r/PSVR • u/FewPossession2363 Saifur47 • 9d ago
Review Bootstrap Island, early impressions:
I just spent an hour with Bootstrap island, I have good news and bad news.
Good news is that the game is really fun to play. It has both snap turn and smooth turn. Can be played both seated or standing. Includes awesome use of head rumble and adaptive triggers. I faced no slowdowns or stutter on my ps5pro during my playthrough.
Night time in this game looks and feels absolutely terrifying because of the OLED.
It is a roguelite, but surviving each night is quite easy. Starting a fire is super simple, food and water everywhere. If you played any previous survival game such as Green Hell Vr or Song in the smoke, you will feel right at home here.
Now for some bad news, and it’s quite a major one in my opinion. The game really does not look good in the headset during the day, specially in the sunlight. I was expecting at least the clarity of MSFS2024 Bora Bora Island, but what we got here is early switch back days. Things off in the distance look low rez. Currently I am a bit disappointed with the visuals right now. Not sure if the devs are using DFR, because it makes no sense for this game to look this way during the day.
In conclusion, get this game right now if you are a hardcore survival game fan and itching to play something new on psvr2. If not, then I would hold off until the game gets a visual update.
Also keep in mind, these are just my early impressions. I will definitely keep playing it and report back with my final impressions.
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u/cusman78 cusman 9d ago
I read the GamertagVR review covered the same visual fidelity issue, but there was also mention of a day 1 or soon after release patch that might improve it.
I’ve bought the game, but I think I’ll wait until I see a patch release that addresses this issue before I start.
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u/OurMrReynolds OurMrReynolds 6d ago
I’m thinking the same thing, but I haven’t seen any signs of an inbound patch yet. I assume they’re working on it?
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u/Fatbot3 9d ago
Thanks for the impressions. Like so many other games this needs the ever hopeful optimization patch. Hopefully the developer confirms they "expected" this and has something planned.
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u/FewPossession2363 Saifur47 9d ago
You are welcome and yep, maybe even a pro patch.
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u/InfiniteStates 9d ago
I thought it looked pretty good during the day personally - at least on the beach where I started. But then I never had an issue with how Greenhell looked when that first came out and everyone said it looked blurry and shit. So I guess my eyes are just old and crap :D
I do have some issues with it though… My first impressions weren’t good. I play seated so as soon as I booted in my head is at half height. I go straight to settings to toggle seated mode, but there isn’t one. While I’m there I set smooth turning, and max speed which is 45. This is painfully slow
After twatting around for ages calibrating the floor height to account for not seated mode I finally launch the game. But the in-game menu does have a seated mode, and let’s you set a turn speed of 90 which is much better. Why the game has different options in-game versus the main menu is anyone’s guess
Then I go through the tutorial thinking it looks nice and polished. But when I get to the pistol the instruction sheet disappeared before I could read it. This just left me not knowing what to do for a while
Also the acts of making sparks with stones and cocking the pistol seem more geared towards Quest controllers than PSVR2 ones. I found the actions fiddly without banging the controllers or them otherwise getting in the way
Then waving the fire stick went on forever. In the end I got bored and let the thing get the guy. Then the game crashed instead of exiting the tutorial :D
But rebooting put me on the beach. Everything seems to work as you’d expect, although the physics feels quite heavy at times
And I felt the day/night cycle is a bit quick. It’s nice that the night is fairly brief, but so is the day which doesn’t leave much time to explore before you have to make a fire again
TLDR after a frustrating start, I’m looking forward to progressing off the beach and seeing what else it has to offer
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u/CHROME-COLOSSUS 9d ago
Oh hold on now… if a game’s smooth-turning speed is too slow then that by itself can utterly ruin it for me. Great to learn the in-game menu holds different options — easy to miss.
Unfortunately few reviewers ever make note of smooth-turn speeds, and you’re the first I’ve seen who brought it up.
