While quite dated by the standards of even just a few years later, The 7th Guest was still considered by many to be one of the benchmarks to hit when developing an FMV-based point-and-click adventure game, if not for its gameplay and puzzle design then at least for its visual flair, presentation, and storytelling.

Fast forward a couple of decades, and in 2023, we get a VR-based remake of The 7th Guest, complete with brand new puzzles that make a lot more sense than the original, a fully-realized 3D recreation of the original’s mansion, and even brand new actors taking on the roles of the various other guests throughout the story. Considering the niche nature of VR, however, it was only a matter of time before the game made its way to a more traditional gaming platform, and now, it has been fully translated for “flat screen” gameplay on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch.

In the modern gaming industry, where point-and-click adventure games have largely disappeared, and horror has split off from the genre entirely, becoming its own thing thanks to a variety of releases ranging from Resident Evil to Silent Hill. Keeping this in mind, The 7th Guest feels quite anachronistic; it still has the original’s spooky atmosphere and dark storyline. However, if you’re expecting to be scared, this isn’t quite the game for you. Rather, The 7th Guest Remake is more focused on making you flex your mental prowess over its several puzzles, which can be tackled at your preferred pace, since there aren’t really any time constraints or grotesque creatures chasing you down.

"The puzzles in The 7th Guest Remake are some of the best things about the game, especially when compared to the original"

The story of The 7th Guest Remake revolves around the mansion of Henry Stauf. While not too many details are revealed in the beginning, the basic plot outline is that, at one point in the past, Stauf invited six guests to spend a night at his mansion at Harley-on-Hudson in New York, and to solve a variety of puzzles that would lead them to discovering his deepest, darkest secrets. However, none of the guests were able to make it too far, with many of them experiencing strange, supernatural events during their stay. You, as the unnamed protagonist, have taken it upon yourself to make your way through the mansion’s various rooms in your efforts to discover just what happened to the original guests, and what Stauf’s secrets might be.

Thankfully, The 7th Guest Remake also retains much of the charm of the original by featuring FMV cutscenes that feature live-action performances by real actors. Just about every character, from deep-in-debt married couple Edward and Elinor Knox, to actress Martine Burden, has been wonderfully portrayed by their respective actors, with equal amounts of nuanced emotion and hammy overacting that keeps just about every encounter you might have with their memories thoroughly entertaining.

The general structure of The 7th Guest Remake is quite linear—at any given time, only a few rooms of the mansion will be available, each room housing its own set of puzzles that you will need to solve in order to make progress, unlocking more rooms in the process. The puzzles themselves are also quite self-contained. Even if some of these puzzles might connect to others, these connections never extend to anything outside of the room you’re in, so you never really have to worry about having forgotten a key item or important detail as you make your way through the game.

When it comes to the actual puzzle-solving gameplay, things are once again quite simple, and there isn’t even an inventory screen like you would find in the Monkey Island series, for example. You only have a lantern that lets you look at things in the past, and a second hand that can hold things while you figure out what to do next. The puzzles themselves are also largely focused on logical thinking, sometimes asking you to handle simple mathematics like addition, and other times making you come up with clever solutions to a mini game, for example. The puzzles in The 7th Guest Remake are some of the best things about the game, especially when compared to the original, since the 1993 classic was well-known for its “logic”-based puzzles being absolutely illogical.

"Thankfully, The 7th Guest Remake also retains much of the charm of the original by featuring FMV cutscenes that feature live-action performances by real actors."

However, the puzzles also betray the fact that The 7th Guest Remake was originally envisioned as a VR game. A surprising number of puzzles revolve around moving things around on a surface, for example, which indicates that fine motor skills were required of a player’s hands. Moving these same objects using analogue sticks doesn’t quite hit in the same way, unfortunately. The VR-styled puzzles felt especially egregious in Hamilton Temple’s room, where there was a heavy emphasis on using a pair of magical top hats to teleport between two places. While the original VR version would have you literally reach into a top hat to grab a key item, for example, the regular version of the game has you simply hitting the “pick up item” button, robbing the puzzles of much of their identity and uniqueness.

