Four months ago, I announced that I was officially beginning a wholesale overhaul and revision of my Curse of Strahd guide Curse of Strahd: Reloaded. This revision completely reworks the guide and adventure, simplifying and streamlining it while accentuating the themes, challenges, and characters that make this campaign so memorable.
Today, I'm excited to share that the first segment of the new revised guide is now available as a fully illustrated color PDF for public playtesting and feedback!
It contains:

• Chapter 1: Into the Mists. An introduction to Curse of Strahd, information on running Session Zero, and all-new character creation options for your players including Flaws, Bonds, and Motivations.
• Chapter 2: The Land of Barovia. A comprehensive breakdown, explanation, and consolidation of Barovia's metaphysics and magic, geography, cultures and factions, and religions—plus a thirty-page narrative history of Barovia, individual NPC roleplaying guides, and a full guide to running and roleplaying Strahd von Zarovich himself.
• Chapter 3: Running the Game. A reworked Tarokka reading and upgraded Tarokka artifacts, an all-new adventure hook with two subtle variations, and a comprehensive adventure summary that walks DMs through the campaign from the beginning to the end.
• Arc A. Escape From Death House. The all-new introduction to the campaign, which leads your players through an upgraded Death House dungeon-crawl before leaving them stranded in Barovia.

This isn't the end of the rework, though! I already have chapters drafted and revised for the Village of Barovia, Tser Pool Encampment, and the Town of Vallaki, with notes and outlined planned for every adventure and hook beyond. I expect to post new public updates frequently—but for that, I need your help.
I want your feedback and comments to help me make this guide the best it can be. Is the formatting readable? Is the adventure fun? Is the content accessible? Is there anything missing, or anything I can do better? Please let me know any and everything I can do to improve!
Thank you so much to everyone who's already assisted with feedback, playtesting, and review, as well as to my incredible patrons for their support. Thank you as well to you for taking the time to read and comment on this ambitious project—I'm sincerely and eternally grateful.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

You can download and read the guide here.

Hi Folks!
After playing D2, D3, PoE, and D2R, here are some quick thoughts after finishing the campaign:

1. Story: 10/10. Absolutely had a great time
2. Gameplay/mechanics: 8.5/10.
   1. The gameplay feels amazing. Start was slow but once you get a couple core aspects, you will have a lot more fun.
   2. Wish there were more skills to choose from - but this can be addressed easily with season passes/expansions
   3. Wish there were more than 6 skills to use - Probably not going to happen because of consoles/controllers.
   4. But then again, too early to tell and they can always add more legs/mechanics to modify skills.
3. Build diversity: Too early to tell. Definitely not as crazy as PoE and this is a good thing. Keep in mind the game hasn't even officially launched.
4. Why the heck does it cost 10x more to enchant the same item again? Is this a bug?
5. ​

My playthrough takeaways:

1. Played Rogue/Twisting Blade. Finished at level 48. Only did a handful of dungeons for some aspects I needed but didn't bother grinding.
2. Was constantly short on gold/mats. Pick everything up and sell/salvage as needed. One or two dungeon runs should be enough to imprint something.
   1. i.e. If I sell everything from a dungeon run (~lvl 47), I'd prob get over 100k gold, so it's not THAT bad.
   2. You will struggle to have enough leg mats in the beginning, but I'm seeing more and more legs so it's gotten better.
3. Strongholds are great for renown and gear.

​
There's definitely a lot of room for improvement, but so far, this game is fricking amazing. I pay my sincerest respect to everyone involved to make D4 happen.
​
Welcome back, Blizzard.

Hey OpenAI,
We are excited to share our latest product update with you - Shuttle AI, a tool to generate and deploy fully working Rust backends & services from a single prompt.
While looking at the latest advancements in the LLM field, we started wondering about how we can enable the machines to do more for developers - and as a company that’s focused on developer productivity, we found that our infrastructure-from-code stack could be the glue the machines need to not just generate code, but also take a step forward and deploy it, enabling them build a fully-running service from scratch.
Combining that with our large repository of sample code, we felt like we were in a perfect position to try and pull off an experiment - and today, we’re happy to show you the results of our work!
With typing just a simple prompt such as shuttle-ai build “Build me a blog service” or `shuttle-ai build "Create a simple twitter clone”``, you can have a whole service generated and running in minutes. We’ve developed multiple GPT Agents that operate in sync, starting from breaking down your prompt into a specification, generating the necessary code, error checking it, provisioning infrastructure, and ending up with a running cloud deployment.
While it still comes with limitations, mostly imposed due to underlying models, we are actively working around some of them and working on adding new features to test the limits of the LLM code generation. We’ll be releasing a larger write-up soon around methods involved, limitations we’ve encountered, and how we managed to navigate around them along with some goodies such as shuttle-ai add-feature "Comments feature for my blog".
To see Shuttle AI in action, head on over to our website where you can also sign-up for the waitlist: https://shuttle.rs/ai

does anyone know how to cover up fresh sh scars? i have an interview today at a coffee shop and idk how to cover them up. i’m scared my mom will find out and send me to pine rest again

Hey guys! I just want to share something that seems to be helping me. I found this video on YT
https://youtu.be/RgfLiq1X35s
I know it looks funny, but I was so desperate. My scans are clear and doctors have no explanation for my PT. I started doing these exercises 2 times a day and taking Mg supplements in the evening before bed. Today is my day 3 and PT is so much quieter and less frequent, almost non existent. I hope it will help in the long run. I don’t know if it is the exercises or Mg, but I don’t care if it is going well. Try it out, maybe it will give you some relief.

He is not allowed to take any breaks, if he does, the run ends. He is not allowed to "fly" in gear 4, but otherwise he can use his gears freely. The landscape is just plain and endless. How far would he be able to travel before his stamina let up? And another question, how far would he be able to travel within 24 hours if he had to travel as fast possible?

Hello 24m here, I’m having issues getting a hold of both IRS numbers as they require my full refund amount but I owe taxes and putting zero as the amount over the phone does not work and has to be a dollar or more. I have an installment agreement that came out today for an amount but yesterday I had made the date and amount change to come out for tomorrow. I’m currently on hold with a local tax building and the collections department to try to resolve this issue and reverse the payment. I’m already assuming that they can’t reverse it but if anybody has other advice on what to put for a refund amount when I owe in order to get a hold of a live agent please let me know. (I should also mention that my return is currently being amended so that’s why I had to change my payment amount and date while the amendment is being established over the next six months)

I'm keeping track of all the VR games I’ve played this year to catalogue them in hopes that they may give fellow VR gamers some fresh games to try out, or reasons to revisit older games that have had big updates. I'm currently up to 52 different VR games played this year. The first 22 that I played from January to March can be found here. The latest 30 games are mostly on the Quest, but many are available on PCVR.
Some of the games listed below, I can see playing all year long, others are not my cup of tea, but they may interest you enough to try them out. In either case, here are my quick thoughts on the 30 games I’ve played during April and May of 2023.
TLDR: My top 5 games to check out are at the bottom and so is some info for a game giveaway.
​

1. ARK and ADE $9.99 Quest / Steam My quick take: A fun shooter with Pistol Whip vibes that is absolutely worth the price of admission. From the store page: “ARK and ADE is an action-jammed FPS shooter in which you get to experience the glory of the 80’s arcade era in a neon fused setting. Shoot your way through retro-futuristic levels filled with enemies, iconic over the top bosses and never ending bullets!” I played this game back when it was in App Lab before it graduated to the full store. It was such a fun shooter back then, and I’d look forward to new levels coming out every few months. Now that it made it out of app lab, has a bunch of levels and had the gameplay polished, it’s absolutely worth a pickup, especially for that price.
   
2. Project Third Eye $9.99 Quest My quick take: A game where you make your own fun. From the store page: “Project Third Eye is an action physics sandbox with a built-in visual scripting panel to apply logic to spawnable items. This allows you to build your own modifications to the game and customize behaviors as you like.” Just like the description says, this is more of a proof of concept and sandbox game more so than a full fledged game with objectives. There are certainly neat ideas here and there, and the dev is really active with updates on Reddit. If you like to experiment and see how concepts develop in a game, you may enjoy this, but there’s no real direction beyond experimenting, so I dropped off fairly quickly.
   
3. Jousting VR Demo $9.99 Quest / Steam Quest Demo My quick take: A bit light on gameplay, but there is some charm here. From the store page: “XIII century, Europe, royal market courtyard. You are a knight who joined the medieval tournament. Your task is 'simple.' Jump on your trusty steed, grab your lance & defeat the enemy. Take into consideration speed, accuracy, strength. Equipment is also important. The better gear the easier the task. Oh, and other knights - they want to win as much as you do.” As advertised, it's a jousting game in VR. I enjoyed the demo, but honestly it was a bit too finicky at times and just not worth a full buy to me. The atmosphere was fun though and there was a progression loop for those who get into it.
   
4. Demeo $39.99 Quest and Steam (flatscreen as well) My quick take: This is a great game that I revisited from start to finish with four players. A must own. From the store page: “Adventurers, it’s time to unite! Gather your friends and fight monsters in Demeo, the turn-based tabletop strategy game of battle and glory. Roll dice, pick up miniatures, and free the world of Gilmerra in round after round of tabletop board game fun. With a huge assortment of monsters, playable classes, and environments to explore, it’s never the same game twice." I finally got a chance to play through the entirety of the game in VR with four friends, through each world, while trying a variety of characters. We even made a video ranking the best players and levels. It really is a solid dungeon crawling adventure. With 2 or more friends, this game really shines and is such a fun ride, despite how punishing the bosses can be. This is the closest you can get to D&D in VR without having a dungeon master. Well worth the asking price.
   
5. Build and Drive Racing Demo Free Quest / Steam My quick take: Early days in development, maybe something to keep an eye on to see how it improves. From the store page: "Get ready for a new experience on Windows desktop and VR, where you get to build your ultimate racing machine, tailored to your driving style and optimized for performance, or race to the finish line with a monster what makes you smile. With stylised graphics and arcade-like physics, every turn, straightway and ramp will put your skills to the test. Feel the thrill of the race like never before in VR, as you immerse yourself counting the seconds on the home stretch." An early demo that has seen some updates. Maybe worth looking at in a few months after a bit more development. I did like what I saw, but honestly, if you’re looking for a finished racing game, try Mini Motor Racing X instead or some of the other heavier PCVR games available.
   
6. Les Mills Body Combat $29.99 Quest My quick take: No subscriptions, great coaches and fun workouts that will make you sweat. From the store page: “Work out at home with a premium fitness app. LES MILLS, the world's leading fitness company, brings the BODYCOMBAT experience to your VR headset with an extensive workout portfolio, top-quality coaching, innovative mechanics, and different intensities.” With no subscriptions or hidden fees, lots of workouts, motivating coaches and the ability to compete with friends on leaderboards, this really is a dynamite workout app. I was working up a good sweat during my workouts, so be sure you have good facial insert and a fan ready. Highly recommended if you want a workout in VR for just the price of entry.
   
7. Interkosmos 2000 $19.99 Quest / Steam My quick take: A difficult puzzle game, but rewarding if you have the patience. From the store page: “Go to space. Save the Future. Try not to Die. Welcome (back) to the world of Interkosmos for an even wilder, weirder and more wondrous adventure. Experience the intense exhilaration of spaceflight. Explore the awe-inspiring interiors of a realistic space capsule. Master the crucial systems that will keep you in orbit (and breathing). And while you’re at it, try your best not to die. Should you complete your mission, you just might save the future – and yourself. Should you fail? Let’s not think about that.” An intense puzzle game where you’re piloting a space ship with some very finicky controls. I found the experience way too difficult and exacting. Along with a bit of bugginess, that didn’t help in me determining if the error was my fault or the game's. If you have the patience, there certainly is some rewarding gameplay here, and an interesting story, but I found it all a bit too much to see to the end.
   
8. The Light Brigade $24.99 Quest / Steam My quick take: In a world of rougelikes, this is one that stands out. From the store page: “As a member of The Light Brigade, humanity’s last line of defense, brave ruins bathed in darkness and free the trapped souls who need the salvation only your gun can provide. Shoot, master spells, and upgrade your capabilities to herald the Sun’s return in this roguelike VR shooter.” There’s quite a lot of rouge shooters on Quest and despite the plethora of choices, this one stands out. Be warned, it starts out slowly, but gets quite fun after you get to know the systems after about an hour in. While I did make it to the last boss, I died and never went back to finished it. The gameplay loop and dynamic levels were solid though. The slight upgrades and different classes during each run were interesting and kept me going for a while. The most frustrating time I had was learning the little tips, tricks and finer gameplay points, but it was worth the push through that initial rough patch.
   
9. Resident Evil 4 $39.99 Quest My quick take: One of the best games in VR. A must own. From the store page: “Explore the world of Resident Evil 4, entirely remastered for VR. Step into the shoes of special agent Leon S. Kennedy on his mission to rescue the U.S. President’s daughter who was kidnapped by a mysterious cult. Come face to face with enemies, and uncover secrets with gameplay that revolutionized the survival horror genre. Battle horrific creatures and face-off against mind-controlled villagers while discovering their connection to the cult behind the abduction.” I forgot so much about this game from when I first played it 18 years ago on the GameCube. The long length, fun characters and how exciting the gun play is, all just came together perfectly. The development team spent a ton of time getting the VR feeling just right, and it’s absolutely one of the best on the Quest and well worth the price of entry. Additionally, once you play through the game the first time it really changes from survival horror to a whole new type of game action game. Simply outstanding.
   
10. Mini Golf Hustler Free Quest My quick take: Early days in development. Some good ideas, but a bit too rough around the edges. From the store page: “Challenge Slick Willie Puttman in this FREE nine hole demo of Mini Golf Hustler. Hazards include armed torpedoes, tentacled arms, ornery tikis and more! Multiple betting games, including skins, match play and the fearsome traveling snake. All played at the same time.” I thought I’d check out another mini golf game to see what other ideas there might be outside of the king - Walkabout Mini Golf. While there were some solid ideas for holes, the betting felt uneven, and everything else felt in their very early stages. To be fair, no other mini golf game feels even close to the accuracy of Walkabout, so I think it’s a tough go for any other games to match. It's probably best to stick with the champ for now, but I applaud the dev for trying something different.
    
