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I first tried VR in the summer of 2011, back when the thought of VR gaming was still a vision into the far future for me. It was a heavily pixelated game where you would try and avoid some witch in the forest, and honestly, it was pretty boring and looked horrible by 2011’s graphics standards. After I played it, a friend of mine guaranteed me that this would be a massive craze in the next decade, and I laughed it off, thinking he was delusional. Little did I know how big the leaps would be in the technology over the next few years and before I knew it, I found myself with a PSVR, then an Oculus Rift S, and then an Oculus Quest 2, and then a Samsung Odyssey Plus, and then a Valve Index.
That VR craze certainly hit me hard than I thought it would, and the reason is that there are tons upon tons of games out there worth playing. While early VR was pretty gimmicky and a lot of the games just felt like cool tech demos, now, there are multiple genres with outstanding games, and regardless of the game type you’re looking for, VR will likely have a game to satisfy your needs. Here is your guide for all the great games worth playing in the VR universe.
Skyrim VR
I’m going to start you off with what I feel is the very best experience in VR, hands down. While it shows its age in some ways and doesn’t have the most immersive VR mechanics, Skyrim VR is an experience unlike any other out there. You have the entire game world from 2011’s Game of the Year at your grasp, and the feeling of adventure and discovery has never been more prevalent than it is in VR. The main quest will keep you busy for a while, but after that, you’ve got so many more hours to play through, and whether you’re taking on the Dark Brotherhood questline or trying to win the Civil War happening in Skyrim, you will never be without something to do.
Skyrim VR is currently available on all headsets besides the Oculus Quest 1&2, but for my money, the best way to play it is on PCVR. The reason behind this is because of one simple thing, mods. With mods, you turn your invisible Skyrim VR body into a fully viewable body decked out in any armor you have on in the game. You also get access to VR holsters that you can pull weapons from, endless quest mods, graphics mods, and so much more that I can’t even get into it here (but I can here).
Skyrim VR starts you off waiting online for the chopping block before a terrifying dragon comes to attack the village. From there, you escape from your fate and are let loose into the truly massive world of Skyrim. There is a main quest line to follow where you discover you are the chosen one of sorts called the Dragonborn, but the real joy of this game comes in the exploration. Every time you near something new, another map marker will pop up, inviting you to come to explore. The music gradually changes depending on what location you’re at, and it creates some truly incredible atmosphere. There are also massive cities to explore, followers to recruit, guilds to join, wars to fight, vampires to fight, dragons to ride, and so much more.
Combat gives you a ton of options as you can play as an archer, mage, or melee user. Archery, in particular, feels incredible here as you actually will have to pull back the bow with your arrow notched on it in order to fire. This immersion is incredible and offers a great workout as well. Magic is an awe-inspiring experience as well. When using magic, you can see your spells bursting from your VR hands, and whether you’re lighting up the room with flames or firing a master ice spell, the effects look incredible and really make you feel like a powerful mage.
Melee combat definitely fares the worst here as there is no physics involved, but using your shield to stop arrows and incoming blows is still a cool experience, even if your actual attacking doesn’t feel all that impactful. Mods will make each of these systems so much better as there are options to add physics into the game on your melee hits and tons of magic and archery mods as well. There is a reason that Skyrim is one of the top games played on Steam to this day. It will last you a lifetime.
If you’re looking to get your RPG and your fantasy fix in one gargantuanly sized game, Skyrim VR has everything you could possibly want and more.
Fallout 4 VR
From the same developers as Skyrim VR, Fallout 4 VR had a bit of a rough start to its career. The initial launch was filled with bugs, crashes, and just plain ugly looking graphics. It was left to the community to find out how to fix the game at that point, and luckily, fan pressure forced a patch out that fixed so many of the issues, and finally, a playable Fallout 4 VR is available to us. While you won’t be seeing the same beauty that Skyrim VR can provide, Fallout 4 VR still leaves your jaw on the floor with its more modern graphics, terrifying vaults to explore and hours and hours of things to discover, and NPCs to interact with, you would be missing out badly by skipping this one.
If this is your first time with Fallout 4 VR, you’re in for a massive treat. You start off living a normal life before nuclear bombs are dropped on the country, completely decimating it. You awake 200 years in the future into a post-apocalyptic version of Boston, and from there, the world is your oyster. You can do the main quest or stray from the beaten path and explore at your leisure. There are all measures of horrifying creatures to encounter and bandits who want to rob you throughout your journey, and tons of weapons and armor to acquire as well. Whether you’re plumbing the depths of abandoned vaults or even building your own settlements, the content here is going to take you a long time to get through, and it’s a great time the whole way through.
