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  1. Games
  2. VR

All 30 Oculus Rift launch games: our take on a strong launch lineup

Features
By PCGamer published 28 March 2016

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When consoles launch, they're lucky to have a single killer app: that one game you absolutely have to buy to justify spending hundreds of dollars on new hardware. The Oculus Rift, however, is launching with a spread of games that span a dozen genres, from a meaty RTS to a 12-hour fantasy adventure to space dogfighting in EVE Valkyrie and asymmetrical puzzle solving with Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes.

We've played most of the 30 games launching with the Rift, and quite a few of the games launching in the second half of the year with Oculus Touch. Now that Rift headsets are shipping out to pre-orderers, we're getting to work reviewing all the big ones. It'll take some time to give them each their due, though, so for now here are our preliminary thoughts on every game coming to the VR headset by April, and an overview of those releasing later, or that we haven't been able to play yet.

This article was first posted on March 15, 2016. We'll be updating it the more we play.

Page 1 of 36
Page 1 of 36
Adr1ft

Adr1ft

Tim: I’m sure Adam Orth, the ex-Microsoft man who’s now co-director on Adr1ft, is absolutely sick of hearing this, but hoo boy the game really would have been a perfect fit for a Gravity tie-in. As in the Sandy Bullock-starring movie, you’re marooned in the icy vacuum of the void after some sort of space station-related SNAFU. First things first: it’s an absolute beauty. If there’s a more compelling sight in an Oculus Rift than Earth’s iridescent majesty viewed from space, well, I haven’t been demo’d it yet. Secondly, and probably more importantly, the spacesuit controls are quick to get to grips with, largely effective in of moving precisely, and didn’t make me want to spew up.

Prior to the main game starting, you’re given some basic training to teach you how to astronaut. In a kind of anti-grav greenhouse you’re shown how to roll, climb and thrust your way to victory. Or if not victory, at least the next object needed to help solve one of Adr1ft's puzzles. Once out in the glittering debris field, the first order of business becomes finding aerosol-sized oxygen canisters to replenish your damaged suit’s supply. The game’s pretty light on guidance in of what to do thereafter, so I found myself choking to death regularly whilst navigating between larger chunks of wreckage looking for what to do next.

The overall, ahem, thrust of Adr1ft will see you trying to discover what went wrong in the first place. But hopefully the trial and error isn’t too punishing, because much as I enjoyed the sensation of floating around in space, it won’t be enough to mitigate my dislike for repeating fairly workaday gameplay sequences without the game being clear what I’m doing wrong. Nonetheless, Adr1ft is easily one of the most intriguing premises in the Rift launch lineup. It just needs the actual gameplay to equal that startling aesthetic.

Page 2 of 36
Page 2 of 36
Adventure Time: Magic Man’s Head Games

Adventure Time: Magic Man’s Head Games

Wes: A port of a GearVR game, so keep expectations in check—this is a fairly simple 3D platformer with a nice dose of Adventure Time charm. Like Lucky’s Tale, Magic Man’s Head Games is proof that third-person works very well in VR. My favorite touch is how Jake’s elongated head follows your vision around in the beginning. Silly as it sounds, it totally pulled me into the scene.

Page 3 of 36
Page 3 of 36
AirMech: Command

AirMech: Command

Wes: The biggest (and most pleasant) surprise of Oculus’s Game Day event, for me. I’ve been playing short demos of AirMech for a couple years now, and thought its VR iteration was a simple tower defense/RTS hybrid. But this is a fully-featured RTS, with dozens of units, missions, and PvP and PvE multiplayer. There’s a ton of game here.

AirMech gives you a third-person view of a cartoony battlefield (think a cross between Advance Wars and Command & Conquer) and a single jet/mech transformer that you fly around to issue commands and jump into the fray. Combat is mostly about capturing bases around the map with infantry, then using those bases to build new vehicles and push towards the enemy base. Looking around the battlefield is pretty simple thanks to a button that centers your view, and two more that zoom in and out; you can also rotate 360 degrees if needed. Issuing commands to the units is fairly basic: you can select groups and tell them to attack, advance, and hold position, so there’s not going to be Starcraft-level micromanaging here. But there seems to be plenty of depth I’ve just scratched the surface of in of unit variety and combinations. You can also pick up vehicles with your AirMech and drop them anywhere on the map for a sneak attack.

