The best VR games 2018: The games that make the most of your Oculus Rift, HTC Vive or PlayStation VR

Vaughn Highfield March 2, 2016

If you’ve picked up one of the best VR headsets around and now want a game to play on it, you might find yourself spoilt for choice.

That’s because for the past few years, since VR has become more popular as a way of playing games, more developers have started realising the potential it brings. While this means there are loads of amazing experiences and games out there, it also means there are many that may be a waste of money.

That’s why we’ve put together this list of the best VR games available to buy on the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Gear VR, PlayStation VR and Google’s Daydream View headset.

Best VR games on Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and PlayStation VR

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

PlayStation VR (£49.99)

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard harks back to the series’ glory days, letting you explore a twisted mansion full of horrors, backtracking through explored environments only to find new threats. The major difference with this Resident Evil is its switch to a first-person view. Call it an Outlast rip-off if you will, but that’s a disservice to Capcom’s long-running horror series. It’s intense even before you decide to don your PlayStation VR and immerse yourself in its world.

Lone Echo

Oculus Rift (£29.99)

Launching as the first room-scale Oculus Rift title, Lone Echo tells the story of an advanced robotic assistant tasked with looking after a space station while conducting scientific research. One thing leads to another – chiefly a space anomaly occurs and ruins everything – and it’s down to you to investigate what’s gone wrong. Not only is it an excellent Rift-exclusive, but its use of zero-gravity gameplay and stunning visuals make Ready At Dawn’s first major VR title an absolute joy to play. It’s not a short-lived experience either, this is a meaty game in its own right.

Elite Dangerous

Oculus Rift and HTC Vive (from £19.99)

Designed to be the biggest space simulation in history, Frontier’s Elite: Dangerous gives you free reign in a universe of 400 billion star systems. Around 150,000 are actually modelled on real-world astronomical data, with the rest algorithmically generated using current known scientific models. It’s a gargantuan project and, for anyone who absolutely dreams of exploring space, it’s the closest thing you’ll ever get to being there. It may not have been designed as a VR title from the outset, but Frontier has done more than simply patch it in, they’ve optimised and built Elite: Dangerous up to be one of the best VR games ever made.

L.A. Noire: The VR Case Files

HTC Vive (£24.99)

Rockstar Games has been staying quiet about its VR projects, even though everyone wants a VR GTA V to emerge. Now though, it’s finally brought L.A. Noire to VR with L.A. Noire: The VR Case Files and it’s absolutely impeccable to boot. Okay, so there are some shortcomings, namely that it isn’t the entirity of L.A. Noire in VR, just some select cases, but it’s still more than worth the investment if you want to really see what a full VR game experience from Rockstar could look like. Heck, it’s worth it just to play around like these guys do in the video below.

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes

PlayStation VR (£11.99), Oculus Rift and HTC Vive (£10.99)

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes turns the concept of isolation in VR completely on its head. This multiplayer game requires one person to wear the VR headset defusing a bomb while others hurriedly flick through a physical bomb-defusal manual trying to help. It’s an odd concept to wrap your head around, but once the bomb-defusal cogs are in motion, you can’t help but get sucked in.

Sparc

PlayStation VR (£24.99)

Having started as a prototype for a virtual-reality sport, Sparc has finally come together as a PlayStation VR exclusive (for now, at least). Playing like something right out of Tron, Sparc tasks you with taking out your opponent with a bouncing flying disk. You can throw with one hand, and use your other to block and rebound your opponent’s disk. It has a great ebb and flow to it, once you adjust to the odd sensation of playing against another human being in VR, and genuinely deserves to become more than just an interesting VR project from the creators of EVE: Online.

Robo Recall

Oculus Rift (£22.99)

Free with every pair of Oculus Touch controllers, Robo Recall is absolutely excellent at placing power in your hands. Robots have gone crazy and it’s your job to “recall” them by shooting them in the head, tearing their arms off and using it to beat them to pieces or simply grabbing bullets from the air and throwing them right back at your attacker. It’s absolutely crazy, but you won’t play any other VR game that makes you feel like such a badass.

Best VR games on Gear VR and Daydream VR

Augmented Empire

Gear VR (£7.99)

Set in a neon-soaked neo-noir future, Augmented Empire is an intriguing turn-based strategy game with a contextual one-button approach to gameplay. Playing in a similar way to Xcom: Enemy Unknown, stages take place on a diorama-like setting and battles occur in the same environments used for storytelling. It’s an intriguing approach to design and one that works wonderfully as it allows for immersive play without any of the discomforts associated with long VR gameplay sessions.

Gunjack 2: End of Shift

Daydream (£12.99)

EVE: Gunjack was a mobile VR arcade experiment developed by CCP games as a way to test the potential for the likes of Gear VR and Google Daydream. Gunjack 2: End of Shift evolves upon the original’s premise of being a gun operator on a huge spaceship. It’s still great fun to play and, if you’ve not got access to Google Daydream, it’s still worth picking up the prequel.

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes

Daydream and Gear VR (£7.99)

Working in exactly the same way as on PlayStation VR, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes takes the multiplayer-focused VR chaos to your mobile. It’s just as superb, and can now be taken absolutely anywhere!

Damnfields

Daydream and Gear VR (Free)

Be prepared to swear and get very frustrated. Damnfields is a great free puzzle-cum-platformer where you simply have to guide a dot through a tight and twisty series of levels using nothing but your gaze. Think of it as a wire-test game for your head.

Land’s End

Gear VR (£4.49)

From the creators of the brilliant and beautiful Escher-esque puzzler Monument Valley, Land’s End is a story-driven puzzler that encourages you to explore your environment to solve its secrets. Ustwo Games’ Land’s End takes place in a dreamlike barren landscape and, to help deal with nausea, it only requires your gaze to solve puzzles and move around your environment. It may sound rather obtuse but trust us, Land’s End is the artistic puzzle game your Gear VR is crying out for.

Twilight Pioneers

Daydream (Free)

On paper, Twilight Pioneers sounds like it just can’t work in VR. It’s a first-person action RPG where you fight one-on-one with big bosses and navigate your way around the environment through teleportation. Oh, and it’s only available on Daydream. In reality, however, it’s great fun. You might feel a bit disoriented at first, but for a free VR game, there’s plenty of polish here to make it a worthwhile addition to your VR library.

Untethered

Daydream (£4.59)

Untethered is a tough title to categorise. Think of it less like an adventure game and more like a radio play that’s taking place around you. Using your own voice, and a laser pointer to interact with objects, you unravel the mystery of what’s happening within the confines of a sleepy coastal town in Oregon. It’s a great showcase for what can be done with VR for storytelling purposes, even if voice recognition currently only recognises English.