The combat is extremely satisfying, and the VATS system in VR is an incredible experience that lets you slow time and take your shots instead of freezing it completely like normal Fallout 4 did. The guns work incredibly well, and your aim is generally what determines if your shots will hit, not some behind-the-scenes dice roll. You’ve got options for long-range and melee combat, and while there won’t be any true interactive physics involved without mods, it’s still a very empowering experience. Having Feral Ghouls sprint at you in darkened subway tunnels will have your skin crawling and encountering Super Mutants up close and personal will intimidate the hell out of you, but fighting through all of this with your fully voiced companions is just so damn cool that you won’t care.
Having your cyborg companion Nick Valentine be right next to you as if he were in the same room as you is just so cool and many of the game’s best sequences are that much better in VR. You can expect a little bit of jank here and there, and it will require a good amount of mods to get to the level it deserves, but if you can put up with the occasional bug or glitch, a mesmerizing journey awaits you in the Wasteland.
Blade and Sorcery
Earlier I mentioned that some games felt like tech demos early on and never really gave off the experience of true games. Well, that’s the case with Blade and Sorcery, but it really doesn’t matter. Blade and Sorcery is a game created by one man and it features some of the most incredible physics VR has to offer. Blade and Sorcery introduces itself as a medieval combat simulator and due to recent updates, it now has a full, randomized dungeon mode to go along with its sandbox gameplay. You start off the game making your character and from there you’re given the option to fight in a handful of arenas or in the dungeon.
In the arenas, you have a long list of options of foes to face from gladiators to bandits and a huge selection of weapons to pick as well. These weapons are all created to scale and all are equipped with realistic physics. That means gigantic, two-handed swords will feel significantly heavier than daggers and require more force to use effectively. You’re also able to use a small handful of spells and these can be a ton of fun to use as well. Your spells options range from lightning to fireballs to the best one, telekinesis.
This power allows you to throw your opponent around like a ragdoll or if you’re feeling particularly sadistic, literally pull their limbs from their bodies. The combat is absolutely brutal, complete with dismemberment and disturbingly realistic stabbing physics. The graphics are smooth too and character models look great and should run just fine no matter what rig you’re running on.
The dungeon mode is the closest thing the game has to a story mode right now and while there is no story to speak of, the randomly generated level design and enemy placements make it an exciting trip through each time. This is being expanded on and constantly updated and Blade and Sorcery’s developer is one of the most interactive with fans in all of VR, which is awesome for the game’s outlook.
One of the best parts of the game is definitely the ability to mod it, which the developer actively encourages. With mods added, you can explore and fight in locations from game of thrones such as Castle Black, use lightsabers to fight against the sith and stormtroopers, fly, turn giant, use Captain America’s shield, fight on Mos Eisely, fight in a gladiator arena, use weapons from Bloodborne and so much more. While the game is available on PCVR and Oculus Quest, the mods, for now, are exclusive to the PCVR unless you have a link and in my opinion, they are integral to the experience.
Tales of Glory
Another game from a one-man development team, I can’t for the life of me understand why this game doesn’t get more love. Tales of Glory sets you up as the survivor of a family on the run and from the opening moments where you’re chased off a cliff, you’re given the freedom to build your army to get your revenge and fight and ally with whomever you want. The combat is all physics-based and the fights that take place on screen put every other VR game to shame as you can see 200 people on screen clashing if your PC can handle it. You’re not just some innocent bystander here either as you have full control over the formation and aggression of your units. In battle, you can direct your units by selecting them with your controller and then selecting from an in-depth order menu, or you can use your actual voice to command your units.
This option is one of the best parts of this game and actually yelling at your troops to charge is an incredibly immersive feeling as it feels like you’re really charging into battle. You can even alter the lines used to trigger each action in the game’s files as well, so any sort of ridiculous saying you can come up with can be used as well.
Combat-wise, you’re given a massive option of weapons to choose from, and much like Blade and Sorcery, it’s all physics-based and you’ll find yourself diving into battle with your troops and getting splashed with blood as you try and retake your kingdom. Maces, Swords, Claymores, Axes, Knives, Spears, Shields, Javelins, Throwable Spears, and more are all at your disposal here and you can even charge into battle on horseback if you so choose. In Tales of Glory, your armor matters more than any other VR game out there, so right off the bat, you’re going to die a lot. You need to learn to defend against attacks and choose your spots wisely otherwise you’re going to fall quickly. There’s no sugarcoating it, this game is not easy, but damn is it rewarding. The more you fight, the more money you’ll make and the more weaponry and armor you’ll be able to afford.
