Bonelab Has TERRIBLE Design

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[@Benamax]

I feel like most of the common rebuttals to criticism of the level design in Bonelabs boil down to, “I did not have this issue. I was able to do X THING on my first try. You are just dumb.” And it’s really irritating because using your single experience as a way to completely invalidate someone else’s experience is pretty poor reasoning. That’s like saying, “Oh, you ran into a bug in this game? Cool, but I didn’t, so you must have done something wrong. It can’t be the game’s fault.” I actually didn’t run into most of the issues you described. I was able to solve the crane puzzle without much trouble, I saw the new item orbs being opened online, I solved the held button puzzle almost immediately, and I saw the map for the space mission before running around. And YET, I would still agree that the game design of Bonelabs is seriously flawed. Even when I stumbled across the solutions quickly, it wasn’t due to intuitiveness. I honestly felt like I got lucky most of the time, and I’m also partly used to Stress Level Zero’s tendency to include vague puzzles with little direction in their games. And even when I knew the answer, they were NEVER fun to complete. Sure, I knew where to go on the Moon level. But was it fun to walk across its surface for 5 minutes in a straight line? No. The low gravity gimmick wore off quickly, and it became incredibly boring as I walked across the level with nothing to look at or do. Every single puzzle is like this. Every. Single. Puzzle. Even if you don’t get stuck on them, they’re still incredibly uninteresting and don’t use the core physics system in a fun or unique way. Half-Life 2, Portal, even Half-Life: Alyx, a game often accredited with less advanced physics than Boneworks/Bonelabs, use physics in more interesting ways, at least when it comes to puzzle and level design. They have impressive technology, but it’s still a game. You need a fun game on top of that technology if you want to showcase it in the best light. And no, mods don’t fix that. As you said in the video, they are an addition to the game, not the main portion. It’s a poor excuse for a badly designed campaign because I *seriously* doubt they intended to make a bad campaign in the first place. And it sucks, because I really like many things about it. In fact, I still would say I like Bonelabs. But it’s got many issues and a frankly annoying fan base who likes to dismiss legitimate criticisms and avoid good faith discussions as all cost. Anyways, good video!

[@XristoferLee]

but isn't that exactly what you are doing by blaming the game?

[@Benamax]

@@XristoferLee I’m not sure what you mean. Could you provide an example in my comment where I made a mistake like that and explain the problem?

[@boinqity4621]

exactly. i personally loved boneworks and didnt run into any of the issues that other people were having (although i did play after lots of those issues were fixed) but that doesnt mean that im gonna say its a perfect game. its fine to enjoy bad things lol

[@naenaemister5048]

i straight up skipped several puzzles by mistake cause i was playing like gone boneworks

[@Peremptor]

@@XristoferLee What are you referring to mate? The game is the game the devs are supposed to try to make the game as good as possible so constructive criticism in the areas where it can be improved is something every fan of said game should cherish and welcome.

[@ShaShaMang]

The problem BONELAB has is a lack of feedback. The open ended level design facilitates the kind of gameplay that makes VR special, however, the lack of tactile, visual, and auditory feedback in many areas can lead to confusion among players. The hold button example from the video perfectly demonstrates this issue. It really feels like SLZ did far too little QA on this game and it sucks to see because its subpar launch will likely define it going forward despite most all major launch issues having been remedied in a patch already.

[@acoustic_.]

@@NocturneJester bone lab supports mods, boneworks didn’t. There’s a ton of mods for bonelab already.

[@thelelanatorlol3978]

@@NocturneJester Bro there's literally a full giant custom campaign in boneworks and boneworks is crazy hard to mod for compared to boneworks. Just wait for the community to really start getting into the swing of things.

[@neofromthewarnerbrothersic145]

I think the lack of feedback is holding VR down in general, keeping it kinda stuck where it is. To get better games, we need better tech. Everything from making the headsets smaller/lighter/better, to adding new interface devices with haptic feedback, etc. When the headsets are no more cumbersome than a pair of ski goggles, and your hands interface with haptic gloves instead of gamepads, VR as a medium can take another leap forward.

[@RustyLemon]

"Too weak to boku no pick up the kart" This right here, this killed me

[@blank4227]

then how did you comment hmm? yeah I think not

[@daltonmiller7259]

@@blank4227 Ghost comments. ooooooooooooo.

[@henrynelson9301]

You didn’t mention the Tower level, where you have to climb a big tower while an assload of flying enemies are attacking you, that forcefully change your avatar IN THE MISSION MADE TO TEACH YOU ABOUT THE TALL GUY. I’m so glad they patched that out. Also that Initial D joke had me howling

[@atimholt]

Ooh, what did they patch it to?

[@henrynelson9301]

@@atimholt your avatar no longer gets forcibly changed, and they added a checkpoint in the middle of the level. They also added more weapons to it and reworked some parts.

[@kernelofficial]

I think he omitted it from the video just because of how much it has changed since launch.

[@Dustin34]

i thought the avatar changing was super cool made it more challenging and made thw game feel more alive

[@kernelofficial]

@@Dustin34 It was kinda neat at first, but when the introduction level to a certain avatar consists of you using that character for only 15% of it is most definitely not good design.

[@ronwinters3571]

The big thing about models is that they don't auto adjust to your body and to change them you need to know the EXACT measurements of some your body parts. The puzzles and some of the levels honestly reminds me of VRChat levels which isn't surprising as the devs go on that game too and probably got inspiration from it. I do hope they fix the problems you mentioned as it would make an all around better game.

[@francegamer]

they did. they added a poster on how to crack open the balls when you first find it, made moonbase a bit more intuitive and fun and they added more direction and instructions for the crane.

[@Shin3y]

@@francegamer I think the crane operation instructions were in the initial release

[@Ozzianman]

@@Shin3y They were not

[@mememanfrommy600poundlife6]

@@Ozzianman yes they were

[@SlushyIsMyName]

@@Ozzianman they were

[@jordanrob999]

Few reviews have ever matched my opinion as perfectly as this one, awesome job! My only other critique is that for a game made for the purpose of being modded, they didn’t make it easier to actually download mods directly on the Quest 2. I imagine a lot of players will end up missing out on that part of the game

[@thelaganator6391]

They are going to add mods though in the approved mods section.