11. Pin City Free Quest (open beta on Discord) / Steam My quick take: Early days, but wow, worth a download and one to watch in the future. From the store page: "Pin City is a bowling game unlike any other bowling game you’ve played before. We strove to bring the spirit of mini-golf into the world of bowling. We’ve taken the standard bowling setup (straight lane, 10 pins, 1 ball) and expanded, transformed, and evolved it. We wanted to give people a chance to bowl in ways that would be impossible, illegal, or extremely impractical.” An early alpha game, but boy, what a great start, I’m really looking forward to the team getting the physics feeling right with weight and feel of the bowling balls and seeing how much more gameplay they can add. Really worth the download or heading over to their Discord to get a Quest key for free to try it out. The quirky bowling, physics and gameplay they're experimenting with really got me excited to see how this one comes together in the next several months.
    
12. Mash Me Up Free Quest My quick take: Please devs, add more multiplayer support! From the store page: “Do you want to play party games with your friends or meet someone new? All is just one button press away with Mash Me Up. One button, multiple games. Will it be Air Hockey, Pier Pong, Flingball, or… Get ready for a surprise! Press, Play, Enjoy and Go Again!” If this game got a bit more development love it would be incredible. As it stands now, there are several mini games you can play against one person. Most are just okay, but a handful are real gems, and one particularly is incredible - Geo Guesser. Hands down the best mini game in the pack. With four, or six players and some new content, they could easily charge for just this one game. As it stands now, it’s a great two player game, but you’ll need to bring your own friend as the servers are pretty barren. Worth a download though for sure as you’ll get a night of fun out of it.
    
13. THZZLS - Treasures Lost In Time $4.99 Quest My quick take: A unique puzzler that can be pretty relaxing, but repetitive. From the store page: “Our first THZZLE is called "Der Bazar", the world's first VR toy theatre puzzle game. The Bazar is a VR puzzle game where you have to place furniture and props in the right places in old-fashioned rooms according to an old picture you see. The game is set in 19th century Germany and each room has objects taken from the German lifestyle magazine "Der Bazar", published in Berlin.” This one used to be free, with paid content, but it has since changed as they added more content. You recreate a scene with cutouts of people and furniture in a 3D space. It seemed to have endless puzzles with randomization of scenes. I could see someone going to this for a relaxing 10-15 minutes, but it is a lot of the same each time and didn’t grab me fully. If you’re looking for a puzzle game that’s outside of the usual ones you find in the store, it’s not a bad choice for the price. Keep in mind though its hand tracking only, so for some that may be a non starter, even though it felt just fine.
    
14. Barbaria $19.99 Quest / Steam My quick take: What I imagine Gorn is like with a solid game loop of RTS. From the store page: “Do you have what it takes to be the Mightiest in Barbaria? Welcome to a brutal world where visceral motion-controlled combat blends seamlessly with god-scale base-building and asynchronous multiplayer raids. Use fists, axes, swords, bows, rocks, or anything you can grab to dominate your foes in intense 1st-person combat. Then jump out to your immortal form and watch your minions carry on the battle while you rain down meteors from above. Systemic combat, versatile enemy AI, and player-created defenses make every battle unique.” I recognize there is a lot here to do in this game - if you like the game loop. Unfortunately, it really didn’t do much for me. I was expecting more RTS than Gorn style gameplay and was not pulled in by the fighting or quests offered. I have to say that the humor was spot on, and it certainly had good visuals, the game was just not for me. All that being said, there is a lot of content here and you could be playing this for quite some time if you think this could be your jam.
    
15. Toy Monsters Free Quest Demo / $4.99 Quest My quick take: Plants vs Zombies in AR with hand tracking that does enough unique stuff to be worth it. From the store page: “Toy Monsters VR is a mixed-reality tabletop tower defense inspired by classic Plants vs Zombies. Built from the ground up with hand tracking and passthrough in mind. As you progress through the 20 levels, you'll unlock new toys with unique special powers. You can enhance your toys with magical potions and use crystal power to unleash magic beams from your hands, transform your fingers into flamethrowers, and more.” This game has come a long way since its initial release. It’s a solid hand tracking Plants vs. Zombies game with its own twist on powers and uses passthrough quite nicely. My biggest complaint is that you really need to complete the game all in one go (about an hour or so) as it doesn’t keep track of your upgrades if you quit. Essentially, trying to pass a later level without prior upgrades or powerups is near impossible. Despite that one issue, give at least the demo a try and if you like it, the price is pretty fair for what you get.
    
16. Exit Condition One Free Quest Demo / $4.99 Quest My quick take: A bit rough around the edges, but escape room fans will find fun with it. From the store page: “You awake from cryo in a mysterious museum. A robot refers to you as a curator and the security system is malfunctioning. Can you get things back to normal and escape? There are no jump scares. The game is designed ground-up for roomscale VR on the Quest, but supports all locomotion modes. Most objects can be interacted with, it fully uses physics, and the hands don't ‘ghost out.’” According to the description, this is still a work in progress. That being said, it was a neat escape game that I felt I got my money’s worth from. It certainly was a bit rough around the edges with its gameplay and had some obscure puzzles to work through, but I did finish it and had a good time with it. Try the demo for sure, and perhaps when it’s finally finished, some of those rough edges will be polished up, but as it stands now, it was pretty solid.
    
17. Hyperdash Free Quest / Steam My quick take: A solid online shooter, but you'll have to put in the time to get good to find the fun. From the store page: “Hyper Dash is a free VR multiplayer team based shooter. Payload, Domination, Control Point, (Team) Deathmatch, Capture The Flag, Elimination, Ball and remix them with Mutators! Dash, sprint, and rail grind your way across the arenas to engage the enemy in fast-paced combat and secure the objective for your team. Offline mode/Bots, Dedicated servers, Private servers, Rebind-able controls, Left hand support, Voice chat.” For a free to play shooter, this one had great controls, nice graphics, a good gameplay loop, plenty of comfort options and a solid player base. All that being said, every player I faced off against were top tier, so I spent my time just dying round after round. This is a good game with a solid player base and there's fun here - if you’re willing to learn the ropes. It's bad for newbies like me just looking to have a good time and get a few kills.
    
18. Please, Don’t Touch Anything $9.99 Quest / $4.99 Steam My quick take: A game for escape room devotees only. From the store page: "Please, Don’t Touch Anything is a cryptic, brain-racking button-pushing puzzle game. Covering for a colleague taking a bathroom break, you find yourself in front of a mysterious console with a green screen monitor showing a pixelated live image of an unknown city. Also present is an ominous red button with the simple instruction to not touch anything! Push the red button once or press it many times. Your choices and actions will lead to outrageous and frightening consequences and over 30 unique puzzle endings.” This is a weird one. A really obscure puzzle game that rewards experimentation, but is absolutely punishing with difficulty. If you’re really good at escape games and don’t get frustrated easily, you may enjoy the tedium. If not, you’ll end up like me, watching a tutorial to find out how to get different endings. But if you find yourself doing that, why not just watch a playthrough.
    
19. Eleven Table Tennis $29.99 Quest / Steam My quick take: Still one of the best, but there’s so much untapped potential. From the store page: “The ultimate Table Tennis simulator. Play opponents in online multiplayer or practice against the advanced AI. With physics designed to be as real as ever achieved in a Table Tennis simulator, you will forget you are in VR." I finally got back to this game after the new UI was implemented. It looks much more user friendly, but much to my disappointment, there were no new arenas, music, or official doubles options. There is so much potential for expanding this game, and I feel like the devs are just content to have it remain in the state it currently is. Which, to be fair, is a perfect implementation of table tennis in VR. It’s still one of the best VR games out there and absolutely a must own. I just really wish they would add an officially supported doubles mode and expand out the game a bit more because the unofficial doubles mode is a real pain to get set up and only barely worth the struggle. If you'd like to see how to set that doubles up currently, here is a video I was a part of.
    
20. Breachers $29.99 Quest / Steam My quick take: Come one, come all, this is 5 v 5 at its finest. From the store page: “In Breachers, you plan your assault or orchestrate your defense as a team through intense close-quarters combat. Whether you play as an enforcer or a revolter, master your nifty gadgetry, customize your powerful weaponry and beat your opponents in stunning environments. Intuitive to grasp. Endlessly playable.” Wow, wow, wow. This officially launched and is such a polished game. With multiple maps, intuitive movement and full lobbies, this game is simply spectacular. Despite the difficulty curve in being good at the game, it’s still a fun time even if you’re not the best, which is something special that few games manage to pull off. Where this game especially shines is with friends. If you can muster up a team of five to take on other random players, you’ll be playing this game for months. Give this a go, and if you're not any good, that's okay, because you'll still be better than the bots and a welcome addition to someone's team.
    
21. Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Outcast (Sidequest mod) Free Demo on Quest / $9.99 (Full Game on Steam) My quick take: Come for the lightsaber play, stay if you can tolerate the puzzles. From the store page: “JK XR is a standalone VR port of the popular Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast game by Lucasarts and Raven Software. Brought to VR by Team Beef & Friends. There are lots of mods and access to the free demo level available through the JK XR Companion App, which is automatically also installed alongside JK XR on your headset.” I never played this game when it first came out on flatscreen in 2002, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. The first part of the game you’re playing essentially as a Han Solo type - a smart talkin’ gun slinger. The next part, you’re a cool Jedi chopping off limbs. Absolutely great execution as always by Team Beef, and you can’t beat the price. There is even a free demo to try out to see if you like it. All that being said, the game’s old puzzles, navigation and gameplay felt every bit of 20 years old. After dying multiple times because of missing an exact jump, getting lost and backtracking because I didn't see an obscure elevator and wasting time trying to navigate odd puzzles, I just found it to be too much to overcome to continue to the end. This is no slight on Team Beef and the great work they did with this port, the game just hasn’t aged the best.
    
22. CoasterMania $9.99 Quest My quick take: Early days, but still some fun to be had. There could be something special here after a few updates. From the store page: “CoasterMania is a physics-based VR rollercoaster game where you create the ride of your life! Use wacky contraptions and elements to fly through the sky, then experience your creation by jumping in the front seat. Sandbox mode: Build your dream rollercoaster without any rules but the rules of physics. When you're done, share your coaster or experience the engineering marvels of others. Design your own rides and upload them online.” You know, this game is just silly fun. It's early days for sure, and the tracks don't twist and come together as easily together as I’d hoped, which makes for a difficult time creating exactly what you want. It is satisfying though to have a roller coaster leap from one track to another over a gap. At this point the game is more of a sandbox than a full game with objectives (which is coming). The coasters other people have created are fun, so if you’re not into creating, there is that option to play with other people's designs, plus you can ride them in first person. I look forward to more updates and think it's worth looking at for sure, but if you’re looking for something a bit more fleshed out currently you can try Stunt Track Builder.
    
23. David Slade Mysteries: Case Files $9.99 Quest / Steam My quick take: You’re a forensic cop, here are your tools. Good luck dummy. From the store page: “Take to the dark and violent streets of downtown Riverside, where you investigate gruesome and violent homicides using a range of Forensic tools and your wits! Inspired by the classic Police Quest adventure series, reborn & reimagined for VR. Includes two epic episodes!” Slade is a murder mystery game that is ruthless in it’s difficulty. Honestly, there are several play throughs of this game on YouTube and none have beaten the first case because it was too hard, they all gave up. This game offers no hints, is super abstract and insanely difficult. Why did I keep playing? Well, the game’s tools were implemented quite well, the story was compelling, and I just felt I had to see this through to the end for my own sanity. Despite being as hard as nails, I somehow managed to finish the first case, then moved on to the second. No real spoilers, but the second case does a complete 180 and essentially becomes a horror game where you’re only weapon is your wits. A real departure from the first case. Again, I found myself frustrated, confused and turned around, but again, I had to power through it because something kept pulling me in. If you’re a masochist for puzzle games, I’d recommend this game.
    
24. Home Detective Free w/IAP - Quest My quick take: Fun use of AR, but pretty basic. From the store page: “Use your own living room to solve the crime! Using passthrough, the crime scene is overlaid onto your play area, leaving you free to explore and find clues. Use the patent-pending Residual Heat Scanner to detect the criminals' recent movements, and then dust for fingerprints or try to find evidence left behind. With your wits, and your trusty sidekick Steve Dobbins' snarky comments, you're sure to get to the bottom of these confusing crimes.” I appreciate the interesting use of passthrough and AR in this game. The first case is free to try, so if you’re into AR and passthrough, it’s worth a try. It's $3.99 for another case if you’re into it, but right now, it’s a pretty basic, but solid idea. My biggest complaint is that all my tools were on a shelf that was inaccessible because they were in my wall. I guess AR is still not quite there yet.
    
25. Vertigo Remastered $24.99 Steam My quick take: A fun and wacky ride from start to finish. From the store page: “It's a classic premise - a massive subterranean scientific facility full of mysteries, with aliens bursting in from alternate universes to wreak havoc. The twist? You're one of those aliens. But you're not here to wreak havoc (collateral damage disregarded), you're just trying to get home. A difficult endeavor, as it turns out this facility is more than prepared to deal with extraterrestrial threats.” Because I heard such great things about Vertigo 2, I thought I’d try out this game before I played the sequel. I was really blown away by how fun the game was and pleasantly surprised that it holds up so well. Considering its a 2016 remake, and VR was still figuring out a lot of things like movement, this still felt fresh. With lots of unique ideas, upgrades and areas to play in, I heartily recommend this one and am looking forward to playing the sequel.
    
26. Playin’ Pickleball $19.99 Quest My quick take: Solid physics, but really only for pickleball fans, or a group of four friends. From the store page: “Playin’ Pickleball is an authentic reproduction of Pickleball in Virtual Reality! Physics, sounds and mechanics have been carefully mapped from actual Pickleball game play. Even the scoring and rules are based on the USA Pickleball Association’s Official Rulebook.” Pickleball is sweeping the nation and if I recall correctly, even ForeVR is getting in on the game with an upcoming title. I’m much more of a tennis than pickleball guy, but I have to say, this game has pretty solid physics. Like most games, this is exponentially better with one or better yet, three other people you know. The AI players can be pretty uninteresting hitting it back and forth without much variance. Also the environments are a bit basic. I have to applaud the movement, physics and customizable items though as they all felt very well implemented. If you want something a bit less daunting than tennis, this might be what you're looking for.
    
