These are the best games available on the Oculus Quest 2

Use your bow as a weapon and a shield as you fight waves of hostile robots in your quest to reclaim the world for humanity.

Espire 1: VR Operative

Step into the shoes of your favorite secret agent or assassin

Whether your stealth shooter game of choice is Splinter Cell, Hitman, or something else, this FPS stealth shooter will scratch that VR itch. Using various gadgets and weapons, you’ll climb up walls to avoid security cameras, tranquilize guards, tell them to “Freeze!” using the Quest 2’s integrated mic, hide bodies before they’re spotted, or go nuts with your weapons once an alert is called.

Espire 1: VR Operative has six single-player missions and no multiplayer or challenge modes — and the devs have said they have no plans for new content modes. Considering the fairly high price tag, you’ll only get your money’s worth, so to speak, if you like playing and replaying levels, finding new ways to take out or sneak past enemies, and competing to beat other players’ high scores. Thankfully, there’s a ton of gadgets and weapons that’ll add enough variety for fans of the stealth genre.

On the Quest 2, the game has some graphical enhancements to bring it closer to the PSVR port in visuals, and we appreciate the comfort settings that make moving around in VR feel less nauseating. But there remain some bugs and issues with the AI detection that can lead to frustrating moments where you’ll say, “How the heck was I spotted?!” If you’re not a stealth fan, in particular, Espire 1 may be more miss than hit for you. —Michael Hicks

Espire 1: VR Operative for Quest 2

Go through your stealth VR training and see if it’ll turn you into the next Solid Snake or Sam Fisher.

Phantom: Covert Ops

A more stationary, but also more polished, stealth shooter

The boat portions of video games are generally the worst (hi there, Half-Life 2), so nDreams making an entire game out of stealth kayaking through enemy territory was a bold choice. Thankfully, it mostly pays off. You must strategically paddle through maps, keep an eye out for enemies, and choose whether to sneak past them, shoot objects to distract and blind them, or take them out and potentially bring more enemies into play.

The campaign mode is fun but short at around five hours, as you infiltrate the region of an ex-Soviet general’s forces to take out high-value targets without getting spotted. The graphics look great, specially optimized for the Quest 2, though people prone to nausea may struggle when you use the “sharp turn” button. You’ll also appreciate the excellent voice acting in what would otherwise be a silent trek. You can revisit levels to find hidden Easter eggs or go for speedrun leaderboard times.

The Challenge Packs add Game Shark-like effects to the core gameplay, adding zany replayability to the more serious campaign. Since headshots are so key to gameplay, enemies are given tiny, giant, or exploding heads. It’s a stealth game that you’ll want to keep revisiting! —Michael Hicks

Phantom: Covert Ops

Paddle your way past Russian troops with all the weapons you need at your feet. It’s an enjoyable single-player stealth shooter with plenty of post-game content.

Resident Evil 4

Somehow, this third-person game plays better ported to first-person

I struggled whether to categorize this as action, horror, or shooter, because it works so well in all three categories. Resident Evil 4 masterfully converted the franchise from survival horror to become more action-packed (before 5 and 6 took things too far), but Resident Evil 4 VR puts you in Leon’s shoes, so when Ganados charge you with tentacles and chainsaws it feels much more frightening than ever before. In the end, it’s thanks to the new motion-control combat that shooting waves of foes feels incredibly satisfying, making VR the definitive way to play the classic game.

Whatever genre it fits, Resident Evil remains a blast to play all these years later. Armature Studios converted it to first-person, so you can grab weapons, healing herbs, grenades, or your combat knife without having to pull up a menu, making the gameplay more seamless than ever. New spatial audio warns you when enemies are approaching from out of sight. You pick up loot and ammo yourself, as well as reload your weapons as quickly as possible while enemies bear down on you. Even your companion, Ashley, received an AI upgrade for this revamped VR port.

Its graphics look a bit dated, but this benefits the game because it doesn’t take up too much hard drive space while offering dozens of hours of gameplay. Whether you’re a fan of the classic game or haven’t experienced it before, Resident Evil 4 works impressively well in virtual reality. —Michael Hicks

Resident Evil 4 VR

As a secret service agent on assignment in Europe, your task is to rescue the president’s daughter from a mysterious cult. But things quickly get far more complicated — and deadlier — than you could ever have imagined.

Robo Recall: Unplugged

Epic Games’ other 2017 game isn’t quite Fortnite-quality, but it’s pretty damn fun

Robo Recall: Unplugged shares a premise with Apex Construct but very little else. It’s a fast-paced, violent, comical shooter made by Epic Games that is less about story (though it does have one) and more about destroying robots and having a blast doing it. The game has so many varied attack options that you’ll feel super powerful and right in the action.

Armed with a pistol, a revolver, a shotgun, and a plasma rifle, you can easily blast apart baddies however you choose — and sometimes it’s more fun to ignore your guns altogether. You can tear robots apart, deflect bullets, grab enemies and point their weapons at other enemies and other creative destructive techniques. Certain levels have bonus objectives that give you higher scores if you kill robots in certain ways, so you have an incentive to replay levels and top your past performance.

There are positives and negatives to the Unplugged version of Robo Recall. Epic Games had to severely limit the graphics to port the game to the Quest, but aggressively fighting robots is more fun when you’re untethered from your PC. While the game may look slightly better on the Quest 2, we don’t have any news on an enhanced patch to the game, which still runs on version 1.0 for now. —Michael Hicks

Robo Recall: Unplugged

Defective, violent robots are trying to overthrow humanity. As a Recaller, you must destroy them all by any means necessary. A robot apocalypse has never been this fun!

Space Pirate Trainer DX

The most fun arcadey VR shooter available, even if you’re not really a pirate

Space Pirate Trainer is a fast-paced arena shooter styled after an 80s arcade cabinet, and it’ll give you a serious workout without ever feeling like work. Colorful enemies swarm in the sky around you, so pick up a gun and shoot them as fast as you can. Dual-wield pistols and switch between attack types to wreck enemies that much faster, or use a shield in your off-hand and reflect lasers at them while shooting from behind cover. It launched in 2016 but got a graphical boost for the Quest 2.

There’s no story to be found here, only more and more enemies that appear from a wide arc to your front, sides, or top, plus the occasional mini-boss. While there are different modes, these only add or remove perks, such as healing you between rounds or removing the auto-slow motion-triggered when a laser gets close. The latter perk temporarily turns Space Pirate Trainer into the Matrix meets SUPERHOT, encouraging you to contort your body to avoid damage. Some players ignore the shield and rely entirely on their reflexes to improve their scores.

We’re incredibly excited for the new “DX” expansion, launching for free on September 9. In the new Versus mode, every enemy you kill appears in your opponent’s arena, and vice versa — adding some tension and variety to the single-player experience. And if you happen to have access to a 32-foot-by-32-foot playspace, the Arena mode uses a massive Guardian space to mix dueling with hide-and-seek against a drone or human opponent.

Space Pirate Trainer DX

More and more enemies fly at you in waves, and you must aim on the fly to shoot them down while blocking or dodging their attacks. This is one of the most popular Quest 2 games today!

SUPERHOT

It’s like the first time you saw The Matrix, but you’re Neo

Chances are, if you’re a gamer who loves first-person shooters, you’ve probably played one of the two SUPERHOT games. Our SUPERHOT: Mind Control Delete review conveyed just how much better the SUPERHOT formula is with the replayability of a roguelike, but if you thought that was amazing, you wouldn’t believe what SUPERHOT is like in VR. This isn’t just some ordinary shooter in VR; it’s a game that’s been redesigned from the ground up with VR in mind, all while utilizing a concept that’s wholly unique to SUPERHOT.