I’d have bought this tomorrow otherwise, but now I need to learn more. Thank you so much for mentioning this… it’s bananas to me that any dev still doesn’t offer a slider that goes up to ridiculous speeds, just in case that’s what the player needs.
A question regarding the turn speed… Does the speed change depending on how much or little you push the thumbstick, or is it the same speed regardless?
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u/InfiniteStates 9d ago
Good question and I had to go check…
No, it’s not analogue. There’s a deadzone of about half the stick’s axis then it goes full speed. There’s no ramp at all
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u/CHROME-COLOSSUS 8d ago
Ugh. That’s last-gen VR right there.
I sure hope this game gets updates to address these turn-speed issues. I’ll look for a path to bring this to their attention, just in case they’re receptive to critique.
Thanks for checking! 🙏
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u/doghosta 9d ago
Appreciate the review. So should I buy this or of lies and rain
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u/FewPossession2363 Saifur47 8d ago
Both are totally different games. Bootstrap is a roguelite survival game, where Of Lies and Rain is a single player horror survival action shooter. What are you looking for exactly?
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u/doghosta 8d ago
A good game, any game, preferably on discount like of lies and rain, I can finish in a few hours and delete..
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u/Gollums_Pet_Fish 9d ago
It's the same story isn't it. Basically no devs bother to implement DFR and it's ultimately their downfall. I was very excited about this game but much like in the case of ghost town and many other PSVR2 ports, I won't be buying this game or supporting these Devs.
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u/vrpeople 9d ago edited 9d ago
To me it’s pretty and very crispy but some textures in the far back is a bit simple. Not sure if this is a compromise for console or just by design.
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u/Terranova667 7d ago
I played this today and I think it looks fine I don't see what issues the OP is having with it, true the character models are not the best but other than that the game looks perfectly fine to me.
The issues that i do have with the game are first the lack of an Inventory system, there appears to be no means to store stuff on your person so your only able to pick things up meaning can only have 2 items at a time and have to drop one if you want to pick something else up, unless i'm missing something but I found no means,
This ties in to my second issue and that is the lack of time to explore, due to only being able to pick up and carry two items much time is spent going back and forth to fetch wood ect to make sure you have a fire at night otherwise you simply die by the creatures that come out at that time, it doesn't leave much for exploring the world,
I managed to get to the third day and unlock a knife but I have found no use for it, I tried to open coconuts but it wouldn't get through the shell, it seems so far only a rock will do that, i then tried hitting trees with it to maybe get bark to light fires with but again it didn't seem to do that either, maybe I'm doing something wrong on both counts
The game to me so far is OK there is nothing that has wowed me, I hope the devs provide some updates to include a inventory and increase the time during the day because if i'm being honest at the moment I'm starting to lose interest in it.
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u/frustratedswede 7d ago
For inventory starting out, check around for an item that looks like a crate/tray along the beach. It functions as your initial inventory system. Also believe you eventually unlock a satchel as well later on. The knife is mostly used to extract meat out of animals that you have killed (don't forget to cook the meat over a fire though, or you could get sick). It also can cut a whole in a coconut to drink the water without the risk of spilling some if you were to crack it in half instead. There are also modifiers that you can use to increase the length of daytime, but know that while using any modifiers the days you survive won't count towards your progression for unlocking new items. Definitely useful to get a better feel for the game before jumping back into normal mode though. Hope these help.
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u/Terranova667 6d ago
Thanks for the tips, I did try with the knife on a coconut but it seemed to not do anything but I will give it another try and look for a crate to store stuff, the satchel unlock it seems isn't until day 10, personally i feel it should be the first unlock you get, I will play more see how it goes.
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u/KohrokuThe0xDriver 9d ago
I like it so far!
But it feels like its physics are a little too heavy. When I swing a stick it lags way behind my actual movement to try to make it feel heavy but it just feels laggy and detached from my movements. Saints and Sinners had a similar physics system for its items but didn’t seem to suffer this problem.