27. Pong $6.99 Quest My quick take: A neat take on Pong, but you’ll have more fun with Cybrix. From the store page: “Classic paddle game reimagined for VR. Destroy all the bricks. Use your paddles to swing at the balls and the balls have built-in assistance to return back toward you. Take advantage of the pistol and magneto power-ups to cause major damage. Or just swing hard at the balls to create large blast radius. Oh and watch out for those mines going for your head. Lean left/right or crouch to avoid.” I appreciated the ideas the developers had in this modern take on Pong, but it was ultimately quite short and not nearly as fun as Cybrix. That being said for the price, I got my money’s worth and would love to see it get a bit more polish and levels in an update.
    
28. Extreme Escape $4.99 Quest / Steam (Early Access) My quick take: One of those special games where you really feel like you're in the environment. From the store page: “Have you ever wondered how it would feel to travel in a hot air balloon and fly above clouds? Have you ever wanted to face your fear of heights and enclosed spaces? Perhaps you wanted to become a pilot and test your critical thinking skills. Looking for a breathtaking experience? Try Extreme Escape.” The game says “early access,” but honestly I believe this has been abandoned. For the price, you get an extremely short, but fun and unique escape room experience. You’re not going to find this game too hard, but I was brought into its world and completely immersed - I had a true sense of dread and panic. The even shorter “demo” inside the game puts you on a sinking submarine and was extremely memorable. Seldom have I felt so immersed in a game. I’d recommend it for this price, just because of how it made me feel, but it’s a real shame about the very short length and that it’s abandoned.
    
29. The Last Worker $19.99 Quest / Steam My quick take: Gaming with a heavy message, but mediocre gameplay. From the store page: “The Last Worker is an immersive narrative adventure centered around a lone worker’s last stand in an increasingly automated world, The Last Worker is a unique blend of work simulation and stealth strategic gameplay. The game is set in a lonely, oppressive but strangely beautiful environment, with characters designed by comics legend Mick McMahon. Kurt works for the world’s largest retailer and is forced to choose between capitalism or activism. Having dedicated his life to work, Kurt’s loyalty is put to the test when a group of activists ask him to dismantle Jüngle from the inside.” I really wanted to like this game. It had an interesting concept, but navigating, fail states and some very annoying bugs frustrated me to the point where I just said it wasn’t worth my time. That and the story wasn’t speaking to me. It’s well rated, so I’m probably on the opposite side of this one from most people. It's unique in many ways, so check out the teaser and see if it might be for you.
    
30. Shadow Point $19.99 Quest My quick take: Fisherman’s Tale vibes with an excellent story and puzzles that makes you feel smart. From the store page: “Built for VR, Shadow Point is a story-driven puzzle game set between a mountaintop observatory and an ever-changing fantasy world. Explore a vibrant kingdom, cast shadows and solve mind-bending puzzles as you uncover the mystery of missing schoolgirl, Lorna McCabe who vanished from Shadow Point Observatory twelve years ago. As your adventure unfolds, you will manipulate gravity, play with your own reflection, walk on walls, peer through a magical lens to reveal an alternate reality and much more.” I had this game on my wishlist forever and finally pulled the trigger, and boy am I glad I did. I really enjoyed the story, gameplay and ended up marathoning it in one session (which I don't recommend doing). It is a few hours long, and there are extra puzzles to go back to if you’d like. It had some serious Fisherman’s Tale vibes, so if you like those type of puzzle games, this is for you. The puzzles make you stop and think, and more importantly, progress nicely. I was never stuck, but certainly had to really contemplate how to solve some of them. It is slightly finicky with having to line up the shadows exactly to progress, but that is a minor complaint. Give this one a go for sure.
    

I hope you find a few games on this list that you might not have heard of, or that you might find worth revisiting. Let me know here or on the Ruff Talk Discord channel if you have a game you enjoy that I should try, I'm always open to recommendations. Until then, I hope your next VR experience is a memorable one.
Also, the week this is posted, I'm hosting a contest where one winner gets a $29.99 or less, Quest game of their choice. You can enter on the discord channel above, but will need to have five posts on the discord channel within a week to enter, so if that interests you, feel free to join. The Ruff Talk guys usually have giveaways every week and it's some solid VR chat if you're looking for like-minded individuals in a non-toxic space.
TLDR: Top five games to check out - Ark and Ade, Pin City, Breachers, Shadow Point, Vertigo Remastered

Lebron James - The easy joke here is that you are somebody who doesn’t really know anything about basketball and just picked the guy you recognised from Space Jam or adverts, but the truth runs a little bit deeper than that. If Lebron James is your favourite player you don’t even like basketball, you like arguing online. The sad truth is, you desperately crave the facade of friendship that comes with the tribalism inherent to picking a side in a popular argument. You exist only to say Lebron is better than Jordan or Curry or Dwyane Wade or whoever it is you and your gang are arguing about that week. Any game of basketball that doesn’t have Lebron in it is completely worthless to you unless it can be used as evidence about a player that Lebron played with/against. Any game with Lebron in it is a nightmare, because you know if he plays badly MJ fans will make fun of you on Twitter, and to you that’s all that matters.
Steph Curry - To be a Curry fan means that, intrinsically, you are spoiled. Your hands are soft and unworked, your mummy still pays for your groceries and you have a manservant to wipe your ass when you’ve finished shitting. You were raised on state-funded winning and excuses for failure. You would never survive even a day in the wild, you shrink from adversity like a child fleeing the hand of an abusive father and you speak like a ten-year old. You have no place in the dirtier arguments of the NBA, you consider yourself above them. Steph and his superteam have coddled you, made you feeble with his asterisk rings. The thought of supporting a REAL player, somebody you have to FIGHT for scares you too much. You are, and forever will be, bitchmade.
Kawhi Leonard - You will never understand why the rest of us are so jealous of you. Kawhi has his rings, he has his fan love and he has an excuse to retire early and not embarrass you with the sight of having to watch him average 7 points a game for the Grizzlies at the age of 36. You support a basketball player who isn’t. Kawhi is now little more than a myth, a legend of the rings of yesteryear that echoes throughout the barren planes of San Antonio and Toronto. All you, as his trusted liege can do is keep the flame alive for as long as you can. The winds may howl and call him a pussy for his load management but as long as you shelter the flame, and Kawhi keeps conveniently getting injured when the Clippers need him, you will be safe. They will always remember the Philly shot. That’s all you need.
Joel Embiid - He can’t keep getting away with this, right? I mean, you put in WORK to get him that MVP, more work than he did, and this is how he repays you? You remember a time when you laughed at the fans of ringless players. AI, Melo, Lillard, Chris Paul, Harden until he saw the light, all bums. Embiid would get you a ring, he was designed to get you a ring, he had to get you a ring. You deserve a ring. You sat through the rebuild, all those injury problems, Ben fucking Simmons, all because you were promised a ring. And every year you would say ‘we lost because of this thing that isn’t Embiid’s fault, we’ll be back next year!’. And for a while, the public believed you. They bought your tales and your lies. Not anymore. They know the truth now, and they hate him for it. Deep down, you do too.
Kevin Durant - How many times will KD ‘seek a new challenge’ or ‘make the move right for him’ before you come to terms with what he is? He’s a nasty ring chaser, and that’s okay. Everyone would respect you more if you just admitted it. You can cope all you want and justify all his moves by claiming ‘toxic environment!’ or ‘the front office hated him!’ but even you don’t believe that, you just say it to save face. The worst part is, you haven’t heard the worst of it yet. KD has gone remarkably unscrutinized by NBA media as a whole, but when people start to question whether the most remarkable unicorn the NBA had seen since Wemby should have more than two state-funded rings, you might have some explaining to do. Maybe he should have stayed loyal to Oakland. Not OKC though, fuck that place.
James Harden - I want you to find a coin right now and flip it, catch it in your hand and turn it over. Take note of what side it lands on and keep flipping it until it lands on the other side. If you can flip this coin 56 times and have it land on the same side every time, congratulations! You have matched the statistical probability of the 2018 Rockets missing 27 consecutive threes. What this exercise should show you is that God is real and for whatever reason, he hates James Harden. Spare your soul and support a real player instead.
Giannis Antetokounmpo - Nobody has ever enjoyed a Giannis performance without already being a fan of Giannis in the first place. He is perhaps the most consistently boring superstar to watch. He never takes threes unless they’re wide open, he has never had a super interesting or acrobatic dunk, he loves free throws and he makes about 14 barely contested layups per game. He has no dribbling bag and his defence relies on simply being large. He is a boring player, and you know this, because that’s why you like him. Your idea of ‘good basketball’ is simply the person who can score the most points with the highest efficiency. You live and die by the box score because you genuinely think that’s the objective way of saying who had the best game. You could be sat in front of an Excel spreadsheet instead of a Bucks game and have essentially the same amount of fun, because your brain has been programmed to release dopamine whenever it sees three numbers over 10 next to each other. You are boring, we all think you’re dull, and when the rest of us are discussing real basketball we don’t want you anywhere near us because your idea of humour is just saying the jokes that Giannis said again. An Allen Iverson comp would kill you on the spot.
Russell Westbrook - It would be easy to make a joke about how much you miss 2017 and how you pretended it still is to try and stop the pain from setting in, but to be honest I honestly think you do still genuinely believe it to be 2017. For you, time hasn’t progressed at all. You’ve been known to play Despacito and Ed Sheeran when you get the aux and you can’t stop talking about how excited you are for Infinity War to come out. And yes, you do still somehow believe Russell Westbrook is a good player. Despite all your friends and family pleading with you to move on and showing you Youtube videos of that time he hit the side of the backboard, you firmly believe that Russ is still cooking on the Thunder. I can promise you, it doesn’t get better. Wake up now before we lose you forever.
Nikola Jokic. You are a 35 year old white guy with a beard and glasses who would, if asked to, happily pay to get advanced basketball statistics. Your life is filled with words like ‘True Shooting’ and ‘Player Impact Estimate’ that the rest of us couldn’t give a single shit about. You are who KD was talking about when he said people watch basketball through a graph. If I showed you a powerpoint saying that Mike Conley is the piece missing from the Suns to make them chip favourites you would believe me as long as I added in enough bar graphs. You have a poster of Ernie on your wall. You have never discussed basketball without double checking a fact on your phone. When you go to a bar in a city you don’t know you make a big deal about ordering local beers, and if the guy next to you didn’t hear you order it you order it again but louder. You have strong opinions on pirating that nobody agrees with. You are probably a centrist. You have no idea how much I pity you.
Luka Doncic - There are two types of Luka fans, the hollow, soulless Mavs fan who physically cannot talk about his team without saying the phrase ‘We just need to get Luka some help’, and the 16 year old jerker who’s brain instinctively goes ‘Luka Doncic is Devin Booker father’ the second they see his name. Both are equally hard to talk to, but at least the Mavs fan has an excuse for their suicidal demeanour. The jerker is barely even a human at this point, a bag of flesh that surrounds an endless stream of catchphrases and recycled memes. Luka Doncic is Devin Booker father. If you laughed at that for the second time, seek therapy or employment.
Jayson Tatum - Bro I am NOT GAY, I promise but IF I was, IF bro, IF I was then of course I would have sweaty man sex with Jayson Tatum, he’s just cute bro it’s not gay to say that bro it isn’t I swear. What? Tatum’s game isn’t good enough to justify the lengths I’ll go to defend him? He’s not really all that and I only love him so much because I think he’s sexually attractive. Nah bro you’re crazy for that one I won’t lie, just because Tatum’s lips are soft like pillows and I like the way his ass jiggles and I wish the NBA would let him play without a shirt on doesn’t make me gay bro you’re crazy for that one.
Zion Williamson - The Great Zion Debate revolves around a single word; ‘if’. IF Zion was to play regularly, he’d probably be top 3 bigs in the league, but guess what? He doesn’t, so he isn't. That should be a very simple thing to understand, but Zion fans love nothing more than to drag everyone into a world full of hypotheticals and make-believe, where anything is possible except Zion’s shitty conditioning being his own fault. Eventually you’ll be spat out of their portal wearing nothing but a lobster bib and a Jose Alvarado jersey, fully believing that it’s AD’s fault that Zion loves food more than he loves his own mother. After all, you can’t say he plays bad if he simply never plays.
Damian Lillard - Oh fuck you’re so cool man, you’re so cool because the player you support is so loyal man, that just makes you so much cooler than everyone else man. Ignore all the times you’ve screamed for him to be traded because the Trail Blazers are a complete poverty franchise, that doesn’t matter because Dame is so loyal and cool man, Dame time baby let’s go! Let’s fucking go! Who cares that the current state of the NBA would be exactly the same if Dame was never drafted and spent his entire life delivering DnD equipment to Portland’s extensive collective of people who couldn’t care less about basketball, he’s so clutch! Ignore all the red flags and hope the Lakers come through with a trade request. You’ll need post-season success more than you think in the years to come.
Chris Paul - When Chris Paul retires without a ring, which is a near guarantee unless Phoenix fix their shit or he begs Denver to take his dog ass for a season, what will you do? You probably gave up on your hopes of a ring around the same time Harden fans did, but man 2021 gave you hope didn’t it? Just for a second you felt what it was like to support a real player, a real man. Not the banana boat enthusiast who choked leads like they were Bart Simpson, but a player who could maybe win something someday. It must have been nice while it lasted. Then, reality set in. To be honest, I don’t really know who I’m talking to with this one. Chris Paul surely doesn’t have any fans left. He barely even has his own family on his side. Ah well, you’ll always have Lob City. And Kim K.
Jimmy Butler - It’s always someone else’s fault isn’t it. Ever since Jimmy realised he could just blame KAT for all the T’wolves failings you’ve carried on that legacy for as long as you can remember. Maybe if Bam plays better against Denver your beloved Jordan surrogate won’t have to be directly outscored by UDFA’s every night. It’s okay though, Jimmy has ‘fundamentals’. You love fundamentals don’t you, they’re that thing you use when you don’t have any actual arguments to say why Jimmy’s better than the perennial MVP candidate you’ve set him up against for no reason. You can whine and cope and say ‘he makes his teammates better’ but if that were true, wouldn’t he have achieved something in Chicago, or with that very promising Minnesota roster? Surely it must be someone else’s fault. Maybe it’s the leagues for hiring referees. Or maybe it’s KAT’s fault again. Who knows.
Kyrie Irving - Kyrie fans are the rare breed of basketball fan that actually play basketball, the problem is that they think they’re him with the handles and the ankle breakers and the and-ones, but in reality they are complete fucking garbage. I will never choose you to play pickup with unless you are the last option and I will never pass you the ball because I don’t want to watch you bounce it off your own thigh for 20 minutes. And dude, can you please stop talking about the Zionist New World Order or whatever the fuck you saw on Twitter last night? I fucking doubt the guy with the MAGA Pepe pfp has links deep in the US government, so forgive me for not believing that they put aphrodisiacs in the tap water so that we spend all our money on babies, just help me guard their sharpshooter or fuck off. And wear some deodorant fucking hell.
Devin Booker - You know, if a player needs All-Star candidates at every other position on the court just to progress to the Conference Finals, chances are that player isn’t very good. This thought does not register in the mind of the Booker fan, who genuinely believes that KD, Chris Paul and Deandre Ayton isn’t enough help. Your greed knows no bounds and will swallow you whole one day, yet in your lust for power you fail to turn inwards. Where was Booker vs the Mavs that one time? Why did he only score 12 points vs the Nuggets this year? Is he stupid? Does he not know he can play well in big games? No, no, clearly the Suns just need to trade Cam Payne and Ayton for Sabonis or AD or some other top 5 big, surely that’s where the problem lies right? Wait, what do you mean salary cap?
Ja Morant - Oh man I feel bad for you. You’re probably a guy who just enjoys basketball as a spectacle, who doesn’t particularly care about winning or losing as long as you get to watch the most entertaining players in the league pull off the most ridiculously flashy plays. Isn’t that what we all want, deep down? Maybe you were raised on a healthy diet of Vince Carter or D Rose, maybe you just think a guy who can jump over another guy for a bucket is neat, whatever the answer is you’re trapped with this fucking idiot who can’t keep himself out of trouble. Now the team you touted as the most exciting in the league is the most hated in the league, and through no fault of your own you look like a fucking idiot. Worse still, the sheen has come off the Grizzlies young core and now people actually expect them to start winning, probably without Ja. Consider suing Instagram before Adam Silver demands Ja be burned at the stake for his transgressions against his fellow players.
Trae Young - Yes, we all remember that New York series. Yes, we all thought Ice Trae was hot shit at the time. But guess what? That was 2 years ago and Trae has shown no signs of progressions since. Still a liability on defence, still a massive ball hog and still ugly as fuck. Just face the facts and admit that without these rivalries you create, be it with New York or Luka or whoever, Trae would be the most forgettable player in the league. Three point specialists are a dime a dozen in the post-Steph era, and there’s nothing to really separate your fave from Dame or Paul George or De’Aaron Fox or any other number of downtown dwellers. Also like dude, come on, he’s so ugly. Have some self respect.