To add to the difficulty, there are boss enemies that will appear in certain fights that will decimate your troops until you deal with them yourself and when you lose troops in battle, they’re gone and you’re going to have to find new ones to fight for you. It’s a tough but fair system that encourages persistence and strategy. When it comes to your troops, you have a ton of options. You can recruit archers, spearmen, knights, cavalry, infantry, pikemen, and more. Each of these units can be leveled up multiple times too, getting better weapons and armor and health with each upgrade. To make things even more immersive, any weapon dropped on the battlefield can be picked up on a whim and used against your enemy.
Aside from engaging enemies in massive battles, there are smaller missions that have you do various tasks like escorting an important person through a dangerous town or burning enemy supplies. They aren’t as fun as the big battles, but they’re a nice diversion from time to time. You can also compete in medieval renaissance faires where there is an archery competition, a group melee battle, and my favorite, jousting. The quality of the jousting here could be a game in itself and it’s so satisfying to physically dodge the incoming lance while burying yours in the opponent. There is a diplomatic side to the game as well.
On your map, you’ll see multiple different colors representing the different houses of the land. Each house has a king that you can visit and talk with and you actually have to kneel in real life before being able to speak to the king. Once he engages you, you can broker peace, start rumors about houses you want that king to fight for you, or offer your sword and become part of their army. It’s an awesome system and the variety of ways these scenarios play out are numerous. If you manage to take down an entire kingdom, you will get an epic scene where you will have to decapitate the king in front of your new castle in front of a roaring crowd. It’s a brilliant touch that just shows how much care went into this game.
If you just want the fighting, that’s available too in the form of an arena, where you can summon any number of enemies or boss characters to fight. You can also choose any map in the game to fight massive battles in where you can customize the amount of each type of soldiers each side has. The levels have a lengthy selection too with massive castles, small villages, ruins, towns, massive bridges, or beachside battles all on tap for you here. If you ever played the game Mount and Blade, this is that exact experience but in VR. To beat the game, it’ll take you around 30 hours to do, but the replay value to me is pretty much infinite and I hop in all the time to take place in a 300 person battle just for the workout aspect, in which there is a ton. Tales of Glory is the most underrated game in VR, and there’s a demo for you try for free so you can see just how good it is.
Half-Life: Alyx
You knew this one was coming. If there has been a game that has been described as the “system seller” of VR, Half-Life: Alyx is the one. In terms of expectations, they were massive as the world has been waiting for the long-awaited sequel to Half-Life: 2 for over a decade, and while this isn’t exactly what people were asking for, it delivers an incredible experience that is authentic to the Half-Life name in every way. First off, we’ve got the best visuals in VR. That’s not hyperbole, it’s truth.
This game looks as good as a triple-A console or PC game at all times and seeing that quality of graphics in VR is an achievement in itself. The detail within the game world is simply astounding as the environments you traverse drip with atmosphere at every turn. Half-Life: Alyx takes you into the past to play as Alyx, a character well known to Half-Life fans, and throughout your playthrough, you’ll be taking on all manors of Half-Life horrors as well as the ever intimidating combine soldiers.
The gameplay is another massive strong point of the game and there is a ton of variety here. You’ll be solving puzzles that use the most impressive VR physics this side of Blade and Sorcery and you’ll be using anything at your disposal to take on the enemies of the game too. The gunplay feels weighty and dangerous and the audio is among the best VR has to offer and guns pop off with some serious power and explosions echo through the hallways to create a wild atmosphere inside your headset. You can also use melee items as well and that will be required as your ammo sources will be pretty scarce.
Half-Life: Alyx manages to throw some scenarios at you in VR that you just never knew you could have. For example, the terrifying Headcrab enemies that are iconic to the series make their return here by falling off the ceiling and onto your actual face. When enveloped by one of these, you literally won’t be able to see anything, and that feeling of real-life panic kicks in quickly as you struggle to rip the thing off your face and kill it as quickly as possible.