Other places where the VR roots of The 7th Guest Remake show themselves are in the movement itself. While walking or running around feels fine most of the time, hitting the crouch button doesn’t even seem to feature any gameplay animations. Rather, the title cuts to you simply being at a lower point of view than you would be if you were standing. This, however, is a minor quibble in the grand scheme of things, especially since the only thing it really affects is the game’s overall presentation.

Generally speaking, The 7th Guest Remake is an incredibly engaging experience. Sure, it might suffer from a slow start, since it’s taking its time in setting up the various characters that you will discover secrets about, while also making sure that you fully understand the simple gameplay mechanics that will be used for its logic-based puzzles. Once it gets going, however, it becomes easy to get trapped in the general loop of clearing a room of all puzzles and then convincing yourself that you’ll just take a look at the next room, and maybe solve one or two of the simpler puzzles there. Before you know it, you’ve accidentally spent a couple of hours combing every square inch of the room to find the final puzzle piece. Sure, it won’t be offering you any frights, but The 7th Guest Remake still feels like a fantastic way to spend a relaxing evening with a cup of tea.

This game was reviewed on PlayStation 5.

Compared to the original Arizona Sunshine’s first-person perspective, the remake will be a third-person shooter that throws players into a variety of levels against hordes of zombies. The title will feature plenty of weapons to choose from, including pistols, assault rifles, grenade launchers, and flamethrowers. Players can also make use of grenades when the zombie hordes get too large for just guns to handle.

In addition to single-player, Arizona Sunshine will support online and split-screen co-op multiplayer. Single-player gameplay will see players accompanied by their faithful dog, Buddy, who helps take down dangerous zombies in his own way. Along with this, the game will also allow players to play as Buddy, which wasn’t previously possible in the game’s original VR release.

Whether the remake of Arizona Sunshine will also include content that was released as Arizona Sunshine 2 back in 2023 remains to be seen.

The original Arizona Sunshine was released all the way back in 2016, and saw quite a bit of positive critical response at the time, with many praising the title for its fun gunplay. It also got upgraded in 2024 for more modern hardware, featuring improved visuals, physics, and a plethora of new toys to play around with.

No release date for Arizona Sunshine has been announced yet.

The trailer revolves around a mission that Magpie is given to get her hands on an ancient relic that seems to be a major part of the plans of Northcrest. To accomplish this mission, Magpie will have to sneak through the streets and navigate houses that are guarded by patrolling guards before she can ultimately find what she’s looking for.

In the new gameplay trailer, we get a look at the kinds of tools that protagonist Magpie will have access to, which includes a scope that can be used to look out for patrolling guards and find hidden safes in the darkness, as well as other classic Thief-styled tools like an arrow that can be shot to create a quick way to climb up a house, and even water arrows that can be shot into lit lanterns to create areas of darkness.

We also get a good look at the kind of mobility that Magpie will be capable of, which includes being able to scale buildings by making use of loose bricks as footholds. Pipes on the sides of buildings can also be used to gain some verticality in order to reach windows that would be otherwise inaccessible. Along with this, the trailer also shows off how guards can be knocked out by using a blackjack, and how locked doors can be opened up by making use of lockpicks.

Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow was originally announced back in June, when it was also confirmed that it will be coming to PlayStation VR2, PC VR, and Meta Quest 2, 3, and 3S. The title was announced with a trailer that also served as an introduction to new protagonist Magpie, who also happens to be the protege of classic Thief franchise protagonist Garrett.

Shortly after the initial announcement, Garrett’s original voice actor Stephen Russell was returning to reprise the role of the character. In a video, he noted that he had been playing the character in just about every Thief-related thing that had come out over the last 30 years aside from the 2014 reboot, where Romano Orzari took on the role.