Bills Enterprise G is gorgeous, but I doubt he is modeling those himself. Where does the .stl come from and how do we get them? If not those something close? I want to be able to run fiber and led

It's more effort than it should be to pick up my antidepressants every couple of weeks. I just want to quit taking them, get worse and then be put into a mental hostpital so I can stop worrying about the outside world.
I'm not a very good human because I'm scared of getting a job and being on my own in a world that I have very little control over.
I don't even feel a whole lot. Because of the meds I have good days but I also get some bad days. Then today is a nothing day. A bad day because I'm venting on reddit but I don't feel that much right now.
I just feel like a screw up that no one takes seriously. I do nothing right, despite willing and trying to learn new skills and try new experiences, I just never succeed at anything and whenever I stretch out of my comfort zone, something always shoots me down.
Joining an organisation for people with mental health? Courses and clubs? Sure, welcome. By the way you won't get any 1 to 1 support, even if we say you will. Even if you directly ask the head of the organisation for more help lol.
Want to go for a run? Sure, I could isw the fresh air and exercise! Actually... you don't have any music with you? Then no we're not going for a run. You HAVE to have music.
Trying college for a second time? Here's some people to laugh at you on your first day. Also here's a weird panic attack thing on your bed.
Open to volunteering? Getting better with the antidepressants? No. You're not. Here's some suicidal thoughts now and then to sprinkle in that will keep you set back another year or so.
Want to go back to counselling? Sure. Just wait a few years first because you can't afford to go private. Hope you can hold out until then!
All in all though, I'm in a good, privileged position because of benefits and living at home. I shouldn't think like this and when the antidepressant high kicks back in, all of this will seem trivial. I've been meaning to call the doctors again and ask for a higher dose or change of meds to see if that would improve this up and down rollercoaster going on but I always push it aside when I'm feeling better. Besides, I still would rather just be locked away.
Sorry if this made no sense.

I'm currently looking at specing out a new build, and this time around I would like to have 128GB from the start. I haven't built anything since DDR5 came out and it seems like there's a slight discrepancy between CPU supported speeds and commonly available memory speeds.
Between the 13900k and 7900x/7950x, does one of these support that quantity of memory better than the other?
Looking at the specs for the 7950x, it looks like it supports 5200 for 1x or 2x but only 3600 for 4x. The 13900k supports up to 5600 though doesn't seem to have any adjustments based on qty. Am I correct in thinking that 4x32GB uses just two channels and I could use up to 5200 with the 7950x?
This is what I was thinking for a build, just want to be sure it's effective and I'm not running into obvious limits. https://pcpartpicker.com/list/g3kFcb

I am a couple of months late but 3 years ago in Q1 2020, Xbox and Playstation revealed the technical details of their next generation consoles - the Xbox Series X (and S) and the PS5.
Of course the full details like the look of the consoles (at least in PS5's case) and the pricing, launch titles and games in general, product ecosystem etc came later in the year, but by this time 3 years ago we knew the technical details about both consoles.
I remember there being fierce discussion and conjecture devolving into console wars (as it often does) around this time regarding the capabilities of each system.
3 years on, I'm curious about what people think about each console and whether each company has lived up to the promises made by them during the reveal stage.
Some specific questions that I had are:

1. What is audio like? Specifically, what is PS5's Tempest 3D audio like? Sony touted it as a major differentiator for this generation and Mark Cerny in particular seemed very passionate about it - has it lived up to the hype? Does it work with non-headphone output devices? Is it possible to generate customised HRTF profiles? And what of Xbox audio - while Xbox themselves didn't talk about audio much, I remember there being a lot of conjecture around it - is Xbox audio comparable to PS5s?
   
2. Has the power difference made a, uh, difference? The Series X is more powerful than the PS5. During the last generation the PS4 being more powerful did make a difference in performance with some early gen games even running at a lower resolution on the Xbox. What has been the case this gen?
   
3. Has the SSD made a difference? The PS5 having a faster SSD - has that made any noticeable difference? In terms of expandability - are drives for the PS5 affordable to purchase and easy to use? Have the Series X expansion drives gotten more affordable?
   
4. How has the PS5's constant power-variable frequency approach worked out? I remember this being quite an interesting decision from Sony's design team, and they justified it by stating that it will allow them to operate the console at the same power draw, fan noise and heat generation for the entirety of the PS5's lifespan. Detractors stated that this would lead to performance drops in games and that Sony was doing this just to boost their teraflop numbers in comparison to Xbox. Do you find Sony's decision to be justified? Does the PS5 have a constant operating temperature and fan speed?
   
5. Opinions on the Series S? Has it been sufficient for 'next gen'? Is it holding back 'next gen'? What has the experience been like?
   
6. Have the haptic made a big difference?
   
7. Any other thoughts or opinions on this console generation so far?
   

To give some context, my nana who is my mother's mom, is disabled and is currently living with my mom and my younger sister. My mother is not a good caregiver, not even to her kids. It started off with her just being neglectful but now she is neglectful and abusive. My little sister is on the verge of contemplating suicide due to the stress of basically running the house by herself while taking care of my nana largely by herself at 17 years old.
My nana's bed room is filthy. The whole house reeks of piss and filth coming from my nana and her spaces. She barely gets a bath. She can not take care of herself, she needs help with almost everything. My mother is mean to her and my little sister.
Financially, my mom can not properly take care of my nana. There is barely any food in the house. My mom does not want to and is fincancially unable to put my nana in a nursing home.
I really do not want to mom to be in jail but i have to stand up for my nana and my little sister.
What are my options? I know that this is not a legal advice forum but has anyone navigated something like this before? Does anyone have any resources they can share?

I'm keeping track of all the VR games I’ve played this year to catalogue them in hopes that they may give fellow VR gamers some fresh games to try out, or reasons to revisit older games that have had big updates. I'm currently up to 52 different VR games played this year. The first 22 that I played from January to March can be found here. The latest 30 games are mostly on the Quest, but many are available on PCVR.
Some of the games listed below, I can see playing all year long, others are not my cup of tea, but they may interest you enough to try them out. In either case, here are my quick thoughts on the 30 games I’ve played during April and May of 2023.
TLDR: My top 5 games to check out are at the bottom and so is some info for a game giveaway.
​

1. ARK and ADE $9.99 Quest / Steam My quick take: A fun shooter with Pistol Whip vibes that is absolutely worth the price of admission. From the store page: “ARK and ADE is an action-jammed FPS shooter in which you get to experience the glory of the 80’s arcade era in a neon fused setting. Shoot your way through retro-futuristic levels filled with enemies, iconic over the top bosses and never ending bullets!” I played this game back when it was in App Lab before it graduated to the full store. It was such a fun shooter back then, and I’d look forward to new levels coming out every few months. Now that it made it out of app lab, has a bunch of levels and had the gameplay polished, it’s absolutely worth a pickup, especially for that price.
   
2. Project Third Eye $9.99 Quest My quick take: A game where you make your own fun. From the store page: “Project Third Eye is an action physics sandbox with a built-in visual scripting panel to apply logic to spawnable items. This allows you to build your own modifications to the game and customize behaviors as you like.” Just like the description says, this is more of a proof of concept and sandbox game more so than a full fledged game with objectives. There are certainly neat ideas here and there, and the dev is really active with updates on Reddit. If you like to experiment and see how concepts develop in a game, you may enjoy this, but there’s no real direction beyond experimenting, so I dropped off fairly quickly.
   
3. Jousting VR Demo $9.99 Quest / Steam Quest Demo My quick take: A bit light on gameplay, but there is some charm here. From the store page: “XIII century, Europe, royal market courtyard. You are a knight who joined the medieval tournament. Your task is 'simple.' Jump on your trusty steed, grab your lance & defeat the enemy. Take into consideration speed, accuracy, strength. Equipment is also important. The better gear the easier the task. Oh, and other knights - they want to win as much as you do.” As advertised, it's a jousting game in VR. I enjoyed the demo, but honestly it was a bit too finicky at times and just not worth a full buy to me. The atmosphere was fun though and there was a progression loop for those who get into it.
   
4. Demeo $39.99 Quest and Steam (flatscreen as well) My quick take: This is a great game that I revisited from start to finish with four players. A must own. From the store page: “Adventurers, it’s time to unite! Gather your friends and fight monsters in Demeo, the turn-based tabletop strategy game of battle and glory. Roll dice, pick up miniatures, and free the world of Gilmerra in round after round of tabletop board game fun. With a huge assortment of monsters, playable classes, and environments to explore, it’s never the same game twice." I finally got a chance to play through the entirety of the game in VR with four friends, through each world, while trying a variety of characters. We even made a video ranking the best players and levels. It really is a solid dungeon crawling adventure. With 2 or more friends, this game really shines and is such a fun ride, despite how punishing the bosses can be. This is the closest you can get to D&D in VR without having a dungeon master. Well worth the asking price.
   
5. Build and Drive Racing Demo Free Quest / Steam My quick take: Early days in development, maybe something to keep an eye on to see how it improves. From the store page: "Get ready for a new experience on Windows desktop and VR, where you get to build your ultimate racing machine, tailored to your driving style and optimized for performance, or race to the finish line with a monster what makes you smile. With stylised graphics and arcade-like physics, every turn, straightway and ramp will put your skills to the test. Feel the thrill of the race like never before in VR, as you immerse yourself counting the seconds on the home stretch." An early demo that has seen some updates. Maybe worth looking at in a few months after a bit more development. I did like what I saw, but honestly, if you’re looking for a finished racing game, try Mini Motor Racing X instead or some of the other heavier PCVR games available.
   
6. Les Mills Body Combat $29.99 Quest My quick take: No subscriptions, great coaches and fun workouts that will make you sweat. From the store page: “Work out at home with a premium fitness app. LES MILLS, the world's leading fitness company, brings the BODYCOMBAT experience to your VR headset with an extensive workout portfolio, top-quality coaching, innovative mechanics, and different intensities.” With no subscriptions or hidden fees, lots of workouts, motivating coaches and the ability to compete with friends on leaderboards, this really is a dynamite workout app. I was working up a good sweat during my workouts, so be sure you have good facial insert and a fan ready. Highly recommended if you want a workout in VR for just the price of entry.
   
7. Interkosmos 2000 $19.99 Quest / Steam My quick take: A difficult puzzle game, but rewarding if you have the patience. From the store page: “Go to space. Save the Future. Try not to Die. Welcome (back) to the world of Interkosmos for an even wilder, weirder and more wondrous adventure. Experience the intense exhilaration of spaceflight. Explore the awe-inspiring interiors of a realistic space capsule. Master the crucial systems that will keep you in orbit (and breathing). And while you’re at it, try your best not to die. Should you complete your mission, you just might save the future – and yourself. Should you fail? Let’s not think about that.” An intense puzzle game where you’re piloting a space ship with some very finicky controls. I found the experience way too difficult and exacting. Along with a bit of bugginess, that didn’t help in me determining if the error was my fault or the game's. If you have the patience, there certainly is some rewarding gameplay here, and an interesting story, but I found it all a bit too much to see to the end.
   