[@jordanrob999]

@@thelaganator6391 That’s awesome to hear 👍

[@azthall4645]

I got the game on day one excited since they announced the game and being promised a huge platform of modding which is the core focus of these sandbox games, to have basically no modding other than gimmick avatars for over a month after release made me lose all interest in this game. I beat the game and waited... and waited... and waited until they'd finally have all of the modding tools available. And now that those mods are here I have no interesting in picking up my quest again. The thought of dealing with the janky controls, pointless avatar system and how much the game costs killed it for me. A shame considering I was hoping for this game to be a great experience on the Quest 2 finally for those without a gaming pc.

[@hubbabubba5177]

@@azthall4645 bruh take a chill pill. They said all that pre launch, and mods take time to be made. Look at the first year of mods for any big game (like Skyrim, fallout, etc) and you'll see it's nothing amazing

[@theallsight7076]

But when is the question? I'll have probably moved onto another game by the time if the devs don't do it in the next couple of months.

[@MajimaEnjoyer2247]

It took me 10 MINUTES to find out how to use the crane.on top of that, when you need to hold the button I thought you had to use the boxes around the room instead of the GIANT PILLER. My brain is that of Jello. Oh, and on the moon I got lost, restarted the map and THEN I saw the map on the wall

[@Ozzianman]

I restarted the moon map and still didn't notice the map because there was no point to paying any attention to the starting area in previous tutorial levels beyond "I want to get out of here". Only reason I know about the map is because a friend told me about it.

[@ojm_6429]

@@Ozzianman there was a map? Lmao I just wandered around til I found the exit

[@Electronidus]

this was my exact problem with this game. i had to MULTIPLE TIMES look up what to do because i could not for the life of me infer what it wanted me to do

[@4-2day54]

I didnt have to look up anything a single time during my playthrough. I have beat boneworks though so maybe i'm accustomed to the bad design.

[@ojm_6429]

If you had to look stuff up multiple times you aren’t very intuitive, that’s a cool thing about bonelab that you have to figure things out yourself without the game holding your hand the whole way through like most modern day games do

[@Electronidus]

@@ojm_6429 the fact that this video exists says its not just about how "intuitive" i am. its just bad game design. plain and simple. sorry were not all high and mighty like your self who never needs to look up anything. touch grass my guy.

[@ojm_6429]

@@Electronidus 😆 idk what tell you then I don’t need to worry about touching grass though my dude, this video is not proof of the game having bad design it just shows someone similar to you who struggled to figure out what they’re supposed to do in the game

[@flup9837]

I didnt have to look up a single thing, i got stuck a few times but solving the puzzles myself made it more rewarding, if i wouldve looked up every puzzle it wouldnt be very rewarding

[@FrenchFries2]

Renn with two N's, my favourite little boy, you should talk about the travesty that is Gotham Knights, and talk about the Batman Arkham games too, think your style of humour, editing and review aspect could really fit for a video like this, as well as it's made by a somewhat competent Triple A company, at least when it comes to console ports of their games.

[@chuck_muckle]

Totally agree

[@B8V88]

I’d watch that

[@RennsReviews]

Call me crazy, but I tried playing those games and I really didn't care for them. I did however only play them on a TV which had significant input delay, that could've been why.

[@driederprinz]

Renn with two Ns is hilarious

[@stoneasterisk382]

i liked gotham knights

[@edenfeledrum1540]

This is an insanely high quality breakdown of Bonelabs, how have I not stumbled across this channel before? Also love the dude in the background at 8:25.

[@PinaSheep69]

No one I've ever watched has such an interesting editing style like you do. Thank you Renn with two N's!

[@nodabs4608]

21:30 Props to the editor for that excellent noose transition

[@RennsReviews]

It only took me like 7 minutes

[@teamdoodz]

0:40 Correction: SLZ did not make the physics engine. Boneworks/Bonelab uses Nvidia PhysX, Unity's built-in physics engine. What they have created is an impressive interaction framework built on top of it.

[@Wkhal]

No???? SLZ made and uses the 1Marrow physics engine which is yes for Unity but it's still there engine that they developed

[@Snikabarz]

@@Wkhal Marrow is their INTERACTION engine. The body, picking things up, etc. All physics are handled by unitys default engine

[@henrynelson9301]

@@Wkhal it’s not an engine, it’s an SDK

[@teamdoodz]

@@henrynelson9301 The marrow SDK and the marrow engine are two different things.

[@henrynelson9301]

@@teamdoodz There is no Marrow Engine

[@StUCaboose]

1:22 That escalated HELLA quick

[@Doctor-Infinite]

honestly what a way to go

[@nemesis4081]

Kinda fun that pilar wasn't even mentioned once while being as much of a problem to many players on their first playthrough as a few of the puzzle mentioned and a frustrating level worst then moon too

[@RennsReviews]

I purposefully left that section out of the video, I didn't want to revisit that for more footage. It was infuriating

[@nemesis4081]

@@RennsReviews understandable and also kinda fitting with the video as a " it was so bad i dont even needed to mention it , you all know it too so let do like it never happen"

[@casedistorted]

Ren swinging a bag of dog poop while shouting at a green screen in a dog park is a scene I wish I could see in person. Those transitions and sponsor ad placement were fantastic. Ren is a lyrical genius.

[@Snikabarz]