“We’ve had a long history together, and it is so delightful to be back with him again,” said Russel in the video, which you can check out below. “I’ve missed the old guy! He’s got such a great sense of humour and they have perfectly captured that in this new game.”

“For me, there’s something about the character that… I mean it was how I got my start in games! So I really owe a lot to this guy, and it’s a huge, huge pleasure to be back voicing Garrett again.”

Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow is slated to feature a story taking place between the events of the original trilogy and the 2014 reboot, according to lead game designer Richard Bunn.

Legacy of Shadow returns to the iconic City but as a new thief, Magpie. Growing up on the streets and stealing to make a living, she discovers a strange artifact that connects to the past. Based on the trailer, it could be Garrett from the original trilogy.

As for the gameplay, it features the usual tenets of Thief – sneaking on rooftops and through alleys to sticking to the shadows. You can pickpocket guards and utilize multiple arrow types, and there are numerous paths to explore for each heist.

Naturally, VR makes it all the more immersive. Stay tuned for more details and announcements for Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow in the coming months.

Out now for Meta Quest 2 and 3, PS VR2, and SteamVR, the first-person shooter has obviously turned a few heads, and to learn more about it and how it translates the Metro formula to the VR medium, we recently had the chance to send across some of our questions about the game to its developers. Below, you can read our interview with game director Samar Louwe.

NOTE: This interview was conducted prior to the game’s launch.

"The Metro series has always thrived on immersion, and immersion is also at the core of VR, so it was a natural fit."

As a franchise, Metro has always been focused on immersing players in their settings while delivering top notch graphical presentation. Was that what led to exploring making a VR game in the series, given how well suited that sort of an experience could potentially be to virtual reality?

Definitely. As you said, the Metro series has always thrived on immersion, and immersion is also at the core of VR, so it was a natural fit. VR can take this to a whole new level—putting players right in the heart of the Metro tunnels, surrounded by the eerie atmosphere and the threats lurking in the dark. The combination of VR’s unique capabilities and the storytelling depth of Metro really excited us.

What other VR games, if any, did you draw inspiration from?

Even though it’s almost 5 years old, Half-Life: Alyx is still very relevant. At the time it showed the VR industry how it was done. Now, it’s still what new games will be compared to when they are released. But we also have a pool of knowledge to draw from in-house. When the team was done with Arizona Sunshine 2 they were able to jump in and help us out with all the lessons they had learned.

Metro Awakening is the first game in the series not developed by 4A Games. How connected to those other titles is it? Did you get the chance to collaborate with them on this title?

We collaborated with 4A Games throughout development. They provided us with assets and references from the mainline series, which helped ensure that we stayed true to the essence of the games.

What has the experience of working with Metro author Dmitry Glukhovsky been like? How heavily has been involved with the game’s development?

Working with Dmitry Glukhovsky has been an invaluable experience. Right from the start, we reached out to him to make sure the story would feel authentic to the Metro series. He ended up surprising us by crafting something really personal and emotional. That direction pushed us to go all in on a story-driven approach, putting character development right up there with atmosphere and gameplay. Dmitry brought such depth to Metro Awakening, helping us create something that feels true to the Metro world but also fresh and introspective in a way we hadn’t initially expected.

"We collaborated with 4A Games throughout development. They provided us with assets and references from the mainline series, which helped ensure that we stayed true to the essence of the games."

How easy was it to translate a complex console FPS to the different input and controls of VR?

It definitely required a shift in thinking. In VR, players aren’t just pressing buttons—they’re physically interacting with the world, which meant reimagining core actions like aiming, shooting, and even putting on a gas mask to feel natural and immersive. We worked closely with our gameplay team from the start to fine-tune these interactions until everything felt responsive and true to the Metro universe. It was challenging, but the result is an experience where every action feels immediate and engaging, making the world come to life in a whole new way.

Will Metro Awakening be a largely linear experience like the series’ earlier entries, or can players expect some elements of open-ended exploration similar to Metro Exodus?