8. The Light Brigade $24.99 Quest / Steam My quick take: In a world of rougelikes, this is one that stands out. From the store page: “As a member of The Light Brigade, humanity’s last line of defense, brave ruins bathed in darkness and free the trapped souls who need the salvation only your gun can provide. Shoot, master spells, and upgrade your capabilities to herald the Sun’s return in this roguelike VR shooter.” There’s quite a lot of rouge shooters on Quest and despite the plethora of choices, this one stands out. Be warned, it starts out slowly, but gets quite fun after you get to know the systems after about an hour in. While I did make it to the last boss, I died and never went back to finished it. The gameplay loop and dynamic levels were solid though. The slight upgrades and different classes during each run were interesting and kept me going for a while. The most frustrating time I had was learning the little tips, tricks and finer gameplay points, but it was worth the push through that initial rough patch.
   
9. Resident Evil 4 $39.99 Quest My quick take: One of the best games in VR. A must own. From the store page: “Explore the world of Resident Evil 4, entirely remastered for VR. Step into the shoes of special agent Leon S. Kennedy on his mission to rescue the U.S. President’s daughter who was kidnapped by a mysterious cult. Come face to face with enemies, and uncover secrets with gameplay that revolutionized the survival horror genre. Battle horrific creatures and face-off against mind-controlled villagers while discovering their connection to the cult behind the abduction.” I forgot so much about this game from when I first played it 18 years ago on the GameCube. The long length, fun characters and how exciting the gun play is, all just came together perfectly. The development team spent a ton of time getting the VR feeling just right, and it’s absolutely one of the best on the Quest and well worth the price of entry. Additionally, once you play through the game the first time it really changes from survival horror to a whole new type of game action game. Simply outstanding.
   
10. Mini Golf Hustler Free Quest My quick take: Early days in development. Some good ideas, but a bit too rough around the edges. From the store page: “Challenge Slick Willie Puttman in this FREE nine hole demo of Mini Golf Hustler. Hazards include armed torpedoes, tentacled arms, ornery tikis and more! Multiple betting games, including skins, match play and the fearsome traveling snake. All played at the same time.” I thought I’d check out another mini golf game to see what other ideas there might be outside of the king - Walkabout Mini Golf. While there were some solid ideas for holes, the betting felt uneven, and everything else felt in their very early stages. To be fair, no other mini golf game feels even close to the accuracy of Walkabout, so I think it’s a tough go for any other games to match. It's probably best to stick with the champ for now, but I applaud the dev for trying something different.
    
11. Pin City Free Quest (open beta on Discord) / Steam My quick take: Early days, but wow, worth a download and one to watch in the future. From the store page: "Pin City is a bowling game unlike any other bowling game you’ve played before. We strove to bring the spirit of mini-golf into the world of bowling. We’ve taken the standard bowling setup (straight lane, 10 pins, 1 ball) and expanded, transformed, and evolved it. We wanted to give people a chance to bowl in ways that would be impossible, illegal, or extremely impractical.” An early alpha game, but boy, what a great start, I’m really looking forward to the team getting the physics feeling right with weight and feel of the bowling balls and seeing how much more gameplay they can add. Really worth the download or heading over to their Discord to get a Quest key for free to try it out. The quirky bowling, physics and gameplay they're experimenting with really got me excited to see how this one comes together in the next several months.
    
12. Mash Me Up Free Quest My quick take: Please devs, add more multiplayer support! From the store page: “Do you want to play party games with your friends or meet someone new? All is just one button press away with Mash Me Up. One button, multiple games. Will it be Air Hockey, Pier Pong, Flingball, or… Get ready for a surprise! Press, Play, Enjoy and Go Again!” If this game got a bit more development love it would be incredible. As it stands now, there are several mini games you can play against one person. Most are just okay, but a handful are real gems, and one particularly is incredible - Geo Guesser. Hands down the best mini game in the pack. With four, or six players and some new content, they could easily charge for just this one game. As it stands now, it’s a great two player game, but you’ll need to bring your own friend as the servers are pretty barren. Worth a download though for sure as you’ll get a night of fun out of it.
    
13. THZZLS - Treasures Lost In Time $4.99 Quest My quick take: A unique puzzler that can be pretty relaxing, but repetitive. From the store page: “Our first THZZLE is called "Der Bazar", the world's first VR toy theatre puzzle game. The Bazar is a VR puzzle game where you have to place furniture and props in the right places in old-fashioned rooms according to an old picture you see. The game is set in 19th century Germany and each room has objects taken from the German lifestyle magazine "Der Bazar", published in Berlin.” This one used to be free, with paid content, but it has since changed as they added more content. You recreate a scene with cutouts of people and furniture in a 3D space. It seemed to have endless puzzles with randomization of scenes. I could see someone going to this for a relaxing 10-15 minutes, but it is a lot of the same each time and didn’t grab me fully. If you’re looking for a puzzle game that’s outside of the usual ones you find in the store, it’s not a bad choice for the price. Keep in mind though its hand tracking only, so for some that may be a non starter, even though it felt just fine.
    
14. Barbaria $19.99 Quest / Steam My quick take: What I imagine Gorn is like with a solid game loop of RTS. From the store page: “Do you have what it takes to be the Mightiest in Barbaria? Welcome to a brutal world where visceral motion-controlled combat blends seamlessly with god-scale base-building and asynchronous multiplayer raids. Use fists, axes, swords, bows, rocks, or anything you can grab to dominate your foes in intense 1st-person combat. Then jump out to your immortal form and watch your minions carry on the battle while you rain down meteors from above. Systemic combat, versatile enemy AI, and player-created defenses make every battle unique.” I recognize there is a lot here to do in this game - if you like the game loop. Unfortunately, it really didn’t do much for me. I was expecting more RTS than Gorn style gameplay and was not pulled in by the fighting or quests offered. I have to say that the humor was spot on, and it certainly had good visuals, the game was just not for me. All that being said, there is a lot of content here and you could be playing this for quite some time if you think this could be your jam.
    
15. Toy Monsters Free Quest Demo / $4.99 Quest My quick take: Plants vs Zombies in AR with hand tracking that does enough unique stuff to be worth it. From the store page: “Toy Monsters VR is a mixed-reality tabletop tower defense inspired by classic Plants vs Zombies. Built from the ground up with hand tracking and passthrough in mind. As you progress through the 20 levels, you'll unlock new toys with unique special powers. You can enhance your toys with magical potions and use crystal power to unleash magic beams from your hands, transform your fingers into flamethrowers, and more.” This game has come a long way since its initial release. It’s a solid hand tracking Plants vs. Zombies game with its own twist on powers and uses passthrough quite nicely. My biggest complaint is that you really need to complete the game all in one go (about an hour or so) as it doesn’t keep track of your upgrades if you quit. Essentially, trying to pass a later level without prior upgrades or powerups is near impossible. Despite that one issue, give at least the demo a try and if you like it, the price is pretty fair for what you get.
    
16. Exit Condition One Free Quest Demo / $4.99 Quest My quick take: A bit rough around the edges, but escape room fans will find fun with it. From the store page: “You awake from cryo in a mysterious museum. A robot refers to you as a curator and the security system is malfunctioning. Can you get things back to normal and escape? There are no jump scares. The game is designed ground-up for roomscale VR on the Quest, but supports all locomotion modes. Most objects can be interacted with, it fully uses physics, and the hands don't ‘ghost out.’” According to the description, this is still a work in progress. That being said, it was a neat escape game that I felt I got my money’s worth from. It certainly was a bit rough around the edges with its gameplay and had some obscure puzzles to work through, but I did finish it and had a good time with it. Try the demo for sure, and perhaps when it’s finally finished, some of those rough edges will be polished up, but as it stands now, it was pretty solid.
    
17. Hyperdash Free Quest / Steam My quick take: A solid online shooter, but you'll have to put in the time to get good to find the fun. From the store page: “Hyper Dash is a free VR multiplayer team based shooter. Payload, Domination, Control Point, (Team) Deathmatch, Capture The Flag, Elimination, Ball and remix them with Mutators! Dash, sprint, and rail grind your way across the arenas to engage the enemy in fast-paced combat and secure the objective for your team. Offline mode/Bots, Dedicated servers, Private servers, Rebind-able controls, Left hand support, Voice chat.” For a free to play shooter, this one had great controls, nice graphics, a good gameplay loop, plenty of comfort options and a solid player base. All that being said, every player I faced off against were top tier, so I spent my time just dying round after round. This is a good game with a solid player base and there's fun here - if you’re willing to learn the ropes. It's bad for newbies like me just looking to have a good time and get a few kills.
    
18. Please, Don’t Touch Anything $9.99 Quest / $4.99 Steam My quick take: A game for escape room devotees only. From the store page: "Please, Don’t Touch Anything is a cryptic, brain-racking button-pushing puzzle game. Covering for a colleague taking a bathroom break, you find yourself in front of a mysterious console with a green screen monitor showing a pixelated live image of an unknown city. Also present is an ominous red button with the simple instruction to not touch anything! Push the red button once or press it many times. Your choices and actions will lead to outrageous and frightening consequences and over 30 unique puzzle endings.” This is a weird one. A really obscure puzzle game that rewards experimentation, but is absolutely punishing with difficulty. If you’re really good at escape games and don’t get frustrated easily, you may enjoy the tedium. If not, you’ll end up like me, watching a tutorial to find out how to get different endings. But if you find yourself doing that, why not just watch a playthrough.
    
19. Eleven Table Tennis $29.99 Quest / Steam My quick take: Still one of the best, but there’s so much untapped potential. From the store page: “The ultimate Table Tennis simulator. Play opponents in online multiplayer or practice against the advanced AI. With physics designed to be as real as ever achieved in a Table Tennis simulator, you will forget you are in VR." I finally got back to this game after the new UI was implemented. It looks much more user friendly, but much to my disappointment, there were no new arenas, music, or official doubles options. There is so much potential for expanding this game, and I feel like the devs are just content to have it remain in the state it currently is. Which, to be fair, is a perfect implementation of table tennis in VR. It’s still one of the best VR games out there and absolutely a must own. I just really wish they would add an officially supported doubles mode and expand out the game a bit more because the unofficial doubles mode is a real pain to get set up and only barely worth the struggle. If you'd like to see how to set that doubles up currently, here is a video I was a part of.
    
20. Breachers $29.99 Quest / Steam My quick take: Come one, come all, this is 5 v 5 at its finest. From the store page: “In Breachers, you plan your assault or orchestrate your defense as a team through intense close-quarters combat. Whether you play as an enforcer or a revolter, master your nifty gadgetry, customize your powerful weaponry and beat your opponents in stunning environments. Intuitive to grasp. Endlessly playable.” Wow, wow, wow. This officially launched and is such a polished game. With multiple maps, intuitive movement and full lobbies, this game is simply spectacular. Despite the difficulty curve in being good at the game, it’s still a fun time even if you’re not the best, which is something special that few games manage to pull off. Where this game especially shines is with friends. If you can muster up a team of five to take on other random players, you’ll be playing this game for months. Give this a go, and if you're not any good, that's okay, because you'll still be better than the bots and a welcome addition to someone's team.
    
21. Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Outcast (Sidequest mod) Free Demo on Quest / $9.99 (Full Game on Steam) My quick take: Come for the lightsaber play, stay if you can tolerate the puzzles. From the store page: “JK XR is a standalone VR port of the popular Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast game by Lucasarts and Raven Software. Brought to VR by Team Beef & Friends. There are lots of mods and access to the free demo level available through the JK XR Companion App, which is automatically also installed alongside JK XR on your headset.” I never played this game when it first came out on flatscreen in 2002, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. The first part of the game you’re playing essentially as a Han Solo type - a smart talkin’ gun slinger. The next part, you’re a cool Jedi chopping off limbs. Absolutely great execution as always by Team Beef, and you can’t beat the price. There is even a free demo to try out to see if you like it. All that being said, the game’s old puzzles, navigation and gameplay felt every bit of 20 years old. After dying multiple times because of missing an exact jump, getting lost and backtracking because I didn't see an obscure elevator and wasting time trying to navigate odd puzzles, I just found it to be too much to overcome to continue to the end. This is no slight on Team Beef and the great work they did with this port, the game just hasn’t aged the best.
    
22. CoasterMania $9.99 Quest My quick take: Early days, but still some fun to be had. There could be something special here after a few updates. From the store page: “CoasterMania is a physics-based VR rollercoaster game where you create the ride of your life! Use wacky contraptions and elements to fly through the sky, then experience your creation by jumping in the front seat. Sandbox mode: Build your dream rollercoaster without any rules but the rules of physics. When you're done, share your coaster or experience the engineering marvels of others. Design your own rides and upload them online.” You know, this game is just silly fun. It's early days for sure, and the tracks don't twist and come together as easily together as I’d hoped, which makes for a difficult time creating exactly what you want. It is satisfying though to have a roller coaster leap from one track to another over a gap. At this point the game is more of a sandbox than a full game with objectives (which is coming). The coasters other people have created are fun, so if you’re not into creating, there is that option to play with other people's designs, plus you can ride them in first person. I look forward to more updates and think it's worth looking at for sure, but if you’re looking for something a bit more fleshed out currently you can try Stunt Track Builder.
    
23. David Slade Mysteries: Case Files $9.99 Quest / Steam My quick take: You’re a forensic cop, here are your tools. Good luck dummy. From the store page: “Take to the dark and violent streets of downtown Riverside, where you investigate gruesome and violent homicides using a range of Forensic tools and your wits! Inspired by the classic Police Quest adventure series, reborn & reimagined for VR. Includes two epic episodes!” Slade is a murder mystery game that is ruthless in it’s difficulty. Honestly, there are several play throughs of this game on YouTube and none have beaten the first case because it was too hard, they all gave up. This game offers no hints, is super abstract and insanely difficult. Why did I keep playing? Well, the game’s tools were implemented quite well, the story was compelling, and I just felt I had to see this through to the end for my own sanity. Despite being as hard as nails, I somehow managed to finish the first case, then moved on to the second. No real spoilers, but the second case does a complete 180 and essentially becomes a horror game where you’re only weapon is your wits. A real departure from the first case. Again, I found myself frustrated, confused and turned around, but again, I had to power through it because something kept pulling me in. If you’re a masochist for puzzle games, I’d recommend this game.
    
