Reviews for free Oculus Gear VR games

So I finally picked up a Gear VR headset for my Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge. Decided to download every single free game on the Oculus store since there were only so many of them. Gonna review them one by one as a fun side-project!

A little preface to this. I wasn't super impressed with the initial experience of the Gear VR. The screen door effect is real and not something I can ignore. But having said that, some experiences make it easy to overlook that, and make the Gear VR experience still as immersive and exciting as I hoped it would be.

Here are the 17 free games I could find on the Oculus store.

1. Cosmos Warfare - RECOMMENDED. Not much to do here, just tilt your head towards enemy ships and watch them explode into smithereens. Quite cool, though.
2. Totems In Dreamland - OKAY. My neck. Requires a swivel chair. Kinda cool, quite  a few levels to play through. Not that big of a fan.
3. Damnfields - MEH. Kinda boring. Essentially a game to learn how to stabilise your head.
4. Samsung School of Ruby - ERR. This one's a bit ... interesting. Not sure what's happening here.
5. Audio Arena Demo - MEH. Too much head tilting. I feel like I might hurt my neck eventually.
6. FindingVR - OKAY. Similar to God of War type games, where you have to go from room to room, dispatch a few enemies, solve puzzles, have a boss fight at the end, but with a VR touch. Best played standing and with a controller. Very short. Quite dizzying.
7. Dreadhalls Demo - RECOMMENDED. Not a big fan of horror games, but tried it out a little. Definitely immersive due to the nature of the game, despite the hardware limitations. Made me feel like I was in a dungeon. My palms were pretty sweaty.
8. Temple Run VR - MEH. Not much different from your normal Temple Run. I find using the touchpad at the side of the headset a little weird. Experience might be improved by using a controller.
9. Gumi no Yume - MEH. Push-box-into-slot game. Kinda boring.
10. PolyRunner VR - RECOMMENDED. Similar to Smash Hit in certain ways. It's one of those runner games where you aim to achieve a high score, but made a lot more fun by VR. Ads, though.
11. Smash Hit - HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. This is the best VR experience I had thus far (31/03). It requires a just enough head movement, not a lot of neck movement, no need to turn around or anything. It makes me feel like I'm Cyclops from X-men. 
12. Shooting Showdown 2 VR - HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. A shootout game where you pair up with some random person online. I'm not sure if I'm enjoying because it's fun or because I'm trashing the hell out of everyone else ...
13. InCell - RECOMMENDED. Holy mother of motion sickness. Maybe I shouldn't have played after a big meal. Feels like roller coaster ride, albeit a stationary one. 
14. Herobound: First Steps - RECOMMENDED. Kinda blows the other hack-and-slashes out of the water. Quite cool at first, but it gets repetitive and boring after awhile (I played for about 45 minutes). Might revise this later on. Less dizzying than FindingVR.
15. Rocket Toss - OKAY. Looks good, but I don't see how the gameplay is fun at all. Essentially a ring toss game in VR.
16. Bait! - OKAY. Looks pretty, but kinda boring. It is, afterall, a fishing game.
17. Solitaire Jester - RECOMMENDED. My first thought was "ugh, solitaire?". If you've ever played solitaire, definitely check it out. It won't be mind blowing or anything, but it's quite neat.
18. Jake and Tess' Finding Monsters Adventure - MEH. Taking pictures of monsters doing stuff? Need to play a little more because I don't get it.
19. Shironeko VR Project - OKAY. Kinda fun. Didn't expect a JRPG-ish hack-and-slash to be on the Oculus VR store.

Thought in progress

Okay, so hear me out.

Given the question "what would you do for a living if money wasn't an issue?", some might say "oh, open a tea shop" or "maybe cut hair for a living". And yet, despite being perfectly well enough to make a living because these ARE indeed noble professions that HAVE to be done by someone, they think about lunch when they arrive at work and think about leaving work when they come back from lunch.

Why do we do this to ourselves? Well because of money. Because it's always better to have more money. Because of kiasuness ((of a person) very anxious not to miss out on an opportunity; grasping.). Because literally everyone says it's stupid to waste your talents on something that you enjoy doing, but doesn't pay that well, instead of spending a good majority of your life doing something dreadful with hopes of leading a more comfortable (albeit in a purely materialistic sense) life. Because we're being told that it's all part of being an adult -- doing things you don't like.

Maybe there's a reason for this. Maybe if not for such societal pressures, there might be a lack of young and fresh auditors to facilitate a functional economy.

Ah, I'm too lazy to ponder on further.

Job hunting woes part n

I think I'm starting to understand why people say it's better to just get a job first. It seems like getting the ideal first-job is infinitely harder than jumping from one job to another.

So it turns out I subscribe to some form of catholicism. I was listening to a podcast just last night about a very successful comedian and he was saying how he viewed his suffering during his early days as some sort of a trial. I've long accepted that this job-hunting phase is just something I have to go through, but I'm wondering how much more of it could I handle till I break.

It doesn't help that I've recently picked up The Bell Jar and it deals with coming-of-age, quarter-life-crisis, suicidal themes.

All I could do right now is hang on to this quote from Kierkegaard:

"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."