SUPERHOT VR takes place in the dungeon-like computer room of a hacker — you — who utilizes floppies and a VR headset to hack into some obfuscated system. While it’s not directly explained, the story looks to be a direct extension of what you’ll experience in other SUPERHOT games, and, indeed, the developers consider this game the second in the SUPERHOT series (and the fourth may be in VR, as well).

When you play it, you immediately understand what physical presence can lend to a concept like SUPERHOT. Sure, the base mechanics are the same — time moves when you move, so choose your movements wisely — but extending this concept to your actual body is what makes all the difference. When an enemy shoots at you, you can completely freeze time to make your next strategic move by simply not moving your arms. This doesn’t just make you feel like Neo from The Matrix; it makes you feel utterly invincible.

There’s nothing quite like mastering the ability to toss weapons to the next story area, only to catch them mid-air and take out enemies in an unexpected way. It’s truly super hot — and super required to play if you’ve got an Oculus Quest 2. —Nick Sutrich

SUPERHOT (Quest 2)

When you stop moving, time stops moving. Use that tactic to achieve greatness, the likes of which you could never before have imagined in this unique first-person shooter.

The Best Music and Rhythm VR Games

The best Oculus Quest 2 games

Music and rhythm VR games are probably the best for both virtual beginners and VR experts. They’re often bright, flashy games with catchy music and simple gameplay. You often just have to point or swipe your controllers at bright objects flying towards you quickly and accurately. As you improve your personal rhythm and up the difficulty, you’ll slowly get more and more of a tough workout while you’re distracted by the fun time you’re having! Here are the best music and rhythm VR games for the Oculus Quest 2.

Audica

Giving target practice a whole new name (and a theme song)

When Audica was first announced in early 2019, my first thought was, “Sweet! Beat Saber with guns!” Turns out, that’s not a really accurate description, as it stands wholly on its own as a game that defines the “rhythm shooter” genre. After all, developer Harmonix is responsible for creating Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Dance Central, and many more music games.

So what makes Audica so good? Think of it as the ultimate target practice game, but one where the targets appear to the beat of dozens of killer songs. Watching the trailer above will give you a cursory glance at just how badass playing Audica will make you feel. That’s particularly true of the hardest two difficulty levels, which will challenge not just your speed and your aim, but also your rhythm and your ability to multitask like never before.

The one downside is that Audica hasn’t gotten any new official songs in over a year. Luckily, it’s similar enough to Osu!, a rhythm game on PC, that somebody made a mod that converts Osu songs to Audica with no need to modify anything. —Nick Sutrich

Audica

Audica’s pumping soundtrack will get your pulse pounding while you shoot targets to the beat, all while feeling like the most badass gunslinger ever.

Beat Saber

It’s a VR icon for a reason

Beat Saber hardly needs an introduction. It’s become a pop culture icon the way no other VR game can even claim, boasting sales numbers and user install bases that most VR developers can only dream of. The game receives regular updates and new songs, including free song updates and tons of DLC packs from the likes of Imagine Dragons, BTS, and Skrillex, as well as plenty of original music.

The addictive block-slicing gameplay will have you coming back again and again until you, quite literally, can’t move your arms. There’s even a way to add custom songs to Beat Saber if you’re willing to do a little bit of legwork — something that will pay off when you’ve all of a sudden unlocked the path to thousands upon thousands of new songs for the game.

I remember the first time I saw the original Beat Saber trailer over three years ago. Holding ~~lightsabers~~ laser swords and slicing blocks to the beat of a song, all in VR? Talk about a dream come true. Little did I know what simply looked like a ton of fun would become the defining reason that so many people would jump into VR. Beat Saber is for anyone and everyone, with skill levels and songs to please all sorts. If this one isn’t already in your library, fix that mistake this instant. —Nick Sutrich

Beat Saber

Beat Saber is one of the most iconic music games of all time and one of the best ways to get an incredible workout at home in VR.

Pistol Whip

For all the John Wicks out there

From the moment the first trailer dropped for Pistol Whip, I was fully on board. John Wick in VR? What’s not to love about that?

It’s a simple concept, really: pull the trigger in time to the beat. Of course, problems arise when the bad guys shoot back, and pillars block your way, so the game fast becomes an aerobic exercise of side lunges, squats, and other shenanigans as you fight to stay alive. When you first start playing, the rhythm part of the game is hard to get into, but as you get used to the enemies’ movement, you will start to hit some big scores.

Since launch, we’ve seen two new campaign expansions: the futuristic Pistol Whip 2089 and the Old West Pistol Whip: Smoke and Thunder. Both are rather short story-wise but add new guns and varied challenges. And the new Styles mode adds a massive amount of variety with challenging modifiers to old missions, like beating all the enemies without guns. And each modified mission has its own leaderboard so that you can compete against other players worldwide with your favorite settings.

All in all, Pistol Whip is a fantastic game that truly shines on the Oculus Quest 2. The freedom to duck and weave without the constant concern for wires is very freeing, and the art style suits the power limitations of the Quest perfectly. I never feel sick playing, and there is never any frame rate slowdown, no matter how hectic it gets. If I could only play one game on the Quest 2 for the rest of time, it would be Pistol Whip. —James Bricknell

Pistol Whip

In this rhythmic shooter, you shoot, dodge, and dance your way through levels while feeling like you’re in an action movie.

Rez Infinite

A 20-year-old game that turned out to be perfect for VR

Android Central’s team has been a fan of this game for so long that our original Rez Infinite review was for the Google Daydream. Originally a 2001 Dreamcast game, this game has been refreshed for new consoles repeatedly before finding its true calling in VR. This port reuses the same five levels from the original with updated graphics while adding a new Area X level that lets you freely explore the world, built specifically for VR.

This musical rail shooter is more of a relaxing, atmospheric game than most of our other rhythm picks, but that doesn’t make experiencing it any less powerful. Over the course of a few hours, the electronic soundtrack gets increasingly intense, and the screen gets filled with color and explosions as you shoot more and more enemies — with the music reacting to your shots.

Launching on the same day as the Quest 2 itself, Rez Infinite takes full advantage of the headset’s power and looks marvelous despite being an “old” game. Just make sure you understand this game isn’t like Beat Saber and its imitators: It’s a transformative VR experience that will last you a few hours in the main campaign, plus more time in Area X, but it doesn’t necessarily have replay value. —Michael Hicks

Rez Infinite

You’re a hacker diving into cyberspace to fight off viruses and wake up a superpowered AI, Eden, to help an overpopulated world survive. Plot aside, you’re there to drift through space and experience incredible sights and sounds.

Synth Riders

Beat Saber’s rhythm rival gives you a different kind of workout

You can’t help but compare Synth Riders to Beat Saber. Both games have you swipe the Touch controllers at colorful objects to the beat of a large original soundtrack, plus new DLC packs from famous bands. Each song has different difficulty levels, so you can challenge yourself once you master the basics. You must not only move your controllers to the right spots, but also move your whole body to dodge obstacles, giving yourself a whole-body workout.

Don’t think of Synth Riders as just a Beat Saber clone. BS is all about swiping your controllers like sabers, faster and faster on harder difficulties. Synth Riders’ gameplay is more of a dance, with the game guiding your arms into constant circular motions that make you bob, weave, and turn in circles. It lets you get into a more natural rhythm and lose yourself in the music instead of violently slicing to the beat.