Nice review, but honestly I'm much more harsh on the game. I think its being given too much slack. Yeah, those avatar levels are really bad. But I'll go a step further, those avatar levels simply shouldn't be in the game. Boneworks offered a cohesive campaign where you were slowly progressing towards the clock tower, you could see it slowly become closer and closer as you progress through the game when you look up to the skybox. Bonelab threw you into random mini games that have no cohesion. All the levels feel disjointed, unconnected, like you aren't going from one place to another. If i wanted to play mini games I'll play the side content, I'm not playing the campaign for that. From the point where you see the huge jimmy face, they should have given you the avatar switching mechanics. Not levels locked to each avatar, but the full mechanics with a few of the bodies. Have some more bodies that are fun to use as collectibles you can find throughout the campaign. Bonelabs music also suffers from the exact same problem. The composer did a full video on the boneworks music, talking about the cohesion between each song. Theres was one main motif that connected each song, making them all different but still feel connected to the overall game. Bonelab is just random music, in 100 different styles. No conection, no cohesion, no progression. Just disjointed random music. I will admit though, the music on the last couple of levels completely nailed it. Bonelab mechanically is boneworks, but copy and pasted into this game with worse climbing. I've also had 10x more bugs. Trying to grab items, holding myself up on stuff, and just getting stuck in doors, all just felt way jankier than boneworks. Boneworks came out almost 3 years ago now. 3 years later SLZ put out boneworks, but jankier, with a worse campaign, that also costs 15 dollars more. But ok whatever, theres modding right? modding will be fun. Except, for anyone thats used the tools, the modding is embarrassingly barebones. I got my hands on the tools just a day after the game came out, and for a game that RELIES on modding to survive, we have basically nothing. Avatars, and very basic levels. No coding is supported. Buttons, doors, and ladders are all things not included for us to use. The only way to add enemies/items to your map is finding a random file that was pinned in a modding discord, stress level zero does not include it themselves with the tools. There is close to no documentation, and the documentation that is there is really bad. People have now fallen back on using the old community made tools that were developed for boneworks, because it actually supports more than the official tools that SLZ provided years later. However, those wont work on the quest version of the game. Overall, bonelab is worse boneworks, 3 years later for more money. It was advertised as a sequel to boneworks. According to the steam page, a game with a "layered narrative", acting like the story campaign was the focus of the game when it was clearly supposed to be modding. I still love SLZ but they advertised bonelab completely wrong. Bonelab isn't a boneworks sequel. It's not a super advanced modding platform. Bonelab is dumbed down boneworks for quest

[@doktorphlog2143]

The lack of cohesion is the theme though. Its not Boneworks' linear story in a single setting with a specific goal the player character had in mind, its a character who has little idea of whats going on being hurled through a digital hell of abandoned projects and fragments of games and simulations left to rot. The music reflects that as well. Your concerns over the devtools however are fully correct. They should've had documentation and other resources ready AT LAUNCH not incomplete with a pinky swear to fix it later. The other concern I agree with here is the use of whole levels to give a tutorial for each avatar, when one level that necessitated all the avatars to be used would've been much better, but they used the solution they did to pad the runtime of the game. The game does, however, have the layered narrative if you explore enough and search for it. The game makes you look for the answers. For example, one question I had was how the world had changed after the actions of Ford, and if you look, you find those changes. In the Museum Basement level, (SPOILERS!) you find a back office that has a few data slates lying around that tell the story of a new hire to Monogon that has realized that his job is not to be a curator, but a destroyer of evidence, and that Monogon has become "extremely paranoid about infosec" to the point that anyone who requests information is immediately put under investigation. The issues it has are apparent, but they have a reason behind them, that reason being the Quest. Thats why the jank is there, thats why the devtools are so barebones, the entire game had to be optimized for Quest porting and they balanced the suffering between both Quest and PC.

[@Snikabarz]

@@doktorphlog2143 The lack of cohesion being "the point of the game" doesnt change anything. Its not good, thats not how a campaign works. I dont care if it was MEANT to be random mini games that dont connect to each other, thats just not how a campaign is made. Its supposed to bring the player through an engaging experience and tell a story, which bonelab was unable to do since it just felt like a whole bunch of side content packed together into a game. I also brought up the layered narrative thing because the steam page makes it look like the focus of the game, when the campaign is clearly not the focus. Not because it doesnt have one. Also, thats kind of my point. This was adverised as boneworks 2. We got boneworks: quest edition. Its clear most the time went to porting it to quest, rather than developing a new sequel to boneworks

[@doktorphlog2143]

@@Snikabarz that's a fair point, but you could've just said it's not what you expected and that would've been a fair enough point, as it was advertised as one thing but we got something else. I personally enjoy the disjointedness of it and feel that it's a storytelling device that's new and interesting, but I can see how one wouldn't enjoy it.

[@sir_vix]

@@doktorphlog2143 but the lack of cohesion IS problematic, and the claim that it is an intended plot device is cynically contrived to excuse and explain away inadequacies as designed outcomes. The game isn't bad, you're just too stupid to realise that the developers are being oh so clever and meta. What do you mean you expected more content in your game? Clearly you are mistaken. This isn't a game - this is a manifesto to inspire a movement which will create content for the product you just purchased. What is the product, you ask? YOU are the product. Congratulations, we just sold you to YOU. Now tell everyone what you think of yourself. If you're not satisfied, it must be something wrong with you. Not us. We're all very clever.

[@doktorphlog2143]

@@sir_vix way to go bud, you beat my whole argument with the idea that the dev is lazy. good job. btw, did you know they'll be releasing a second part later, likely as a free addon? you seem to be mad that game daddy SLZ didn't make the exact game you wanted so wheres your game? the one im sure you made and will be charging little to nothing for? I'd like to see it. I'd like to see you do better or show me a better story game in VR that isn't Boneworks, Duck Season, or a flatscreen port. I personally got bored of Boneworks after beating it, but I've gotten more than 40 hours out of Bonelab. Maybe you just bought a game you didn't end up liking and are now blaming the developer because you didn't like the direction they went with? also how is it a cynically derived argument that they made a design choice when a game has been in development for 3 years with a specific vision in mind and the game is unapologetically what it is and leans hard into the concept, AND reinforces it with the lore and design?

[@ApocalypseMoose]

"Something small like debris placement in a video game can matter a whole lot." As someone that plays Tarkov, absolutely. There's a whole lot of loose loot and items that can be found on the ground, and it is more often than not next to a whole bunch of other debris (or at least similar looking to static debris), making it harder to distinguish it from the scenery.

[@moltenboyo2163]

I’m currently working on my first ever review, and it’s because of this game. Your critique on guidance is 100 percent correct. I managed to have a seamless experience the first time I played, but only because I had a CALL FULL OF FRIENDS telling me exactly what to do. If a significant chunk of your players can’t even find the game they just paid 40 dollars for, you have a guidance problem

[@RennsReviews]

Best of luck!

[@ryanrussell750]

Wow this video was incredible! I thought the exact same thing about how aimless and un intuitive the game design and the puzzels were and I also thought the sandbox part of the game was super fun. I loved how you put in the half life alyx deveoper clips in because yeah i never had a problem knowing where to go in half life alyx. And it was super cool how you made the video weird and unintuitive like putting random camera angels or letting the annoying music play for a while. This video is amazing! Keep it up Renn!