The way Exodus ventured into new territory with its open world structure was a great step for the mainline games, it elevated the game to new heights. As a player I thoroughly enjoyed playing through it. But the story in Exodus is also about Artyom venturing out, escaping the Moscow metro system, on a quest to see what more is out there. Whereas the story Dmitry wrote for Metro Awakening is much more targeted: you must find your wife. So, it was only logical not to distract our players (and protagonist) with open-ended areas. Additionally, since this is a story that’s set before the events of 2033, it made a lot more sense to stick to the original setting.

The charm of the earlier games is also a very good fit for the immersive nature of VR. The confined spaces in the Moscow underground allowed for the pressing and inescapable atmosphere that we knew was going to be successful for our medium.

The Metro franchise has always been particularly effective at delivering its own brand of unique, post-apocalyptic horror. How have you approached translating that to a VR experience with Metro Awakening?

Our approach has been to amplify Metro’s unique sense of tension and dread through VR’s immersive capabilities. Spatial audio, dynamic lighting, and physical interactivity are all key to creating an atmosphere that keeps players on edge. VR lets players engage directly with the environment, whether it’s wiping fog off their gas masks or navigating through dark, claustrophobic tunnels. By bringing players directly into these intense moments, we’re creating an experience that feels immediate and visceral heightening both the fear and the wonder that Metro is known for. This is Metro at its most intimate.

"We worked closely with our gameplay team from the start to fine-tune these interactions until everything felt responsive and true to the Metro universe. It was challenging, but the result is an experience where every action feels immediate and engaging, making the world come to life in a whole new way."

Roughly how long will an average playthrough of the game be?

It varies depending on the player’s approach and style—something we’re already seeing with players who have access to the Deluxe Edition—but on average, a playthrough should take around 10 hours.

Metro Awakening is targeting all major VR platforms at launch. How has the experience been working on these three very different takes on VR at the same time?

It was a conscious decision to ensure we delivered a consistent experience across PC VR, Meta Quest and PlayStation VR2, while still allowing for certain areas to shine on higher-end platforms like PC and PlayStation. So, it has been both a challenge and an opportunity. Higher-end systems let us implement advanced rendering and lighting for enhanced visuals, while Meta Quest pushed us to innovate in performance optimization. Our technical teams have collaborated closely, balancing fidelity and performance, and ensuring the game looks and plays its best on every platform. It’s been a rewarding journey that’s pushed us to be creative and adapt, making the most of what each platform has to offer.

VR-ONLY

As mentioned, Metro Awakening is a VR game- which means it is exclusively a VR game. Fans of the series who have been hoping for a new instalment for years might be disappointed that what’s looking like a promising new entry is locked to VR platforms, but it is looking like it’s using the virtual reality medium in interesting ways, so there’s that. Specifically, the game is available for PS VR2, Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3, SteamVR, and Viveport.

STORY DETAILS

We know that Metro’s main story will be continuing with the game that 4A Games currently has in the works, so where exactly does Metro Awakening fit in the timeline? The VR title serves as a prequel to the trilogy, being set before Metro 2033. Starring a new protagonist in Dr. Serdar, who embarks on a deadly quest to rescue his wife. The game tells the origin story of Khan, an enigmatic recurring character than fans of the series will be familiar with.

WRITTEN BY ORIGINAL METRO AUTHOR

Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky, who penned the Metro novels that 4A Games’ shooters are based on, has always been heavily involved in the creation of the games as well, and even though Awakening isn’t developed by 4A Games, Glukhovsky has still had a major role to play. He is credited as the game’s writer, with the story being an original one penned by Glukhovsky himself- which means fans of the series can expect an authentic Metro experience that slots nicely into the series’ larger lore. 

RETAINING THE LOOK OF THE MAIN SERIES

Developer Vertigo Games has obviously made some fundamental changes to the game design in Metro Awakening, given that its a VR game, but it is still a Metro game also. As such, the studio has ensured that it retains the look and feel of the main series as well, for which it worked directly with 4A Games. Speaking with the PlayStation Blog, creative director Martin de Ronde explained, “We were very happy that 4A helped us fantastically well with supplying all the assets that they have from those games. We were able to either use some of those assets directly or use them as a reference for most of the stuff that we built in the game… it’s helped ensure that the game looks the way it looks.