Synth Riders has a dedicated community, thanks in part to its cross-platform multiplayer and its active dev team. You can regularly find other people to compete against in real-time for different songs or join the weekly Saturday Synth Fever dance party. Where other Quest 2 games feel like their devs have already moved on to other things, Synth Riders is one you can count on to get constant improvements and new songs. —Michael Hicks

Synth Riders

Get ready to sweat and have fun doing it. Synth Riders is one of our favorites across different genres and is great for staying active while stuck indoors.

Thumper

Powerful rhythm action you can enjoy while seated

Most rhythm games punish you for missing the beat, shaming you into trying to do better. Thumper takes a different approach, offering lethal consequences if you can’t keep up. You are a tiny beetle rushing towards a series of colorful eldritch abominations intent on destroying you. Save yourself with well-timed button presses and stick movements.

Thumper’s graphics are dauntingly beautiful, especially on the Quest 2. You can play Thumper on non-VR platforms, but the “rhythm violence” gameplay is more fun while wearing a headset and feeling just as small and vulnerable as the beetle. You’ll press buttons at key points to send attacks at your massive foes, dodge obstacles, survive sharp turns, and so on. The rhythm controls make sense within the context of the game, as opposed to just being magical floating blocks.

The original soundtrack is seriously catchy and will make you want to replay levels — as will trying to get S rank on all levels and beat the game on Play+ mode, in which just two mistakes will kill you. This game still doesn’t have quite the replay value of something like Beat Saber, but it’s a powerful and challenging experience that doesn’t overstay its welcome. —Michael Hicks

Thumper VR

You’d best have great rhythm if you want to survive. Sail through strange, disturbing worlds and match the button prompts to survive. This is the rare rhythm game that’s meant to be played comfortably while seated.

The Best VR Exercise Games

The best Oculus Quest 2 games

According to the Virtual Reality Institute of Health and Exercise, Beat Saber players have burned over 4.6 billion calories since the game launched, probably without even noticing. VR games have a real scientific advantage to exercise because the total visual distraction and spatial audio combine to keep your mind too occupied to notice how hard it’s working. While any random VR game can get you sweating, these are the best Oculus Quest 2 games that give you a real workout for people that want to stay fit without stepping outdoors.

Creed: Rise to Glory

Super Punch Out meets Rocky in VR

Creed: Rise to Glory strikes the sweet spot between the more realistic Thrill of the Fight and the cartoonish Knockout League. As the eponymous boxing phenom played by Michael B. Jordan, you’ll enjoy a short campaign where you take on opponents with different skill sets and techniques as you rise to the top. The campaign is relatively short at just a few hours of hard-punching, but you can follow it up with freeplay bouts or PvP matches against online opponents.

We tested our original Creed: Rise to Glory review on the PSVR and Oculus Rift, but the core mechanics that we loved remain unchanged for the portable version. You’re guided by Rocky Balboa himself as you learn boxing techniques and wear out your arms on a punching bag, then step into the ring. Unlike games where you just swipe your controllers wildly, this game has a stamina meter that will tire out your character if you throw too many punches — so you need to be strategic. Don’t worry. You’ll still be incredibly sore after a few matches.

Though we wish the story mode were much longer, it at least succeeds in making you feel like a bonafide boxing star. And when it comes to fighting online opponents, you can choose or play against Rocky franchise boxers like young Balboa, Apollo Creed, and Ivan Drago. These cameos make your fights feel more dramatic like you’ve stepped into the classic films. —Michael Hicks

Creed: Rise to Glory

A prequel to the film Creed II, Rise to Glory helps makes you feel like a true boxing champion. At least, until you play online, where you’ll face off against skilled opponents that will break you unless you improve your fitness and reflexes.

Dance Central

Come for the licensed soundtrack, stay for the multiplayer

Dance Central is a music rhythm series originally designed for the Kinect, but it achieved a second life on the Quest. It can only track your head and hands instead of your entire body, but at least the tracking for those body parts is much more accurate than it used to be. After you design your personal dancing avatar, you dive into nightclubs and try to match your body to the character’s choreography in front of you. As someone with very little dancing skill, I found this intimidating at first, but I eventually forgot myself and managed to have a good time.

The game has 32 licensed songs, a couple of which are older rock songs but mostly come from modern artists and bands like Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars, and more from various genres. Each song has two difficulty levels and different dance routines, so you can replay songs to master your moves without it feeling too repetitive. The big disappointment is that this game has only had one six-song DLC since launch and isn’t likely to get any more updates. You can’t add custom songs, either, though modding custom dance routines wouldn’t be easy.

Dance Central can be perfectly fun as a solitary experience. But if you’re friends with other Quest 2 headset owners, you can enter a personal dance lounge with chat functions and multiplayer dance modes. You’ll all groove to match the avatar on stage and watch each others’ scores in real-time, competing to see who is the best or just having casual fun. —Michael Hicks

Dance Central

$9.99/mo. at Oculus Store

Made by the creators of Rock Band and Guitar Hero, Dance Central follows a long tradition of games that convert your favorite music into addictive gameplay. Master some new moves and burn some calories while you’re doing it — you’ll be having too much fun to notice.

FitXR

Boxing and dancing workouts combined into one app

FitXR (the developers) took its former game BoxVR — a challenging boxing workout simulator that we loved — and turned it into FitXR, adding dance workouts and more detailed workout metrics for a more complete app experience. So whether you prefer straightforward punching and weaving or a more natural rhythm experience, FitXR will absolutely get you sweating.

In our FitXR for Oculus Quest 2 review, we had tons of praise for the game’s “immersive, futuristic, psychedelic experience”; the mix of motivational rock, dance, hip-hop, and electronic music that’ll keep you in the zone; and the detailed statistics. Just keep in mind that if you want to actually track burned calories, invest in one of the best fitness trackers since the in-game calorie counter generally overestimates how many calories you actually burn per workout.

In exchange for a monthly subscription, you get access to fresh daily workouts and new licensed music. Along with boxing and dancing, FitXR added new features like a HIIT Studio, simultaneous “multiplayer” workouts, and a training mode to justify the subscription. For new subscribers, this offers good content for a smaller monthly fee than Supernatural. For those who bought the $30 game and $10 DLC before everything switched to a subscription, you can still access purchased content and received a free 90-day sub-trial. But many still found this change frustrating.

A dedicated workout app that’s simultaneously fun and good for your body, FitXR is worth subscribing to if you’re serious about indoor fitness in 2021. —Michael Hicks

FitXR

Strike at colorful boxing targets, then work on your full-body dance routines and move your body in time to match the virtual trainer. Challenge other players’ scores, and challenge yourself to get fit!

Racket: Nx

The best sports game for effortless exercise

For me, dedicated workout or boxing apps can sometimes feel too much like work. Even putting on the Quest 2 can feel like a time commitment. If you’re like me, you should find an active sports app that prioritizes fun, with burned calories and sweat as a neat side effect.

In Racket: Nx, you stand in the center of a giant dome and use your racket to bounce a ball against different hexagonal tiles, some of which give you extra points when you hit them. You can ricochet balls across multiple hexes for combo scores if you aim properly, but until you master the controls (or if it’s a younger kid playing), you can just have fun hitting the ball over and over and watching the resulting light show. You don’t need to be as accurate as in something like a table tennis VR game, and in fact, this is the rare game that’ll have you spinning in full circles as you track the ball until you fully lose track of your real-world surroundings.

The main gameplay is single-player, with a campaign and endless mode, but you can also play co-op or versus modes with other Oculus players. While I love the original soundtrack, I also appreciate the option to add my own custom music, which makes me want to spend more time swinging my racket and enjoying my favorite playlists. Simple but endlessly replayable with very accurate controls, Racket: Nx is a must-buy whether you care about VR exercise or not. —Michael Hicks

Racket: Nx

Free trial at Oculus Store

Everything around you is your virtual tennis court. You’ll need to swing your Touch remote with force and accuracy to get the best scores and challenge other Racketers in multiplayer matches.