The melee combat feels powerful too and your actual strength will be required to take down some of the stronger enemies, so don’t expect to get by waving your hands around wildly, this game requires you to put some effort into your survival. The main story is excellent and proves to be a pivotal piece of the Half-Life world. Once you’ve finished your playthrough, there are now tons of mods available and some of them are must-haves, such as the mod that lets you play through the first level of Goldeneye, which is a nostalgia trip and an incredible example of the tools Half Life: Alyx provides to create mods with. If you have VR and you haven’t gotten this game yet, change that right now. As far as the must-plays in VR go, this is at the very top of the list.
Swords of Gurrah
Another underrated gem, Swords of Gurrah does something that no other game in VR does currently. It’s a multiplayer, melee combat game and it fulfills a niche that doesn’t exist anywhere else. Swords of Gurrah has a wildly unique style that feels oh so right in VR and provides you with some of the coolest weapon choices you can find. You’ve got massive, two-handed swords, spears, two-handed staves, samurai weapons, throwing stars, crossbows, and axes of multiple sizes as well.
Each one looks fantastic and the best part is how they’re implemented into combat. The biggest obstacle for this type of game was always how it would approach a blade hitting another character in VR when both are user-controlled? The solution here is brilliant. Swords of Gurrah solves this issue by causing your blade to explode each time you connect with another player’s body or blade.
To add to this, you can also make your blade solid and unbreakable, but this cannot damage other players, it can only block their attacks or be used to intentionally break their weapons. This move can be activated instantly and figuring out the delicate dance of when to attack vs. when to defend creates some thrilling scenarios. The modes are your typical multiplayer fair with deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture the flag all being available, but there is also one on one duels and also a massive arena mode where you fight against AI enemies, resulting in a showdown against a massive boss.
The best mode is duel mode as the combat is best served when its one on one, but all the modes off a pretty great experience and the community is incredibly helpful and friendly as well. You can customize your character at any time, and you can equip multiple weapons as well.
The community is the best part of this game as the Discord is always active and despite the relatively small player count, you can always find a match and they even have tournaments available that are complete with cash prizes. If you’re looking for your online VR melee combat fix, Swords of Gurrah is pretty much the only game to satisfy that niche and you’ll find its addictive gameplay something you’ll come back to time and time again. Swords of Gurrah is available on PCVR.
Beatsaber
While I’m not usually one for rhythm games, even I can’t deny the greatness that is Beatsaber. There are tons upon tons of VR rhythm games right now, but so few of them catch on like Beatsaber is. Trying to pin down why this game is so magical is tough, but it’s definitely a combination of the graphics, music, and your ability to wield a Lightsaber.
The concept of the game is simple, you start a level on the difficulty of your choice and when the song starts, you will see blocks coming at you with directions on them. At this point, you have to cut the blocks up to the beat of the song. You will also be dodging barriers, ducking under walls, and avoiding damaging blocks as well. The song list is pretty large, but the big bonus comes with the ability to put any song you want into the game and have the game adjust the beat map to it.
This can provide a pretty endless experience and it’s part of the reason the game has been so enduring. There is also a multiplayer mode too where you can test your skills against other players across the world, though I found more enjoyment just playing solo. There’s a decently long single-player mode too, so multiplayer is never a necessity here.
As far as games to show off your VR to your friends, this is easily one of the most fun ones out there it’s very easy to play with friends as you just play one song take off the headset and pass it around. One of the best features of Beatsaber is the workout aspect. You will find yourself dripping sweat after some rounds and if you bump up the difficulty, you will find yourself with one of the crazier workouts you’ve ever had and your arms and legs will be heavily utilized here. Beatsaber is the easiest game in VR to jump into while still being addictive enough to last you for years and if that doesn’t scream value to you, I’m not sure what does. Beat Saber is also available on every headset out there, so nobody gets left out of the fun here.
No Man’s Sky
Talk about a good comeback story. No Man’s Sky started out as one of the biggest flops of all time during its launch for a variety of reasons, but since 2016, it has built itself into a one-of-a-kind experience that offers you the ability to explore an infinite universe at your leisure. All of this got even better as it was released with VR capability in 2019 and if you’ve never played it before, you are in for the experience of a lifetime. No Man’s Sky starts you off on a random planet in a vast solar system and tasks you with repairing your ship.
In the start, you have just a mining tool with not much means to defend yourself, so you have to quickly gather the materials needed and once you finish this somewhat dull opening mission, you literally take to the stars. It’s hard to explain how cool it is getting in a spaceship and blasting off into space is in VR, but I’d rank it up there as one of the must-have experiences in VR. From there, you are free to follow the main quest line or just explore at your leisure.