“There are assets that we looked at, and we wanted to use them specifically because they play a role on the mainland series, we wanted to reuse them again. In our game, you want to also make sure that fans recognise those elements. And then there was obviously stuff that serves the purposes as reference. And then there’s stuff that we’re almost regressing in terms of what would have looked like, X number of years before the events in the mainline series.”

SIMILAR STEALTH-COMBAT LOOP

Another area where Metro Awakening isn’t looking to deviate from the norm too much is the balance that the series has generally struck between combat and stealth, even if you can obviously expect the moment-to-moment mechanics to feel different, being an entirely different medium. That, in fact, was something that the team at Vertigo Games identified early one as a core component of any Metro experience, as per game director Samar Louwe. He said, “Some of the things that we noticed is the dynamic that they have between stealth and combat. And always making sure that you’re on your toes, and that you are never really sure when people are going to spot you. That’s something that works very, very well in VR. There’s just something about creeping up on enemies, listening to what they’re talking about. Of course the nature of VR, you can physically sit behind cover, maybe you can peer through a hole in the cover, and then you can spy on your enemies.

“But rest assured for everybody that is a little bit more trigger happy, there’s plenty of classic Metro action in the game.”

SLOWER COMBAT

Though Metro Awakening’s core loop will hew closely to the main series’ gameplay foundations, Vertigo Games has said that where combat is concerned, players should expect a slower-paced game. You’d expect that anyway in a VR experience, but as per the developers, the reason for that is that, unlike Artyom, who is the main series’ protagonist, Awakening’s protagonist isn’t a trained combat expert, which is why a slower pace makes more sense.

AMMO CONSERVATION

Survival mechanics have always played an important role in Metro, and sure enough, Awakening won’t buck that trend. Specifically, ammo conservation is something players are going to want to keep an eye on, which, again, is very Metro, as fans of the series will tell you. That, in fact, is also what encourages exploration above all else. Speaking to the PS Blog, game director Samar Louwe said, “You’re basically constantly looking for ammo. We have this beautiful environment, we have this beautiful world, our art is made sure that there’s detail to explore. But you also need a reason to explore. And the main reason to explore every nook and cranny is to just find bullets. We figured it would be best to hide those in small packets. So you won’t necessarily find full clips all the time. Instead, you will be finding single bullets out here, a couple of bullets there. And we’ve also made an effort to make sure that in some cases that there’s a bit of environmental storytelling around how that ammo got there, and something that triggers your imagination.

“The philosophy that we’ve taken along for this is also that basically, if you look everywhere, you’re probably going to have enough bullets to get through your combat encounters. If you just look on the critical path, you will probably have to be a better shot. And if you don’t scavenge at all, then you’re gonna have a hard time. Of course, you can always fall back to stealth. If you’re successful at that, then that’s always an option.”

STEALTH DETAILS

Stealth mechanics in Metro Awakening are going to be familiar if you’ve played any other game in the series. Staying hidden in the dark and sneaking up or past enemies will be your bread and butter, as you’d expect, in addition to throwing items to cause distractions, using a crossbow that you get later on in the game for quieter kills, and more. Enemies can also spot you if you keep your flashlight on, which also sounds promising.

UI AND INTERACTIONS

The Metro series loves to keep its UI as diegetic as possible, replacing typically gamified elements and menus with versions that are grounded in the game itself, thus thoroughly immersing players. Metro Awakening is trying something similar, and even takes things further courtesy of the VR medium. To check your bullets, you manually look at your gun’s clip and see how many shots it has left. To put on your mask, you have to first pull your backback off your shoulder and then pull the mask out before equipping it. This is an area where the franchise has always excelled, so it’s heartening to see Awakening leveraging VR hardware exactly as fans would have hoped it would.