Supernatural

Your personal at-home gym membership for a monthly fee

The biggest question most people have (once they realize Supernatural isn’t a horror game) is if Supernatural VR is worth the subscription cost? After you finish the 30-day free trial, the game costs $19/month or $179/year, which will be an immediate turn-off for plenty of Quest 2 owners. That’s essentially the cost of a cheap gym membership!

What are you paying for? For starters, you get access to actual coaches that give you tips and encouragement during new, daily workouts, where most VR exercise apps rely on tracking software alone to encourage hard work. You can find different workouts meant to target specific body parts. Instead of original electronica soundtracks that never change, you’ll listen to new licensed music. The gameplay is extremely similar to Beat Saber, but the app tracks specific metrics, like the force and extension of your arm thrusts or the depth of your squats, as a way to track your progress. And you can connect your fitness tracker, so your heart rate is associated with the workout.

If you’re serious about your health in 2021 and have enough space in your home to stretch out and strike the air without hitting something, seriously consider starting a free trial. The Supernatural app lets you pair a fitness tracker to your Quest 2, so you see exactly how many calories you’ve burned. 30 free days will be enough to decide if you like VR fitness and have the willpower to stick with it. —Michael Hicks

Supernatural

If Beat Saber’s workout is a bit too casual for you, Supernatural has similar mechanics but with a greater focus on total-body exercise instead of rhythm and pure arm-swiping. Get daily coaching that’ll keep you pumped for your virtual gym workout.

The Best Multiplayer VR Games

The best Oculus Quest 2 games

Virtual reality may allow you to explore fantastic worlds or real places on Earth, but you’ll usually be all alone doing it. Thankfully, there are a growing number of multiplayer experiences, either with fellow Quest 2 owners or with your friends and loved ones in the room with you. Here are some of the best multiplayer games for the Oculus Quest 2 to start your social VR experience.

Acron: Attack of the Squirrels!

Fend off your frenemies in this rare, superb local multiplayer VR game

Acron: Attack of the Squirrels! is one of the rare local multiplayer VR games. It’s frenetically fast-paced, well-balanced if everyone knows what they’re doing, and perfect for families or parties. You, the Quest 2 wearer, are an angry tree furiously defending its acorns from invading squirrels while your friends use the free iOS or Android app to become acorn-hungry squirrels and try to get past your attacks and steal your treasures.

Acron is a tower defense game played from both the attackers’ and defenders’ perspectives. The tree player can snag and toss enemies that get too close or throw projectiles like boulders, knock out, or ensnare opponents. The squirrels, meanwhile, take on different roles like the fast one, the tank with a shield, or the strategic squirrel that digs through the Earth. Since the tree is so overpowered, you’ll need to use strategy to get past them, including building past traps Fortnite-style or taunting to distract them.

You can have up to seven squirrels playing at once, but since people can’t meet in person at the moment, you can play with just a couple of others and fill the gap with AI bots. The Sulky Swamp Halloween update on the Quest 2 added some bot fixes and made it possible to play against just one real squirrel opponent, so you can technically play this 1v1. People with families will probably get the most out of this genuinely fun game. —Michael Hicks

Acron: Attack of the Squirrels!

Don’t touch my acorns! Become an angry tree and use all your abilities to fight off those greedy squirrels. Then, as a heroic squirrel, take on that evil, hoarding tree and use different abilities to snag its golden acorns and feed your family!

Echo VR

Zero gravity conditions make for the perfect VR sport

Have you ever read the novel Ender’s Game (or, God forbid, seen the movie)? Remember how zero-g combat worked? That’s Echo VR. For the time being, the Oculus Quest version only has access to Echo Arena — a free-to-play zero-gravity sports game where players must make their way from one end of the arena to the other trying to toss a disc into the goal on the other end. Like any good sports title, the opposing team is there to make sure you never score (with a well-landed punch, in some cases). Players will find themselves floating around an arena littered with floating cubes to grab, flinging themselves around and zooming towards the goal with wrist-mounted boosters.

Echo VR is built upon the same zero-gravity tech found in Lone Echo, the acclaimed Oculus Rift game that has you roaming an advanced mining facility in the rings of Saturn. The developers’ love for all things zero-gravity nailed them a special spot in Facebook’s first-party Oculus VR development studios, and that pedigree continues in some of the most authentic gameplay you’ll experience in VR. After all, how many times are you going to get the chance to play in space? This might be your best shot.

Echo VR is free to start but has you pay for seasonal echo passes. Echo VR Season 1 was an incredibly rewarding experience full of cool unlockable content and fun, strategic matches against tough opponents. The game has since moved on to Season 2 with even more customizations, boosts, and heraldry. Each season lasts a few months and will feature unique items to unlock that can’t be had any other way. Since this is a free-to-play title, Echo Pass offers ways for players to purchase additional content to customize their in-game avatars. Don’t worry, though. This isn’t a pay-to-play thing. —Nick Sutrich

Echo VR

Free at Oculus Store

There’s nothing quite like floating in zero-gravity. Add combat and an incredible sports concept to the mix, and you have the ultimate multiplayer title.

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes

You’ll explode from happiness at how fun this game

You’re alone in a room with an elaborately armed bomb. Your colleagues off-site have acquired the codes used by the bomb-maker, but there’s a ticking clock and no time for them to reach you and disarm it themselves. You have no choice: you must relay the complex mechanics of the bomb to them exactly, so they can tell you how to dismantle it in time. Make too many mistakes, or take too long to find the solution, and it’s game over!

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is a local couch co-op game. It’s been around since the original Oculus Rift and since then has ported to Android, iOS, PC, Switch, Playstation, Xbox, PSVR, and Quest. The core gameplay hasn’t changed, and you don’t need to play this in VR; all you need is the free bomb manual, and to make sure that the one disarming the bomb can’t see it from where they play. But this is a case where VR’s natural isolation works in your favor: it makes you feel trapped with no escape, making the bomb’s countdown that much more stressful.

Gameplay is fairly straightforward. Each bomb has different modules with traps that can’t be solved without the manual. One example: you see a module with five wires and tell your friends. They check the manual and ask you questions. Depending on the color and number of the wires, you’ll need to cut a specific wire. Get it wrong, and you get a strike (three strikes equals BOOM).

The Quest 2 version has enhanced graphics that make this dated game feel slightly less old. We really hope the developers add hand tracking support, but we haven’t heard of any plans to add it. Despite that, it’s still a really fun experience that’ll help get your reluctant family members or roommates to try VR. —Michael Hicks

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes

Keep Talking has the headset wearer disarm traps while non-VR onlookers read through a manual and guide the wearer while unable to see the bomb themselves.

Onward

CS:GO-style military simulator focuses on tactics and teamworks

Most shooters today turn you into a one-person army and are generally fast-paced and cartoonish. Old-school games where you rely on your squad and call out your opponents’ tactics at a more deliberate pace aren’t as popular anymore. But VR sometimes gives new life to older genres, and Onward is one of the more popular multiplayer games on the Quest 2 because it makes you feel like a soldier in real tactical situations.

Onward has single-player, co-op, and multiplayer modes, with different game types that keep things varied. In standard multiplayer, you’ll play on one of two sides, each with different weapons you’ll need to master. You actually have to hold your gun up to look through the scope, crouch down in real life to hide behind cover, or check your magazines to see how much ammo you have left. You can equip different load-outs with specific weapons or tools like colorful smoke grenades or a recon drone, and there are a decent number of maps, including night variants.

