I don't care if it's innovative, I just want a good campaign with nice gameplay and level design that is fresh enough to not feel like been there done that and good enough to not make me think I'd rather play the games it was inspired by again instead, hopefully a story that doesn't get in the way by either its quality or over-abundance on top (I thought Half-Life did this just about right with its limited means and Half-Life 2 tried to add too much detail and characterization and depth to its story telling so I liked it less as it didn't have quite the level of quality those elements need to be compelling to me if they're there at all).
3D game design applies just the same in VR as it does out of it even if the player interface and interactions are done with tracked hand representations rather than just mouselook and buttons. Some people hail Boneworks as innovative, I'd give it a 5/10, or just basically a not recommended status, other games did things better even if they didn't hype hyper real physics or try to be jacks of all trades in the same way instead focusing on fewer specific elements they do well and just because one uses this or that tech doesn't mean the game is good or better than others that don't.
For example Boneworks has melee weapon physics (very) similar to those seen in Blade & Sorcery (yet in videos they acted like they pioneered the concept) but to me they don't add anything much to the game, they could have gone for a far simpler system that still looked natural and physics based but without all those different weapons and different penetrative capabilities and all that as it adds nothing to the actual gameplay. In contrast, the simple system in Saints & Sinners adds a lot as the core of it is that you need to penetrate the skull and get to the brain for zombies to be killed, they don't simulate it to the same detailed degree as Blade & Sorcery but it just feels natural and good and like it adds to the gameplay in a balanced manner. And of course in Blade & Sorcery that melee system does make sense as the enemy AI takes that in account and at least tries to put up a fight, block, parry and dodge your strikes, so you need to overcome their defenses to get good hits in and what not, it just works for it. It too has the infinite slow motion crutch but as it's currently just an early access arena style mode I just decide if I want to use it or not, hopefully they make it some kind of Max Payne like resource when they implement proper progression elements.
And that's before going into the janky implementations of Boneworks like the inventory which means you often drop things instead of placing them in the body slots you intend to when other VR FPS did this much better years ago with just the right amount of stickiness and lenience making them far more natural to use. Or the way your physical body representation is affected by everything in the environment so you get different degrees of involuntary not-player-initiated body and camera movement based on how you bumped into this or that random thing as you were playing, rather than simply smoothly stop your movement if it's meant to be insurmountable or just push the object out of the way if it's too minor to affect you as it happens in your average 3D game these days where minor objects are detail clutter there for effect and only walls or whatever objects actually affect your character's movement.
Its campaign is also pretty bad to me because it lacks good level, encounter and gameplay design and no amount of physics can save that. The environments aren't, most of the time (since there are some clever bits here and there), just visually uninteresting which can be chalked up to a subjective dislike of that faux VR-within-VR theme they went for, they're uninteresting to traverse, and the gameplay incorporates clashing elements like the slow motion making every gunfight trivial and therefor also uninteresting. It kind of tries to ape Half-Life 2 with physics puzzles and things but doesn't have the good design to back it up. Not that Half-Life 2 only had great stuff, it too had some silly puzzles here and there but the bulk of it was pretty well done overall so it's easy to overlook. In contrast to that basically infinite slow motion system trivializing encounters, Saints & Sinners has a decently effective resource management meta-game implemented, all the weapons act like ranged weapons in that you need resources for them, melee weapons break with use so it's like using junk which allows you to craft more of them (only back at your base, not during a level) almost like ammo, ranged weapons can also break and use ammo on top, your inventory slots are limited so you can't bring more than you'll ever need with you or loot so much junk you're set for a life of crafting and as a result you always gauge a situation with the resources it would take to overcome or in return yield in mind on top of your basic playing skills which aren't the be all end all.
In the original Half-Life and Deus Ex and System Shock 2 and other ancient by now games of that era you can often pick up and drop or throw pretty much any object you think you should be able to and have all kinds of breakables and interactive items and objects to make the environment seem more realistic and like it's more than artificial corridors designed for the player to have something to do but rather they were the environments they're trying to portray and then the game's events went down, even though they use rudimentary or near non existent physics in terms of how they're viewed today, it just works. In contrast, with Boneworks you have so called hyper real ragdoll-type (but not just for dead bodies, instead affecting everything in motion, your body included) physics but it fails at making the environments cohesive and compelling like those old nearly physics-less games achieved by design. It's wrong to say it's thanks to Boneworks style physics that hands and objects no longer clip through walls and objects, and how every game should be like that.
Similarly older VR games had you interact with the environment and objects in natural ways with your hands even though they didn't employ all of Boneworks' in depth physics calculations and related stuff. Opening drawers and cupboards and things with your hands is just how it was natural for them to use and they've been doing it even if they didn't physically simulate the whole furniture (and in Boneworks case result in annoying unintended interactions like dragging the whole furniture off the ground by just trying to open it which is something that easily happens in game when you clearly have to expend much more force to do that in real life so you never do it by accident instead limiting your interactions to the easily manipulated parts of it, the drawers or doors and their own essentially on-rails movement limits) or every atom in the game objects.
I guess it's kind of how Amnesia: The Dark Descent did that whole physical object stuff pretty good with its mouse interface, manually using objects and doors and things like that. It works very well for that game, but that doesn't mean every first person game since Amnesia should employ that system. In other games it's much better to go with the simple press E or whatever to interact with the object in this single predetermined way, or maybe with a bit more detail if you're playing something like Rainbow Six and you want and even need to based on the rest gameplay to differentiate between slow/silent and fast/louder opening of a door and such, but generally never to the detailed degree Amnesia did it with to enhance its realism and atmosphere.
Similarly in VR games I can play something super simple like Pistol Whip where I just shoot, reload by just pointing the gun down or up or whatever I chose in the options, and just let loose with a fun game balanced for those simple mechanics, yet I also enjoy Onward with its far more realistic (yet still not fully physics driven) representation of firearms and detailed interactivity with their reloading mechanisms and various attachments, gadgets, and so on and so forth (and next to no other interactions as that's what the game focuses on, tactical shootery shenanigans, I don't need to be able to pick up a coke can and squeeze it as we can in Alyx for that to work well). Whatever works for the game. Just because VR is next gen and all new or whatever doesn't mean every VR game needs to do everything one can imagine for real lifelife interactions to be worthwhile, just as modern non VR 3D games don't all have to be fully realistic sandboxes.
Anyway, I have lots of gripes with how things were implemented in Boneworks but it's the content that I find sub par, I could deal with the janky annoyances if the level design and encounter design and basically your journey through the game made it worth it. I'm sure Half-Life: Alyx will be a far better game.
But even if Boneworks was the only existing VR example of an actual full fledged action adventure or whatever (which it isn't), I still wouldn't personally recommend it just because it tries to do all those things that in my opinion it fails at. That would be like recommending the original Red Steel on Wii because it does everything, melee weapons, shooting, in a single player adventure campaign environment. I'd sooner recommend Link's Crossbow Training and Wii Sports Resort to show far simpler and smaller games that however do these elements, shooting, and various other motion control uses, better and fun and let you imagine the possibilities of fully fledged adventures incorporating those mechanics while waiting for something of the quality of Metroid Prime 3 or Red Steel 2, if they ever appeared in that timeline, rather than play bad games just based on their premise and not their actual, practical merits. Similarly I'd sooner have people play Onward and Blade & Sorcery and First Contact and Vox Machinae for simpler games that have mechanics you can imagine how next level it would be when they're used in a good high production value campaign or other AAA type productions, whether they ever happen or not, rather than hail Boneworks as the thing to copy when it basically copied all those other games itself, but did it badly.
