Your enjoyment of Stellar Cafe comes down to two things: how you feel about AI in video games and how good of a conversationalist you are.

I've had some experience with AI-driven NPCs in games before, specifically in Skyrim (with mods) and former-social-VR-turned-MMORPG Riff XR. The difference with these two examples is that those games have much more to offer than said AI NPCs whereas Stellar Cafe lives and dies on the characters and your interactions with them. It makes for a unique experience that rolls credits before the fairly simple premise wears thin.

Developer AstroBeam's claim to fame is being helmed by Devin Reimer, one of the co-creators of Job Simulator, and Stellar Cafe feels very much inspired by that VR classic while taking the concept of sentient robot interactions to the next level. You play as, well, yourself, with James, your robot barista, asking your name and using it for the rest of the game. Having played dozens of games where the player can name the main character, only to watch voice-acted NPCs never actually say it, this was surprisingly an immersive touch.

After talking shop with James, you learn that James is throwing a party for Patch Day, an upcoming holiday, but the nine other RSVPs have only replied 'maybe.' James requests your help to find out why each robot is on the fence and convince them to turn that 'maybe' into a 'yes.' The rest of the game plays out like a linear sandbox. You progress through the robots in groups of three across three cycles (days), but how you solve their problems is entirely down to your creativity.

For example, one bot can't attend the party because they have to work at a job they hate and would rather quit. Through a series of prompted responses, you assist this bot in writing a resignation email. After that email is done, it gets sent to the supervisor who replies in short order. I played the first three scenarios in the game twice (including this one), using wildly different approaches each time, and the responses were indeed different. Another example is Captain (one of the few names I remember as I write this review) who needs your help to come up with a story pitch. The sky is the limit since your dialog choices and the responses are not pre-determined. I can see this game being played multiple times to see just how wacky of a response you can get from the robots.

Frankly, these characters felt more realized with better personality traits and voices than I've encountered in most VR games. I enjoy puzzle games in general and it was a trip to have the puzzle actually talk back to you. Having said that, a little goes a long way here. Each encounter can be completed inside 10 minutes and some of them landed better than others. I won't give any more specifics to avoid spoilers, but there were two in particular I could not wait to move on from. Also, there are one or two phrases that every robot says that got old pretty quickly.

Another unique part of the game is that it is entirely driven by your voice, including the movement. Utilizing your Quest's microphone, you instruct your AI assistant, Visor, to move you from location to location (the counter, the booths, and the tables) and of course you spend the entire time talking. There are physical interactions as well, with some bots having tablets to pick up and view, and of course, plenty of custom drinks from James.

All of the voice interactions work perfectly fine, but the tablets were a bit jittery at times. Stellar Cafe can be played with controllers or hand-tracking and the game suggests using the latter. Unfortunately, my Quest kept detecting my controllers, to the point where I had to turn on hand-tracking. That's not a shortcoming of the game itself but Meta's operating system, though I still wanted to point it out in case other players bump into it. There were also instances where I looked around the cafe during a conversation and the bot registered it as me shaking my head no, forcing me to redo a prompt or response.

Stellar Cafe's full runtime is about 2 hours, including the ending. However, I can see players who enjoy the live AI interaction toying with the bots for hours on end. There were a few hiccups in the interactions, like sometimes James would make me a drink and deliver it to me, then tell me the drink would be ready soon. To the game's credit, I called James out on this every time it happened and he responded appropriately, apologizing and saying something about his timing circuits misfiring. Nicely done.

Visually, Stellar Cafe isn't exactly pushing the boundaries of standalone VR. If you've played any Owlchemy Labs game (Job Simulator, Vacation Simulator, etc.), it's about that level of visual fidelity. However, take your time and look around the cafe. There are a ton of little touches that show a level of care and sense of humor in the single-level game design. The television above James plays a rotation of news broadcasts, weather reports, a humorous riff on the Home Shopping Network, and more. I got a kick out of the employee of the month plaques too.

Finally, to address the elephant in the room: yes, this is ostensibly an artificial intelligence game. If you are uneasy or outright opposed to the use of AI in video games, Stellar Cafe is not going to change your mind. It's not a revolutionary step forward for the medium, but it is an interesting thought experiment into how this technology can be applied.

Stellar Cafe - The Final Verdict

Stellar Cafe is a lighthearted, relatively short AI experience that wraps up its simple story before outstaying its welcome. I do wish it were longer, but what's here is quite enjoyable and worth a pickup as a glimpse into what feels like an inevitable future for gaming, especially social sim settings like this.

UploadVR uses a 5-Star rating system for our game reviews – you can read a breakdown of each star rating in our review guidelines.

Street Gods, one of two Norse mythology-inspired VR roguelites coming to Meta Quest in December, emphasizes style and power fantasy over any real impactful combat.

Developer Soul Assembly has a long history with combat-heavy VR titles, like the Drop Dead series, Last Stand, Warhammer 40,000: Battle Sister. While it occasionally dabbles in other genres, like working on​ Just Dance VR, action games are its bread and butter. All the aforementioned games, primarily shooters mind you, received mostly the same critical response. Straightforward, albeit shallow, and fun to play with friends.

So, given Soul Assembly's history and the genre we're dipping into, the first thing that surprised me in this game is how forward the story is. Most roguelites deliver the setting in a cursory introduction that just sets the table for the carnage that will ensue. Street Gods surprisingly takes its time with a lengthier than expected multi-part tutorial that arguably takes a bit too long with the setup, but in hindsight turns out to be the best part of the game.

You play as Val, a street-smart graffiti artist who happens upon Mjölnir, the signature weapon of Thor, the Norse God of Thunder. As you approach it, Mjölnir inexplicably begins to speak to you. This voice is Thor himself, entrapped in his own weapon for reasons beyond his own understanding. You pick up the hammer and are immediately attacked by what can only be described as Norse zombies, who look ripped straight out of the Drop Dead universe with different clothes on.