The Quest 2 version is a great way to play Onward. You can enjoy cross-play with Rift and SteamVR players, and you get to duck and move around without worrying about wires, so you have a competitive advantage. You’ll want to talk to your squad using proximity chat, so like any multiplayer game, the experience is only as exhilarating or as toxic as the people around you. I recommend starting against bots, so you don’t feel the pressure to perform well for strangers. But there isn’t a campaign here: the crux of the game is multiplayer, so get this if tactical VR shooting against real opponents is what you want. —Michael Hicks

Onward

Become a soldier and work with a team over proximity chat to plan your next move. Duck and peek out around cover, using realistic weaponry to take out foes.

Population: One

Turning battle royale on its head … literally

When Population: One first got announced in late summer 2020, I’m pretty sure I heard a collective sigh from the VR community. “Do we really need another battle royale game?” was heard across forums far and wide, but developer Big Box VR proved most everyone wrong a few months later. Not only is the game one of the single-best battle royale games on any platform, but its mechanics are so well-tailored to VR that it doesn’t make sense to play Population: One any other way.

If you’re a fan of games like Fortnite, Apex Legends, or Call of Duty: Warzone, you’ll feel immediately at home in the standard gameplay mode. Fly into a map and make sure you’re the last one standing to win. The unique setup becomes apparent immediately since it doesn’t take place on one floor. VR’s unique level of freedom is fully explored in this game because it lets you climb anywhere — and I mean anywhere — and glide off said structures by simply extending your arms like you’re wearing a wingsuit. It’s doing to the battle royale formula what Breath of the Wild did for third-person adventure games when it comes to traversal.

Big Box VR has also supported the game in a way that’s making players come back for more. Season One added a new War Mode, new weapons like a katana, and plenty of fresh skins. Season Two grew the map with a Western-themed area, threw in tons of new weapons, and grew the max player count to 24. And the most recent Kingdom Age season converted part of the map into a massive medieval castle, with new swords and tools to freshen things up.

Rest assured, if you want a game that gives you plenty of reasons to play regularly, Population: One is that game. —Nick Sutrich

Population: One

One turns battle royale on its head by giving players true freedom of movement. Climb, glide, or fight anywhere.

Rec Room

The most consistently popular game on the Quest 2

Facebook wants to make Oculus more social by adding Messenger, but for now, most Quest 2 owners get their social fix in VR by playing Rec Room. Over one million gamers play Rec Room in VR every month, half of them using the Quest 2. There are also plenty of non-VR users playing on PC, iOS, Xbox, or PS4, making it a great, free way to hang out with friends that aren’t into VR as much as you!

Rec Room has many activities, some officially created by the devs but mostly created by fellow players. The most popular is Rec Royale, a battle royale mode that the original Quest couldn’t handle but the Quest 2 fully supports. There are also official quests where you team up with up to three other players to defeat killer robots, find pirate booty, vanquish Dracula, and other tasks, many of which are Quest 2 exclusive as well. But the player-built modes are where you’ll find knock-offs of popular games like Among Us and Fall Guys, unofficial maps from popular properties like Star Wars, or just little clubhouses where you can hang out with friends or meet new people.

If you’re tight on cash and want content that will last for hours, Rec Room is the game for you. Just keep in mind that some people’s experiences with Rec Room can be poisoned by rude trolls, so you may have more fun if you play in private sessions with people you trust. —Michael Hicks

Rec Room

Free at Oculus Store

Looking for the first Oculus Quest 2 game you should try with your new headset? Rec Room has tons of minigames and quests that’ll make you comfortable using the Touch controllers, plus the option to play games with your non-VR friends. And it’s free!

Star Trek: Bridge Crew

Trekkies everywhere need this game in their lives

From the tender age of eight, I have lived and breathed the Star Trek universe. The first time I donned a VR headset and sat in the captain’s chair in Star Trek: Bridge Crew, I knew this was a game I would be playing for years to come. This is not a game of energetic action but one that fully immerses you into the Trek universe. The main missions of Bridge Crew are set in the Kelvin Timeline, and you get to captain the newest ship of the line, the USS Aegis, searching for a new home for the Vulcans that survived the 2009 movie.

Bridge Crew is a co-op game in the truest sense of the word. Each of you holds a different position on the bridge, from the captain to the engineer, and has different tasks to make the ship run efficiently. Whether it’s diverting power to the warp core to give you more speed or completing evasive maneuvers against Klingons, the game has a sense of urgency to every process that makes it incredibly compelling. If you are a Next Generation fan, then the DLC is also a must-have. Sitting in Picard’s chair or standing at tactical as the Borg attack has been a defining moment for me and cemented my love for VR.

Do yourself a favor; take three of your friends and try the Kobayashi Maru level. It is as close to being in an episode of Star Trek as you will ever come. —James Bricknell

Star Trek: Bridge Crew for Quest 2

Space. The final frontier. These are the voyages of the USS Aegis. Don your Oculus Quest 2, team up with your fellow Trekkies, and boldly go where no one has gone before.

The Best Action VR Games

The best Oculus Quest 2 games

Most VR games tend to keep their gameplay slow and methodical because anything fast-paced can cause motion sickness. But that doesn’t mean your VR game library should only contain the equivalent of arthouse films. You want action, adventure, and excitement! These VR action games deliver these in bucketloads.

Blade & Sorcery: Nomad

Medieval duels backed by a realistic physics engine

One of the most popular PC VR games, Blade & Sorcery is a giant sandbox where you fight foes with swords, bows and arrows, or magical attacks. Its popularity stems from the realistic physics engine, which lets you parry or deflect attacks and ensures your weapons don’t just teleport through foes.

Now it is available untethered on the Quest 2 with Blade & Sorcery: Nomad, so your duels to the death can become fully roomscale. Plus, it adds a new procedurally generated Dungeons mode in which you traverse through different environments, vanquishing foes, collecting loot, and leveling up your skills. Plus, this port will allow you to use mods, which creative gamers have used to add foes from Star Wars, Marvel, and other popular brands.

Nick described B&S combat as a “balanced mix of ‘video gamey’ and semi-realistic that feels just right. The Goldilocks of VR weapon handling, if you will,” in his review. He praised the game for its variety of weapons and mostly bug-free gameplay. It’s impressive that developer Warpfrog managed to make the game work with the Quest’s limited hardware at all, and it’s been a blast to play so far. — Michael Hicks

Blade & Sorcery: Nomad

A medieval fantasy sandbox with melee, ranged, and magic combat driven by a realistic physics engine. Warpfrog pulled off some wizardry of its own to make Blade & Sorcery work on a portable headset like the Quest.

In Death: Unchained

This roguelite is a heavenly romp through the gates of Hell

When it launched on the PC as, In Death, in 2018, many players proclaimed it their favorite VR game. Unfortunately, developer Sólfar Studios couldn’t keep it updated and later transferred the rights to Superbright, which now runs the Oculus Quest version of the title. The subtitle of In Death: Unchained is a duality in itself, referring both to the freeing nature of untethered VR that’s brought about on the Quest platform and the never-ending quest in the game to top the leaderboards with ever-improving skills.

Like most roguelites, In Death: Unchained features a procedurally generated world that’s never quite the same round after round. Set in three main areas of a godless afterlife, players will find themselves fighting through levels with a bow as their main weapon and the ability to fight melee if the need arises. The bow isn’t just used to kill enemies, though; it’s also an excellent means of traversal, thanks to a special arrow that works as a teleportation device. Skilled players will use this movement in tandem with free-moving joystick controls to outsmart enemies and bosses alike, all with gorgeous visuals and compelling boss fights.