[@_Frieza]

I'm gonna be honest, a lot of the complaints about some puzzles just didnt really make much sense to me. I played boneworks just a little bit before bonelab released, and after playing boneworks, I never really got lost on anything in the game. (Except the crane), so a lot of the points here just didn't make a lot of sense because they were so easy. The trying to find a button at the beginning had me laughing, because I have never heard of a single person who tried that. You didn't even do that in boneworks at all. The button gate in long run was pretty obvious, big pillar with yellow handles, big red button with lines connecting to a gate. But to be fair, all your other points about the game I completely agree with. Thanks for reading my long dumb comment! (You also used dont fence me in at the outra, instant sub.

[@koufiosalami]

How old are you? I cant tell if its an inteligence thing or renn is wright and they didnt design the game well

[@LethalOlive]

To be fair, I also thought you had to find the button

[@BrandonDeanRobinson]

I really want to like this game (big fan of Boneworks and was looking forward to Bonelab) but the janky physics makes a large portion of this game downright infuriating to play and jank will occur at the absolute worst of times. Couple of examples - Climbing up ledges : avatar will randomly think you want a weapon from your side holsters or a magazine. Guns: when attempting to hold the weapon with both hands and CAREFULLY ensuring that my non dominant is on the part of the weapon that can be held for stability, the avatar will instead rip the damn magazine out (lol?). It's especially annoying when I'm cornered by a bunch of enemies and have to end up fighting to put the mag back in. The avatar puzzles: the parkour puzzle was supposed to highlight the fast avatar's abilities, but instead, all it did was highlight the games jankiness. I lost quite a bit of ammo and some weapons due to it. The racing section was fun, except at the end of the race I flipped my cart and it somehow got stuck in my avatar body. I ended up having to leave and come back to the level because I could no longer jump up to reach the end goal of the map. I think the game has a ton of potential, and personally Im OK with the modding community taking the center stage (really eager to see if this game will end up like Gary's mod) but the jank is really killing a lot of fun. Boneworks had it's issues, sure, but rarely did I ever feel like the game was actively working against me and I was even able to develop a good pace. Bonelab on the other hand feels like it constantly unintentionally works against me.

[@EnzoBergstrom]

Great as always! I recognize myself in so many examples in this video of my first bonelab playthrough.

[@mayonnaise3959]

You didn’t even finish the video

[@dylan10182000]

@@mayonnaise3959 patreon exists

[@mayonnaise3959]

@@dylan10182000 then why comment on the video? And you know this person has patreon?

[@EnzoBergstrom]

@@mayonnaise3959 Patreon links too the videos unlisted on KZbin.

[@owlcacone]

Thankfully, the crane game puzzle has been made a lot easier to comprehend and even find in the latest patch. I think the puzzle shouldn't even be there honestly. Just instruct the player to play a couple minigames and then start an event where the door opens by itself, no crane required. I can't really speak on the whole thing with the missing button in the airlock, as I completely ignored it and went straight into the room, but it does seem a bit confused. As you mentioned, the wall could collapse and that would be a cool little memorable physics moment, like with the skeleton in the wall at the start of the game. Can't speak on the pillar button puzzle, as I got spoiled to it in a review. 😅 I've noticed that the boulder launch puzzle does break on a ton of people, you can blame the physics engine bugging out on you for that. A good way to have fixed that was to have the boulder launch be a static, repeatable process (spawning a new boulder with the same exact velocity every time it exits that little pipe). I don't think that the moon map should've been in the campaign at all, there's better ways to show off a short avatar than a low gravity, slow, (before they added the jump pads) and completely useless level. You do nothing, but go to a location and pick up an avatar orb. The ascent part of the game should've had a lot more levels to it instead of just 1. The campaigns ending was extremly bittersweet because of the campaign length. All-in-all, this review is amazing, you have put into words that which I could not perfectly. I still adore SLZ and this game, let's see what the future holds.

[@saunshilu]

It felt like the devs put all the dev time putting the game on the quest, for better and for worse

[@cjaymeme]

Oh my god that door "puzzle". I didn't know what to do, and didn't realize you could move the pillar. I spent like 20 minutes stacking the two red herring boxes to hold the button, which worked, but was clearly unintentional and frustrating. This game's puzzle design is like Zelda BoTW's shrines but if the intended solution was as unclear as possible. They're nonlinear and open to a fault.

[@Koniving]

Now the way that I found that little door with the debris and such, I found the switch I found out it was missing something. For me it struck me as odd because the prongs were pointed the wrong way, every battery terminal receives prongs these problems were sticking up which basically told me it didn't fit anything that was previously in bone works and I regarded it as completely irrelevant. I then started looking around and the big room to the right was already of interest so that when I turned around sure enough bam there's a doorway. However if you didn't happen to notice the room to the right was a window you probably wouldn't think to look for it again after you get to the switch to go oh there's a door. If it had a more distinct color it probably could have stood out more or if what was inside was more visually distinct. Since I was playing on the quest it actually is more distinct it is on the PC because the PC has real lighting and it's affected by the real lighting the quest has pre-baked lighting and because of this the room isn't like completely overshadowed and yellow and that room actually is more distinct because of that.

[@dray1195]

Videos like these bring be back to when boneworks first came out and got similar mixed reactions from the VR community and gaming in general

[@B8V88]

The kills at 1:18 are atrocious 😭

[@SuperHornetA51]

The puzzles weren't hard because they were difficult, they were hard because they didn't make sense, and instead of doing whatever they wanted me to do, I just started climbing things until I got around it. There are no real puzzles that require thought, just luck.

[@PeterPlayerOne]

Beautifully conveyed, my experience was similar to yours and my opinions going into the game were as well. I like how you highlighted habie’s video title “Bonelabs is a perfect VR game” while he talks about how broken its design is. It’s a little gross how the user reviews are mostly players that obviously give the game leeway because of SLZ’s reputation, or because they want VR so badly to succeed and bonelabs to be their savior, or because they actually enjoyed the frustrations for the sake of them being “puzzles”. If it had been any other game or on pancake, it would have tanked. The game is just bad imo, should have been $20 for boneworks owners or PC users and $40 for quest. I wasn’t expecting you to make a video on this but I’m pleasantly surprised, you’re true and analytical perspective is desperately needed.