It's here that my primary issue with Street Gods comes up. Thor teaches you how to swing and throw Mjölnir to defeat the undead, but nothing really lands. I realize that when playing VR, you are ostensibly always swinging at air, but most melee-heavy games get around this with a combination of controller haptics, sound effects, and visual cues (sparks, blood, enemy reactions, etc.). There is no real crunch here, no impact, no visceral immersion to the combat. The controller haptics are extremely weak, so when unleashing power attacks like shooting lightning from the hammer, it doesn't feel like much of anything because both the haptics and sound effects are so subdued. The 'clank' sound of the hammer on impact is fine, but not enough. It needs more oomph, to be blunt.

Now, this may be by design, since you are imbued with the power(s) of a God in this game, but the power fantasy here is muted by the lack of physicality. This is a fairly lightweight arcade-like experience with a heavily comic book-inspired aesthetic (more on that later). The arcade feel shines through as you tear through enemies like wet paper with all of your various abilities, but I couldn't shake the combat's lifeless energy.

Having said that, Street Gods makes up for its general lack of substance with all kinds of style. As you quickly unlock new abilities, you'll be tossing enemies around with lightning-powered hammer uppercuts, a golden lasso that can yank foes all over the map, unleashing lightning attacks, and so on. The elongated introduction has a stretch where you are falling through the merging of Earth and Asgard, and that sequence is terrific. The game feels cool to play, but that level of cool can be fleeting depending on your personal tastes. I found myself losing interest about 20 minutes into each of my runs because of combat.

This extends to the power-ups. After dispatching all the enemies in an arena, you are presented with a chest with the standard assortment of power-ups and perks: more health, better defense, increased attack power when health is low, and so on. New abilities are unlocked in an arena that lets you practice before you move forward. Occasionally, a new ability would spawn as a perk, like dropping a bomb behind you when you dash, but they are few and far between. All the tropes are here, but at its core, there's nothing new to veteran roguelite players.

One of the tricky things to get right in a game that plays in power fantasies is balancing said fantasy with a sense of peril. Street Gods falls woefully short here. I never felt any real sense of danger during any of my runs. Enemies can spawn all around you, but maybe owing to the limitations of standalone VR, there are never more than a handful onscreen at any given moment and they go down so easily that you hardly ever get hit.

Even as the game ramps up with a few new enemy variations with area of effect attacks, they're still taken out from range simply by throwing Mjölnir (which eventually gets powered up to hit multiple enemies). Health is dropped in droves by enemies upon death too, so even if you do take damage, it's easily nullified. Compare this to Drop Dead: The Cabin, another Soul Assembly title, where restrictions on map traversal and scarcity of supplies make every run a struggle and that is sorely missed here.

Visually, Street Gods is an interesting study in contrasts. The story of the game is the Norse realms are colliding and merging with Earth (Midgard), so you do battle in city streets with otherworldly vines and giant crystals protruding from them. It looks quite nice, but after the umpteenth time in the same map, even with switching things up with different times of day & weather, it gets old pretty quickly. Most of the maps are quite colorful, except for the snow-covered areas. These are blindingly washed out, so much so that I had to turn down the brightness on my Quest.

Occasionally, between levels, you'll travel to a hub between realms to get some exposition from your talking hammer and a rock with paper drawn eyes and a crown representing Loki. This hub area is the nicest looking part of the game by far. You can also damage the vehicles and dumpsters in each level, but like the enemies, the damage just sort of happens. If you are old enough to recall destroying the car in Street Fighter II, same idea here. Frame A, perfectly fine. Frame B, destroyed. With no animation or motion between the two, other than a plume of fire for vehicles.

As stated earlier, the common enemies look ripped straight from a Drop Dead game, with gangly looking movements and a comic book-esque word pop-up when getting hit, but in motion, they don't look great. If they are far away from you, they visibly move at a lower framerate and this frame drop repeats when you knock them far away. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. Graphically, Street Gods is a mixed bag.

The world of Street Gods doesn't take itself too seriously, choosing to lean on the (hopefully) fun combat and powers to keep the player engaged. The exchanges in the hub area are mostly played for laughs, with the voice actors delivering their lines like the straight man in a goofball comedy. Some of it lands, but most of it doesn't. Val and Thor also quip endlessly during combat, with some of their lines clumsily stacking over each other, and after 2 or 3 runs, I had heard them all and was begging for a mute button. Same with the music, which felt very run-of-the-mill and on a short loop. There is a story here, with hints at Val's backstory and questions as to how and why Thor is imprisoned in his own weapon, but the dialogue and the characters are so ho-hum that it's difficult to get invested.

Finally, when I was approaching my first boss fight, I entered the portal and the game crashed after 3 minutes of black screen with music playing. When I reloaded, it just dropped me back into more waves, this time in a new element type (snow) that I hadn't seen yet. I had to let myself die and delete my save data to in essence restart the game to get back to the boss fight, which thankfully loaded on the second attempt. Performance was fine to start, but after that crash, I started to see some stuttering and frame drops when a lot of enemies were onscreen.

Hopefully this can be fixed with patches, but having to restart took me out of the game completely. I put it down for some time before jumping back in.

Street Gods - Final Verdict

If you are an action junkie just here to wreck enemies, there are better roguelites available in VR with more engaging combat than Street Gods. Even as a power fantasy, the lack of weapon variety, uninspired enemies, repetitive locations, and power-ups make Street Gods a struggle to hold your attention for long.

UploadVR uses a 5-Star rating system for our game reviews – you can read a breakdown of each star rating in our review guidelines.