24. Home Detective Free w/IAP - Quest My quick take: Fun use of AR, but pretty basic. From the store page: “Use your own living room to solve the crime! Using passthrough, the crime scene is overlaid onto your play area, leaving you free to explore and find clues. Use the patent-pending Residual Heat Scanner to detect the criminals' recent movements, and then dust for fingerprints or try to find evidence left behind. With your wits, and your trusty sidekick Steve Dobbins' snarky comments, you're sure to get to the bottom of these confusing crimes.” I appreciate the interesting use of passthrough and AR in this game. The first case is free to try, so if you’re into AR and passthrough, it’s worth a try. It's $3.99 for another case if you’re into it, but right now, it’s a pretty basic, but solid idea. My biggest complaint is that all my tools were on a shelf that was inaccessible because they were in my wall. I guess AR is still not quite there yet.
    
25. Vertigo Remastered $24.99 Steam My quick take: A fun and wacky ride from start to finish. From the store page: “It's a classic premise - a massive subterranean scientific facility full of mysteries, with aliens bursting in from alternate universes to wreak havoc. The twist? You're one of those aliens. But you're not here to wreak havoc (collateral damage disregarded), you're just trying to get home. A difficult endeavor, as it turns out this facility is more than prepared to deal with extraterrestrial threats.” Because I heard such great things about Vertigo 2, I thought I’d try out this game before I played the sequel. I was really blown away by how fun the game was and pleasantly surprised that it holds up so well. Considering its a 2016 remake, and VR was still figuring out a lot of things like movement, this still felt fresh. With lots of unique ideas, upgrades and areas to play in, I heartily recommend this one and am looking forward to playing the sequel.
    
26. Playin’ Pickleball $19.99 Quest My quick take: Solid physics, but really only for pickleball fans, or a group of four friends. From the store page: “Playin’ Pickleball is an authentic reproduction of Pickleball in Virtual Reality! Physics, sounds and mechanics have been carefully mapped from actual Pickleball game play. Even the scoring and rules are based on the USA Pickleball Association’s Official Rulebook.” Pickleball is sweeping the nation and if I recall correctly, even ForeVR is getting in on the game with an upcoming title. I’m much more of a tennis than pickleball guy, but I have to say, this game has pretty solid physics. Like most games, this is exponentially better with one or better yet, three other people you know. The AI players can be pretty uninteresting hitting it back and forth without much variance. Also the environments are a bit basic. I have to applaud the movement, physics and customizable items though as they all felt very well implemented. If you want something a bit less daunting than tennis, this might be what you're looking for.
    
27. Pong $6.99 Quest My quick take: A neat take on Pong, but you’ll have more fun with Cybrix. From the store page: “Classic paddle game reimagined for VR. Destroy all the bricks. Use your paddles to swing at the balls and the balls have built-in assistance to return back toward you. Take advantage of the pistol and magneto power-ups to cause major damage. Or just swing hard at the balls to create large blast radius. Oh and watch out for those mines going for your head. Lean left/right or crouch to avoid.” I appreciated the ideas the developers had in this modern take on Pong, but it was ultimately quite short and not nearly as fun as Cybrix. That being said for the price, I got my money’s worth and would love to see it get a bit more polish and levels in an update.
    
28. Extreme Escape $4.99 Quest / Steam (Early Access) My quick take: One of those special games where you really feel like you're in the environment. From the store page: “Have you ever wondered how it would feel to travel in a hot air balloon and fly above clouds? Have you ever wanted to face your fear of heights and enclosed spaces? Perhaps you wanted to become a pilot and test your critical thinking skills. Looking for a breathtaking experience? Try Extreme Escape.” The game says “early access,” but honestly I believe this has been abandoned. For the price, you get an extremely short, but fun and unique escape room experience. You’re not going to find this game too hard, but I was brought into its world and completely immersed - I had a true sense of dread and panic. The even shorter “demo” inside the game puts you on a sinking submarine and was extremely memorable. Seldom have I felt so immersed in a game. I’d recommend it for this price, just because of how it made me feel, but it’s a real shame about the very short length and that it’s abandoned.
    
29. The Last Worker $19.99 Quest / Steam My quick take: Gaming with a heavy message, but mediocre gameplay. From the store page: “The Last Worker is an immersive narrative adventure centered around a lone worker’s last stand in an increasingly automated world, The Last Worker is a unique blend of work simulation and stealth strategic gameplay. The game is set in a lonely, oppressive but strangely beautiful environment, with characters designed by comics legend Mick McMahon. Kurt works for the world’s largest retailer and is forced to choose between capitalism or activism. Having dedicated his life to work, Kurt’s loyalty is put to the test when a group of activists ask him to dismantle Jüngle from the inside.” I really wanted to like this game. It had an interesting concept, but navigating, fail states and some very annoying bugs frustrated me to the point where I just said it wasn’t worth my time. That and the story wasn’t speaking to me. It’s well rated, so I’m probably on the opposite side of this one from most people. It's unique in many ways, so check out the teaser and see if it might be for you.
    
30. Shadow Point $19.99 Quest My quick take: Fisherman’s Tale vibes with an excellent story and puzzles that makes you feel smart. From the store page: “Built for VR, Shadow Point is a story-driven puzzle game set between a mountaintop observatory and an ever-changing fantasy world. Explore a vibrant kingdom, cast shadows and solve mind-bending puzzles as you uncover the mystery of missing schoolgirl, Lorna McCabe who vanished from Shadow Point Observatory twelve years ago. As your adventure unfolds, you will manipulate gravity, play with your own reflection, walk on walls, peer through a magical lens to reveal an alternate reality and much more.” I had this game on my wishlist forever and finally pulled the trigger, and boy am I glad I did. I really enjoyed the story, gameplay and ended up marathoning it in one session (which I don't recommend doing). It is a few hours long, and there are extra puzzles to go back to if you’d like. It had some serious Fisherman’s Tale vibes, so if you like those type of puzzle games, this is for you. The puzzles make you stop and think, and more importantly, progress nicely. I was never stuck, but certainly had to really contemplate how to solve some of them. It is slightly finicky with having to line up the shadows exactly to progress, but that is a minor complaint. Give this one a go for sure.
    

I hope you find a few games on this list that you might not have heard of, or that you might find worth revisiting. Let me know here or on the Ruff Talk Discord channel if you have a game you enjoy that I should try, I'm always open to recommendations. Until then, I hope your next VR experience is a memorable one.
Also, the week this is posted, I'm hosting a contest where one winner gets a $29.99 or less, Quest game of their choice. You can enter on the discord channel above, but will need to have five posts on the discord channel within a week to enter, so if that interests you, feel free to join. The Ruff Talk guys usually have giveaways every week and it's some solid VR chat if you're looking for like-minded individuals in a non-toxic space.
TLDR: Top five games to check out - Ark and Ade, Pin City, Breachers, Shadow Point, Vertigo Remastered

I'm fairly new to regular run training, having just caught the triathlon bug in Feb 2022. I am currently running 25 mpw and am looking to increase that to 40+ eventually. I have been wearing zero-drop, minimalist shoes for years (not for running but just calisthenics and daily living) and have never run in anything but Altra. As I ramped my mileage up from 350ish miles in 2022 to my current clip, I have never been injured and have gotten a good deal faster. I ran a half marathon at 1:40 and want to level up my rotation game.
I'm training for 70.3 triathlon, a 3:30 marathon, and possibly some ultras. I run in the "Born to Run" style at a 180 spm cadence with a forefoot/midfoot strike.
I'm thinking of going with an Altra-only rotation since I know they work for me. Here are my current shoes:

• Escalante Racer for most runs - I currently have 3 pairs that I rotate through, but one pair has 500 miles and is on its way to retirement.
• Superior for trail runs, which I also like, though I much prefer the Escalante Racer's knit upper.
• Xero HFS, Z-Trail for shorter runs

Shoes I'm thinking about adding:

• Via Olympus for long (8-10+) mile runs or for when my legs are feeling beat up
• Vanish Tempo for tempo runs and racing.
• Vanish Carbon (as an eventual splurge) for racing

I've never run in anything with much cushion in it - only ever Xero HFS and Escalante Racers.

1. Does anyone have experience with adding in some cushioned or some race shoes after running primarily in minimalist shoes?
2. Are there any other brands/shoes I should consider?

Trying to get my first solo dungeon clear. I’ve watched all of the videos and seen people do it with ease, but every time I enter into DPS with Ecthar, it’s a mess.
Running double special, OTP shotgun, Lament, Assassin’s Cowl. 100 Res, Amped Up, Electric Armor, Thunderous Retort, Spark of Resistance, etc.
First off, does anyone know what could cause the Lucent Witches and the Knight you get the buff to break Ecthar’s shield to not die to a One Two Punch and a melee with 3x Combination Blows and Lethal Charge active? It’s extremely inconsistent for me, sometimes killing them in a shot+melee as intended, sometimes leaving them with half of their health left. This often messes up the beginning of DPS as I’m fully prepared to melt the buff Knight but he doesn’t die like he should.
Next, Ecthar always seems to hit me with a shield that tracks like crazy before I can get to him with Lament. This leaves me with half health and it’s just a game of perfect Lament timing at that point, often killing me. Is there any way to go from dunking the final Vestige into killing the buff Knight (assuming the effects work as intended and he dies right away), into dealing damage without getting bonked? I always try and hit him with the super+grenade combo while in buff to break his shield fast but the timing is so unreliable, especially when he’s running around behind pillars.
Any and all tips are welcome! Thank you!

DAY 001
Turns out my life at been changed like the anime call " Lie in your April ". I met a girl just like the main character of lie in your April did. She was just outstanding in my eyes anyways. I was in totally in love with her . It's the first time I love someone in 19 years,my age is 20 now .so I didn't know how to love someone,I didn't care to love someone,I was not interested in that part at all. But after saying her my life got totally changed. It's not like I don't have any friends (girls). But something about her totally different from others the way I look at her I don't I just don't felt this kind of thing before . First I didn't figured it out what was going on , slowly I understood that that i liked her so much . She didn't even put that much effort but even so sometimes that little things she did for me was enough to do so .she didn't know anything about this and I didn't wanted to tell anyone even so after a few months I told my best friend about this . Basically I thought that this feelings will be gone eventually but it didn't it became strong. So told my best friend that i liked her . But not the all of it just some part . ( After i met her and became friends with her, i introduced my best friend to her and her friends and we became close we would hangout in a group).Then a few months went by i talk to her like normal ,try my best to act natural around her cuz you know it hard to act normal im front of someone who you have a hard crush on. I best friend would tease me about her, so I told him that I didn't have a crush on her anymore. And some months went by , we would hangout together all the time.I got some dates but didn't wanted to go to everyone asked why did i not wanted to go ,i lied that i didn't wanted to we didn't match vibes. Last month my best friend got a girlfriend. And here comes the "lie in your April" part after my best friend got a gf the girl i like one of her friends told him that she liked him and all indirectly. Then my best friend told me everything and i did take it well on the outside but you know how it feels on the outside. I'm not excatly sure if that's true and all cuz her friend does this all the time . Anyways if you are asking that why don't i just man up and ask her on a date . The reply would be i just can't right now, I don't wanna lose this thing with her as friends, i can't risk it all . And that part she like my best friend above all pains me . I mean c'mon man it cloud be anyone why it had to be my best friend. Anyway i try to not show any emotions.
Today we had a meet up and i gave a cold shouler to her because i wanted to go this feelings away so then i wouldn't be in this much pain . I didn't wanted to act bad with her like i did today.but i just had to. Now she is angry with me and I'm trying to make it even bad I don't now what am i doing.
Just felt like to share it

Hey all, this is my first post here on this subreddit. I hope everything I say here is within the rules.
I'm a newly graduated university student who is beginning medical school in a few months. I had been in a relationship with a woman who graduated the semester before me. We were together for about 8 months. 2 months ago she started her one-year-long master's degree in a foreign country. No doubt, I figured it was going to be challenging, but not as hard as it really ended up being.
We got in a massive fight yesterday - the day before I was going to go fly over to visit her. I ended up cancelling my flight and breaking up with her in a harsh manner if I may say. After hearing opinions from my loved ones I realized that I made a massive mistake and reacted poorly to the situation - I ended up apologizing to her. However, I know there was really no going back. She is doing her studies there - why would she want to be with someone who keeps stressing her out (insecurities, being too hard on myself, not thinking logically sometimes and taking stuff out on her - all of these things culminated in our fight yesterday).
Today we officially ended things. She decided that it was not healthy for us to be together right now although she acknowledged that I made a mistake (and so did she) and that she does not hold it against me. I agreed with her, even though it pains me because I still love her. I have begun to scour the internet for self-help guides to address some insecurities and some of my personal flaws that ended up failing her and this relationship. No doubt, in our situation, nobody was blameless and we both acknowledged that. But I know my reaction and my behavior to the situation at hand was not proportionate. I feel ashamed for the way I treated her at the end of the day because she was a very sweet girl who I do not think deserved it.
Anyway, I am feeling really down today - this was the first serious person romantically in my life who I introduced to my family. Her family was fond of me in the short time we were together. She returns to the United States soon for vacation (where we are from) and will do so also after she graduates to start looking for a job. I am finding it incredibly difficult to ever bring myself again in front of her, although at the same time I know I want closure by seeing her perhaps for a last time and talking through the whole situation so we can both feel better and potentially move on or try again with one another, should she want to.
What should I do? How do I begin to heal? I am certainly not going to hold out hope or wait for something magical to happen - whatever happens will happen. Just having some trouble starting the healing process and making sure that I don't fail someone ever again like I did again. Was hoping you good folks on this subreddit could help me out. Cheers.