[@funkydino7564]

My first 3 days of playing were spent on level two. (It was more like I’d play for an hour then get frustrated and stop playing the game)

[@receptionsystem]

I was initially gonna dismiss you since I'm one of _those_ people, but looking back to launch day, I straight up thought that the way to get to the next level was by using the in-game level select in the hub. I had zero clue that the crane was the way to progresa. I just kinda put the spheres in and went on my way. Same thing happened with the Boneworks box later on.

[@ShminkleFart]

as some one who as less than no experience in the first game, i entered the story as a fucking ape. but lacked that "you could do this in the first game so you can do it in this one" mindset. I was able to fuck around with my imagination to figure stuff out. So i ended up finding out the pop ball thing pretty early. i'm a dirty quest user and even with all of the games faults, it's the best game on the quest store.

[@DasGewkmiXX]

After playing this game I am convinced that nobody outside the actual company playtested the game

[@itz-electro]

I also had a problem where i didnt know how to open the capsules, my biggest problem was the what to do with the iron key jimmy gives you. I couldn't figure it out to the point i had to search it up on google

[@gavinbowers137]

I tried to pick up the spheres with the crane for ten minutes to open that damn door, then promptly refunded the game. After that I looked it up and learned that the free play modes need to be entered first. I just wanted to jump right into the campaign...

[@kiliangangale8531]

It says it when you enter the hub XD

[@atimholt]

For some reason, I never had to enter the nodes. Still haven't entered most of them, because the game was such a painful, boring ordeal.

[@SpoogySock]

I legit spent 10 minutes looking for another battery for that broken door battery thing. Then I spent another 10 minutes trying to place a battery I used for the magnet thing into it. Then I spent 10 minutes looking for unique batteries in the mini games. Then I spent 10 minutes looking up a guide. Then I spent 10 minutes being befuddled and dumbfounded. Also, I spent so much time getting passed the one part from the trailer when you’re the little guy in the sewer. Then you step on the pad and get launched through the grate thing into the gravity beam. IT WOULD NOT SHOOT ME OUT. No matter how I oriented myself, what I had (if anything) in my hands, what character I was, it would not shoot me out.

[@VaidasMaldzius]

review spot on. The worst for me was the tower level. I mean What they were thinking? It wasn't fun, just overwhelming frustration and wish to progress as soon as possible. And the lack of ques of what player needs to do to progress was ridiculous. They can't expect a player playing visual VR game to pay attention to a stand. Or these fucking clipboards. Why the hell has time or wants to read them? Show, not tell. VR is such an amazing tool to show but yet you have clipboards to read. Bad bad design. They can learn from HLA a lot.

[@Koniving]

The card has a bunch of different solutions in the take back control room (I named it based on the song that plays), for me the first time I was in there I found the hook on the ground and remember the puzzle from bhone works and I tried it that way. It worked the first time I was in there because I was heavy and fat. However when I try it again I was a female character and while I could grab onto it and stuff I couldn't keep my feet on the ground I had no friction or traction. So instead I cleaned up grabbed onto the cart and I started pulling myself along the rail where I discovered that the rails don't have proper grip points attached. The message you're using in the video I discovered only relatively recently which made it considerably easier because prior to that point I had just been jumping the damn thing as my go-to for getting through there.

[@alexlayoutube4727]

The only places where I really got stuck were the lab and the capsules. The other places were just me being dumb or something. Though the level design in boneworks was way better since it was more open so you could think out of the box

[@rayfer.]

You were right saying that the developers expect the comunity to mod bonelab to make it great but it sould be the cherry on top of a game that is great for itself, but I think that is boneworks, the whole purpose of bonelab is to make the people mod it and make it great, the developers didn´t spent the time creating a wholesome game (even they did create some levels that vere very good like the ascent) , they spent the time making the engine the best they could so that WE the comunity made some amazing modded campaigns or avatars. If you think about it its better let a entire comunity of creative people make the things they want than a small indie studio create a long camgpaing and that is exactly what they did with boneworks... "This is about building, about creation" - Jimmy wong.

[@Koniving]

Well they put up posters well before this video was posted but I assume it was made well before then given the editing quality, I gave you a pull apart motion but you'd only be able to see it if you were holding it at a certain angle and looking directly at it and yeah. But if you were Japanese or enough of an anime geek, you would recognize this as a gacha capsule or one of those little balls that are showing up in a lot of animes now or even referenced a lot in the final Fantasy 7 remake. Basically little collectible things in a ball that you pull apart to get what's inside, very similar to the American gumball machine that has goodies for a quarter. I noticed that people who did not experience bone works actually had an easier time with the gacha balls. I myself noticed the arrows and tried it and sure enough I was able to get it pretty quickly but that's because I saw the arrows. In your own footage the arrows popped up in the video but you didn't notice them apparently. The game seems to assume that we have a monochrome of critical thinking skills that has been kind of worked out of education in the early 2000s.

[@Koniving]

I do agree that the little missions for each Avatar is pretty bleh. It just meant to feel like a small video game that could be discovered on the various game mod types in the lab. There are ways that they could have been improved a bit. Of them my favorite was the one for strong. The one for fast was okay but it could have been better. So I see why they did it the way they did because if you had to worry about combat while doing parkour you probably couldn't figure out the parkour part if you're completely new to it. Monica and raceway really needed something to race against, but in all these scenarios it's basically trying to cheat you something in the hopes that people will create mods based on these mechanics later. The final mission feels too short but as the monolith says this is not the final mission and if you explore the monolith, you have instructions referring to the second half of the game which has not yet been released. The initial info about page within the game actually states that this is a vertical slice of the final product and that the game is not complete. The info written in red basically tells us that until New paths open relax here and create as you please, allowing us to create mods until the time has come in which we can use any Avatar as we please on whatever future missions are coming for us when the campaign finally continues.