The game provides a literally endless supply of planets to explore and on each one, you will see the most bizarre aliens that videogames have ever seen. They are procedurally generated and there is no way to know what you’re going to run into before seeing it up close. Some will be hostile and others will be friendly and you can turn them into pets that you bring with you in your intergalactic adventures. I’ve seen everything from a little cute bird hamster, a massive, robotic brontosaurus that had a massive glowing circular head to a floating obelisk that floated along the planet’s surface.
Plenty of VR games claim you will be exploring brand new worlds, but none really manage to give you that feeling quite like No Man’s Sky. To make this all the more amazing, the entire experience is online and when you visit the Anomaly, you can see all the other players there with you and visit the bases they’ve created and see the planets that they’ve explored.
The main story is incredibly intriguing and the feeling of the unknown pervades over everything happening and while it can be overwhelming at times, it’s fantastic. You can learn alien languages, find new weapons, build new ships, upgrade your ship weapons, sell to other players, buy random aliens spaceships, engage in ship-to-ship combat with mysterious forces, and pretty much anything else you can imagine. If the main quest doesn’t grip you, you can also do the expeditions which are standalone stories you can play through that range from the exciting to the terrifying and the most recent one has you fighting gargantuan sandworms on a strange and dangerous world.
I believe that VR should inspire a sense of wonder and a feeling of visiting worlds completely unlike our own. No Man’s Sky is the game that does this better than other games out there.
Flying through endless space with the wild soundtrack blasting in the background is a feeling unlike any other I’ve experienced in games. Approaching a new planet is terrifying and exciting and knowing you have full control over everything from the approach to the landing makes it all the more amazing. The species to discover are essentially endless and you’ll find yourself discovering new wonders every time you log on. I consider this a must-play VR game as there’s nothing else like it. No Man’s Sky’s comeback is complete as it now stands at the mountain top of VR’s best.
Pavlov VR
When VR was first released, the most obvious kind of game was the first-person shooter as now, it would literally be in the first person. Despite that, not one single triple-A studio jumped at the concept. Shocking, to say the least, but the early bird gets the worm and we’re all the luckier for that. Pavlov VR is not only the best shooter in all of VR, it’s also the most popular and most played. The player base is outstanding and you will rarely see a time where the servers are not filled with players. Pavlov VR takes its spot very seriously too and they show it particularly with the gunplay. The guns are numerous and each one handles a little bit differently than the last. They all have tons of attachments to try out as well. Perhaps the best feature of Pavlov VR is the manual reload.
While other VR games have tried it, none manage to feel as good as Pavlov VR does and each gun has a completely different way to load a clip in which makes the sequence feel incredibly realistic, even if it is a bit difficult to do at times. While the base game was great fun on its own, the developer’s decision to open the game up to community creations has taken the game into the stratosphere. Brand new games modes, player skins, guns, and massive, user-created maps now populate the servers and there are so many different game types to try out.
For those who tire of the same old team deathmatch mods, you can try out TTT or Trouble in Terrorist Town. This game works by dubbing some players terrorists and others detectives and the trick here is that nobody knows who the terrorists are. What ensues is a fascinating social experiment as you’ll watch people turn on each other and kill the wrong players and the voice chat involved in this mode is crucial to figuring out who the terrorists actually are. There’s also a zombies mode which is the answer to Call of Duty: Zombies.
It’s a shameless ripoff and we’re thankful for that as this mode is brutally fun in VR and coordinating with your teammates to take on the horde is tons of fun. Map wise, there is so much variety it is insane and a favorite of mine would have to be Blood Gulch. That’s right, the iconic map from the original Halo is in here in its full form and that means ATVs are included as well.
Getting to explore classic maps like this is part of what makes Pavlov VR so good. I’ve also had shootouts in the Dunder Mifflin office, ridden panzer tanks in WW2, and stormed the beaches of Normandy in Pavlov VR as well. It’s a shooter with the flexibility of Minecraft and it’s as excellent of a multiplayer experience that you can find in VR. It’s available on PCVR, but you can also get Pavlov Shack off Sidequest to have it fully playable on your Oculus Quest headsets.
Superhot VR
Superhot initially came out as a console game and while it had a cool concept and was reviewed pretty well when it was released, Superhot VR unlocks the potential of this must-have title. The premise is simple, the game world and enemies do not move until you do. While this concept was original on consoles, it became genius in VR. Everyone has always wanted to dodge bullets like in the Matrix and Superhot VR was the first game to introduce this wild concept. To make things challenging, you and your enemies both die in a single hit.