I played a 1v1 PvP match of AirMech, and while it was a little slow and grindy—we were throwing troops into the grinder against each other for a good half an hour before I slowly pushed forward and captured all the map’s neutral bases—I think more experienced players will complete games much more quickly as they put together efficient army compositions. I’m most excited about the idea of playing co-op against the AI. Comp stomp in VR, here I come.

Page 4 of 36
Page 4 of 36
BlazeRush

BlazeRush

Wes: BlazeRush reminds me of a 1994 Sega Genesis game called Combat Cars, except Combat Cars was a kind of terrible top-down racer filled with goofy weapons and BlazeRush is a definitely-less-terrible isometric racer filled with goofy weapons and physics. The team at Oculus talked it up as one of the most fun VR multiplayer games, but due to some network issues I unfortunately only got to play it singleplayer. The small tracks are reminiscent of stock car racing, and the bouncy physics give them a fun toy car playfulness. It’s definitely satisfying to pick up a disc launcher power-up and send a whole pack of opponents flipping and spinning out.

BlazeRush has a set of campaign missions and tons of racers to unlock with different stats, although the brief bit of narrative between races seems poorly designed for VR thanks to a tiny, illegible font. This is another case where VR doesn’t add a lot to the experience, but the base game (released on Steam in 2014) is good enough that it doesn’t much matter.

Page 5 of 36
Page 5 of 36
Project CARS

Project CARS

Wes: This one we haven’t had a chance to play in VR yet, but we know it’s a great sim racer on a monitor. Playing with a full racing wheel setup is likely quite a treat, as long as motion sickness doesn’t strike.

Page 6 of 36
Page 6 of 36
Chronos

Chronos

Wes: I think Chronos will be the breakout hit of the Oculus Rift launch lineup among dedicated PC gamers. It doesn’t have the wow factor of other VR games—the intensity of EVE Valkyrie or the immersion of motion-based Touch and Vive games. But from what I’ve played, it’s a savvy adventure game that takes elements of Zelda, Dark Souls, and Resident Evil, and blends them into something alluring. Fixed camera angles give it a bit of an old school vibe, but also smartly avoid VR motion sickness issues. This isn’t the one you’re going to show friends and family to prove how cool VR is. It’s the one you’re going to play alone for three hour stretches, totally absorbed in the journey.

Chronos sends your young hero through a series of fantasy worlds, with environmental puzzles in the vein of classic Resident Evil and combat that requires some of Dark Souls’ precision, though it’s definitely simpler. Enemies are fairly few, but they hit hard. Chronos demands you block, parry, and dodge roll in even the simplest encounter, then deliver your hits when the enemies leave an opening. Button mash, and you’ll quickly wind up dead. Each time you die, you’re thrown from the world you were exploring—part of an ancient labyrinth that only appears once per year—and your character ages a year waiting for another attempt. Every 10 years, you develop a new trait that makes you stronger, so speedrunners will have a nice challenge ahead of them. The better you play, the less advantage you have later in the game.

There’s also a traditional leveling system for a few stats (strength, agility, magic, and vitality) and weapons to be found and upgraded. The developers previously worked on Darksiders as Vigil Games, so they’ve been around the block. They’re promising something in the vicinity of a 12 hour adventure, so get ready for some long Rift sessions.

Page 7 of 36
Page 7 of 36
Darknet

Darknet

Tim: Ask mid-‘90s me what virtual reality would be like, and the answer would have looked a lot like Darknet. Of the actual VR experiences I’ve played back here in 2016, it’s the only one to take place against such a classic ‘cyberspace’ backdrop. Darknet is a puzzler in which you hang disembodied over a glowing neon network of nodes and pathways. You’re a hacker (of course you are) charged with injecting viruses and hyrdas into the nodes, thereby spreading your infection and earning you stolen cash with which to purchase more lovely malware.

