Dying: Reborn VR (PlayStation 4) Review

Dying: Reborn is a sort of first-person "escape the room" type puzzle game, moving around in a 3D space seeking out clues and trying to solve a variety of puzzles that range from preschool difficulty to Myst levels of obscurity... At least they would be that difficult on the standard version of Dying: Reborn. In the PSVR abridged edition, the puzzles are seriously neutered to laughable extremes where they feel pointless.

The cumbersome inventory interface is probably the most challenging aspect of the entire game. It gets especially frustrating when trying to use puzzle items around the environment, the player-character puts the key item away if it's being used wrong. This means having to constantly go back and forth with the inventory screen when experimenting with key items in every nook and cranny in each room. Much of the puzzles in Dying: Reborn revolve around searching the room and finding keys, figuring out passcodes/combinations, or interacting with some aspect in the area. These are the kind of puzzles that can be expected from the old PlayStation Resident Evil games.

Visuals are surprisingly decent, if a bit bland or stock. The PSVR version of Dying: Reborn does actually have a few flourishes that are not in the core release, such as steam coming out of pipes and a much more stable frame rate. For a horror game, the lighting is disappointingly flat and even. It lacks any real imagination aesthetically and is just generic, with noticeable recycling of various assets. It is to be expected for a low budget indie title, but considering how small Dying: Reborn is, it does make it feel like maybe the developers bought much of these assets instead of making their own.

Dying: Reborn VR's biggest flaw is by far the lack of control options. Many other horror PSVR titles like Here They Lie and Resident Evil 7: Biohazard have a smooth turning option for moving about, which offers a much more natural way to play in VR. Dying: Reborn only has snap-turning, and the only control options are just adjusting the amount of degrees to snap-turn. For an advanced VR user, this will only frustrate and make them regret their purchase. There is absolutely no reason why the game has to play with this scheme since there is a standard version of the title that uses regular everyday first-person controls. All this does is make the easiest aspect of a game annoying and jarring.

While the story in the standard version of Dying: Reborn is generally uninteresting and poorly acted, the PSVR version has even less going on in it. A distinction between the two versions of Dying: Reborn available on PSN: the PSVR version is half the price of the regular game. This is because, for some inexplicable reason, the VR edition is what the publishers are calling an "abridged" version of the game. This entails that the game has only half the amount of levels and all the puzzles to escape the rooms have been simplified. Those who only play the PSVR version will be extremely confused by the sudden plot details of a missing significant other. Sadly, this iteration of Dying: Reborn is a complete misfire and should have either been included with the standard edition or just featured the entire game in VR.