I bought Books after I got a 75% off voucher through steam and honestly after 1.5hrs I feel that I overpaid for it. Here's why:
+ Books is an achievement grinding game app. If you accept it as such and you like mindless achievements grinding then it is for you.
+ You learn some interesting and some otherwise funny facts about a small selection of animals and birds.
+ The UI is so simple, a four year old could use this app (assuming they could read). Perhaps aimed to younger audience?
+ At the time of writing this review, all 4,564 achievements could be unlocked in under 2hrs.
- Books is not a game per se, so it is a waste of unreal engine's power. There are many other apps/educational tools which are suited much better to this type of Q&A application and on top can provide stats and graphs for the progression of your learning.
- Each answer right or wrong regardless will net you in between 9-14 achievements! Often you have to wait before proceeding for the achievements to catch up!!
- Achievements are abstractly named and have nothing to do with the Q&A (except for a handful of miscellaneous ones). At the 4K mark, I could not keep track of which achievements were missing without a guide.
- UE4 glitches galore and erratic frame rate (locks to 62fps! Drops to 40fps for no reason on static scenes). It spawns the Oculus store when starting and exiting the app! (why use VR functionality?)
- Bad assets scaling on full screen (UHD mode, 4K mode or anything above 1080p); frequent crashes.
- Non existent/audible sounds or music; even when the volume is cranked up to extreme levels you can barely hear a pop sound here and there (at that level other games rattle the house windows). Bug?
- Quite a few spelling and grammar mistakes. Some questions make no sense at all (Google translate?). Best part of the app, seriously!
- No Steam trade-cards, backgrounds or icons
1.0