Golem Review – Nauseating

I’ve been playing VR games for years. I’ve experienced experimental VR games, I’ve been on VR roller coaster rides, I’m not green in the VR department. Golem gave me an unforgettable VR experience, as I’ve never experienced motion sickness in my life until I played Golem. Not only did Golem make me sick in the first hour of play, but I was actually incapacitated for the rest of the day. I spent the next several hours laying on my couch wondering what I had consumed that could make me feel like the evil inside was trying to break free. That thing I consumed was Golem for PSVR.

Golem
Developer: Highwire Games
Price: $40 USD
Platform: Playstation 4(Reviewed)
MonsterVine was supplied with a PS4 code for review.

Golem tells the tale of a boy named Twine who is injured in an accident and becomes bedridden. Taught by his older sister to control and construct golems by using a device that looks suspiciously like a Playstation Move controller, he begins his adventures through the eyes of the golems he constructs. Conceptually, Golem is a very interesting game and sounds like a game perfectly suited to VR. In practice, less so.

The first real problem with Golem reveals itself when you get access to controlling your first golem. Control schemes in VR aren’t particularly fantastic but Golem’s is outright mind-boggling. Expected to lean forward to move forward and sit straight to sit still, Golem becomes less of a game and more of a lesson in posture. Once I found out you could use the controller in place of the lean method I immediately switched. But even using the controller to move is an awkward mess. Moving, a central function of the game, never felt right. I almost never managed to move where I wanted to, constantly correcting and overcorrecting. I felt more comfortable my first time driving a car than I did controlling my golem.

It was at this point I started to truly feel awful. Looking from side to side I could see the room in which my character was sitting, peripherally. Because you’re controlling a character that’s controlling a golem, the developer, Highwire Games believed the best way to immerse the player was by allowing you to see the varying degrees of control. To me, this served not only as a distraction, but something that contributed heavily to the motion sickness I was experiencing. While my inner-ear and eyes were arguing over whether or not we were actually moving, I was trying to figure out if this was a me problem or a Golem problem. 

As I continued playing Golem I found the world to seem vast and interesting. If Highwire managed to get something right in Golem it was giving us an interesting world to explore. It’s unfortunate then that I raced to the end of each section solely to wrap up an area so I could get my headset off before I became sick. Requiring me to experience Golem in mere 20-minute increments before having to take a several hour break made the game a complete chore.

Even the combat presented itself as tedious. Slow-moving golems that broadcast their attacks and require the player to place their golem’s weapon at a single location to parry the attack made each golem fight slow, boring, and uneventful. Eventually, fights became more interesting by speeding up attacks and requiring a little more perception and guesswork. Unfortunately, by this time, I was more worried about the constant motion sickness having a lasting effect on me than whether or not the combat was enjoyable.

The Final Word
Golem is one of the most disappointing experiences I’ve had in gaming. Though the initially boring world eventually became interesting and mysterious, I was too focused on making sure I wasn’t getting sick to enjoy anything the game had to offer. Golem is a game inhibited by the method it chooses to present itself and so far, that’s a first for me.

MonsterVine Review Score: 1.5 out of 5 – Terrible