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Phantom: Covert Ops releasing June 25! Reviews and impressions

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

Looks awesome:





 
Get the game here:
 
https://www.oculus.com/experiences/rift/1766848360109262/?locale=en_US

Phantom_Screenshots_Rift_01-scaled.jpgPhantom_Screenshots_Rift_02-scaled.jpgPhantom_Screenshots_Rift_04-scaled.jpgPhantom_Screenshots_Rift-Watermark_06_SM-scaled.jpg

    

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

35 REPLIES 35

mclizen
Explorer
Great game! 1.5-2.0 PPD is a must for me via the Debug Tool for more overall sharpness. Shame thay did not put a SS slider in the video options inside the game. No motion sickness for me.

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

mclizen said:

Great game! 1.5-2.0 PPD is a must for me via the Debug Tool for more overall sharpness. Shame thay did not put a SS slider in the video options inside the game. No motion sickness for me.


Or use Oculus Tray Tool to set up specific PPD profiles for your games and apps. I never use the Debug Tool for that. Oculus Tray Tool starts automatically (minimized) every time I start my rig.  

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

saami81
Rising Star
I just did first mission and game seems good so far. Stealth has "accurate" feel. It works like you would think it work in real life. Enemies have brains and when something suspicious happens, they investigate it and be more cautious looking for intruder. I played on middle normal difficulty.

Zenbane
MVP
MVP
Yeah the AI is quite good. It isn't overly generic with pathways. They do actually respond very well, and look for you if suspicious.

Some things feel less realistic though. Like when I create an explosion. Everyone should hear that shit! But those moments are in the minority.

RuneSR2
Grand Champion
I think it said that AI will depend on the choice of game difficulty (?), or maybe it's just how accurately they hit you, lol. I've chosen normal difficulty for the first playthrough - they hit me just fine :blush:

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

RuneSR2
Grand Champion
Tried the game using the Index, and the game does not just work, it really works perfectly. And then again not really. 

Using Index I could use High settings, but of course had to use FXAA instead of temporal antialiasing for best image quality. Even forcing SteamVR res 150% I got close to solid 90 fps. Res 125% might be the perfect choice for my rig though. Using Index you need more than res 100%, res 100% does not look great due to too little antialiasing. With the Index, the CV1 SDE is now gone, distant objects are much sharper (3D depth is greatly increased), fov is bigger and sound is great - so everything should be awesome? But it's not. It really comes down to oled vs. lcd.

Using CV1 I was greatly impressed by the water - and since you're in a kayak, water is important and you're going to experience a lot of it 😉 The CV1 water looks like some giant black mirror, and the small waves/ripples make the water come alive and look better than any other game I can remember. That water is more or less gone with lcd - sure you can see it when you got enough light, but you don't get much light in the game. You'll simply lose a lot of details using lcd, and these details are very important for immersion.

Then the textures. While the textures look great using CV1, lcd will expose all weaknesses, just like in Kobold. In fact the CV1 SDE is your friend here making low-res textures look much more high-res. Even the textures on the front of the kayak, which I thought looked really awesome with CV1, now did not look impressive, but looked more okay-ish. Using lcd the game looked much more mediocre, I'd fully agree to a 7/10 rating using lcd hmds.

Then the jaggies. While temporal antialiasing works like a charm using CV1 and removes all jaggies, you need FXAA for the lcd hmds. Unfortunately FXAA is rather weak in the game, and even using Index res 150% jaggies are easy to see - as if the game has become more like a normal 2D pc game, which again reduces immersion. 

Now, I'm really not trying to build a case stating that this game was made for oled hmds, but it's a conclusion hard to avoid. Also see this trailer from May 21 2019, where the game looked quite finished - indicating that the game was developed using CV1 (because Quest and Rift-S were not available before May 21 2019):

https://youtu.be/Brsr5eEAynI

In short, this game shines with the good old CV1 (and probably also Quest Link), but - if possible - I'd avoid lcd hmds for this game. If some reviewer used a lcd hmd when reviewing this game, I'm confident the reviewer never experienced Phantom: Covert Ops "the way it's meant to be played"  B)

Btw - although Quest is oled that hmd seems to have some trouble in the game - accordring to Road to VR:

On Quest specifically, the headset’s OLED black-smear issues are truly exacerbated by the game. Dark areas of the scenes get smeared around a good bit during head movement, largely defeating the benefit of having the OLED display in the first place. The game is still playable, but I’m hoping this could get patched in the future to prevent the game from using true-black so often (thereby hopefully reducing smearing).

I'd rate the game 9/10 using CV1, but I'd probably be down to 6/10 or 7/10 using a lcd hmd. If you only got a lcd hmd, of course you should still get the game - it's still great fun to play. 

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

RuneSR2
Grand Champion
Maybe I got slightly carried away in the previous post - I just added:

"If you only got a lcd hmd, of course you should still get the game - it's still great fun to play." 

Lcd vs. oled discussions are feinschmecker issues, not game-breaking issues. Still a bit worrying that current reviews (=those accepted by Metacritic) are all based on lcd hmds. I'd add at least another 10% to the score if you're using the CV1 (or maybe O+ or Vive (Pro)). 

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

RedRizla
Honored Visionary

RuneSR2 said:

Unknowingly, I've been training for Covert Ops for months  😄 




Do many people play this online? It looks like a shit load of fun if they do?

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

RedRizla said:


RuneSR2 said:

Unknowingly, I've been training for Covert Ops for months  😄 




Do many people play this online? It looks like a shit load of fun if they do?



I don't know, singleplayer is great though - and it's a bright game, perfect for lcd hmds 😉

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

RuneSR2
Grand Champion
Right now - number of ratings:

Rift: 31 - average score 88%
Quest: 208 - average score 94%

I doubt there are more Quest than Rift owners out there - and I seriously doubt that there are more than 6 times the number of Quest owners compared to Rift owners (which would correspond to the different numbers of current ratings). So Rift owners have stopped buying games? 

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"