 Before I begin, let me shove these disclaimers down your ear holes. Number one, my copy of Alvo was provided to me by Mardenpole. And number two, I am a community moderator for First Contact Entertainment. First Contact Entertainment are the developers of Firewall Zero Hour, which is a compensator to Alvo, therefore feel free to take everything I say with a grain of salt, even though I'm going to be honest. With that said, here is my Alvo review. Alvo is the latest first-person multiplayer shooter to grace the PSVR, a genre that is surprisingly sparse on Sony's virtual reality headset. Alvo's history is a turbulent one, being announced in 2017, cancelled and then brought back from the dead by an angel investor you may know as Steve. It's somewhat of a miracle that this game got over the finish line at all. It is pretty hard to talk about Alvo without also talking about Firewall Zero Hour because it's pretty much the only other competition it has on PSVR for one thing, yes, but also in a lot of ways Alvo seems like a direct response to Firewall. The aspects of Firewall that some people disliked, such as waiting around in lobbies and its slow pace, were specifically addressed and touted at selling points for Alvo during its development. So did Alvo succeed? Alvo certainly commits to many of those selling points. If you want a fast-paced run-and-gun game in the arcadey style of Call of Duty or Counter Strike then Alvo definitely delivers. One of the first things you'll notice is how agile you can be in this game. With a generous high-speed sprint, a bunny hop and even a crazy slide manoeuvre that can essentially allow you to drift around corners, you'll also spend hardly any time waiting around in the menus. Since, as soon as you select the mode you want to play, you're loaded into a map. You hold this off by allowing bots to fill the lobby you join and then, over time, real people replace those bots and all players are kept together until they decide to leave. It's a nice solution to the lobby screen problem of Firewall and if Alvo can maintain the same kind of playerbase as Firewall has managed to do then hopefully you won't be stuck with bots for too long. That's something we'll have to revisit in a few months from now and see how things are going. Alvo is of course a game about shooting so maybe we should talk a little bit about that and how it feels. It's a bit of a mixed bag in this area. On the one hand you can attach scopes with functioning real-time magnification on your guns. It's Friday. Oh, it does. And that feels awesome. It does have zoom. Wow, that's so cool. Which blew my mind when I first tried one out and Alvo even allows fun killstreaks like dogs and drones but on the other hand the guns don't quite feel as real as you might like and a lot of that is tied up in presentation and the nature of this game being developed by a very small team with presumably a pretty low budget. It's not AAA. The gun models themselves look quite nice but they're static. You'll notice your in-game finger doesn't pull the trigger as you do. Sound effects feel kind of lacking. The reload animations are stiff. You've got floating hands instead of the full body. Your movements aren't accurately reflected to other people who may be watching you so physically gesturing and stuff like that which you may have gotten accustomed to in virtual reality games is not present here. I briefly mentioned modes earlier on. That's because you'll be choosing between one of three different modes at least at launch. There's a 10 player free-for-all, a five versus five team death match and a five versus five search and destroy. The free-for-all mode is pure chaos. In this you have 8 minutes to get the most kills. I had a lot of fun playing with friends here but on the smaller maps, particularly the monastery map, it's almost as if there aren't enough spawn points and you'll often find yourself dead within a few seconds of spawning, sometimes even spawning right in front of an enemy or an enemy spawn right in front of you. It is not too frustrating because you're able to respawn again within five seconds and you're up again and run it but if I wanted to get sweaty and be a tryhard in a free-for-all match I could see myself maybe get a little bit annoyed and frustrated and instead shift in my focus to team death match or search and destroy. Team death match is where I spent most of my time. It's the same as free-for-all just with two teams of five. The spawning issues were much less noticeable here as you have four other teammates that can safely spawn beside you. It's a lot of fun and the quick respawn times makes you feel like you're never out of the action. Finally, search and destroy is the mode I had the most trouble with. It was tough to get a full 5v5 going and my team and I quickly ran into some issues so we abandoned it and went back to team death match. However, I'm not going to give up on that mode just yet as it seems to have the potential to offer the most tactical gameplay in the entire ZL. Alvo. Players only have one life each per round in search and destroy and they must either plant or diffuse a bomb at target locations. It's very counter-strike-ish. It does raise the question of whether a PSV or multiplayer shooter can afford three modes without fracturing the player base up too much and it'll be an interesting test case to see if all three modes can survive together as the months roll on. In terms of content overall, it's also a mixed bag, at least right now, especially with the 40 dollars or 40 euro asking price. The game has three modes straight away, which is Grace, but it has launched with only five maps and technically there are really only four maps because two of those maps are the same map just at different times of day. The weapon and equipment selection is also somewhat limited. However, there is the promise of more maps arriving in the near future along with more weapons, perks and even more modes including a zombie mode and a private match mode. A lot of that stuff is advertised on the main menu with a large coming soon notice attached. It almost gives Alvo the feel that it's a little bit unfinished like a steam early access title. Next up, let's talk about visuals and presentation. As I said before, this isn't a triple A game, so I wasn't expecting to be blown away visually. But I was pleasantly surprised by how clear Alvo is on my headset. It still has jaggies and shimmering and those are more noticeable on the bigger maps like the desert one, but overall the image quality was quite nice. The detail of the textures and what not isn't particularly high. However, the soldiers you choose from look like their clothes are kind of painted on and surfaces can look pretty flat. The menus and UI look nice. However, there are some bugs in there that need to be ironed out like purchasing attachments for weapons with your hard earned Alvo coins where sometimes you have bought something and it will tell you that it's still locked even though it has unlocked. So it can be kind of confusing. Other than that though, the menus are easy to navigate and pretty intuitive. Squadding up works just the same as firewall two. So if you're used to firewall, then you'll be up and running with your squad in no time. Alvo also comes with its own progression slash leveling up system. Although as of right now, it doesn't seem to be working too well. If you're wondering about what controller you should use with Alvo, don't worry. The DualShock 4, the aim controller and the moves are all supported here. I played exclusively with the aim controller myself and the controls handled great. I've enjoyed the time I've spent with Alvo so far. Playing with friends, I've had a blast. A lot of the issues I've had with Alvo seem like they could be mostly sorted out with a few patches down the road and maybe even a PS5 patch. The $40 price tag might put some people off with the current small selection of maps and weapons, but considering the PSVR doesn't really offer anything else like Alvo as of right now anyway and the promise of future content to come, not to mention upcoming cross play with other platforms when Alvo releases on those, I'm sure many PSVR owners will be willing to open their wallets first. That is it for this video lads and ladies, but before I end, please let me thank my Patreon supporters whose names are on the screen as I speak. Thanks to their generosity, they're helping keep this channel nice and moist. In particular, let me give a shout out to the top tier Patreon supporters tradition, Chrome, Pete Hawkins, Columbus Thomas III, Chapter 517 and Daniel the Pumpkin Patch Kid. Thank you very much for that support. It is very much appreciated. If you'd like to help out on Patreon, the link will be in the description, but if not, I'll be happy with the likes, the subscribes, shares, the comments, all the usual YouTube and shite. Finally, let me thank Decepticon for letting me use his music in all of my videos. You can find him at Decepticon.com, linked to that in the description as well. And with that, I will end this video. Please stay nice and moist. Petrifying Pumpkins.