LOCOMOTION SETTINGS

Always key in any VR game is its controls and locomotion settings, and Metro Awakening will feature two options on that front, as similar VR games often do. Comfort mode will feature teleportation based movement, while Immersion mode will allow for continuous stick-based movement. Additionally, several additional settings in the settings menu will also allow players to tweak their experience further.

PS VR2 ADAPTIVE TRIGGERS

PS VR2 is one of several platforms that Metro Awakening is hitting, but though it’s not exclusive, it will, of course, leverage the device’s exclusive features. Take its adaptive triggers, for instance, which, according to game director Samar Louwe, have been used liberally across the entire experience, and help heighten the immersion factor that much more. “The adaptive triggers are a great example of how you can boost the immersion even further, because they give you just a tiny little bit of extra feedback as you fire your weapon,” he told the PS Blog. “And our weapon designers actually had a lot of fun implementing it and tweaking it for each weapon. It seems like a really small thing, but it is kind of like those subtle elements that make you forget that you’re playing a game when it’s just there, right? Another example is the haptic feedback. It gives you that little bit of added experience to make the intense things that will happen to you in this game, to make them that bit more visceral.”

LENGTH

Being a VR-exclusive spinoff prequel, Metro Awakening is obviously not meant to be a full-fledged Metro Exodus-sized experience, though that doesn’t mean it’s a bite-sized one either. As per reviews, the game’s main story is roughly 8-10 hours long on Normal difficulty, which is a decent length for a linear, story-driven first-person shooter. That is, in fact, roughly how long the first two games’ main stories were.

Metro Awakening serves as a prequel to Metro 2033, following a doctor named Serdar and telling the origin story of the character Khan. It employs a linear structure similar to the series’ first two instalments, in contrast to Metro Exodus’ semi-open world approach, while also emphasizing slower combat, stealth gameplay, and horror elements, most of which will be very familiar to series fans.

Metro Awakening will launch worldwide on November 7 for PS VR2, Meta Quest 2 and 3, and SteamVR. Check out the game’s first seven minutes through here.

A new seven-minute gameplay trailer outlines the beginning. It sees Serdar joining his comrades to guard an entrance into their settlement. Mutants quickly assail them, and despite using a turret to repel them, they breach through and proceed to slaughter their residents. Serdar and his allies find a way to stop their advancement, but it comes at a price.

How Yana survived remains to be seen, but the doctor sets out to find her, navigating the treacherous Metro with its bandits and monsters (and ultimately becoming Khan). Metro Awakening is out on November 7th for PC VR, PlayStation VR2, and Meta Quest 2 and 3, though pre-ordering the Deluxe Edition grants 48 hours of advanced access.

Similar to previous games, players have a gas mask (with filters), a wristwatch, a lighter, a universal charger, and whatnot. The difference is how much more organic everything feels in VR due to the lack of onscreen UI. You can glance at your watch while aiming and pull out your backpack for items to use, like grenades. Whether changing filters or cleaning the mask, everything is done physically.

PlayStation VR2 adds to the immersion with adaptive triggers, spatial audio, and headset feedback. The result stays true to its predecessors while offering a new spin on the series’ survival/shooting.

Metro Awakening launches on November 7th for SteamVR, PSVR2, Meta Quest 2 and 3, and more. Deluxe Edition owners can start playing on November 5th.

Taking place before the events of the first game with a story by author Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro Awakening is about Dr. Serdar, who ventures into the metro to locate Yana, his wife. Along with battling bandits, he’ll have to contend with the various monsters that lay in wait.

As a VR title, players must manually manage their gear, reload weapons, and more. There are also two locomotion settings to assist with movement. Head here for more details. It’s also worth noting that those who pre-order the Deluxe Edition, which provides 48 hours of early access.

Metro Awakening isn’t the only title in the survival shooter franchise in the works, with 4A Games also developing a brand new entry. Stay tuned for updates in the future.