[@UchinanchuStyle]

I never played boneworks but I didn't have the problems finding out what to do in this game as you were showing, as soon as I realized this felt like half-life my curious/problem solving brain turned on and I tried to reach every nook and cranny by climbing around with the crowbar, as soon as I found a single secret area I was hooked to scan every room for them before moving on, but I can see where a lot of people could get hung up by little things, happened to me a lot in other games and made me feel dumb

[@billyanderson8149]

This game was easy and still is kinda fun

[@ojm_6429]

@@billyanderson8149 yeah idk how some people got so confused I guess they’re just used to modern games holding your hand

[@rovertronic]

1:17 i wish my last moments would be like that nullman's last moments

[@AveryHyena]

25:21 That's not true. My cart flipped and I was able to flip it back with Light no problem.

[@ryanwood6754]

one thing that makes me laugh to this day is the defenders of the game answering the confusion with the mini game "puzzle" and the containers your supposed to pop to get items. Everyone was saying like you pointed out that they were confused on what to do, where to go and how to deposit the orbs. The defenders argument was "just google it bro its not hard you will find your answer" If I have to exit the game to google how to deposit or in this case pop the orbs to obtain items then the game is flawed. Simple as that. No game should get pity points because you can "google it". Otherwise back in the day before the internet guide books would be MANDATORY! but they were not! they were just there for those who were stuck or just basically either wanted to cheat an easy win or find secrets. You didn't NEED them in order to play. Put it this way I completed bone works and loved my experience. I got to the puzzle after unplugging the drain (which took me an hour!) and I gave up and only installed the game months later to try the mods which didn't help because they felt as janky and bland as the game because they are just glorified skins. And yes I had the same bug as you with the ball where it would NOT HIT THE BUTTON! or the balls would get stuck and wouldn't respawn to me this is an example of developers thinking its a good puzzle because they thought it up and it works functionally but they completely disregarded the fact they know how to solve it because they created it but the average user will be confused as fuck

[@Likon]

How could you forgot to tell about the pillar level where insects switch your avatar for no reason and sometimes you fall because of that, you can't even hit them normaly? I didn't had much problems with other things, but I bet everyone had problems with the pillar.

[@Left4pillz]

Personally i just found the whole game disappointing, especially compared to Boneworks that came out a few years earlier. Bonelab had some cool concepts, but never really utilised them in any fun ways, and there weren't really any improvements from the original Boneworks and I actually thought it was a slight downgrade if anything. The story especially was bad . It feels like someone at SL0 pitched the story with a basic outline, then they just used that outline as the entire plot, and didn't give it any depth. Anyway loved the video Renn, really funny seeing you go out into random public places wearing the headset and swinging around in your VR videos, people must think you're a nutter lol. Cheers

[@Samsaraslug]

getting stuck because the game doesnt allow you to figure out what to do is one of the most frustrating things in gaming...really makes you wanna stop playing...especially with a kilogram of headset strapped to your face

[@Samsaraslug]

actually had something similar happen to me while palying dying light and after a few minutes of nt knowing what to do or what to look for i just started playing max payne 3 instead

[@kellanaldous7092]

This was the very first VR game I played. I got stuck at the hub and had to look up what to do, but after that I never got stuck again. I also didn't know how to use the orbs until I looked it up, but I still enjoyed the game quite a bit.

[@Noodle-Segootal]

It's called initial D because of the cool drift move the main character does where he does an initial drift into the wall and follows it up with a second away from the wall

[@Electronidus]

i can also confirm that running around the go kart track on foot does not count your progress. i did that for one lap becuse the go kart physics was making me nauseous

[@BiggisFoot]

I did it on foot because the go kart kept flipping over and I was frustrated with it.

[@Koniving]

It does do more hand holding now and it did do some hand holding if you looked at your hands. But from what I seen in videos a lot of people didn't have their hands in their view and so they couldn't see the damn tips. It's like literally some Legends need to be climbed it's on your hand but people run into the room and they try to door and then they can't figure out where they go and eventually they figured out but you know if they could have seen their hand. Also curiously it's placed on whichever hands is opposite of the movement hand, which is weird because if you did set it up to move by controller rather than headset, it would be the movement hand that would be up.

[@praralexander7561]

Wait, what about Tall guy's tower climb level? Easily one of the worst levels I have ever played in a game. The fact it has a time limit, the janky rope mechanics, randomly getting switched to different characters, some of which cant progress (Cat and Fat guy), I had a bug where I couldn't pick things up, the flame launchers that can 2 hit you placed above you because apparently, the parkour wasn't difficult enough already, the complete lack of direction on how to finish the level.

[@Spidoc]

Anyone who says that they want a pair of floating hands is disgusting. Also, this wasn’t even supposed to be a full game. This was a project that was divided into 2 parts. They did that in order to fit the game onto the Quest, which got them a lot of funding for a much bigger project.

[@dylan10182000]

Wow one of my favorite youtubers reviewing one of my favorite games to come out in the past year? I don't see how anything could go wrong!

[@DandyDorsia_Official]

as someone who played boneworks for like 10 minutes and completed bonelab in one day I can say at least for me the game puzzles weren't so hard for example when I got into the quarantine door and saw that the wall was broken so I went there and opened to other door and went to the next room but when I got there and climbed the ladder and got into does ventilation fans I thought you needed something else to open up them but they where open from the beginning and also in the big pool room I didn't really know what to do and looked around for like 30 minutes to actually find the exit and when I later realized that you needed that hook thing to open up the water cork I got a little frustrated for sure but the rest of the game was pretty simple and not hard

[@theallsight7076]

My biggest gripe with the game is what was said about the mods being the game's heart beat. Whilst the content in the game is immense, there is a lack of content that will keep me from properly enjoying it. It's not the issue of it not being able to satisfy an itch, it's an issue of "will I need to use mods to continue my fun?" That's not a feeling I like nor want. Also, in some parts of the game, I had issues with how to do things and completing a level. The moon base I was able to understand by walking forwardMy biggest gripe with the game is what was said about the mods being the game's heart beat. Whilst the content in the game is immense, there is a lack of content that will keep me from properly enjoying it. It's not the issue of it not being able to satisfy an itch, it's an issue of "will I need to use mods to continue my fun?" That's not a feeling I like nor want. Also, in some parts of the game, I had issues with how to do things and completing a level. The moon base I was able to understand by walking forward, but the Void Level at the very end with the taxi was frustrating because I couldn't get the Taxi to actually move. I didn't know there was a slow motion mechanic nor did I know how to exit a vehicle or enter one properly. Overall, the game is great. It's the most fun I've had since playing Blades and Sorcery with mods. It is a wonderful experience that people should go in blind.