The actual hacking, in the limited amount of time I spent with it, didn’t seem hugely compelling. Depending on where you insert your viruses within each node’s substructure, the virus will either make it safely to the centre (win!) or be neutralised by antivirus software (lose!) which spreads rapidly along similar geometric lines to your intrusion. Played at the higher levels there’s probably more to it than that, and I imagine how you decide to tackle the overall network might get interesting, but it didn’t feel quite moreish enough.

There are some giant “Sentinel” nodes which share firewall security with the smaller nodes connected to them, so bringing down one of those bad boys is probably satisfying in a paint-by-numbers sort of way. What is interesting to me, though, is that abstract games, and specifically puzzlers, are clearly going to work well in VR. It’s pleasing to just hover around in the air, poking at coloured blobs, even if the whole Lawnmower Man aesthetic is super played out.

Page 8 of 36
Page 8 of 36
Defense Grid 2 Enhanced VR Edition

Defense Grid 2 Enhanced VR Edition

Wes: The VR edition of Defense Grid 2 is pretty much Defense Grid 2: a great tower defense game, but with your face much closer to the towers. The single mission I played didn’t get into the crazier difficulty of later Defense Grid missions, but it was enough to prove the interface works just fine in VR. Your gaze takes on the role of a cursor, and looking at build slots gives you a simple menu to plop down towers. Upgrades are as simple as another button press.

I don’t think VR adds much to the experience—and probably makes quick building more difficult when things get frantic—but it’s a fun way to get closer to the action.

Page 9 of 36
Page 9 of 36
Elite Dangerous: Deluxe Edition

Elite Dangerous: Deluxe Edition

Tim: I’m not sure much more needs saying about Frontier’s space truck-’em-up at this point, beyond that there can be few games that expose the shameful limits of my spatial awareness so brutally. Back when I played the game on BBC Micro I used to share the keyboard with my then best friend, me manning the weapons, him handling the movement. And there was good reason I never got to drive. Despite understanding how the radar works, I found myself completely incapable of consistently bringing myself to bear on enemy craft. At one point the increasingly glum person overseeing the demo pointed out that I was, in fact, flying in reverse.

I think part of the problem is that the realistic starfield and lack of landmarks (spacemarks?) comparative to EVE Valkyrie's more cluttered maps, robs the game of a sense of speed. Even when I was boosting I had to double check I was actually boosting. Apparently the ship they gave us was a bit of a milk float though—and, let’s face it, someone who’s barely touched Elite since the BBC days is not the target audience for this. Long story short, if you’re already loving playing Elite, you’re almost certainly going to find that experience all the more impressive in VR. Even if it does seem pretty focused on shooting small dots that are a kilometre away. Classic Elite, really.

Page 10 of 36
Page 10 of 36
EVE Valkyrie

EVE Valkyrie

Tim: I’m basing this on an absolutely tiny sample size of less than 30 minutes with each, but the dogfighting in C’s spinoff felt more immediately gripping than its equivalent in Elite. It seemed substantially easier to stay on a bogey’s six (I wonder if any actual fighter pilot still says this stuff), raking them with cannon fire, and locking on for a killing flurry of missiles. I also dig the little spinning turrets which can be deployed as a countermeasure to take out incoming missiles. Though don’t expect to dodge death too long.

Getting blown up is an inevitable part of what’s an unabashedly arcadey game. At least when it comes it looks cool: your cockpit shatters and then the instruments freeze when exposed to the cruel chill of the void. Better than dying on the toilet I guess, and you’re soon hurtling down a launch tube ready to re the action. Still, I can’t help wonder what VR applied to the full EVE universe might be like. Even in the form of some sort of spectator mode to enable players to witness those insanely big battles. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion and all that.

Page 11 of 36
Page 11 of 36
Fly to KUMA

Fly to KUMA

Wes: Lemmings, but with bears, and also in VR. They’re pink bears, which is an especially cute form of bear. The rest you can probably suss out yourself. Fly to Kuma takes advantage of VR’s 3D space to let you look around the environment, move objects with head tracking to guide your bears to safety. I didn’t play long enough to get into challenging puzzles. But you get it: Lemmings.

