I’ve only played for about an hour so far. The haptics and intro sequences have been really nice, combat feels great (the little that I had). Definitely promising and reception in general seems to be very positive.
I seem to be in the minority but I'm finding the game pretty boring and lame. They pretty much lost me at the fact that I have to solve a puzzle to drop down to the smallest of levels of a few feet when I'm basically a god and just been wall riding myself to that spot. Just jump down! Also the fact menus etc pop up from wherever you calibrated at the start of the game so if you move around a lot they might pop up to the side or behind you.
The graphics and object interactivity are just ok IMO. I mean it's good for being stand alone but everything is pretty flat and boxy and lifeless. Like quake 2 graphics. I think I prefer more cartoon graphics style on stand alone quest like mini golf I think it works better than trying to be semi realistic.
I think Alyx has just spoiled everything for me unfortunately and probably just not a huge fan of RPGs. I'll probably come back to it later when I'm bored and they've patched it.
Yeah the graphics look a bit muddy occasionally but they said a Quest 3 improvement is coming. And I agree with the annoyances you mentioned. The menu seems to be made for a headset where you never turn irl, the notifications only appear on one side and so does the menu. And not being able to jump down e.g. a wall you just climbed is equally annoying. There definitely is a lot of stuff in the game though.