After 30 years of stutters and stops, virtual reality is finally a reality, thanks to an influx of billions of dollars of investment in hardware from top technology companies. Facebook has its $600 Oculus Rift — add an extra $200 for Oculus Touch controllers — and HTC has its $800 Vive and its included hand controllers, for those who either have a turbo-charged PC or are willing to invest another $800 or more in that hardware. Sony makes things a bit easier for the 50 million gamers who own a PlayStation 4, offering either a $400 PlayStation VR or a $500 bundle that includes the camera and PlayStation Move controllers you’ll need to play games. And just about anyone can pick up a mobile VR device like Google Cardboard, Daydream View, or Samsung Gear VR for under $100. Here are 10 great VR games for these platforms today.
The Climb
The Climb is one game that will either cure your fear of heights or send you into a frenzy. It’s one thing to watch a movie like Everest on a big screen, it’s quite another to be high above a valley floor clinging for your life to rocks. To truly experience virtual extreme solo rock climbing, you need to have the Oculus Touch or HTC Vive controllers for full control of your hands as you scale cliffs and mountains. (The Xbox One controller just doesn’t immerse you in the moment.) Real mountain ranges across North America, Europe, and Asia were used to bring this photorealistic game world to life. You can hone your skills in training mode before attempting to climb in Tourist mode, eventually ascending to the Bouldering mode, which requires perfect technique and fast scaling.
Werewolves Within
This is one of the few VR games that enables cross-platform play, which is especially important given the limited audience of gamers out there who own a headset. Werewolves Within is a VR interpretation of a classic party game usually called Mafia or Werewolf. Five to seven players can gather together around a virtual campfire in the medieval town of Gallowston and play. The game automatically assigns each player one of 11 roles like Drifter, Saint, Villager, Tracker, Gossip, or Werewolf. The idea is to hunt out the werewolf in the allotted time. It’s a game of deception, conversation, and gestures (which come alive via hand controls) that brilliantly transports you to another place and time and ensures no two games will be the same. It’s also a preview of what social VR can become in the future, as the technology evolves and more people make the virtual plunge.
Minecraft VR
Since 2009, Minecraft has been captivating kids of all ages with its unique take on building with virtual bricks and sharing those elaborate creations with the world. After conquering every other platform and selling over 106 million copies, developer Mojang (which Microsoft bought for $2.5 billion in 2014), has brought Minecraft to Oculus Rift with the help of Doom mastermind John Carmack. As long as you’re willing to overlook that this is essentially still the same “old” game, but in VR, the experience is one of the most enjoyable out there — as long as you’re not playing for hours and hours. Unlike the PC, console, or mobile versions, spending an excessive amount of time in VR can still tire your eyes. Mojang has fixed one problem, by allowing you to pull out from a first-person perspective and into a large-screen 2D perspective when needing to turn left and right a lot, or when your eyes are tired. What makes Minecraft such a simple but addictive game on other platforms works brilliantly in VR.
Star Wars Battlefront: Rogue One X-Wing VR Mission
One of the coolest virtual reality experiences out there is unfortunately also only a single mission. But anyone who has a PlayStation VR will be showing off this game to everyone who comes by. Electronic Arts and DICE created a full multiplayer game with Star Wars Battlefront last year. This year they worked with Criterion Games to add an exclusive, free virtual reality mission for the game that puts you inside an X-Wing as a rookie pilot from the original Star Wars Trilogy. It’s loosely tied into the new Rogue One film, but with just 15 minutes of gameplay, it’s not going to reveal any spoilers for the blockbuster movie. You’ll navigate an asteroid field and take on TIE-Fighters, which is the dream of every kid who grew up watching George Lucas’s original movies. There’s plenty of replay value here, but now the dream is when will EA create a full-fledged Star Wars VR game.