Page 12 of 36
Page 12 of 36
EVE Gunjack

EVE Gunjack

Wes: C’s second VR game is a straightforward turret shooter and nowhere near as kinetic as the dogfighting in EVE Valkyrie. It’s a game I can easily imagine feeding quarters into—the VR equivalent of Galaga, with waves of ships flying across the screen and a score multiplier that rewards you for not missing a single target.

Page 13 of 36
Page 13 of 36
Herobound SC

Herobound SC

Wes: A simple adventure game ported over from GearVR and developed by Gunfire Games, the ex-Vigil team that also made Chronos. Herobound was their first project, and it’s definitely a simpler one than Chronos. Think a pretty simple Zelda-like that can run on a smartphone, with a mix of hack-and-slash combat and puzzles, and you’ve got the picture. Oh, and you play a snaggletooth goblin. Cute.

Page 14 of 36
Page 14 of 36
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes

Wes: One of the most inventive uses of VR yet, and one that clearly resonates: even though the major consumer VR headsets are just now arriving, it’s already sold 200,000 copies. You can read more in our write-up from GDC. Keep Talking is a great argument for VR as a social experience: one player (or group) is outside the headset with a manual explaining how to defuse a bomb, while the other player tries to follow orders in VR. Consider this a great excuse to yell at your parents for either being too slow to defuse the bomb, or too poor in their instruction-giving. You’re going to get some good yelling in either way.

Page 15 of 36
Page 15 of 36
Lucky’s Tale

Lucky’s Tale

Tim: I’ve seen a lot less of Lucky’s Tale over the game’s gestation than Wes has, so I was something close to dumbstruck by how polished it actually is. With a lot of VR stuff you expect compromises and rough edges, but this Technicolor platformer starring a cartoon fox is slick, responsive, and crucially, really good fun. Hey, don’t make that face. It’s easy to look at the accompanying screenshot here and dismiss it as a rote, family friendly, collect-’n’-jump game. But as with the best VR experiences so far, there really is no substitute for the freshness you get from jumping into the world and controlling the character in what feels like true three-dimensional space.

The good news is that this is one of the games that will come bundled with the Oculus Rift, so everyone will get to sample its charms. Lucky is essentially Tails from the Sonic games but with a regular number of appendages. He’s charming enough that youngsters will immediately like him, but also doesn’t do/say anything likely to annoy adults. Lucky’s core set of moves includes double jumping, tail-spinning and a Mario-style bottom bash. Standard stuff, again, but what I particularly like is that the animation can be interrupted to let you combo smoothly from one moves to another.

Careful attention, and according to lead game designer Dan Hurd a vast amount of man-hours, has been spent on making sure the camera stays positioned correctly as you bouncing Lucky around the levels. For the most part I found the approach, which is a mixture of automation and manicured placement, worked well. It was never disorientating, and only did I find myself straining to see something it wasn’t already showing me. Playful, the studio behind Lucky’s Tale, reckons it will take about four-six hours to finish. Five-seven if you’re stopping to sniff the cartoon daisies.

Although there’s nothing novel here in of mechanics, saying that misses the point entirely because it’s the perspective itself, and the sense of being there, that makes the game feel like it could be close to an essential Rift experience. Much of the talk around VR has centred on how first-person content will work. But Lucky’s Tale suggests that third-person might be substantially more viable. Not only does it dodge the motion problems which blight first-person content, but it actually feels like it benefits from the addition of VR. Lining up jumps and timing attacks actually proves more satisfying, and more intuitive, in third-person VR. Who knew? Just Lucky, I guess.

Page 16 of 36
Page 16 of 36
Radial G

Radial G

Wes: Radial G somehow doesn’t make me want to hurl. It should, because it puts me in the cockpit of a sci-fi racecraft, cranks the speed up to F-Zero levels, and sends me hurtling down pipe tracks with 360 degree movement and obstacles to avoid. There’s rapid acceleration and deceleration, twists and turns and jumps. This must be some kind of magic—or very smart VR design. The foreground of the cockpit view and flashing the screen during acceleration helps keep your brain and stomach from doing somersaults.

