The most important part of virtual reality has programs that will take full advantage of what the headset is capable of. While not all storefronts have the games players are looking for, there are plenty of fantastic VR titles for each headsets list. However, with how new VR is, it’s difficult for players to find a game that’s going to be worth purchasing. These games will provide players with some of the most entertaining and intuitive titles and show players what virtual reality is about. Whether you’re completely new to VR or a veteran who’s looking for a second opinion on a title everyone’s raving about, these are the best VR games. 

PlayStation has some of the best console games. While the company knows how to make games for the flatscreen, they’re more than capable of delivering exclusive content for virtual reality and taking control of the limitations of the PSVR to deliver fantastic experiences for their PSVR headset. 

Price: $19.99

A champion of the platformer genre, PlayStation created a single 3D platformer built for VR with the release of Astro Bot: Rescue Mission. Playing a massive robot, the player controls Captain Astro after an alien steals his spaceship’s VR headset. 

While similar to Crash Bandicoot in level design, Astrobot has players going up, down, behind, and around in all directions while Astro tries to find the rest of his crew strewn across space, all while facing bosses and more with their style and flair. The player also takes direct control of the environment by using many gadgets attached to the in-game controller, which can help Astro conquer challenges and puzzles throughout his journey. With a fun and exciting adventure, huge scale of characters, and plenty of charm, Astro Bot Rescue Mission is a perfect beginner title. The game can be played without any form of motion sickness and is enjoyable for players of all ages. 

Price: $39.99

Stepping away from the cutesy 3D platformer is Blood & Truth, a VR action game that puts players in elite soldier Ryan Marks’s shoes. Returning home from duty, the soldier is thrown into a war between his family and a criminal empire. However, the one thing the enemy doesn’t expect is Ryan. Being a mix of John Wick and Rail shooter games like Time Crisis, players will run, jump and fight their way through crime-ridden London, picking up weapons, shooting bad guys, and breaking through walls and blockbuster worthy stunts if they want to win the war that’s been brought against their family.  

While a decently sized game, the Blood & Truth content also continues with challenges that’ll test the marksmanship of players, as well as their reflexes. 

Price: $39.99

PlayStation’s most recent VR title is an Iron Man game with players taking control of the Avenger in a singular story following Tony Stark after he quits making weapons to pursue being Iron Man. However, he has to fight one of his most dangerous foes, Ghost—a hacker who’s tormenting him through the wrongdoings of his past. 

The game will have players flying through the world, being one of the few games on the PSVR to tackle the 180-degree tracking issue, making the flying feel fun and natural. Action sequences run rampantly through the game, letting players feel like the iron-clad hero while flying through the city. Dialogue options can be made in the game that change Tony’s response, making for better immersion with the player. A Progression system is also available for the player to use, allowing them to upgrade Tony’s Suit and paint job, making the Iron man they want to fly around as. With the setting being within the Marvel comic’s universe, the game also allows for more easter eggs to other Marvel titles, without a need to adhere to Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe.

While the game isn’t perfect, it helps set the bar that players expect from superhero branded games and comes with more than enough excitement for a game priced under the regular $60 price tag. The game is more of an experienced player’s game, meaning that motion sickness could be something that a small handful of inexperienced players have. However, those who have put enough time into the headset shouldn’t have an issue with the game’s flying and robust movement system. 

Price: $19.99

Farpoint is a well-made and visually stunning VR title that puts players in the hands of an astronaut who’s stranded on another planet with their two crewmates. After a wormhole causes the player and their two crewmates to be transported to a desolate planet, they find themselves attempting to uncover their friends’ mystery and find a way off the planet. While the story is good and the gameplay is interesting, Farpoint is meant for one of PSVR’s best accessories, the aim controller. 

Being PlayStation’s take on the evolution of the light gun, the aim controller is a gun-shaped controller used in some of their titles, Farpoint being the first. Players can aim down the sights, use the dual analog sticks to move around freely, aim around corners, and switch weapons by moving the controller above their shoulder. Making for a concise and accurate shooting experience, the aim controller will run players about $80 as it comes bundled with PlayStation’s other premier FPS title, Firewall: Zero Hour. 

However, Farpoint is one of the best VR FPS titles on the PSVR. It delivers a rich story, entertaining gameplay, and an intuitive and explainable gameplay system that keeps immersion continuous and delivers some of the best VR shooting that the platform has seen due to its uniquely designed and beautiful controller. 

