Seeking Dawn is essentially a mix of different game styles, primarily a first person shooter but also a game of exploration and crafting. You could be excused for just wanting to walk around and explore the beautiful landscape and examine the wildlife… but you do have a job to do and as big as the world is it does guide you (gently) towards your goal. Ultimately it’s a great example of what can be done in VR and a well polished game. Touted as a multiplayer game, it’s no slouch as a single player game and is certainly worth a play through.
Seeking Dawn is a somewhat flawed but overall incredibly enjoyable VR title. Graphically it’s one of the best sci-fi VR games we’ve ever dived into, and overall the shooting and exploration prove that Seeking Dawn is much more than a pretty face. With around 14 hours of gameplay packed into a $40 package it’s one of the longer VR experiences on the market and worth playing through solo or with friends.
Awesome game (reviewed v. 1.1.0.8) - but it's VERY important to spend time optimizing (in-game) settings, or the game may be unplayable. The game's graphics menu does not allow beyond super-sampling (SS) 1.2 (SS is called resolution in the game). Using an oc'ed GTX 1080 the game runs at (usually) 45 fps using SS 1.2, no antialiasing and all other settings maxed (including textures set to Ultra) - and the good old Forceware 385.24 :-) But SS 1.2 is very blurry. Note that the game defaults to SS 1.0 everytime you load a scene or die (even if it still says 1.2 in your settings), needing you to constantly reapply a higher SS value than 1.0. Only lowering resolution increases performance, other settings like LoD, textures and shadows have no effect on frame rate. A GTX 1080 (Ti) is required for 90 fps SS 1.0 - or 45 fps SS 1.1 or 1.2. 45 fps SS 1.6 will probably require a GTX 1180 ;-) There's also a serious error causing the Tray Tool SS value to be multiplied with the in-game SS value. So SS 2.0 (global) in Tray Tool + SS1.2 set in-game resulted in SS 2.4 in-game and totally crashed the game - so beware! I tried to set textures to high instead of ultra and had a hard time seeing any difference. At first textures don't look that good, but when you get close a layer of extremely detailed textures becomes visible - I've never seen more detailed textures, but again - it's only visible when you're a few inches away from the texture. The game is a system hog - much more demanding than for example Lone Echo, Robinson, Doom VFR and Mage's Tale. The ground often looks tesselated - this could explain the extreme hardware requirements. Controls are great, you have options of full locomotion, teleport and more - and there's smooth turning (or angled and more). Your inventory is elaborate reminding me of FallOut 4 VR. Like in Subnautica I needed water and food, and craft items; there are nice light-weight RPG-elements included. This isn't a simple first person shooter, it's an amazing sci-fi experience!
This is an amazing vr sci fi game , first person shooter with elements of harvesting games as you have to collect items to craft ammunition and tools. The review is from end of November 2018 played on First Vive. The backpack and quick pick option as well as the locomotion movement are outstanding practical. Graphics are beautiful although could be sharper. Fantastic sound ( if it works - game still in early access ) but the best part is that this game did not let me do anything else until I finished it .
Which is very rare for me now pushing 40 as I did not had this urge to play in years.
This game is on Vive subscription available and can be easily finished in a few hard playing days.
Though each of those individual elements won’t surpass anything you’ve played before, one can’t deny the level of effort that has gone into making this a smooth VR experience. Seeking Dawn is not the definitive space epic you may have been waiting for, but for now, it’ll do.
It’s a shame that Seeking Dawn didn’t perform as well as I hoped, especially with the production values through the roof. Multiverse clearly has a firm grasp on creating worlds within VR. Hopefully, their next experience will trim the fat and give us the lean adventure VR game the team is certainly capable of delivering.
Seeking Dawn is the kind of title you have a love/hate relationship with. On the one hand when it works smoothly it’s a really fun and beautiful VR experience to play, with masses of content and hours and hours of gameplay. Unfortunately it’s not perfect, with plenty of repetition and glitches that need finessing. It might not be VR’s summer blockbuster but Seeking Dawn isn’t quite the dud either.
If only Seeking Dawn had more of the former and less of the latter, this review would have been written very differently. As it stands, it’s a flawed — but absolutely gorgeous — VR FPS that struggles to find its footing.
The TL;DR Review
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Game type: Fps
Style: Solo / Co-Op
VR used: Oculus
Platform used: Viveport
System specs: 1070 gtx 8gb OC, i7, 32gb Ram, Windows10, Oculus rift & touch controllers.
Graphics - 8/10
Sound - 8/10
Gameplay - 7/10
Comfort - Medium (standing, 360play 360view, larger area required, possible motion sickness but has 4 movement types from locomotion, to teleportation and in between variants to suit)
Fun - 5/10
Replayability - 3/10 (Plot and repetitive gameplay means this would more than likely be a 1time play, you can farm levels for gear upgrades etc. but the gameplay is so boring I can’t see myself doing this for long.)
Overall - 6/10
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Graphics - a rating of how visually appealing, welldone and immersive the visuals are, not how realistic or high end. Rated out of 10
Sound - a rating of how good the quality, fitting with the game and immersive the music is. Rated out of 10
Gameplay - a rating of how the overall feel of the game is, from mechanics and controls to ai and purpose of game. Rated out of 10
Comfort - a rating based on how the game makes you feel in VR, motion sickness, immersion, playspace/position. Rated casual(seated, no motion sickness, usually an experience with no gameplay), easy(usually seated, no motion sickness) , medium(standing or seated, possible use of 360 space, medium play area, no motion sickness ) , hard(standing, usually larger play area and 360 space, possible motion sickness) or extreme(standing, full 360 space, larger play area, possible motion sickness).
Fun - simply how fun the overall experience is. Rated out of 10
Replayability - How likely you are to replay the game, 10 being lots of replay, 1 being single playthrough.
Overall - a final rating based on previous points and others. Rated out of 10
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The Full Review
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Seeking Dawn drops you into a fairly generic starship troopers like sci-fi environment. Whilst it looks graphically beautiful and well built, the gameplay boils down to, kite waves of enemies whilst firing as fast as you can, then loot items and upgrade gear.
I will be honest here, after the first mission I was already fed up with the gameplay, shooting felt very un-fun compared to other FPS titles I have played in VR, the enemies felt boring, movement was slow and the worst part is the looting. There is no group loot or auto loot, you have to manually pick up each piece of loot that drops by aiming at it and clicking, it becomes tiresome when you kill so many creatures and each can drop multiple bits of loot.
To it’s credit the developers have created 4 separate movement options to cater for all kinds of player from locomotion to teleportation and some in between hybrid options, so it is unlikely to cause motion sickness for most people. However some options lead to better gameplay but with the trade off of motion sickness.
Mechanically the game is simple, point shoot, move, interact, loot, using inventory systems, all basic RPG/FPS style things, you will pick it up in no time.
Running the game on my system it felt smooth with no issues, but I only gave it limited play time as it got very boring and dull fast, it is a very high graphic game and lower spec systems may face issues running it smoothly.
For the price of this game (£30/$40) I have to advise you to be weary of it, you may end up paying a lot for a game that becomes draining and boring fast. Some players will love it, others will hate it. I would recommend renting it using something like viveport if you wish to try it before buying, but overall I would not recommend this as something you need to play, there are plenty of other FPS titles on the switch that are more fun and enjoyable such as Arktika.1.
SummaryWelcome to Seeking Dawn, a multiplayer survival VR adventure that takes you far beyond the solar system. Step into the shoes of a soldier discovering a hostile planet, where predators roam free and enemies are ruthless.