[@IAmFromTheYear]

Every gamer says they don't need to have their hand held until they need to have their hand held.

[@steven.2602]

Every gamer, including you and I, says they don't need to have their hand held because they don't notice the ten strings guiding them to their destination.

[@RennsReviews]

Wonderfully put - so long as we don't notice the strings we are generally happy.

[@IAmFromTheYear]

@@RennsReviews The strings are 'handholding' though. That was my point... Even subtle hints have to be noticed lol. This invisible strings metaphor has irked me ngl lol.

[@sniss]

its frustrating how underwhelming the amount / quality of levels is disproportionate to the amount of cool things that could have existed in this game. like more than half of the experiences is poorly showing you each character, and when it isn't just underwhelming its infuriating. the tower climb level stands out as one of the worst experiences in a game ive had this year. it doesnt deliver on what the avatar swapping mechanic could be, and almost feels like no qa testing happened at all love the vid as always renn

[@MonerLaine]

What's the name of the Song at the end? ITS amazing

[@butterr8037]

I think it’s OST for Bonelab

[@Boone227]

Dont fence me in

[@morkofficial1]

9:33 boneworks would've had neon arrows and drawings towards that entrance. Like the guidence from X. SLZ just became fkng lazy when it came to bonelab. And i can not stress it enough. I hate bonelab. I was so incredibly hyped for this game when it game out. And i dont think i have ever felt this let down by a game. Its truly sad.

[@Mr.CoolcatsVR]

I remember when I was doing longrun and for the button part I thought I had to move the two metal boxes to hold down the button not knowing I had to move the big thing I’m so stupid lol

[@drakesteller8368]

i had the exact same problem with the item balls and only found out when I got to the end of the strong character level and spent an hour trying to open it

[@P_ckneck]

that giant ball bugged out the same way for me too

[@Jaxd789]

This is honestly the problem I had with Boneworks. I loved the possibilities within the game, but I swear that the level design was, to put it bluntly, absolutely terrible, with seemingly zero consideration that level design should be tackled in a different way in VR. It's like they were designing Source maps for Half-Life 2. imo, movement with the analog stick should be kept to a minimum as much as possible in VR. But what were Boneworks' levels? Incredibly huge barren hallways that you would spend minutes at a time walking down, while IRL you're just... standing there, waiting to arrive at the next interactive thing. For all the work Brandon and his team did on the Marrow physics engine, I think it's all been entirely let down by game and level design that doesn't nearly do it justice. Best thing about Bonelab is that hopefully we won't be having to play SLZ's levels for much longer, and people can start making far more intuitive, more appropriately designed VR levels.

[@nexus_neko]

If you see this renn, just know that I am VERY critical of the state of youtube and content creation as a whole. There is so much deceit, misinformation, and subjectivity in place of a supposed objective view, that I find it hard to give credibility to anyone on this platform. All of this, does NOT apply to you. Ive been watching for awhile, and its good to see that over the years, your content and opinions on whatever you are covering remain objective and constructive. Not to mention I absolutely love all the public bits you do. Have a lovely halloween, renn :)

[@TheFloodFourm]

I feel that so hard.

[@nebula8611]

This video was way more informational than those clickbait "Bonelab sucks!?!" Videos. (Also wondering, why didn't you include pillar climb in the avatar sections? I feel a lot needs to be said about it.)

[@TylerTraverse]

I know a lot of people were also confused by the item balls. After holding it for a moment and looking at it, it shows arrows going apart, and I was confused for a moment thinking back to the reclamation bin but I was determined to figure out what the arrows meant and after a moment I did.

[@TheAlison1456]

3:10 you don't have to be a Builder to know that if a Building has gigantic glaring holes that either only people who've used a lot of buildings, or who make them, can see, then this is bad. Anyone who tries using the building, despite not seeing the holes, is still gonna fall through the hole. 8:28 really? Damn. I figured you did that, but hearing it explicitly is incredible. 8:49 I love this shirt. 9:15 Holy shit this is amazing!!! 11:56 it's not your fault. Game language is real. Visual language is real. GUI language is real. These are all intentional things intentionally communicating from its communicator to an interpreter. 17:02 "which was a recreation from a different movie" philosophy moment 24:55 I love how you said it's an arcade game reference even though it's really an anime reference. Based gaming preferentialism.

[@awokelee1831]

thing is if you treat it like you treated half life 1 you kinda figure shit out without any hand holding, that being said fuck the moon level and fuck the tower level. besides that it was good fun all around

[@CalavErik]

I love thinking that security camera employees get a sneak peek of your next videos. If any of them is a fan they'd be thrilled

[@westingtyler2]

3:14 I bought Boneworks day 1 for Quest 2, and was really annoyed by how I couldn't find an actual campaign story anywhere. I just found a big hub with a bunch of tech demo rooms. I tried the first one, the shooting range, and i stopped playing because I could not find a reasonable way to reload my gun while sitting in my armchair. I then thought "if all this game is, is a bunch of tech demo mechanics rooms to advertise that later this game will have mods, and there's no campaign, I'm seriously disappointed. I was excited to play the game but it seemed like an inaccessible tech demo. If I could have gone right to the campaign, I would have stuck with it, but the whole 30 minute experience left me with a sour taste. if now you're basically telling me this whole hub area was just a mandatory tutorial, now I'm pissed. 6:40 yeah me too. I never realized you could just pop those things apart, until i saw a video of someone doing it and then got made that I had abandoned all those item orbs due to them seemingly doing nothing. how you gonna innovate game design in so many areas then miss some basic things like this.