While not all games are made for every platform, some of these games mentioned next are for all systems, meaning that players on PC, Quest, and PS can enjoy the same games together, regardless of what console they play on. However, not all games are created equal. Some are for the PC, possibly due to PlayStation’s business or otherwise. 

Price: Free

Platform: PC, Quest, PSVR

The social hub to rival games like VRChat, players will find themselves enjoying everything Rec Room has to offer. While not as robust as VRChat, where players can design whatever they want, Rec Room prides itself on bringing that idea into the game world by letting players design their levels inside the game rather than hosting their worlds. 

Players can enjoy everything from platforming challenges to murder mysteries. However, the player base of Rec Room isn’t the only one making content for the game. The Rec Room developers have been making their content over the years, and since 2017, they have continuously updated the game. Players can find themselves enjoying a myriad of rooms and challenges in the game world. From a battle royale on a campground with other players to traversing a pirate world fighting off skeletons to completing a Castlevania-styled quest with a whip that can destroy enemies, the possibilities of this title are nearly endless. With the game growing constantly, players can always have something to do in the game, no matter what platform they’re playing on!

Price: $24.99

Platform: PC, PSVR, Quest

The joy of flying through space with friends is coming true. While not a new game, this game is perfect for those who are into co-op games and Star Trek. Star Trek: Bridge Crew puts players in ships’ crew from across the fleet, letting the players go on missions and flying around the many systems in the galaxy, answering the calls of distress from some of the other ships. With one player taking the role of captain, another steering the ship and engaging warps, another playing the role of engineer, and one playing gunner and scanner, the team of four move their way through missions, every move feeling like an episode of Star Trek, with the players narrowly escaping by the end of it. 

With the DLC including content and missions from Star Trek: The Next Generation, players find themselves experiencing the golden age of Star Trek with their very own eyes while taking orders or giving orders to their fellow players. All while making on-the-fly decisions to determine the fate of the crew aboard the ship. With Ubisoft behind the wheel of this game, players can complete missions and explore the galaxy without worrying about what console they reside on. The game is playable online between PC, Quest, and PSVR, making the game fun for everyone, no matter the platform. Even though this is a licensed Star Trek game, the title is fun for players who don’t know anything about the series, and fun for those who know everything, as the main goal o the game is pure teamwork between members of the ship. 

Price: Free

Platform: PC, Quest

While this isn’t a game available on PSVR, this is one of the reasons that players have been picking up virtual reality headsets since 2017. VRChat is a lot of things, and one of those things is fun. VRC prides itself on full creator freedom, letting players choose to be whoever they want, whenever they want, as well as being able to make whatever they want in their worlds. However, you might need some coding knowledge if you want to make your VR paradise. No manner of copyright infringement will stop the game from coming down. The players themselves upload the avatars onto the service, which means that any character is fair game for the wonderful world of VRChat.

VRChat also recently updated to running their worlds on Udon, a coding script inside of unity that allows for games to be programmed into the worlds easier than before, making VRChat more like games rather than games environments. This caused a massive boom in in-game worlds on VRChat. It has evolved from a social hub to talk with other like-minded VR enthusiasts to a program where players can engage in karaoke. It also turned into a version of Among Us in VR, a fully playable 6-star version of Bomb-Omb battlefield from Mario 64, and even a version of Home Run Contest from Smash Brothers. 

The possibilities of what can be experienced in VRChat are endless and are ever-expanding, with more worlds added every day. With more content always coming down the pipeline and VRChat being constantly updated, it’s no surprise that players are making their way onto the platform to experience what the game has to offer, as well as make some unlikely friends along the way. 

However, the Quest version of VRChat is held back massively if being played on the headset alone. Some of the worlds are too intensive for the headset and will be unable to be accessed by the guest user. This goes for models of the characters, too, seeing that some of the models are too high quality for the players, making them unable to see what some players might look like. VRC has tried to remedy this by letting the PC players pick their Quest model, which can fix this issue sometimes. Still, it proves to be a problem for PC players trying to interact with Quest users. Regardless, VRChat is the go-to social hub in VR, and anyone who’s playing on PCVR or Quest should at least try to play the game once, as weird as the game looks from the outside. With all the additions and changes to the game, it’s becoming more mainstream and has serious competition with games like Rec Room. 

Price: $19.99

Platform: PC

Blade & Sorcery is the game for players who want to experience some of the most satisfying combat. Boasting a hefty amount of weapons and environments, taking on legions of enemies with slick combat moves and a bullet-time slowdown function makes you feel like a sword-swinging, shield-bashing master. The game may still be in early access, but the game is coming along fantastic, and for a $20 entry fee, it has a lot of promise.