This means that no matter what you hit them with or what they hit you with, one hit does the trick. Cups, knives, and guns all do the same damage and often the levels you play are littered with options for how you want to take on your enemies. What happens is an incredible dance of whether to move quickly vs. slowly to complete your objectives and Superhot VR becomes as much of a puzzle game as it is an action one. The main mode doesn’t last all that long, but there are multiple modes including one that challenges you to survive as long as possible.
VR party games are hard to find a lot of the time and Superhot VR is easily one of the best ones to show off your fancy new headset with. The quick nature of the play sessions allows for quick exchanges between friends and the content can be endless if you want it to be. If you’re open to trying a different sort of action game that will challenge your mind just as much as it will challenge your body, Superhot VR is an excellent and unique experience. Superhot VR is available on all VR platforms.
Iron Man VR
Plenty of people thought the Iron Man VR game was just going to be a gimmicky, low effort and forced game shoved out to be a quick cash grab. What came out instead was an extremely passionate and entertaining experience that did its utmost to make you feel like you’re actually Iron Man. You’re given an original story with some familiar faces and some new ones and from the get-go, you are Iron Man.
This game gives you every tool in Tony Stark’s arsenal and the illusion of power it creates is something that many other VR games struggle deeply to provide. Controlling yourself in the suit is a difficult task at first as your hands have rocket propellers on them and determine which direction you’re going to fly based on where your arms are situated.
This learning curve is pretty steep, but I think that’s what makes the experience so cool as you actually feel like Tony Stark learning how to use his equipment. As far as what you’ve got to play with here weapon-wise, you’ve got missiles, lasers, hand beams, chest lasers, close-up shotgun blasts, it’s all here, and learning to manage what situation requires each weapon is an awesome balancing act.
Your enemies aren’t the most thrilling as they largely consist of different kinds of drones and robots, but the boss encounters and scenarios you play through are genuinely pretty thrilling and the segments where you get to walk around Iron Man’s house that’s ripped right out of the movies is a pretty surreal experience. Iron Man VR is a PSVR exclusive, so if you’re a PSVR owner, there are very few games that deserve your attention above this one. It’s not the longest experience, but it is one of a kind and definitely worth a look.
Gladius
VR is all about creating the power fantasy and oftentimes, they try to emulate things from action and adventure movies to try and replicate that feeling of awe that we go to these big blockbusters to achieve. Gladius is one of those games and it succeeds with flying colors. The power fantasy on hand here is the feeling of being a gladiator and fighting in the arena in front of thousands of screaming fans. While the concept is pretty simple, the gameplay on hand here is more varied and deep than it has any right to be, and that makes one of VR’s earliest games one of its best.
The setup is simple, you’re a gladiator and you’re fighting for your freedom. Standing in your way in the campaign mode are multiple levels, each with a unique theme. While you start out just fighting gladiators, soon tigers get thrown into the mix, then you’ll find yourself in a tomb fighting mummies and even a gigantic minotaur. The scenarios get wilder from there, but that’s up to you to discover.
All of this is held together by a very clever fighting system that will reward those seeking that stylistic “300” type of experience. You’re given the option to fight normally, blocking and going for openings when you can, but if you block in the spot on the swords you’re instructed to, you get a slowdown meter that builds up and when this activates, chopping in the designated areas will literally sever your opponent’s limbs off. It’s all hyper-realistic looking and each time you pull one of these moves off, the crowd goes nuts and if they like you enough, they will throw you food in between rounds to replenish your health. It’s an awesome way to connect you to the surging crowd noise, which gets louder and louder the better you perform.
You has a large variety of weapons to choose from in Gladius and each one will require a completely different strategy. Short swords will be perfect for stabbing open areas in armor, while things like wolverine claws will force you to get up close and personal.
Two-handed weapons will give you a way longer reach, but be harder to hit accurately with as enemies get closer to you and shields will be crucial here and you can’t just block every attack as your shield wears down the more hits it takes until breaking completely. This will make fights very tactical on higher difficulties and makes you think like a gladiator would in order to win. There are several modes to choose from and tons of weapons to unlock as well. Gladius is available on PCVR and Oculus Quest 1 & 2.
