Personally I much prefer last year's for a number of reasons:
Firstly this year's has the same issue Saw Alive has, where you're watching 'bad' things happen to people instead of feeling the immediate threat yourself, with only 2 or 3 short bits where something is actually happening to the rider which makes it feel much less scary.
Secondly, although being filmed on a camera makes it more realistic, it means the motion of the headset doesn't track with the video so if you move your head slightly or even look around quickly, you're moving while the image stays in the same place which makes me feel sick, even though I rarely get motion sickness from VR.
Thirdly, this is a general problem with the whole ride at the moment, but the second section is horribly out of sync with the motion of the ride system which again makes me feel sick at the end, to the point where I just take the headset off before the motion platform section.
I find the acting almost shockingly bad in it as well, which is kind of understandable as they had to interact and be scared of something that wasn't there. Along with this is, a section I cannot get over is how one of the climaxes of one of the sections in the 2nd section is the girl being pulled by the leg by the demon, only for the demon to let go and she hits her head on the window. Something I'd expect from a very bad comedy show, not a multi million attraction marketed to be one of the scariest attractions ever created.
This section also somehow increases the already unbelievable number of plot holes and inconsistencies throughout the ride. Why when you get back on the train are there suddenly people again who weren't there in the previous section? Also the fact there is an obvious cut between sections where the characters' positions reset; a 'glitch' where the VR goes black for just a second so it would make sense for people to be in a different position would be a lot better that a normal cut with a funny sound. To make matters worse, there's clearly been a mix up in the order of the scenes. At the end of the scene where the demon grabs the girl's leg, she's holding her head after she hit the window (gruesome, I know!). It then cuts to the next scene and everyone has magically changed position, yet some scenes after that where the train starts moving again, the girl is holding her head like in the scene where she hit her head. Another issue being that the 'where is it' girl just randomly appears from nowhere when it's her turn to speak.
Yet another problem with this section is that at one point, a guy is being dragged by the demon but he's in the shadows for so long, you can hear the screaming but for what seems like ages you can't see where they are and you think you're missing something. Another problem with the shadows is that the dark sections don't really work in VR as it feels like you're looking at a dark screen which is still lit up, ruining the illusion of the VR itself.