Genotype VR Review - The First Virtual Reality Immersive Sim
Genotype VR has everything you would expect in an immersive sim game.
Massive facility to explore that is overrun with hostile creatures? Check.
Everyone is perished or worse except for one person who talks to you over the radio? Check.
For some reason, everyone who lived there used to record journals and audio logs and just leave them randomly scattered around? Check.
There are locked doors with keys you have to find, management of your limited resources, many different weapons to find... or rather grow, a little mystery as to why everything has gone so wrong, and tons of different obstacles and enemies to overcome as you scavenge and fight through this dangerous secret Antarctic Facility.
Except all of this is in Virtual Reality, and nowhere else. Built from the ground up for VR, Genotype is a pioneer of a game that is tackling an expansive and expensive genre for the first time natively to Virtual Reality headsets. It's an ambitious project to tackle for such a small studio.
While it isn't the first VR game released by developer Bolverk Games, it certainly is their most expansive. The question though, is is Genotype VR a good example of the Immersive Sim genre? Does it really succeed in being a good immersive sim game? Let's talk about it and find out more about Genotype VR in this review.
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Genotype VR Review - The Combat
Let's start with the most prevalent element in any immersive sim game, the element that all other pieces of the game revolve around, and that's the combat.
In Genotype VR you'll be fighting the aliens that have taken over the Antarctic research base that you find yourself in, and you'll be fighting a lot of them.
Fighting enemies in Genotype VR early on in the game
There will be loads of them the first time you enter an area, and even cleared out rooms can sometimes spawn more for you to take on. When aliens spawn in a room the doors will lock until you've dealt with them. There is even an in universe explanation for this. Something about an aggressive pheromone locking system that automatically closes the doors, which is a nice touch.
So you can't just run around and kite enemies through rooms forever. You'll need to stand and fight them in one location. This is a good thing because Genotype VR's combat system is very dependent on movement.
The ability to move around freely is your greatest offensive and defensive tool. This is because there are no hit scan enemies, and cover is rarely a factor. Enemies will either try to close into melee range to hit you with their claws, or more commonly shoot slow moving projectiles at you. So your ability to strafe out of the way is really important. Every fight is way easier when you have space to move around.
The game generally gives you this space, though in a few cases closes you in for a really quick and intense fight. The map design leans into how the combat works by giving you the maneuvering room that you need, but this also leads to combat that depends on you constantly strafing around enemy attacks or moving away to keep your distance.
The factor that decides whether or not you win or lose is mostly your ability to play keep away and avoid getting cornered.
You get all sorts of options in Genotype VR, like this flamethrower
Whether or not you like this movement heavy combat in your VR game is up to you, but combat in Genotype is generally enjoyable and doesn't get old. However, the constant slow strafing around projectiles does feel a little overly artificial. This is especially true during the boss encounters in this game, which are just the usual aliens but scaled up and with some smaller enemies added in.
The bosses have huge health pools and felt very bullet spongey, which is fine, they are bosses after all, but needing to constantly strafe around them while attacking made the issues with the strafe heavy combat in this game very apparent where normally the shorter length of a fight disguises it somewhat.
The game throws in new enemy types and more dangerous variants of those enemies at a pretty consistent pace. While the combat seemed a little easy at first, it does get significantly harder as you progress further into the base, though at the same time, your arsenal of tools becomes larger and more dangerous.
Your first and most obvious tools are your weapons. You start with the Spitter, a slow firing but heavy hitting weapon that does some area of effect damage. Then you soon acquire more, like the Grubber, which is a short range tentacle that can punch or grab on to enemies.
The Grubber is your weapon with infinite ammo and biomass removal tool in Genotype VR
You can deal good damage with this thing by grabbing an enemy and then ripping your hand away, which is a novel weapon for VR that has you using a different hand movement in combat than just pointing and shooting, very creative stuff.
You’ve also undoubtedly noticed that all of these weapons also aren't weapons in the traditional sense, and are rather creatures that grow out of your hand. This is a great way to explain how you can walk around with a huge arsenal, and also some cool flavor to the game overall.
A rip cord on your shooting hand lets you select which creature to grow for you to use, and not all of them are just for combat, but we'll get into exploration and utility a little later.
In Genotype VR you select a new weapon by pulling a ripcord on your main hand glove
These weapons are varied and more or less useful in different situations and enemy types. You might end up using weapons that do splash damage against swarms of smaller enemies, or a weapon that rapidly deals damage to a single enemy against big boss monsters.
There is no one weapon that is definitively more powerful than the rest, and that is a good thing. You'll naturally be inclined to use different weapons to suit different combat situations.
Now for your other combat tools, your items.
You'll find a lot of different items while scavenging the base, most importantly healing syringes, but there are more interesting ones, like rockets you can shoot out of your off hand, or syringes that make you invisible or extremely fast.
It can be difficult to use these items during combat because you'll have to constantly be moving while accessing your inventory to avoid getting hit, but they're so powerful that it's a reasonable added challenge.
All sorts of consumables are spread around the facility in Genotype VR
The one downside to items is that if you're at all stingy and hang on to them your inventory will quickly fill up.
Still, this could be intentional, because running out of inventory space directly incentivizes you to actually use these items instead of just hanging on to them forever. A little more inventory space would have been nice though.
Genotype VR Review - Exploration
So the combat is good, but what about the parts of an immersive sim that really make them an immersive sim? The world, the exploration, the atmosphere.
Well, you'll be happy to hear that there's a lot of world to explore. Each wing of the strange complex that you find yourself in is pretty big with lots of nooks and crannies to explore.
This is the usual scenery in Genotype VR. Lots of future industrial hallways
Exploration is well rewarded with more resources and tokens for upgrades, and it always feels exciting and worth it to uncover a new hallway or room. There are even a few puzzles to solve or key codes to discover and use to get tons of extra loot. The biggest downside of the exploration is that for huge chunks of the game there is very little variety.