In Death: Unchained, unlike its predecessor, has been updated and even overhauled several times now to change things up and keep the action fresh for veteran players. The move to seasonal content has also proven quite successful for the game and its players. In fact, it was among the first batch of games that was heavily updated to support the Oculus Quest 2’s significantly enhanced processing power, a testament to Superbright’s dedication to the game. —Nick Sutrich

In Death: Unchained

In Death: Unchained is a roguelite that drops players in a relentless procedurally-generated realm of the afterlife, testing their bow skills as much as their persistence.

Ironlights

An intense melee dueling arena where skillful technique trumps speed

Step into the ring against AI or human opponents and use your brain as much as your arms to strike down foes in a game that has some of the best combat and multiplayer we’ve seen on the Quest. In Ironlights, you challenge your enemies as a variety of classes, each of which uses a different weapon combination. To prevent you from just wildly swiping at enemies as fast as possible, your weapon breaks every time you use it, so you have to strategically strike without leaving yourself vulnerable.

In our Ironlights review, we praised the game for its balanced classes and stressful combat. You’ll start with single-player matches against AI to master your techniques, but the difficulty level spikes once you start playing multiplayer. People are much harder to trick, while AI is more prone to falling for feints. Still, we appreciate that the game lets you fight AI opponents to stay fresh while you wait for PvP duels, the true meat-and-potatoes of the game.

As someone who grew up trying to master different fictional lightsaber fighting techniques, Ironlights gives me the one-on-one dueling that I wish Vader Immortal had. I’m sure I look ridiculous swiping and posing while trying to outsmart my arena rival, but successful hits and blocks make me feel like a medieval swordsman, which is really what matters.

Before buying, make sure that you have plenty of space to move around the virtual arena. If you stand in one place, certain classes can exploit this and attack with longer-range weapons, making it hard for you to counter-attack. Our other recommendation is to get active on the Ironlights Discord server, where players like to put together tournaments and compare techniques. —Michael Hicks

Ironlights

Ironlights has some of the best weapon combat for the Oculus Quest 2. Stand directly against your opponent and use your reflexes and wits to strike them down.

Pixel Ripped 1995

A nostalgia-filled love letter to SNES games for ’90s kids

Whatever your childhood-era video game console or favorite arcade was — I’m an N64 and Nickel City child myself — you’ll probably remember long weekends spent gaming non-stop until a parent made you turn off the console or you ran out of tokens. Pixel Ripped 1995 (and Pixel Ripped 1989, available as DLC) hearken back to those childhoods in the best possible way.

You play a young boy trying to squeeze out as much gaming time as possible, while NPCs like your disapproving mother get in the way. Similarly, 1989 has you, an elementary-age girl, playing games in class while keeping your teacher distracted. Most levels start with you playing a game-within-a-game, with gameplay modeled after famous classics like Super Metroid, Sonic the Hedgehog, and others. But you’ll have to let go of your controller to interact with your surroundings. Then, without spoiling too much, you’ll often find that the game world has begun to blend with the real world.

At about five hours, the campaign doesn’t spend too long with any one “game.” And while the in-game graphics look sufficiently 90s, the NPCs’ faces can look a bit wooden. However, the overall experience is genuinely fun and nostalgia-inducing, and the developers added incentives to replay levels like hidden golden cartridges, a hardcore mode, unlockable collectibles, and alternative routes. —Michael Hicks

Pixel Ripped 1995

Play fun knock-offs of your favorite 16- and 32-bit games, then channel your inner kid and watch as those games come alive in the “real” world. Pixel Ripped 1989 and 1985 give you tons of varied gameplay to enjoy.

Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge + Last Call

Nothing ever happens on the Outer Rim of the known galaxy, right?

Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge is an action-adventure game on the planet Batuu, right within the very same Blackspire Outpost featured at Disney theme parks. While the theme parks let patrons walk the halls of a mythical Star Wars location, Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge takes a more story-based approach to the namesake. You play the role of a droid repair technician who ended up on the wrong end of a Gauvian Death Gang leader’s gun; shooting your way out, you find yourself caught up in matters of galactic importance.

While the game takes place between the events of Star Wars movies Episodes 8 and 9, the stories themselves span the annals of time, including the original trilogy and the High Republic era some 400 years prior. To get the most out of the game, you must download the Last Call DLC, which adds new stories where you play as a Jedi Knight and bounty hunter, along with a proper endgame to the main storyline.

Compared to Vader Immortal — another pick on this list — Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge and Last Call make for a more scattered game, but also a more varied one. Different Tales switch up the gameplay and story for some variety, while the main blaster-based combat is enjoyable and surprisingly challenging at times. Add in the DLC, and you meet a ton of characters, including some fan favorites from other SW properties, that make you feel part of the world. Star Wars fans certainly shouldn’t skip this one. —Nick Sutrich

Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge

A collection of stories from the known Galaxy’s Edge awaits you, coupled with blaster fights, lightsaber duels, and plenty of porgs.

Swarm

Spider-Man heads to the arcades

Swarm is what happens when you imagine an old-school high-score arcade shooter brought into VR. You’re launched into an arena teeming with aliens that spawn from random portals across the map. However, it’s not a static shooting gallery; this is a very, very active game. Armed with grappling hooks and pistols, you must pull yourself every which way to avoid attacks and position yourself to strike back — performing aerial acrobatics that only make sense with room-scale VR technology.

Each level lasts only as long as you — or the enemies — can survive. Other levels offer movement challenges that test your ability to accurately grapple as fast as you can without falling to your doom. Power-ups and new weapons are found and earned during play, and you’ll soon find yourself in a zen-like state of grappling, pulling, shooting, and dodging. Can you defeat the swarm and save the Earth? —Nick Sutrich

Swarm VR

Grapple, fling, shoot, repeat. Swarm captures the essence of classic high-score arcade titles and perfectly translates it into VR.

Until You Fall

Either you’ll fall, or your arms will fall off

Until You Fall is a unique take on the hack-and-slash roguelite genre. Taking thematic elements from high-fantasy epics like Lord of the Rings and injecting it with a thick serum of Tron-like neon highlights, Until You Fall will have your jaw on the floor with its stylistic beauty, up until the moment the first enemy makes you drop to the floor. Then, as the name implies, you’ll battle your way through enemy after enemy until you fall. Then, you respawn back in the hub to upgrade your character and do it all over again.

Until You Fall utilizes seriously realistic physics modeling that makes you feel like you’re actually swinging the weapons you wield. There’s something trippy about feeling like you’re fighting with a giant neon-drenched ax, and Until You Fall nails that feeling with every single swing and block. Enemies will ruthlessly attack you in groups, and the end of each section brings the choice of one randomized power-up to reward you with.

Players will make their way through dozens of levels, separated by three tiers of difficulty, color, and enemy types, battling bosses at the end and collecting Aether. This ethereal currency is used to make those weapons even more brutal, giving you the edge in battle — once you muster up enough patience, that is. The question is, which part of you will fall first, your mind or your body? Until You Fall will challenge both. —Nick Sutrich

Until You Fall

$10 at Oculus Store (Episode I)
$10 at Oculus Store (Episode II)
$10 at Oculus Store (Episode III)

Until You Fall will test your patience and your body, willing to break at least one in this action-packed hack-and-slash roguelite.