I'm keeping track of all the VR games I’ve played this year to catalogue them in hopes that they may give fellow VR gamers some fresh games to try out, or reasons to revisit older games that have had big updates. I'm currently up to 52 different VR games played this year. The first 22 that I played from January to March can be found here. The latest 30 games are mostly on the Quest, but many are available on PCVR.
Some of the games listed below, I can see playing all year long, others are not my cup of tea, but they may interest you enough to try them out. In either case, here are my quick thoughts on the 30 games I’ve played during April and May of 2023.
TLDR: My top 5 games to check out are at the bottom and so is some info for a game giveaway.
​

1. ARK and ADE $9.99 Quest / Steam My quick take: A fun shooter with Pistol Whip vibes that is absolutely worth the price of admission. From the store page: “ARK and ADE is an action-jammed FPS shooter in which you get to experience the glory of the 80’s arcade era in a neon fused setting. Shoot your way through retro-futuristic levels filled with enemies, iconic over the top bosses and never ending bullets!” I played this game back when it was in App Lab before it graduated to the full store. It was such a fun shooter back then, and I’d look forward to new levels coming out every few months. Now that it made it out of app lab, has a bunch of levels and had the gameplay polished, it’s absolutely worth a pickup, especially for that price.
   
2. Project Third Eye $9.99 Quest My quick take: A game where you make your own fun. From the store page: “Project Third Eye is an action physics sandbox with a built-in visual scripting panel to apply logic to spawnable items. This allows you to build your own modifications to the game and customize behaviors as you like.” Just like the description says, this is more of a proof of concept and sandbox game more so than a full fledged game with objectives. There are certainly neat ideas here and there, and the dev is really active with updates on Reddit. If you like to experiment and see how concepts develop in a game, you may enjoy this, but there’s no real direction beyond experimenting, so I dropped off fairly quickly.
   
3. Jousting VR Demo $9.99 Quest / Steam Quest Demo My quick take: A bit light on gameplay, but there is some charm here. From the store page: “XIII century, Europe, royal market courtyard. You are a knight who joined the medieval tournament. Your task is 'simple.' Jump on your trusty steed, grab your lance & defeat the enemy. Take into consideration speed, accuracy, strength. Equipment is also important. The better gear the easier the task. Oh, and other knights - they want to win as much as you do.” As advertised, it's a jousting game in VR. I enjoyed the demo, but honestly it was a bit too finicky at times and just not worth a full buy to me. The atmosphere was fun though and there was a progression loop for those who get into it.
   
4. Demeo $39.99 Quest and Steam (flatscreen as well) My quick take: This is a great game that I revisited from start to finish with four players. A must own. From the store page: “Adventurers, it’s time to unite! Gather your friends and fight monsters in Demeo, the turn-based tabletop strategy game of battle and glory. Roll dice, pick up miniatures, and free the world of Gilmerra in round after round of tabletop board game fun. With a huge assortment of monsters, playable classes, and environments to explore, it’s never the same game twice." I finally got a chance to play through the entirety of the game in VR with four friends, through each world, while trying a variety of characters. We even made a video ranking the best players and levels. It really is a solid dungeon crawling adventure. With 2 or more friends, this game really shines and is such a fun ride, despite how punishing the bosses can be. This is the closest you can get to D&D in VR without having a dungeon master. Well worth the asking price.
   
5. Build and Drive Racing Demo Free Quest / Steam My quick take: Early days in development, maybe something to keep an eye on to see how it improves. From the store page: "Get ready for a new experience on Windows desktop and VR, where you get to build your ultimate racing machine, tailored to your driving style and optimized for performance, or race to the finish line with a monster what makes you smile. With stylised graphics and arcade-like physics, every turn, straightway and ramp will put your skills to the test. Feel the thrill of the race like never before in VR, as you immerse yourself counting the seconds on the home stretch." An early demo that has seen some updates. Maybe worth looking at in a few months after a bit more development. I did like what I saw, but honestly, if you’re looking for a finished racing game, try Mini Motor Racing X instead or some of the other heavier PCVR games available.
   
6. Les Mills Body Combat $29.99 Quest My quick take: No subscriptions, great coaches and fun workouts that will make you sweat. From the store page: “Work out at home with a premium fitness app. LES MILLS, the world's leading fitness company, brings the BODYCOMBAT experience to your VR headset with an extensive workout portfolio, top-quality coaching, innovative mechanics, and different intensities.” With no subscriptions or hidden fees, lots of workouts, motivating coaches and the ability to compete with friends on leaderboards, this really is a dynamite workout app. I was working up a good sweat during my workouts, so be sure you have good facial insert and a fan ready. Highly recommended if you want a workout in VR for just the price of entry.
   
7. Interkosmos 2000 $19.99 Quest / Steam My quick take: A difficult puzzle game, but rewarding if you have the patience. From the store page: “Go to space. Save the Future. Try not to Die. Welcome (back) to the world of Interkosmos for an even wilder, weirder and more wondrous adventure. Experience the intense exhilaration of spaceflight. Explore the awe-inspiring interiors of a realistic space capsule. Master the crucial systems that will keep you in orbit (and breathing). And while you’re at it, try your best not to die. Should you complete your mission, you just might save the future – and yourself. Should you fail? Let’s not think about that.” An intense puzzle game where you’re piloting a space ship with some very finicky controls. I found the experience way too difficult and exacting. Along with a bit of bugginess, that didn’t help in me determining if the error was my fault or the game's. If you have the patience, there certainly is some rewarding gameplay here, and an interesting story, but I found it all a bit too much to see to the end.
   
8. The Light Brigade $24.99 Quest / Steam My quick take: In a world of rougelikes, this is one that stands out. From the store page: “As a member of The Light Brigade, humanity’s last line of defense, brave ruins bathed in darkness and free the trapped souls who need the salvation only your gun can provide. Shoot, master spells, and upgrade your capabilities to herald the Sun’s return in this roguelike VR shooter.” There’s quite a lot of rouge shooters on Quest and despite the plethora of choices, this one stands out. Be warned, it starts out slowly, but gets quite fun after you get to know the systems after about an hour in. While I did make it to the last boss, I died and never went back to finished it. The gameplay loop and dynamic levels were solid though. The slight upgrades and different classes during each run were interesting and kept me going for a while. The most frustrating time I had was learning the little tips, tricks and finer gameplay points, but it was worth the push through that initial rough patch.
   
9. Resident Evil 4 $39.99 Quest My quick take: One of the best games in VR. A must own. From the store page: “Explore the world of Resident Evil 4, entirely remastered for VR. Step into the shoes of special agent Leon S. Kennedy on his mission to rescue the U.S. President’s daughter who was kidnapped by a mysterious cult. Come face to face with enemies, and uncover secrets with gameplay that revolutionized the survival horror genre. Battle horrific creatures and face-off against mind-controlled villagers while discovering their connection to the cult behind the abduction.” I forgot so much about this game from when I first played it 18 years ago on the GameCube. The long length, fun characters and how exciting the gun play is, all just came together perfectly. The development team spent a ton of time getting the VR feeling just right, and it’s absolutely one of the best on the Quest and well worth the price of entry. Additionally, once you play through the game the first time it really changes from survival horror to a whole new type of game action game. Simply outstanding.
   
10. Mini Golf Hustler Free Quest My quick take: Early days in development. Some good ideas, but a bit too rough around the edges. From the store page: “Challenge Slick Willie Puttman in this FREE nine hole demo of Mini Golf Hustler. Hazards include armed torpedoes, tentacled arms, ornery tikis and more! Multiple betting games, including skins, match play and the fearsome traveling snake. All played at the same time.” I thought I’d check out another mini golf game to see what other ideas there might be outside of the king - Walkabout Mini Golf. While there were some solid ideas for holes, the betting felt uneven, and everything else felt in their very early stages. To be fair, no other mini golf game feels even close to the accuracy of Walkabout, so I think it’s a tough go for any other games to match. It's probably best to stick with the champ for now, but I applaud the dev for trying something different.
    
11. Pin City Free Quest (open beta on Discord) / Steam My quick take: Early days, but wow, worth a download and one to watch in the future. From the store page: "Pin City is a bowling game unlike any other bowling game you’ve played before. We strove to bring the spirit of mini-golf into the world of bowling. We’ve taken the standard bowling setup (straight lane, 10 pins, 1 ball) and expanded, transformed, and evolved it. We wanted to give people a chance to bowl in ways that would be impossible, illegal, or extremely impractical.” An early alpha game, but boy, what a great start, I’m really looking forward to the team getting the physics feeling right with weight and feel of the bowling balls and seeing how much more gameplay they can add. Really worth the download or heading over to their Discord to get a Quest key for free to try it out. The quirky bowling, physics and gameplay they're experimenting with really got me excited to see how this one comes together in the next several months.
    
12. Mash Me Up Free Quest My quick take: Please devs, add more multiplayer support! From the store page: “Do you want to play party games with your friends or meet someone new? All is just one button press away with Mash Me Up. One button, multiple games. Will it be Air Hockey, Pier Pong, Flingball, or… Get ready for a surprise! Press, Play, Enjoy and Go Again!” If this game got a bit more development love it would be incredible. As it stands now, there are several mini games you can play against one person. Most are just okay, but a handful are real gems, and one particularly is incredible - Geo Guesser. Hands down the best mini game in the pack. With four, or six players and some new content, they could easily charge for just this one game. As it stands now, it’s a great two player game, but you’ll need to bring your own friend as the servers are pretty barren. Worth a download though for sure as you’ll get a night of fun out of it.
    
13. THZZLS - Treasures Lost In Time $4.99 Quest My quick take: A unique puzzler that can be pretty relaxing, but repetitive. From the store page: “Our first THZZLE is called "Der Bazar", the world's first VR toy theatre puzzle game. The Bazar is a VR puzzle game where you have to place furniture and props in the right places in old-fashioned rooms according to an old picture you see. The game is set in 19th century Germany and each room has objects taken from the German lifestyle magazine "Der Bazar", published in Berlin.” This one used to be free, with paid content, but it has since changed as they added more content. You recreate a scene with cutouts of people and furniture in a 3D space. It seemed to have endless puzzles with randomization of scenes. I could see someone going to this for a relaxing 10-15 minutes, but it is a lot of the same each time and didn’t grab me fully. If you’re looking for a puzzle game that’s outside of the usual ones you find in the store, it’s not a bad choice for the price. Keep in mind though its hand tracking only, so for some that may be a non starter, even though it felt just fine.
    
14. Barbaria $19.99 Quest / Steam My quick take: What I imagine Gorn is like with a solid game loop of RTS. From the store page: “Do you have what it takes to be the Mightiest in Barbaria? Welcome to a brutal world where visceral motion-controlled combat blends seamlessly with god-scale base-building and asynchronous multiplayer raids. Use fists, axes, swords, bows, rocks, or anything you can grab to dominate your foes in intense 1st-person combat. Then jump out to your immortal form and watch your minions carry on the battle while you rain down meteors from above. Systemic combat, versatile enemy AI, and player-created defenses make every battle unique.” I recognize there is a lot here to do in this game - if you like the game loop. Unfortunately, it really didn’t do much for me. I was expecting more RTS than Gorn style gameplay and was not pulled in by the fighting or quests offered. I have to say that the humor was spot on, and it certainly had good visuals, the game was just not for me. All that being said, there is a lot of content here and you could be playing this for quite some time if you think this could be your jam.
    
15. Toy Monsters Free Quest Demo / $4.99 Quest My quick take: Plants vs Zombies in AR with hand tracking that does enough unique stuff to be worth it. From the store page: “Toy Monsters VR is a mixed-reality tabletop tower defense inspired by classic Plants vs Zombies. Built from the ground up with hand tracking and passthrough in mind. As you progress through the 20 levels, you'll unlock new toys with unique special powers. You can enhance your toys with magical potions and use crystal power to unleash magic beams from your hands, transform your fingers into flamethrowers, and more.” This game has come a long way since its initial release. It’s a solid hand tracking Plants vs. Zombies game with its own twist on powers and uses passthrough quite nicely. My biggest complaint is that you really need to complete the game all in one go (about an hour or so) as it doesn’t keep track of your upgrades if you quit. Essentially, trying to pass a later level without prior upgrades or powerups is near impossible. Despite that one issue, give at least the demo a try and if you like it, the price is pretty fair for what you get.
    
16. Exit Condition One Free Quest Demo / $4.99 Quest My quick take: A bit rough around the edges, but escape room fans will find fun with it. From the store page: “You awake from cryo in a mysterious museum. A robot refers to you as a curator and the security system is malfunctioning. Can you get things back to normal and escape? There are no jump scares. The game is designed ground-up for roomscale VR on the Quest, but supports all locomotion modes. Most objects can be interacted with, it fully uses physics, and the hands don't ‘ghost out.’” According to the description, this is still a work in progress. That being said, it was a neat escape game that I felt I got my money’s worth from. It certainly was a bit rough around the edges with its gameplay and had some obscure puzzles to work through, but I did finish it and had a good time with it. Try the demo for sure, and perhaps when it’s finally finished, some of those rough edges will be polished up, but as it stands now, it was pretty solid.
    
17. Hyperdash Free Quest / Steam My quick take: A solid online shooter, but you'll have to put in the time to get good to find the fun. From the store page: “Hyper Dash is a free VR multiplayer team based shooter. Payload, Domination, Control Point, (Team) Deathmatch, Capture The Flag, Elimination, Ball and remix them with Mutators! Dash, sprint, and rail grind your way across the arenas to engage the enemy in fast-paced combat and secure the objective for your team. Offline mode/Bots, Dedicated servers, Private servers, Rebind-able controls, Left hand support, Voice chat.” For a free to play shooter, this one had great controls, nice graphics, a good gameplay loop, plenty of comfort options and a solid player base. All that being said, every player I faced off against were top tier, so I spent my time just dying round after round. This is a good game with a solid player base and there's fun here - if you’re willing to learn the ropes. It's bad for newbies like me just looking to have a good time and get a few kills.
    
18. Please, Don’t Touch Anything $9.99 Quest / $4.99 Steam My quick take: A game for escape room devotees only. From the store page: "Please, Don’t Touch Anything is a cryptic, brain-racking button-pushing puzzle game. Covering for a colleague taking a bathroom break, you find yourself in front of a mysterious console with a green screen monitor showing a pixelated live image of an unknown city. Also present is an ominous red button with the simple instruction to not touch anything! Push the red button once or press it many times. Your choices and actions will lead to outrageous and frightening consequences and over 30 unique puzzle endings.” This is a weird one. A really obscure puzzle game that rewards experimentation, but is absolutely punishing with difficulty. If you’re really good at escape games and don’t get frustrated easily, you may enjoy the tedium. If not, you’ll end up like me, watching a tutorial to find out how to get different endings. But if you find yourself doing that, why not just watch a playthrough.
    