Doom VFR
There are plenty of VR games that introduce you to a beautiful world and let you explore. Some test your mind and even give you completely new perspectives on real-life experiences. Doom VFR is not that game, and that’s completely fine. For anyone living under a rock, Doom is a franchise that hands you big guns and throws big enemies at you, and tells you “go have fun you psycho.”
This series has never been about subtlety, story, or anything that bogs down consistent action, and thankfully, Doom VFR knows that and knows what you came for. You’re here for the gore and explosions and roaring heavy metal music while you take down the demon army and that’s exactly what you’re going to get to do here.
Seeing its VR, Doom VFR had to find a way to let you perform all the gruesome kill moves that the series is known for and while they didn’t find a way to give you that exact ability, instead they introduced teleporting into your enemies bodies to kill them. An insane solution to a tough problem that feels right at home in this crazy universe and when you get an enemy near death, literally imploding their bodies from the inside out is a wild experience that no other VR title has tried and it fits in great here. You get the typical arsenal of over-the-top weaponry here and your enemies are every mix of insane demon you can think of.
The variation here is what keeps things interesting as certain enemies require certain guns to take down effectively and micromanaging your arsenal is crucial to survival. Boss enemies are suitably insane too and the campaign is plenty long enough to have your fill of insanity here. One big drawback is the lack of haptic feedback on your guns, but it’s still an awesome experience that shouldn’t be missed. Doom VFR is available on PCVR and PSVR.
Crisis VRigade 2
Despite the nonsensical title, Crisis VRigade 2 is one the most challenging and addictive games in the VR world. If you can remember back to the time where arcades were still a thing, one game, in particular, had people waiting on line to play more than any other. It was called Time Crisis and the premise was you would be playing with a Lightgun and there was a pedal on the floor that you would press to rise from cover to take your shot and let go of when you wanted to duck.
For the time, it was an incredibly immersive way to play video games and glimpse into the future we have fully realized today. Crisis VRigade 2 pays tribute to that experience but transferring it into the VR world and it is one hell of a time. Each level starts out with you approaching some dangerous scenario whether it be a robbery or just a full takeover by terrorists and from there, you move from spot to spot trying to take your enemies out.
Where in the past you’d use a pedal to determine when you were taking cover, now it’s your entire body doing the work and work it will be as you will find yourself rising and ducking more than a prizefighter here. The fitness aspect of the game is immense and it adds a ton to the action going on in your headset. Bullets will destroy you in this game awfully fast, so you really need to time your shots right otherwise you’ll be heading back to the beginning of the level.
To help you along the way are several powerups that let you dual wield guns, equip better guns, use a riot shield, restore health, and more. It’s one of the hardest games I’ve played, but it’s also one of the most fun. It gives you the feeling of being in an intense shootout better than any other VR game on the market and that makes it one of the must-plays. You can play Crisis VRigade 2 on PCVR and Oculus Quest 1&2.
Pistol WhipÂ
Pistol Whip is one of the more interesting titles in VR. It doesn’t really bring anything too new to the table as we’ve seen rhythm games, and we’ve seen shooters. What we haven’t seen is a rhythm game shooter and Pistol Whip takes the best ideas from Superhot and Beatsaber and throws them into a pot, and then slips a tab of LSD into the pot to create the wild experience that is Pistol Whip. The experience here is not only a physical one but a mental one as well. The gameplay has you taking on all different kinds of insanely colorful and wildly designed levels and the idea to survive until the end of the level.
Your enemies consist of black silhouettes that are generally armed with guns, although they can come at you up close as well. The trick here is that you can only take a couple of hits before dying, and the same goes for your enemies who will all die after one hit unless they have armor on. During each level, a bombastic track supports you as you travel automatically towards the end of the level and the key is shooting your gun or guns to the sound of the beat to increase your score.
This is a tough thing to get your head around at first as there are some crazy beats being thrown at you here, and luckily, this isn’t required, and you can shoot at whatever pace you’d like. The interesting part of the game is that when the beat drops, that’s when the enemies generally swarm you and you can get sept up in the feeling the game inspires when the music is blasting, and you’re dodging all over the place while shooting everyone in your sight. It’s very much a stylistic John Wick experience and the various levels do a great job of keeping everything feeling fresh.
A story mode is available too and while its super short, it’s a decently interesting story involving robot overlords and untrustworthy AI which culimnates in a massive boss battle that I didn’t think Pistol Whip had in its arsenal. Your options for weaponry are limited to pistols as well as a sawed off shotgun which is used in the wild west scenario and there are a bunch of different skins for the guns you can use that both look and sound different as well. Options wise, you can tweak just about every aspect of the game and the option everyone should go to at the start is the ability to dual wield as it really completes the experience.
