Since the post-modern literary movement, there is a fondness in art to go meta, to comment on a genre or a medium within that very thing. So when I find myself playing a game in virtual reality that takes place in virtual reality I expect some clever or amusing moments. But what I found in Loading Human felt developed by rote that doesn’t live up to its premise.

Loading Human: Chapter 1 is the first part of a trilogy of episodes. It is a science fiction point-and-click adventure that was just released — we reviewed the PlayStation VR version. It was made by a London-based developer named Untold Games, published by Maximum Games. You play as Prometheus, an astronaut in the year 2184 who will one day travel into deep space to find a powerful source of energy called the Quintessence, which can power the nanobots that can save the life of your dying father, the inventor of the Dark Matter engine that makes such space travel possible.

The point-and-click adventure is a niche genre that was once a mainstay of computer games. During it’s height of the ’80s and early ’90s there were classics like Secret of Monkey Island, Kings Quest, and Myst. Loading Human is played in first person and has the core genre convention of using random items to solve puzzles, walking around looking for that one thing you need to move forward in the story. It can be frustrating and in Loading Human there were several moments when it was. None of the puzzles were especially intriguing or amusingly diabolical.

The game’s control schemes work well, fortunately making the slow travel around the game’s antarctic setting somewhat more tolerable. With the Move controllers acting as your hands, you can point one forward and hold the top button to walk. You can point to the side or behind and tap the top button to instantly turn in that direction. To grab items or levers you maneuver the hand to the object and hold the trigger button. To push buttons it is similar, but you just tap the trigger.

Read the full article at Upload VR.