19. Eleven Table Tennis $29.99 Quest / Steam My quick take: Still one of the best, but there’s so much untapped potential. From the store page: “The ultimate Table Tennis simulator. Play opponents in online multiplayer or practice against the advanced AI. With physics designed to be as real as ever achieved in a Table Tennis simulator, you will forget you are in VR." I finally got back to this game after the new UI was implemented. It looks much more user friendly, but much to my disappointment, there were no new arenas, music, or official doubles options. There is so much potential for expanding this game, and I feel like the devs are just content to have it remain in the state it currently is. Which, to be fair, is a perfect implementation of table tennis in VR. It’s still one of the best VR games out there and absolutely a must own. I just really wish they would add an officially supported doubles mode and expand out the game a bit more because the unofficial doubles mode is a real pain to get set up and only barely worth the struggle. If you'd like to see how to set that doubles up currently, here is a video I was a part of.
    
20. Breachers $29.99 Quest / Steam My quick take: Come one, come all, this is 5 v 5 at its finest. From the store page: “In Breachers, you plan your assault or orchestrate your defense as a team through intense close-quarters combat. Whether you play as an enforcer or a revolter, master your nifty gadgetry, customize your powerful weaponry and beat your opponents in stunning environments. Intuitive to grasp. Endlessly playable.” Wow, wow, wow. This officially launched and is such a polished game. With multiple maps, intuitive movement and full lobbies, this game is simply spectacular. Despite the difficulty curve in being good at the game, it’s still a fun time even if you’re not the best, which is something special that few games manage to pull off. Where this game especially shines is with friends. If you can muster up a team of five to take on other random players, you’ll be playing this game for months. Give this a go, and if you're not any good, that's okay, because you'll still be better than the bots and a welcome addition to someone's team.
    
21. Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Outcast (Sidequest mod) Free Demo on Quest / $9.99 (Full Game on Steam) My quick take: Come for the lightsaber play, stay if you can tolerate the puzzles. From the store page: “JK XR is a standalone VR port of the popular Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast game by Lucasarts and Raven Software. Brought to VR by Team Beef & Friends. There are lots of mods and access to the free demo level available through the JK XR Companion App, which is automatically also installed alongside JK XR on your headset.” I never played this game when it first came out on flatscreen in 2002, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. The first part of the game you’re playing essentially as a Han Solo type - a smart talkin’ gun slinger. The next part, you’re a cool Jedi chopping off limbs. Absolutely great execution as always by Team Beef, and you can’t beat the price. There is even a free demo to try out to see if you like it. All that being said, the game’s old puzzles, navigation and gameplay felt every bit of 20 years old. After dying multiple times because of missing an exact jump, getting lost and backtracking because I didn't see an obscure elevator and wasting time trying to navigate odd puzzles, I just found it to be too much to overcome to continue to the end. This is no slight on Team Beef and the great work they did with this port, the game just hasn’t aged the best.
    
22. CoasterMania $9.99 Quest My quick take: Early days, but still some fun to be had. There could be something special here after a few updates. From the store page: “CoasterMania is a physics-based VR rollercoaster game where you create the ride of your life! Use wacky contraptions and elements to fly through the sky, then experience your creation by jumping in the front seat. Sandbox mode: Build your dream rollercoaster without any rules but the rules of physics. When you're done, share your coaster or experience the engineering marvels of others. Design your own rides and upload them online.” You know, this game is just silly fun. It's early days for sure, and the tracks don't twist and come together as easily together as I’d hoped, which makes for a difficult time creating exactly what you want. It is satisfying though to have a roller coaster leap from one track to another over a gap. At this point the game is more of a sandbox than a full game with objectives (which is coming). The coasters other people have created are fun, so if you’re not into creating, there is that option to play with other people's designs, plus you can ride them in first person. I look forward to more updates and think it's worth looking at for sure, but if you’re looking for something a bit more fleshed out currently you can try Stunt Track Builder.
    
23. David Slade Mysteries: Case Files $9.99 Quest / Steam My quick take: You’re a forensic cop, here are your tools. Good luck dummy. From the store page: “Take to the dark and violent streets of downtown Riverside, where you investigate gruesome and violent homicides using a range of Forensic tools and your wits! Inspired by the classic Police Quest adventure series, reborn & reimagined for VR. Includes two epic episodes!” Slade is a murder mystery game that is ruthless in it’s difficulty. Honestly, there are several play throughs of this game on YouTube and none have beaten the first case because it was too hard, they all gave up. This game offers no hints, is super abstract and insanely difficult. Why did I keep playing? Well, the game’s tools were implemented quite well, the story was compelling, and I just felt I had to see this through to the end for my own sanity. Despite being as hard as nails, I somehow managed to finish the first case, then moved on to the second. No real spoilers, but the second case does a complete 180 and essentially becomes a horror game where you’re only weapon is your wits. A real departure from the first case. Again, I found myself frustrated, confused and turned around, but again, I had to power through it because something kept pulling me in. If you’re a masochist for puzzle games, I’d recommend this game.
    
24. Home Detective Free w/IAP - Quest My quick take: Fun use of AR, but pretty basic. From the store page: “Use your own living room to solve the crime! Using passthrough, the crime scene is overlaid onto your play area, leaving you free to explore and find clues. Use the patent-pending Residual Heat Scanner to detect the criminals' recent movements, and then dust for fingerprints or try to find evidence left behind. With your wits, and your trusty sidekick Steve Dobbins' snarky comments, you're sure to get to the bottom of these confusing crimes.” I appreciate the interesting use of passthrough and AR in this game. The first case is free to try, so if you’re into AR and passthrough, it’s worth a try. It's $3.99 for another case if you’re into it, but right now, it’s a pretty basic, but solid idea. My biggest complaint is that all my tools were on a shelf that was inaccessible because they were in my wall. I guess AR is still not quite there yet.
    
25. Vertigo Remastered $24.99 Steam My quick take: A fun and wacky ride from start to finish. From the store page: “It's a classic premise - a massive subterranean scientific facility full of mysteries, with aliens bursting in from alternate universes to wreak havoc. The twist? You're one of those aliens. But you're not here to wreak havoc (collateral damage disregarded), you're just trying to get home. A difficult endeavor, as it turns out this facility is more than prepared to deal with extraterrestrial threats.” Because I heard such great things about Vertigo 2, I thought I’d try out this game before I played the sequel. I was really blown away by how fun the game was and pleasantly surprised that it holds up so well. Considering its a 2016 remake, and VR was still figuring out a lot of things like movement, this still felt fresh. With lots of unique ideas, upgrades and areas to play in, I heartily recommend this one and am looking forward to playing the sequel.
    
26. Playin’ Pickleball $19.99 Quest My quick take: Solid physics, but really only for pickleball fans, or a group of four friends. From the store page: “Playin’ Pickleball is an authentic reproduction of Pickleball in Virtual Reality! Physics, sounds and mechanics have been carefully mapped from actual Pickleball game play. Even the scoring and rules are based on the USA Pickleball Association’s Official Rulebook.” Pickleball is sweeping the nation and if I recall correctly, even ForeVR is getting in on the game with an upcoming title. I’m much more of a tennis than pickleball guy, but I have to say, this game has pretty solid physics. Like most games, this is exponentially better with one or better yet, three other people you know. The AI players can be pretty uninteresting hitting it back and forth without much variance. Also the environments are a bit basic. I have to applaud the movement, physics and customizable items though as they all felt very well implemented. If you want something a bit less daunting than tennis, this might be what you're looking for.
    
27. Pong $6.99 Quest My quick take: A neat take on Pong, but you’ll have more fun with Cybrix. From the store page: “Classic paddle game reimagined for VR. Destroy all the bricks. Use your paddles to swing at the balls and the balls have built-in assistance to return back toward you. Take advantage of the pistol and magneto power-ups to cause major damage. Or just swing hard at the balls to create large blast radius. Oh and watch out for those mines going for your head. Lean left/right or crouch to avoid.” I appreciated the ideas the developers had in this modern take on Pong, but it was ultimately quite short and not nearly as fun as Cybrix. That being said for the price, I got my money’s worth and would love to see it get a bit more polish and levels in an update.
    
28. Extreme Escape $4.99 Quest / Steam (Early Access) My quick take: One of those special games where you really feel like you're in the environment. From the store page: “Have you ever wondered how it would feel to travel in a hot air balloon and fly above clouds? Have you ever wanted to face your fear of heights and enclosed spaces? Perhaps you wanted to become a pilot and test your critical thinking skills. Looking for a breathtaking experience? Try Extreme Escape.” The game says “early access,” but honestly I believe this has been abandoned. For the price, you get an extremely short, but fun and unique escape room experience. You’re not going to find this game too hard, but I was brought into its world and completely immersed - I had a true sense of dread and panic. The even shorter “demo” inside the game puts you on a sinking submarine and was extremely memorable. Seldom have I felt so immersed in a game. I’d recommend it for this price, just because of how it made me feel, but it’s a real shame about the very short length and that it’s abandoned.
    
29. The Last Worker $19.99 Quest / Steam My quick take: Gaming with a heavy message, but mediocre gameplay. From the store page: “The Last Worker is an immersive narrative adventure centered around a lone worker’s last stand in an increasingly automated world, The Last Worker is a unique blend of work simulation and stealth strategic gameplay. The game is set in a lonely, oppressive but strangely beautiful environment, with characters designed by comics legend Mick McMahon. Kurt works for the world’s largest retailer and is forced to choose between capitalism or activism. Having dedicated his life to work, Kurt’s loyalty is put to the test when a group of activists ask him to dismantle Jüngle from the inside.” I really wanted to like this game. It had an interesting concept, but navigating, fail states and some very annoying bugs frustrated me to the point where I just said it wasn’t worth my time. That and the story wasn’t speaking to me. It’s well rated, so I’m probably on the opposite side of this one from most people. It's unique in many ways, so check out the teaser and see if it might be for you.
    
30. Shadow Point $19.99 Quest My quick take: Fisherman’s Tale vibes with an excellent story and puzzles that makes you feel smart. From the store page: “Built for VR, Shadow Point is a story-driven puzzle game set between a mountaintop observatory and an ever-changing fantasy world. Explore a vibrant kingdom, cast shadows and solve mind-bending puzzles as you uncover the mystery of missing schoolgirl, Lorna McCabe who vanished from Shadow Point Observatory twelve years ago. As your adventure unfolds, you will manipulate gravity, play with your own reflection, walk on walls, peer through a magical lens to reveal an alternate reality and much more.” I had this game on my wishlist forever and finally pulled the trigger, and boy am I glad I did. I really enjoyed the story, gameplay and ended up marathoning it in one session (which I don't recommend doing). It is a few hours long, and there are extra puzzles to go back to if you’d like. It had some serious Fisherman’s Tale vibes, so if you like those type of puzzle games, this is for you. The puzzles make you stop and think, and more importantly, progress nicely. I was never stuck, but certainly had to really contemplate how to solve some of them. It is slightly finicky with having to line up the shadows exactly to progress, but that is a minor complaint. Give this one a go for sure.
    

I hope you find a few games on this list that you might not have heard of, or that you might find worth revisiting. Let me know here or on the Ruff Talk Discord channel if you have a game you enjoy that I should try, I'm always open to recommendations. Until then, I hope your next VR experience is a memorable one.
Also, the week this is posted, I'm hosting a contest where one winner gets a $29.99 or less, Quest game of their choice. You can enter on the discord channel above, but will need to have five posts on the discord channel within a week to enter, so if that interests you, feel free to join. The Ruff Talk guys usually have giveaways every week and it's some solid VR chat if you're looking for like-minded individuals in a non-toxic space.
TLDR: Top five games to check out - Ark and Ade, Pin City, Breachers, Shadow Point, Vertigo Remastered

Apologies up front for a bit of a lengthy post, and following are some understandings and assumptions. I know people get paid from Apex, they post it on their website. I also know that most people aren't profitable, but there are some that are. Ignore commissions and fees for my math to make it simple.
My fundamental question is why don't you see six figure payouts? It seems like that should be a rare thing, but based on Apex's rules, you should see that listed fairly often. Let me run through some numbers to show you what I'm talking about, so bear with me for a minute.
A $50k PA account (the most common) has a max withdraw of $2000, twice per month. Those max withdrawals are for the first 3 months. After that, there's no limit.
If you scalp 3 contracts for 2 points twice a day, that's $600/day, or $6000 in the 10 day trading period they require to have a payout. If you take out the $2k max that leaves you with an additional $4k buffer. Over the course of the 3 month max payout time frame you would build up $4k twice a month, for 3 months or a cumulative buffer of $24,000 per account. A lot of people have the max of 20 accounts which would give you a nest egg of $480,000 when they open it up after 3 months to "no withdraw limit".
So why, since March 5th to May 22, Smita has gotten a $100k and a $77k payout, Ana got $77k, and there have been only 3 other 5 figure payouts, but none over $20,000. This is where my Fight Club reference comes in to play. Nobody that I've been able to find has said, "I tried to withdraw $250k and they denied me because of this...." or even, "after 3 months they combine the 20 accounts into 1" or some sort of info.
You also never see people with multiple accounts getting payouts more than twice. Do they cancel you or kick you out? Surely not everyone blows their accounts after 4-8 weeks. Also, I can't imagine that everyone takes their $30k and retires to the Bahamas. Even if you were going to use it to fund your own trading account so you don't have to give them the 10%, you're still allowed 100% of the first $25k per account, so why wouldn't you take it?
Does anyone have some experience with this? Is there some sort of prop firm mafia Omerta code? IF so, you don't have to post your answer here, DM me.
I am not bashing Apex, I'll have 5 funded accounts tomorrow. And even if you never get that massive 6 figure payout, if you have 20 accounts, getting paid $2k each twice a month that's still $80k a month which is a hell of a life. I just want to know what the real deal is so I can play the game correctly.
Everyone has their opinions of prop firms, and I'm not really looking for opinions. I've heard them all, it's a scam, the rules are setup for you to fail, etc. That's been discussed ad nauseam. So, I'm asking for people to share their personal experience with payouts on their funded accounts.