I’m glad I can play Radial G without feeling ill, because it’s a thrilling and seriously challenging racer. Using boost, ramming other cars and hitting red track areas all drain your ship’s energy, so the key to a successful race is threading those obstacles while hitting the green boost pads littered across the map. Controls are as simple as an analog stick and acceleration button, although the devs plan to add weapons in an update down the road (Radial-G has already been out on Steam in Early Access for some time). Winning against tougher AI or human opponents—Radial-G s 16 player multiplayer, and the devs want to get that number up to 32—will require mastery of the tracks, staying on the inside of the tube as much as possible to shave off precious lap seconds.

Page 17 of 36
Page 17 of 36
Vanishing of Ethan Carter

Vanishing of Ethan Carter

Wes: Take an interesting and utterly gorgeous exploration game, stick it in VR with movement and looking mapped to a pair of analog sticks, and you have the recipe for an interesting and utterly gorgeous exploration game that makes you motion sick incredibly quickly. From every example I’ve seen, first-person movement tied to an analog stick is a terrible idea. VR has big unsolved challenges with locomotion, and until those are solved, games like Ethan Carter may be a poor fit for the format.

If it doesn't affect you negatively, you're all set, but otherwise only those with iron stomachs or the patience to try something nausea-inducing should play this in VR with a traditional control scheme. For now, better off on a monitor.

Page 18 of 36
Page 18 of 36
Vektron Revenge

Vektron Revenge

Wes: Imagine playing Geometry Wars 2’s Pacifism Mode with head tracking instead of an analog stick and you’ve got the basis for Vektron Revenge, an arcade throwback born out of a VR game jam. The whole thing looks like the inside of a Tron arcade cabinet. Your ship follows your head as you look around, firing out blasts in the four cardinal directions, and enemies come after you. As it turns out, keeping your head motions steady enough to weave in and out of waves of enemies is a hell of a challenge.

I can see myself chasing a leaderboard position for awhile, if only because I was so bad at Vektron’s Revenge at first. I want to prove I can be better at it. But I don’t see it having the same staying power as Geometry Wars for anyone but diehard score attackers.

Page 19 of 36
Page 19 of 36
VR Tennis Online

VR Tennis Online

Wes: One of the least satisfying VR games I’ve played. Being in VR didn’t seem to add anything to this arcadey tennis experience, which plays like a stiffer version of Mario Tennis. The characters can choose between some fun abilities, and there might be some depth here beyond the 20 minute session I had, but mostly it just made me want to play Windjammers in VR. Or Windjammers on an arcade cabinet. Just Windjammers.

Page 20 of 36
Page 20 of 36
Pinball FX2 VR

Pinball FX2 VR

Wes: I’ve never gotten into virtual pinball (well, at least not since Epic Games’s Android pinball shareware, which I played a *lot* on my 386). I love the real thing, but playing on a screen just can’t replicate the physicality of pinball. That’s still true of Pinball FX2 in VR, but it brings you so much closer to the table, it’s by far the best virtual take on pinball I’ve experienced. Using the Xbox controller’s triggers gives a satisfying for each shot, and playing in VR puts you right above the table, letting you see the details of the playing field and figure out where to aim.

This won’t turn you into a pinball fan, but if you already love pinball, it’s probably the best way to play pinball without a real machine handy.

Page 21 of 36
Page 21 of 36
Smashing the Battle

Smashing the Battle

Wes: An arcadey beat 'em up that made me wish I was playing Assault Android Cactus instead. The camera movement in Smashing the Battle made me a bit nauseous after 15 minutes of frenetic combat, and VR didn't add much to the hacking and slashing experience.

Page 22 of 36
Page 22 of 36
The Climb

The Climb

Wes: The name is literal here: a rock climbing game that has you scaling sheer cliff faces with a mix of vision and simple button inputs. You use your head to look where you want to trip, and separately control each hand to make an ascent. The sense of scale is unnerving if you look down, but I found the climbing unsatisfying without motion tracking on my hands. The Climb will Oculus Touch later this year, which I think will be the way to play.