[@butterr8037]

I enjoyed the game thru and thru. 1:16 lmao😂

[@shellshockhkmk7816]

As a quest user, Bonelab is very fun for me to just mess around in, i wish its campaign was better, theres a mod level called big anomaly rerun which is a much more fun version of the official big anomaly, even replacing the normal dialog from Jimmy (the very large radio man) with his own cut dialog. I still play it a lot, and mod’s definitely make it more fun. I hope they learn from bonelab when they make their next game/ B-Side Also due to my quest having memory issues at the time, i had to replay the campaign multiple times, i beat the tall avatar level easily, no problem. But not the second time. Some people loved the Mine Dive level cause.. well, why wouldn’t you? Well, if you get motion sickness you wouldn’t, since i don’t get immersed as much to the point i feel motion sick, I can’t experience what its like to hate minedive (except for how damn long it takes)

[@NephilisThylord]

bro forgot the pillars section i dont blame him that shit with the uncontrollable avatar changing was such bullshit that they totally removed it from the game in the new patch lol

[@beejaymaks7794]

19:13 I argue that this is not just a "bear-em-up" section. I argue that this section is to show that this avatar can kill and handle weapons very well. So on guns, it means that the recoil is reduced when someone is that avater. So no, they did not forget to remove the guns.

[@slowjones9245]

the "puzzle" where you spawn in a ball and fling it into a button wasnt bugged for you, cause this is still an issue for me after playing through the game 3 times now. the entire campaign feels extremely lazy and under delivers compared to what we got with the boneworks campaign

[@MrJagermeister]

9:50 damn, that was a nicely executed screen wipe transition. Same with the noose at 21:30.

[@Djk9ar]

On the part where you need to hold the button I didn’t even know you could move the pillar, I just pried open the door. In sprint bridge I didn’t see the opening on the left. Pretty much all the other levels seemed like common sense. On the moon level I didn’t have a problem with walking I just didn’t know I had to jump on top of the base. Even though the game does have flaws it’s still a masterpiece.

[@RDR1899Jake]

I'm going to the moon. In space, no one can hear you complain.

[@markfamilari3842]

Anyone know that song at @1:22 it's so good

[@lfaded_phantoml8232]

Should be in the bone lab soundtrap on KZbin

[@synkadus]

Every problem you've listed I encountered And my go-kart ride was enraging too because i tipped over and didn't know how to exit the vehicle. Oh and tower with flying fish was so fucking infuriating i nearly rageqited because parkour sucks, you can't grab things consistently, falling to the very beginning, and your avatar changes every 5 seconds, and you losing hp, so screen is constantly red. And when you finally arrive to the top you have no ammo and you with your sword cannot get near the orb which is flying away from you btw, and there is like 25 fishes attacking you. Yes, you can grab them and beat the shit out of them, but remember that grabbing works 2 times put of 10. Fuck this

[@El_Bandido420]

Now...granted i was a good bit drunk with one of the first puzzles...so i recorded it to watch back later....I stood there for an hour and a half trying to figure out where to go only to find out i needed to climb up

[@Trace6x]

Glad I wasn't the only one who thought bonelab had terrible design. Also it's worth saying, Boneworks ALSO had terrible design, both games really scream 'we didn't play test this outside of anyone in our development studio', which is clearly a real mistake Edit: omg I'm still watching this video and after the moon level I literally went to complain on Reddit at how it was one of the worst video game "levels" I've ever played, idk what the fuck they were thinking lol.

[@RussianAiden]

I had to look up a walkthrough for basically all of the puzzles, that’s how much info the game doesn’t tell you

[@thelemonwiththumbs4560]

My problem with bonelab is that the level of attention that was being given to the game was mismanaged. One of the selling points for the game was that you could play it on a quest without having to roll the dice to see if it's going to lag out your headset. but while they tried to figure out how to make a physics game run on a headset that allready can't run most games without lagging out they kinda forgot to make the game itself better. And many of the design choices seemed rushed, because they were using the same exact engine they could have recycled the models and code from boneworks (although I am not sure if that's true many of the textures and models look pretty different.) Essentially what I'm getting at is they didn't have enough time to make another masterpiece and they didn't have enough time to make new levels and get feedback and such. And mere moths after it's launch they are trying to use modding as a crutch.

[@giokaji]

I did not know you could shoot with the tank, I saw that his fingers were WAY to big for the trigger guard so I assumed he was entirely based on melee and I thought it was a pretty good idea.

[@TeleportRush]

Man was so traumatized by the tower that he forgot to bring it up.

[@muddhopkins]

The gacha balls was the most frustrating part because I literally beat the game annoyed that I didn't know what these collectibles did so I left them behind, and then I see some guy on reddit say how to open them. They added an info board about it in the update but that was far too late.

[@fringo5464]

The hold button puzzle doesn’t even tell me to use the pillar I just used a box leaning against the door

[@BartholemewFitzgeraldThe4th]

“Hate having my hand held” Me spending 1 hour trying to figure out how to open the quarantine door to continue the campaign: 👁👄👁

[@RenTheFen]

alternatively you can pry the quarantine door open in the lab with your hands and a crowbar if you’re dedicated enough; I also see your frustration, and while most people can put it off as the user not “playing it right” but more as that most people aren’t used to the experience of being able to interact with the environment in this strange and specific way that Bonelab has. It’s a little bit of the player, and little bit of the game, working together to make the game confusing on accident. It’s sad to see that this is the way the game unfolded, but hopefully future updates can fix the communication errors. I also fell prey to the gatcha balls and only figured it out when I noticed the weird arrows. I feel like it just needed to guide the player a little bit more.

[@generic__]

I can definitely relate with being easily overstimulated visually in vr. During the section where you need to pull the plug I was so distracted by everything in the section I never thought to read a message on a wall barely sticking out to look up.

[@insertgoodchannelnamehere]

24:45 its a genre called eurobeat, and Initial D was originally a manga.

[@bonelabguy1]

28:19 I also definitely agree with this I've made a post about this online in the entire internet hated me for it so I thought it was just me glad to see someone else sees this but still a great game that I love

[@TTailled]

First part of the game was obvious what needed to be done. Didn't need any direction. It was the crane and the lack of interest in playing sandbox events that aren't related to the story that bothered people... We all wanted more creepy pasta storyline but what we got was more like an unrelated sidequest of Boneworks that tried very hard to justify player frustration as a type of gameplay. Negatives aside, combine Boneworks story and direction with Bonelabs features and Machine King is looking mighty fine.

[@darkrai3242]

bonelabs feels like more of a dlc than a standalone game tbh, looks like they probably focused more on the physics engine+mod support rather than the base game though doesn't seem like its worth the 40 usd for a mod engine