thing’ style wave shooter—neither doing service to the stealth combat genre, nor particularly interesting from the standpoint of a modern VR game in general.
Here’s an open secret: one of my least favorite tropes in VR gaming is the ‘helpful narrator’, which invariably chimes in with hints and mission objectives at every turn. Winda has unfortunately become a constant companion in your ear, as the fax machines of old are now replaced with a wireless headphone. I really think it smacks of laziness on the part of the developers, as they undoubtedly did it to generate quicker, more pointed action instead of giving you more of those fun little post-it note hints, or napkin drawings found in an overlooked cupboard. Having a mission objectives list and a voice in your ear telling you where to go and what to do basically makes me feel more like one of the robots I’m tasked with killing, and removes some of the fun of exploration as a result.
That said, number two has a few more benefits that shouldn’t go unnoticed in the immersion department; notably the character animations when baddies die.
The first time you stick a sentinel in the leg, and they limp around helplessly like wild animals, it basically left me wondering if it would still pursue me, or pick up its gun again for another potshot. A robot’s death is much bloodier (oily-er?) than I would have expected, which really makes you want to get your first shot right, if only to spare yourself the inevitable moaning it does about how it still has time left on this planet. Jesus. Re-reading that makes me feel like a monster.
The environments were also more varied and felt more alive as a result. There’s a lot more variability in terrain, such as stairs and ramps. but there are basically no-go zones for your portal gun, which introduces a bit of frustration where it otherwise wouldn’t be in a flatter, more office-like environment. It’s a give and take that essentially tests the limits of the default locomotion scheme.
I did contend with a few bugs in the sequel, although nowhere near the extent that saw the first pulled on the literal day of its release, which some reported was entirely borked, and unplayable. The developers have mentioned that bug-squashing and more polish are coming to the launch version, but I didn’t run into anything but minor flickering of some assets in heavier scenes, and a few misplaced bits of dialogue.
Comfort
Teleportation is the only way of moving around Budget Cuts2—it’s a fundamental part of the game’s basic mechanic, and even though some hardcore anti-teleportation pundits may be automatically against it, I argue that it not only makes sense in terms of comfort, but is well explained enough to be an integral part of the world at large. You simply couldn’t play the game any other way.
Teleportation is by far one of the most comfortable ways of moving around in VR (although it infringes on immersion), and it probably won’t leave you with the flop sweats and a spinning head, making it good for newcomers and sensitive users alike.
There is snap turn for forward-facing setups (namely the OG Oculus Rift), and 360 support, but you’re going to be standing and using your body to play this game. Seated in not an option, and not encouraged, as you regularly have to squat and hide behind barriers, unless you want to constantly micro-correct for where you’re standing with the portal gun.
Budget Cuts 2 changelog:
