Favorite VR Games?

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I got an Oculus Rift a few days ago and trying out some of the demos right now. I haven't had much success getting it to work with games like Far Cry or Grand Theft Auto, but I'm going to try a $40 driver software that injects older games into the VR headset. The Oculus store has a decent selection, though they can get a bit pricey in my opinion. Elite Dangerous looks like a hella fun, so I'll probably try that out next.

So what are your favorite VR games you've played? Not exclusive to current VR technology, if you played Nintendo's Virtual Boy back in the day, or if you've played some VR at an arcade, share the games you enjoyed.

I don't have a VR headset (yet) but of all the games I have with VR support my favorite is Elite Dangerous, I hear it's pretty amazing with VR. Even without VR that game is super immersive and fun. I have some other games with VR support too like Subnautica, Pulsar: lost colony, and Universe Sandbox 2 and I can see how VR would make those games even better.

Check out the Doom 3 VR mod someone made, not sure if it works for the rift + rift touch also but it was amazing! First full game I played from start to finish on the vive.

Loved peaking out of corners, holstering weapons (you can assign weapons to spots on your body), and just feeling like a total badass.

It requires the doom 3 BFG edition.

I'm going to wait for the wireless add-ons to come out for the vive before playing it again because getting caught in the cord is my number one complaint for VR (I've developed some tolerance for motion sickness).

Be prepared to get motion sickness. Older games are not designed for VR, but some work fine without giving you a bad experience.

Looks like Doom does work with the Rift, plus the Touch controllers. I hadn't planned on buying the Touch controllers for a while but then you only live once and good excuse to enhance the experience. It looks so much more appealing being able to aim forward and look left and right, having separate mobility of your head from your hands rather than your aim locked to your view.



I've gotten some nausea from choppy frame rates and vertigo from disorientation. Also I feel the need to take a break every half hour or so as it definitely can strain the eyes.

I would not recommend driver software like VorpX, having purchased it sometime myself. Simply put, these experiences don't translate well to VR at all, which really shouldn't come as a surprise given they were never designed with VR in mind.

I have spent over 600 hours in VR, having used it since the Oculus Rift developer kit days. Most of that time (530+ hours) has been in Elite: Dangerous, which I can recommend with some caveats. The actual flying around gameplay is really fun, as well as the moment to moment gameplay in combat. The game is weaker in its overall game design, with archaic old school MMO elements such as massive penalties for death where you can lose weeks of progress, or the optimal way to playing being through massive amounts of grinding rather than through in game missions. The game is most fun if you can avoid playing the optimal way and min/maxing, opting to instead play for fun.

Arizona Sunshine is a great campaign FPS that can be played single player or cooperatively, with additional multiplayer horde modes. It's a decent length, lasting for about six hours, with a lot of polish that isn't typically seen in VR games.

Audioshield is my second most played VR game, having played it for 22 hours. It's a simple but addictive music rhythm game that uses your music collection to generate levels where you use shields to block incoming projectiles that come in time with the music. It also uses Youtube music videos as levels, and any song ever played has online leaderboards to compare score. It has multiple difficulty levels, with the hardest one being really difficult. If you have ever played either of the Audiosurf games, it is similar to that and is made by the same developer. The amount of enjoyment you get from this game will probably depend on your music tastes and how well they line up with the algorithm the game uses for generating levels.

The Gallery - Episode 1: Call of the Starseed is a great start to an episodic adventure series. It has the best VR interaction in any game I've played, and is heavily reminiscent of games like the Myst series, with an island to explore, a mystery plot, various weird characters and the occasional puzzle. It is short however, lasting only two hours with little replayability. It is however, the most polished VR game I've played by far - even if the rest of the episodes don't turn out well I expect that it'll be influential in how other developers use controls in the future.

House of the Dying Sun is really fun, a great fast paced spaceship combat game with RTS elements, heavily reminiscent of Homeworld or the reboot of Battlestar Galactica in aesthetic. You mostly play as a combat pilot in a small fighter, but can also control a small fleet simultaneously on short objective based missions. Each mission lasts a few minutes, but is packed with action and decisions on how to manage your fleet, similar to Freespace or the Star Wars: Rogue Squadron series. It lasted me about five hours, but there was no filler and I felt like I got my money's worth.

The Lab is a collection of minigames and experiences made by Valve. It's very polished, and it's completely free. There's pretty much zero reason for anyone with a VR headset to not have played it. I know people really like the archery minigame, but personally I'm a fan of Xortex, the bullet hell shooter.

Rec Room is another free game, with a lot of content. It's a minigame collection with a focus on social interaction, with a shared hub world leading to each minigame. There is paintball, an RPG style dungeon game, charades, and various other games. Like The Lab, there really isn't any reason not to have tried this game. It's free and it's great.

Sportsbar VR is great if the idea of playing pool with AI or online appeals to you. It also contains a number of other minigames such as bowling, darts, or air hockey. The pool is the main attraction though, and it works really well in VR.

Vanishing Realms is a great action RPG made by an ex Valve employee. It was one of the first games made for VR available on consumer release, and it has yet to be surpassed in terms of its controls and content. It's in early access, but it's content complete with future patches to address bugs and optimisation, neither of which I found to be a problem.

Vertigo is another great campaign FPS with good, varied gameplay. It is reminiscent of Portal, with a futuristic aesthetic set in a research lab, with various puzzles as well as action. It also has some stellar boss fights. It does suffer from a number of major bugs, however. I would recommend this after Arizona Sunshine.

Raw Data is in early access, but it has a good amount of content already. It's a wave based shooter that can be played in single player or coop, with various characters with different kits such as a telekinetic ninja cyborg with a laser sword and shurikens, or dual pistol wielding bishop with time altering powers. It's on the pricey side, and I think it's definitely worth watching to see how it develops if you are wary of early access titles. I wouldn't recommend it over Arizona Sunshine or Vertigo, though.

Skyrim, Mirror's Edge and GTAV. I tried Skyrim and Mirror's Edge years ago before the consumer headsets were out, realised it was awful and uninstalled. Reinstalled when I had the Vive to see if it was any better, tried it in GTAV. It's really no better than it was years ago. It's just a fundamental issue with trying to make something VR by essentially emulating a mouse with your head. Also, as someone who has spent years using VR, VorpX is really the only software that consistently makes me nauseated.

I don't have a problem with retrofitting games with VR. I've played really good VR retrofits of Doom, Doom 3, Quake, Serious Sam and Minecraft. I expect Fallout 3 VR will be good too, if not immediately upon release. It's just that VorpX isn't a very good implementation. Also, the software is exorbitantly expensive for what it offers. A lot of the games I just mentioned are freely available or are very cheap. VorpX is about as much as a full AAA game.

One more thing. I'm over thirty now and don't have the time or the inclination to spend hours setting up a game to work. With VorpX you really have to be the kind of person willing to spend a bunch of time fiddling with settings, installing various mods, configuring various config files, just to get something to work passably. If you have the time and money and a huge desire to play Skyrim in VR it might be worth it for you. But keep your expectations low.