Pistol Whip is also a great party game that gets consistent updates to its content and has just as much longevity to it as Superhot VR and Beatsaber. Pistol Whip is available on all VR headsets
VR Chat
As we hurtle towards the future of VR, one word that consistently rings out loud is Metaverse. This idea of interconnectivity in a virtual world has been hammered into our brains at a solid clip lately and for those that have VR already, your entryway into such a place already exists and that place is VR Chat. VR Chat is an endless multiplayer experience that allows you to interact with other players in a shared social space and do everything from playing different games with them to watching entire musical performances.
At the start, you create your character out of an absurd array of equipment and the result can be a normal human or something out of a nightmare. The result is a hilarious mixture of creatures all hanging out together and the sight is certainly a bizarre one to behold. Getting the hang of how to access everything in VR Chat is tough at first, but once you do, you’ll realize that you have a near-limitless suite of options to choose from and you can quickly fall into the addiction that is VR Chat. While it’s not for everyone and graphically, not all that impressive at all, it’s a glimpse of the future that is going to be looked at as a very important step into introducing us to the Metaverse.
Until You Fall
The roguelike is one of the most popular game types in video games today and there’s good reason for it. Because of their random nature, the games are endlessly replayable and because of that, VR felt it needed its own entry. Until You Fall is incredibly confident in what it wants to be. It has little story and setup, but ultra addicting gameplay and some beautiful graphics with a unique style that gives it its own identify. You start off picking a weapon and you’re thrown into battle against gradually more difficult enemies. Combat is not really physics-based, but rather directional and when you do enough base damage to an opponent, they will become stunned and from here you can strike in the proper direction to do massive damage.
Different enemies have different attack patterns and in order to wear down the tougher opponents, you can block their attacks with your weapon by performing the correct directional block. You’ll also be dodging from side to side to dodge some attacks as well and you’ll need to be ready to sweat in order to beat this one.
As you move from stage to stage, things get tougher and tougher until you get to a boss. If you die at any point, you’ll start over at the beginning, though any bosses you’ve clearer will be beaten for good. Your weapons all have different powerups to charge up and unleash against your enemies and the hook that pushes you forward is that after each round, you can choose one powerup, health refill, or money bonus before you continue.
The balance of what you do here is tough to figure out as you have no idea what is going to be in the next arena waiting for you. Generally, you’ll want to recharge your health, but the damage powerups are incredibly valuable as well. I haven’t beaten the game because it’s one of the toughest games to beat physically, as you’ll be exhausted after a few rounds of this, but there are few games in VR that are more satisfying to succeed in
The Walking Dead: Sinners and Saints
A lot of VR games are fun to play, but fail to provide great stories or full worlds to explore. The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners manages to not only be a terrifying experience, but also one that works as an awesome RPG. The graphics are a unique mix of realistic and cel-shaded, and the result is a very unique look that is incomparable. Where The Walking Dead: Sinners and Saints hangs its hat is with its elite use of physics. When taking on Zombies in VR, your first instinct is going to be survival at all costs. That means you’ll be wanting to use whatever you can to fight off the undead here and that’s just what you’ll be able to do. Beer bottles, bats, swords, knives, anything you can find will be useful in your war against the undead.
The Walking Dead: Sinners and Saints really hang its hat on its storytelling. That is what brings you closer to this version of New Orleans that is so far gone in both literal humans as well as the humans inhabiting whats left of the survivors. Your morality will be tested on multiple occasions, giving you different outcomes to choose from and having the storyline branch depending on what you do. There’s a reason The Walking Dead: Sinners and Saints is among the most played VR games of all time, and the blend of unique graphics, gripping plot, and straight-up terrifying gameplay is plenty of reason to give this a shot. The Walking Dead: Sinners and Saints are available on all VR platforms.
FAQ
Question: What VR Platform has the Most Titles?
Answer: PCVR currently has the most titles available and compatible with the majority of headsets
Question: What’s the Best Introduction to VR Game?
Answer: Blade and Sorcery. It’s quick to get into and doesn’t take much time to play and is endlessly fun.
Question: What is the Best VR Game Available?
Answer: Skyrim VR. It’s available on most platforms and provides an experience unlike any other.
Conclusion
VR is a sleeping beast that’s just waiting to be awoken, so if you want to get in early to the party, this list of games is a great place to start.