Page 23 of 36
Page 23 of 36
Dragon Front (coming in spring)

Dragon Front (coming in spring)

Tim: “You should like this Tim, it’s a bit like Hearthstone” noted Wes, before smugly beating me at it (Wes note: I was pretty smug about it). The game does indeed have similarities with Blizzard’s wizard poker simulator, insofar as you draw cards each turn, spend mana to place creatures on the board or cast spells, and get a rising sense of unquenchable anger when the other guy plays a bunch of bullshit you feel completely incapable of dealing with. The core difference, though, is that the board is split into four lanes. Your minions advance down these towards the opponent’s fortress, which they’ll be able to damage provided there are no enemies in the way.

A card game might not seem the most obvious fit for VR, but surveying proceedings from the largely static camera above proved pleasing. As did interacting with the cards, and seeing a cool effect like your champion climb down from the fortress onto the board to start dispensing hurt. There’s little of the polish or likeability which Blizzard’s millions in development resource and deep lore bring though. The real test of Dragon Front will be how much depth there is to the deck building (each of which contains 30 cards, again as per Hearthstone).

Page 24 of 36
Page 24 of 36
Eagle Flight (coming in Fall)

Eagle Flight (coming in Fall)

Wes: Ubisoft’s first VR project is the kind of weird, personal little game you’d expect from the developer of Grow Home and Valiant Hearts, not the developer of Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry. But Ubisoft somehow encomes both of those extremes, and I’m glad to see a big name putting money and ion behind a VR project. Eagle Flight is a 3v3 multiplayer combat game with just a couple control buttons: speed up, slow down, and fire a piercing eagle scream. Flying is controlled with tilting your head, and like Radial-G it feels like it should make you throw up, but somehow it works just fine.

According to one of the game’s developers, a big part of Eagle Flight’s comfort comes from blacking out the edges of the screen as you turn and accelerate. Much of the vertigo in VR first-person movement is apparently tied to peripheral vision. Another trick: keeping the brain so engaged it doesn’t get sick.

Eagle Flight is a fast, intense game. In the mutltiplayer mode I played, each team of eagles raced to capture dead prey from one point on the map, then return it to the eagle nest while dodging the other team’s scream attacks. The battlefield is a beautiful cartoon representation of Paris, and you can fly right down into the city streets, between and through buildings if your head movements are precise and steady enough. Winding through alleys is thrilling, and Eagle Flight makes a great case for VR as a party experience. Every high-speed swoop under a bridge or through an open window was met with woops from the crowd observing my match.

Ubisoft is building out a full singleplayer campaign as well, but I think that will mostly be practice for the competitive multiplayer.

Page 25 of 36
Page 25 of 36
Edge of Nowhere (coming in spring)

Edge of Nowhere (coming in spring)

Tom: One of the earliest announced Oculus launch titles, Edge of Nowhere is a 3D platformer from Insomniac Games—makers of Spyro and the Ratchet and Clank series, so they know a thing or two about third-person platforming. Unlike those games, however, the demo I played was not so cartoony, set in a snowy, mountainous area infested with vaguely Lovecraftian horrors that seemed determined to hunt me down.

Last summer, Wes wrote about why 3D platformers could be one of VR’s best genres, and Edge of Nowhere made a strong argument to back that up. The platforming felt responsive, and looking down on my avatar in a virtual world somehow raised the stakes while jumping between icy rocks. They weren’t particularly difficult jumps, and in any other presentation might have felt a little bland, but the whole experience had more urgency when playing through a VR headset. In one scene I was being chased by monsters through an ice-cave and found myself physically turning around to look at the creatures chasing me—it was thrilling, but ultimately led to me running straight off a cliff. Still, turning around is I’ve never an option I’ve had in a platformer chase scene, and I’ve been in quite a few.

The world itself felt a little drab, a side-effect of placing your game in the middle of a snowstorm—and I imagine was somewhat affected by the demanding requirements of VR. When we get a chance to play the full version of Edge of Nowhere, I hope Insomniac will take us to more places than just mountaintops and crystal caves. The demo I played felt like it was designed to sell you on the concept of VR platforming. Now that I’m sold, I’m eager to see how much game lies behind that demo.

