Xion is a VR based shoot 'em up. In it you use one of your controllers to guide a tiny space fighter through a level blasting everything before it blasts you. The Fighter matches the position of the VR controller with some lag for very quick motions representing the limits of your fighters acceleration. Just holding down the triggers fires a constant stream of laser blast out the front of the fighter which can be pointed like any pistol. The level scrolls forward around the fighter and the players point of view at a constant speed. The levels, enemies, and fighter are all made of blocks like minecraft without textures which add to the games arcade vibe. Each level ends with a boss fight against something big enough to fill it in proper shoot 'em up fashion. In between levels the player can modify there fighter to give it better weapons, more thrust, better shields, and a higher energy output to power all of these systems. This whole process is accomplished by attaching parts to the ship like it's a Lego set which allows for some horribly asymmetrical and bizarrely shaped fighters. All of this adds up to a very paint by numbers game that is none the less mostly original in a VR context and moderately fun in it's gameplay.
I wish my description could end their but it can't. This game has one glaring flaw that's resulted in a mixed review status on Steam. It's not finished. I don't mean that it has no end or that it's in early access. I mean that it's just not complete in ways that make it unpleasant to play. There's no undo option on the ship building, stuff fails to load, and at the end of the second level I beat the boss and the game just soft locked with the boss dead and me stuck in the level. A quick search shows that this is not a normal occurrence so I may just be very unlucky but it's part of a larger pattern of jank. The simple lack of basic quality control is really, really galling because underneath the problems there is a decent game. I just can't have fun playing because I have to spend my time worrying that it's going to screw me. This isn't a problem that I expect to be solved by time either. Xion came out in 2018 and I bought it in 2020. That's enough time to do basic fixes. This and the publishers not having released any games since lead me to believe that it's been abandoned with no hope of fixes. I'd recommend giving this a pass even for the hardcore VR and shoot 'em up fans. It's not worth the headache and even if it was this sort of thing should not be rewarded.
IRON NODER XV: LAST SECOND BARE BONES IRON NODER FREAKOUT!