Being outside in the antarctic winds is amazing, and the storms surrounding the facility look truly impenetrable and impressive. Unfortunately, you'll be spending most of your time indoors, and the practically identical look of the hallways, offices, maintenance rooms, and laboratories that you'll find yourself in gets old.
The outside area looks fantastic in Genotype VR, but you’ll hardly ever be there
Some areas do have this beautiful and fascinating alien growth covering them to add some variety, but you'll definitely be looking at the same sorts of industrial, sterile walls and floors a lot. Though the various tools you'll use to assist your exploring are still very cool, like the Brain Link, a creature that spawns an egg that hatches a tiny alien that you... become?
It somehow absorbs your entire body and then hatches back into a fully grown human again once you press another button. This might not make a ton of sense, but it is unique and useful for fitting into tight ventilation shafts or bridging gaps by launching the egg over them.
Even deep into the game Genotype throws some new challenges and tools your way that are completely unexpected, but welcome new challenges. Like one section that suddenly introduces a swimming mechanic. It’s these sudden new changes in exploration, puzzling, and navigation that keep Genotype fresh all the way through to the end.
Crawling through a tunnel using the Brain Link in Genotype VR
So exploration takes a little thinking as well, but hardly ever feels obtuse. Even if you do get lost there are ingame objectives and a map to help you out, but no onscreen markers.
There's also dialog between your character and the mysterious man on the other side of the radio, which will add context and character to your next goal. While their conversations are tense and mysterious at first, they quickly develop a rapport and it's fun to listen in on their conversations.
There are some light jokes, and their contributions to the story unfolding in front of your eyes and hands are pleasant and charismatic. Your mysterious helper explains the strange place you find yourself in and gives much needed context to what is going on and what you’re doing.
Genotype VR doesn't hold your hand, even with these helping nudges, but if you keep looking around and uncovering new areas you will inevitably find what you need to complete your objective.
A beautiful hallway infested by alien fauna in Genotype VR
Genotype VR - Upgrades And Personalization
What is your objective anyway? Luckily your friend over the radio has a solution to the aliens roaming the facility, and the plague that you carry within you. Did I mention you are also infected with an alien plague? Well, you are. To cure it and get rid of the creatures you will have to collect 9 DNA samples from across the facility to engineer a solution to destroy them all. So you go to each wing and collect the samples.
There's more after that of course, but I won't spoil what happens next for you here. The story of Genotype VR isn’t groundbreaking stuff, but it’s very serviceable and gives enough color to the setting through dialog and the journals scattered around the levels.
Back to the samples. They also function as upgrade points for your weapons. You can also upgrade yourself with Tokens found around the facility three times, which unlocks some more general buffs and a maximum health increase. This is where the Immersive Sim nature of Genotype VR shines again, and why that's such a focus of this review.
Upgrading a weapon at an upgrade terminal in Genotype VR
What's an immersive sim without the ability to choose how you want to approach each situation? Well Genotype VR doesn't give you an insane amount of customizeability, but enough to make you feel like you're choosing upgrades that fit your playstyle. Each weapon has a few to choose from, and even just choosing which weapons to upgrade is a choice within itself.
Since I was so attached to the Grubber I decided to upgrade it first with a health leeching ability that also increased its damage. Oh, and the swarmer too with a faster fire rate.
While there are situations in which each weapon you can grow from your hand is useful, there are also many chances to pick favorites. You also get some more general upgrade choices each time you collect enough of the Tokens spread around the base. Like a passive ability that makes each alien you destroy explode into a ball of lightning to hit its allies.
Choosing an upgrade in Genotype VR
If you're ever unhappy with your decisions or want to try a new playstyle you can redo all of your upgrade choices at any time. The freedom to mix and match your choices at will is good to have, and changing up which weapons you will favor and how you use them is a real mark of an Immersive Sim VR game.
Crafting and resource management are also typical hallmarks of the Immersive SIm genre. There's a crafting resource you can collect by defeating enemies or finding capsules of the stuff lying around.
I found that I had an absolute ton of it pretty early on in the game and never ran anywhere close to empty, so strict resource management wasn't much of an issue. Though the Grubber has infinite ammo in case you run out completely, it would be pretty difficult to run out of resources, and this one resource can print basically anything you need at an upgrade station.
Healing items, buff items, rockets you can shoot from your off hand, and ammo of course. While Genotype VR doesn't utilize resource scarcity to ratchet up the tension, the abundance of resources also gives you a lot of latitude and options to pick your playstyle by choosing which items to create and carry in your inventory.
The inventory in Genotype VR
Overall Genotype VR has turned out to be a fantastic VR game. I enjoyed it all the way through to the end. If you love immersive sims then you should definitely give this game a try.
In fact, if you're dying for a new and novel singleplayer VR game then Genotype VR is a good choice for any VR gamer who has liked what they've heard in this Genotype VR review. It's a game that makes you want to just explore one more room to see what is next until the next thing you know, your headset is out of battery.
So Genotype VR is a fun game that I’d recommend, but is it truly the first VR Immersive Sim?
I’d say so, your vast choices of items to use and upgrades to take can change how you approach enemy encounters. Though you’ll have to do a lot of strafing regardless of what you pick. Your options mostly come down to weapon selection, and different weapons do play differently. Genotype VR reminded me a lot of the remake of the original System Shock in its pacing and exploration.
This feeling was more deeply ingrained by other elements like the audio logs, text logs, and lock boxes that lead back to the start of the genre.
Genre definitions are more up to the community than individual reviewers such as myself, so whether or not Genotype VR counts as the first VR immersive sim is up to you, but if you ask me I’d say it does.
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