Need for Speed No Limits VR
Electronic Arts has transported its bestselling Need for Speed racing franchise to mobile VR. This full game is a part of a recent mobile title, Need for Speed No Limits, souped-up for VR. This game puts you in the cockpit of 30 of the fastest cars in the world, including the Lamborghini Aventador LP 700-4 and Porsche 911. This nighttime street racing game harkens back to the Need for Speed Underground franchise gameplay experience and offers 60 events across 12 tracks. The objective is to beat out rivals’ vehicles while keeping away from the cops, earning more cash to buy new racing vehicles and upgrade your existing cars. The motion controller takes a little to get used to with steering, drifting, and engaging turbo, but it’s a great first foray into racing for the mobile platform.
EVE: Valkyrie
CCP Games was one of the earliest developers to tackle VR, and it shows with this action-packed dogfighting adventure. From the first moment you sit in the cockpit, this game reveals the promise of VR with a fully realized and detailed world. Valkyrie is set within the deep EVE Online universe of New Eden, although it does away with all of the strategy of that core game and focuses its efforts on thrusting the player into the middle of a revenge story that pits the space pirates of Valkyrie against an evil corporation. Players can pilot an assortment of customizable, heavily armed spacecraft through intense single-player combat against enemy ships. The game really opens up with cooperative gameplay, where up to five players can create a squad and take on enemies. Multiplayer offers options like Team Deathmatch, Control, and Carrier Assault for never-ending battles in the stars.
Hover Junkers
Up to eight players can jump into the action of this multiplayer flying combat game that takes place on a junk ship that’s literally the size of the room-scale space you set up with the Vive in your home. Set in a post-apocalyptic world in which battles are fought over the desert wasteland by men and robots aboard hovering junk ships, the action is fast and frenetic in this multiplayer shooter. In addition to having an assortment of weapons you can wield with both hands, the dueling hover junkers can come at you from every side, requiring you to constantly move, jump, duck, and shoot in all directions. You get a good workout along with a fun game that’s always different thanks to its multiplayer focus and variety of game modes. A version for Oculus Touch is expected in 2017, but this game really showcases the room-scale Vive experience.
Robo Recall
From the maker of the Gears of War trilogy comes Robo Recall, a full-fledged game for Oculus Rift’s new Touch controllers. The free pack-in game with the $200 controllers offers a first-person shooter experience minus the motion sickness. The arcade game opts for humor over excessive violence as the player is tasked with rounding up malfunctioning robots that are running around the city. Armed with guns for sharpshooting, the game also lets you tear robots apart limb by limb when they’re up close. And you can even take control of larger robots to laser through waves of incoming “enemies.” Navigating this world is as simple as pointing and clicking to any area, and then instantly being ready to fire at will.
The Arcslinger
Google has upgraded its virtual reality game with Daydream View. The $80 goggles already have exclusive games that take advantage of the hand controller and head tracking capabilities. One of the cooler games is the futuristic Western-themed first-person shooter The Arcslinger. Armed with the upgradeable gun Angelheart, players assume the role of Valiant and must take down Gold Smoke and his gang. The story unfolds through 15 levels of shooting action across different landscapes. And the game keeps things interesting through different upgrades to the gun, called Arcs, that unleash special powers. This game makes great use of the motion controller for aiming, and offers an entertaining story complete with top-tier video game voice actors like Nolan North.
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
This puzzle game has been built around the concept used in countless Hollywood movies and TV shows in which a clock ticks away the minutes and you’re tasked with cutting the correct wire before it’s too late. This being a multiplayer game, the bombs you’re tasked to disarm are very complex and packed with switches, knobs, and levers. Every bomb is randomly generated, which opens up the replay value of this experience. As does the multiplayer design, which has one player wearing the headset and the others helping by reading a manual on how to diffuse the bomb. The interactivity this opens up can be hilarious. And it’s a great way to pass around a VR headset and get a taste for the technology, since most people won’t have multiple headsets in a home (outside of mobile goggles).