Page 26 of 36
Page 26 of 36
Rooms: The Unsolvable Puzzle

Rooms: The Unsolvable Puzzle

Tom: A puzzle game that launched a year ago on Steam, now coming to the Oculus Rift. Rooms takes the concept of the sliding number/picture puzzle and adds a small platforming element to it. Instead of simply trying to move the tiles to the right position, you are a character inside the puzzle and need to slide the paths to let you reach an exit.

Rooms doesn't make much use of the Rift's VR features, but does some fun things with 3D perspective. It's a clever puzzle game, but one fundamentally built for a single dimension, so developer HandMade Game has designed the environment around the puzzles to be visually appealing for the tech. The game is set in a giant, ever-shifting mansion, and the gaps behind each tile reveal a series of rooms endlessly stretching into the distance—sort of like looking into a hall of mirrors.

Rooms doesn't really need to be in VR, but HandMade did a nice job justifying its use. I didn't get a chance to play through many of the puzzles, but it's an interesting twist on a puzzle game that has infuriated me as a small plastic toy for longer than I've been playing video games at all. If nothing else, I'm happy to see well-crafted puzzle games could find a comfortable home in VR.

Page 27 of 36
Page 27 of 36
Damaged Core (coming in spring)

Damaged Core (coming in spring)

Wes: I haven't played Damaged Core since an early demo, when it was a pure sniping game. It's grown in complexity since then.

Tyler: Without having played it yet, I'm interested in Damaged Core mainly to see another way developers might approach VR movement. We've discovered that 'walking' with a keyboard or analog stick doesn't feel quite right. I didn't have a big problem with it when I played Half-Life 2 on the Rift DK1, but it can make people sick, so we're seeing a lot of games that either put you in control of a vehicle as a seated pilot or otherwise do the moving for you. Damaged Core, like Epic's Bullet Train demo, solves the problem with teleportation. But it's not one body dematerializing and appearing somewhere else: you're leaping between the bodies of your robot enemies. It's a creative solution and I'm keen to see how well it works, because these early experiments are going to influence a lot of games going forward.

Page 28 of 36
Page 28 of 36
Albino Lullaby

Albino Lullaby

A horror game makes even him shriek.

Page 29 of 36
Page 29 of 36
Audio Arena

Audio Arena

A game jam VR game we haven't tried yet, ported over from the GearVR. You can check out a trailer here. The most we can say is that it looks very relaxing. Try not to fall asleep with your headset on, though—we imagine that'd be a terrifying way to wake up.

Page 30 of 36
Page 30 of 36
Dead Secret

Dead Secret

A Gear VR mystery that places you at the scene of a murder. You'll probably want to solve it. Check out a trailer here. We haven't played it yet, but Deadly Premonition creator Swery apparently called it "bizarre," so that's a good sign.

Page 31 of 36
Page 31 of 36
Dreadhalls

Dreadhalls

The website for Dreadhalls says "You will wake up in a scarcely lit dungeon." From all the screenshots we've seen, that description is accurate. Here's a trailer for the stealth dungeon explorer. This is another we haven't played, but more evidence that VR developers really, really want to spook us.

Page 32 of 36
Page 32 of 36
Esper 2

Esper 2

A puzzle game with some strong voice talent behind it. This is another we haven't been able to try yet (as are the rest), but you can check out a trailer here.

Page 33 of 36
Page 33 of 36
Omega Agent

Omega Agent

A GearVR game that, quite naturally, puts you in a jetpack. Who doesn't want to be in a jetpack? Watch the jetting in action here.

Page 34 of 36
Page 34 of 36
Shufflepuck Cantina Deluxe VR

Shufflepuck Cantina Deluxe VR

Apparently VR shuffleboard is quite popular on Steam. Who knew? We'll give this one a try soon.

Page 35 of 36
Page 35 of 36
Windlands

Windlands

A grappling hook adventure game already on Steam, which we haven't had the opportunity to play.

Page 36 of 36
Page 36 of 36
PCGamer
PCGamer

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