Vader Immortal: Episodes I–III

The Force will be with you, always

So many games over the years have tried to recreate the feeling of being a Jedi, with Kyle Katarn and the Jedi Knight series bringing us closest and motion controls in games like Star Wars Kinect moving us further away. Finally, Vader Immortal raises the bar, giving tons of Star Wars fans the experience they’ve been craving.

If you haven’t already experienced Vader Immortal, you’re lucky that you’ll get to play through all three episodes at once, then dive right into the lightsaber dojos and refine your lightsaber technique. Altogether, the cost and story length is about the same as many other Quest 2 games — a relatively high price for a relatively short campaign. The only thing that made Episodes I and II initially underwhelming for some gamers was their short duration.

Each episode changes your level of Force skill as you develop from a novice into a legitimate threat to Darth Vader. Because of that, each game encourages you to use different skills to defeat enemies; Episode 1 relies more on your lightsaber, while III gives you more power to fling enemies around and adds blasters. After you finish the story, you’ll want to spend hours in the dojo perfecting your Jedi skills.

Keep in mind that you won’t be jumping around and fighting like the flashy Jedi of the prequels. You’re mostly rooted to a single spot while enemies approach you, which helps avoid motion sickness but can also feel somewhat limiting. We’re also waiting on a Quest 2 graphics update; the Quest 2 has more trouble with deep black colors than the original Quest, so some dark areas in Vader Immortal now look grayer than they should. Otherwise, this is one of the best Oculus Quest 2 games for single-player combat. —Michael Hicks

Vader Immortal: Episodes I–III

Set between Star Wars Episodes 3 and 4, you’re a force-sensitive smuggler forced to work for Darth Vader and who slowly comes to know the ways of the Force. Enjoy the story, then spend hours fighting enemies in the Lightsaber Dojo.

The Best Horror VR Games

The best Oculus Quest 2 games

Virtual reality is the perfect medium for horror games. Normally you can turn off the lights and try to make your home as horror-filled as possible, but there’s still some objective distance between you and the screen. In VR, the monsters and nightmares are just an inch from your eyes, and there’s no way to avert your gaze. The Oculus Quest 2 has some genuinely frightening and fun horror VR games, but these are the first games you should try.

Arizona Sunshine

Also could have made our best shooter, multiplayer, or action lists

Arizona Sunshine is no longer the best zombie game on the Quest 2 thanks to the new Walking Dead game, but it’s still a VR classic that has received several content updates since it launched in 2019. That lessens the $40 price tag sting, which initially felt exorbitant since the campaign only lasted about four hours. Along with single-player, you can play levels in co-op mode or enjoy multiplayer horde mode against waves of zombies.

This great action horror game gives you tons of firepower, with over 25 different weapons that’ll help you mow down enemies. While there are scenes in low-lit areas, many of them take place in bright sunshine, so the level of terror isn’t as high as in other horror games. But, don’t worry, there’s still the fear of an inexorable horde approaching you too fast to shoot them all.

We’re excited about Vertigo Games’ new zombie thriller, After the Fall, to come out sometime this year, but for now, it’s only a SteamVR and Rift S game, making Arizona Sunshine the best option right now. We loved the The Damned DLC for its tense story and combat situations, as well as the new Trailer Park horde map for shooting endless zombies with friends. It’s one of the few Quest 2 games that feels like a full environment to travel through instead of an on-rails or stationary experience. —Michael Hicks

Arizona Sunshine

You may not think a hot desert is the best location for a zombie game, but there’s a ton of scary fun to be had in the scalding Arizona heat. Test your zombie-killing skills in the campaign, then challenge yourself to take out as many as possible in horde mode.

Blair Witch

A much scarier experience than the Blair Witch Project movie

Set in 1996 in the same Maryland woods as the original film, you play Ellis, a traumatized ex-cop looking for a missing child in the woods. Accompanied by your dog Bullet, you run into more horrors than you could ever have expected. You must stay near the dog as much as possible to preserve your sanity while using a camcorder to play tapes that reveal story hints, as well as manipulate the world around you and solve puzzles.

In Windows Central’s Blair Witch Xbox One review, they called it a tense, atmospheric horror game with some really cool gameplay mechanics, a great story premise, and plenty of scares — though it did suffer from some framerate issues. Now, take that game and add it to the Oculus Quest with its limited mobile chipset. Unsurprisingly, the port had to be rebuilt and downgraded to fit properly.

Thankfully, the VR version only benefits from its new medium, making the jump scares and atmosphere that much more frightening. In fact, the developers who ported the game to VR said in an interview that they chose to “make the combat more intense, adding jumpscares and additional sound effects to increase tension,” as well as add more interactive objects and make it more fun to allow you to physically pet your dog with the Touch controllers. Plus, the Quest 2 port does improve some environmental textures and 3D models.

As a traditional horror movie-like experience where you can’t solve your problems with a gun, Blair Witch delivers as one of the best VR horror experiences on the Quest 2. —Michael Hicks

Blair Witch (Quest 2)

For a stressful horror experience that’ll test your courage, Blair Witch is a great game to try. See whether you have what it takes to survive.

Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted

Chuck E. Cheese animatronics weren’t even close to being this scary

There are two types of Five Nights at Freddy’s (FNaF) fans out there: those who obsessively watch theory videos about the Bite of ’87 and those who just enjoy watching their favorite YouTuber scream over animatronic jumpscares. This Quest 2 port appeals to both types. You can revisit scenes from old entries and get to interpret obscure lore moments, but it also lets casual fans enjoy jumpscares without worrying about the details.

As someone who saw the original games as kind of cheesy and too repetitive, let me assure you that the gameplay is so much more frightening and tense in VR. Unlike other horror games with stories that ease you into scary scenarios, FNaF:HW has nearly nonstop moments of tension. Plus, the mix of different gameplay mechanics from different games ensures that things feel more varied. That being said, you’re still just as stuck in one place as in the PC games, so don’t expect to explore your surroundings or be allowed to flee from Freddy Fazbear’s gang.

While not as visually crisp as the PSVR or Steam version (which you can access via Oculus Link), Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted doesn’t suffer much on the Quest 2 since the games have never been that graphically demanding. You should also invest in the Curse of Dreadbear DLC, which adds Halloween-themed baddies and (more importantly) new minigames to survive.

Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted

Confront Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, Foxy, Springtrap, The Mangle, and other terrifying animatronics from scenes across Five Nights at Freddy’s 1, 2, 3, 4, and Sister Location.

Jurassic World Aftermath

Making dinosaurs scary again

I was still in elementary school when the first Jurassic Park movie came out, and I’ll never forget the wonder and horror that ensued. The concept was so fresh, and the dinosaurs were absolutely terrifying; the latter, in particular, was a concept that none of the many sequels captured. The many tense moments in that kitchen scene alone can be felt throughout the entirety of Jurassic World Aftermath.

You (stupidly) take a job to recover some lost data on good old Isla Nublar — two years after the fall of Jurassic World, might I add — and predictably crash land when a group of Pteranodons obliterates your aircraft. Once you make it to the facility, you realize the raptors are still hanging around and are ready to play cat and mouse with you while you are just trying to escape for your life.

Like any good stealth survival horror game, Jurassic World Aftermath makes you feel totally helpless against these creatures. There are no weapons and no real way to defend yourself. You just have a wrist-mounted gadget that can be used to activate old electronics remotely, along with a series of lockers, desks, and other debris to hide yourself in during the adventure. It’s an astounding sensation of fear that’s primal in nature and nearly flawless in execution. It’s also just the first half of the series, which might be even more exciting than running from a hungry carnivore. —Nick Sutrich

Jurassic World Aftermath

You’re just trying to find the lost data, but the mean old dinos won’t let you. Are you clever enough to outsmart these girls?