Currently, the game is in a sandbox mode of sorts, letting the player pick any weapon they want before deciding to take on wave after wave of enemies. However, the game shines in its physics engine. This allows for players to take on the same enemies with as much force as they want. From kicking enemies into spikes in the gladiator ring to throwing them off the citadel bridge, jumping from a ledge, and landing on them with their knives, the combat scenarios are endless in the game, making it feel infinite possibilities in the world. 

However, the game shines even more with the legion of custom mod support for the game. One such collection is “The Outer Rim,” which adds locations from the Star Wars universe to the in-game map and includes an astounding amount of light sabers and blasters from the entire Star Wars Lineage, as well as the ability to customize them all to your liking. The mods for Blade and Sorcery are also constantly being updated and include weapons from throughout time, as well as some of gaming’s most iconic weapons imaginable. Blade and Sorcery is the go-to game for melee combat on PCVR and has proven to be one game players can get a kick out of. 

Price: $29.99

Platform: PC

Stress Level Zero is one of the many indie companies in the VR landscape that’s been making strides in the community. After the success of their narrative-driven title Duck Season, they’ve been hard at work on a new title named Boneworks. In the heavy physics-based VR FPS game, the player takes control of an unnamed character. The player works his way through the many levels to understand the mystery of the digital world he’s in, complete physics puzzles, and deal with denizens of the virtual city. 

This game shines with the mechanics that the player has when playing the game. For one, the game isn’t like regular VR titles where the character can phase through objects. A player is a physical object in the world, and they’ll be able to brush up and interact with pretty much everything on the level, meaning that everything on the level is interactable. When some of the enemies aren’t pursuing the player they’ll encounter in the world, they’ll be climbing up ledges and jumping across gaps with the same weight and momentum as they would in real life. However, they can also use the environment and weapons around them to make things easier, like using a crowbar to grab a ledge that’s just out of reach or using a fence as a makeshift ramp. 

Although combat is involved in the game, it’s something else, as the weapons are precise and realistic, making the player feel like they’re fighting for their life in this virtual landscape. Players will have to slide in magazines and rack bullets into the chambers to fight their way through the world. Taking some notes from Half-Life, the enemies can be anything from mindless humanoids to combine looking holograms on rotating spheres to evil headcrab like VR headsets that, when attached to you, will put you inside a virtual reality inside the game. This creates virtual reality inception until you pull them off your head and put an end to them. 

The game also includes an arena mode where combat against these enemies is graded and can be done with a handful of new weapons. If playing around with the physics sounds fun, multiple secret sandbox modes can come across if they keep their eyes open. 

Price: $59.99 or free with a Valve Index purchase

Platform: SteamVR

This game is a must-have for VR users on Steam. While you can play it on the Oculus Quest through Air Link or the Rift S through Steam VR, the game should be experienced through the Valve Index. The game was made for Valve’s headset. With Source 2 being the main force behind this new title, not only does it spell the beginning of a new era for VR at Valve, but a new leg for the thought to be defunct Half-Life series. 

The story takes place 19 years before the events of Half-Life 2: Episode 2. If you haven’t experienced a Half-Life game before Alyx, this would be a good time to play through them, as they spoil events in the other Half-Life games. Players will take control of Alyx for a change instead of controlling Gordon Freeman. As Alyx works her way through city 17, they’ll be stopped by the Combine and forced on an adventure to find their father Eli Vance and uncover a secret the Combine wanted to be hidden. 

With the Index at the forefront of this title, Valve has worked tirelessly to develop a game that will captivate the player from a story standpoint and a technical standpoint in virtual reality, making the game work for all headsets well as the Index. The functionality of the game may be fantastic, but the gameplay of Half-Life Alyx is also phenomenal. It was built from the ground up with single-handed gunplay in mind. The player will be set to complete difficult brain teasers while fighting against enemies coming behind them, making for claustrophobic and intense gameplay as is. And while Alyx may be the main character, the first VR entry in the Half-Life series hasn’t lost the spirit the game has had since the beginning.

There’s no shortage of titles on all VR platforms. While some remain exclusive to other storefronts and hardware, it goes without saying that there are games for every type of VR user out there, whether it’s playing online with friends or playing alone, experiencing amazing and intense stories. With the possibility of Netflix making a push towards VR, more content will be coming soon.