Lies Beneath

Forget survival; this is pure horror

If you’re a fan of Japanese horror manga, you’ve likely heard of names like Junji Ito and Shintaro Kago. If you’ve not heard of these names, go ahead and Google their work — you’ll immediately understand what you’re about to undertake in Lies Beneath, a survival horror game inspired by these works. From the comic book style to the onomatopoeia that flies around the screen as you run, shoot, and kill, Lies Beneath will immediately transport you to a world gone wrong and completely upend your sense of reality.

Lies Beneath is a first-person survival horror that’ll have you trekking through the woods and deeper into madness as you recover from the ashes of a fiery car crash. The demons you encounter could be real or just a figment of your imagination, but they’re no less deadly regardless of their otherworldly appearance. You’ll have to be savvy and sneaky on your journey if you’re to avoid being overwhelmed, both by enemies and the thoughts that constantly grow louder in your mind.

Few games master the feeling of panic that Lies Beneath delivers. The game was developed with the Oculus Quest in mind, and, amazingly enough, all the character models were created completely in VR using Medium by Adobe. That’s important since VR can give you an understanding of scale like no other visual medium can, and creating the enemies you face solely in VR has allowed the team to make models that are more convincing than what you’ll find in other games. —Nick Sutrich

Lies Beneath

Terrors you simply couldn’t imagine are waiting for you in the woods in Lies Beneath. Will you venture in?

Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners

Post-apocalyptic New Orleans is a veritable hellscape

From the emotional intro to the surprising end and every encounter in-between, The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners is a modern masterpiece of a game. While it’s technically more of an action-adventure title with RPG elements, Saints and Sinners creates a sense of fear that most zombie games fail to deliver. It achieves this through practical methods that feel authentic — a limited set of resources, a set amount of time to spend scavenging each day, finite stamina and hunger meters, and a gripping story that’ll keep you returning every single day to find out the truth of what happened.

Post-apocalyptic New Orleans is uniquely horrifying. It’s a landscape filled with tightly packed mausoleums, decrepit, pillaged buildings, and plenty of areas flooded by failed levees. Everything about it is memorable, including the characters, side missions, and main quests.

Beneath the story lies a ground-breaking set of gameplay mechanics that’ll leave you wondering why every game hasn’t adopted them already. Every weapon you scavenge and build has a realistic set of physics to go along with it. As a result, combat feels uniquely satisfying in a way that most VR games have a hard time replicating. It all adds up to one of the most satisfying experiences you can have in VR. —Nick Sutrich

Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners

You’ve survived the apocalypse, but you’ve still got a long way to go. It’s an action-adventure RPG like nothing VR has ever seen.

Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife

You thought death was scary? Wait until you see what’s after.

When I first played Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife as part of a hands-on event in March, I really only had an inkling of how scary the game could be. Turns out, the final version (check out our Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife review) is considerably scarier than I could’ve imagined. There are few words to describe the feeling of dread the game paints at every corner, and you’ll be turning quite a few of them as you roam the halls, rooms, and courtyards of the massive Barclay Mansion.

Wraith is set in the World of Darkness universe, including games like Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, and others. In Wraith, you play as a photographer that woke up dead one day and found himself trapped in the last place he was still alive: Barclay Mansion. As you roam the halls, you’ll unravel the story of what happened, narrated by a very dead, very scary shadow of your former self. You’ll quickly find out that everyone was a part of a mysterious seance, led by a woman tasked with calling upon the dead to heal the owner of the mansion. But, in true horror fashion, something went terribly wrong, and everyone was brutally murdered — or were they?

Along the way, you’ll find spectres destined to rip and tear you to pieces if they spot you, and you’ve got no good defense against them. Thankfully, you do have the special powers only bestowed upon a Wraith at the time of death — powers you’ll only earn as you progress through the story. I’m not a horror fan, but the story here was compelling enough to pull me through the terror and keep me wanting more, giving it the honor of being on the list of best Quest 2 games. —Nick Sutrich

Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife

You’ve heard that death isn’t the end, but I’d bet you never expected it to be the beginning of a truly terrifying experience. Your death is a mystery, and solving the puzzle of why everyone’s stuck in Barclay Mansion might just free you.

The Best Family-Friendly VR Games

The best Oculus Quest 2 games

You’re technically supposed to wait until your child is 14 and up to play games in VR, but it’s safe enough in moderation. Some parents will want games specifically for their young ‘uns, while others will want games that kids and adults can enjoy. Thankfully, most of the best family-friendly games are ones that people of all ages will get a kick out of, even if they don’t have the violence or serious storytelling of some other favorites.

Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs

It’s exactly what you think it is

Does Angry Birds even need an introduction? The game that practically defined quality mobile gaming proved to be a perfect fit for VR puzzle heads. Grab your slingshot, load it with a bird, and fling them at defiant piggies that just won’t stop stealing eggs, no matter how many times you defeat them. Clever physics-based puzzles have been the hallmark of the series since its inception, and the translation to 3D space only makes them more compelling.

Developer Resolution Games has been behind over half a dozen VR hits and used that experience to translate Angry Birds to VR. It updated the game several times since the original launch, and players can now sling through over 100 official levels of mayhem, with each level topping the last in terms of complexity. There’s even a level creator and thousands of community-made levels to play, so you can sift through those in your free time and aim to top the developers in their level-building skills after. —Nick Sutrich

Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs

It’s Angry Birds. In VR. What more could you want? Use your slingshot to fling birds at those bad piggies and get your eggs back.

Curious Tale of the Stolen Pets

Remember making dioramas in school? Now you get to play with them.

A rather long and seemingly convoluted name makes way for a simple and fun game that’s perfect for all ages. Here you’ll find a loose story following the stories of childhood memories with your grandfather and the pets you had, which sets the stage for a hide-and-seek game on a diorama scale. Roughly half a dozen levels transport players inside the imagination of a child as they pan, spin, and poke their way around each puzzle-filled world.

The goal is to find all of the lost pets in each world — hidden by some dastardly foe — as well as a smattering of secret coins that can be found by only the most curious of players. You’ll have to solve clever puzzles along the way, all of which are incredibly accessible and can be completed by players of any age. Despite my son only being five years old when the game originally debuted, I was able to watch him play and help him through puzzles by sharing the Quest’s view to the Chromecast attached to my TV.

At only $15, it’s likely you and your kids will get several hours of entertainment out of the package, making it a great deal. If that weren’t enough, The Curious Tale of the Stolen Pets is one of the best games to use hand tracking on the Oculus Quest family with, making it ultra-simple to pick up and play at any time. —Nick Sutrich

Curious Tale of the Stolen Pets

Finding your lost pets in a diorama-scale world is surprisingly relaxing and constantly intriguing, thanks to clever puzzles that are great for all ages.

Ghost Giant

Be the guardian angel you wish you had

Some of my most memorable VR experiences, including Allumette, Arden’s Wake, Moss, and others, play with the idea of you as a giant in the virtual world, with the power to lean down and peek in on character’s lives or even change them with a single touch. The more interactive control you have over their lives, the greater your responsibility to protect the little characters around you and keep them happy. Ghost Giant plays with those same themes, but acknowledges that there are certain things that you can’t fix.

Our Ghost Giant reviewer had a similarly powerful and emotional response to this game as I did. You’re there to protect and bond with a young boy named Louis while also taking apart the little houses around you to spy on the other NPCs, solve puzzles, and look for little collectibles. In the midst of exploring the beautiful landscape, you will have several emotional moments as you see first-hand what these characters are going through. It’s a family-friendly game, but the emotional beats are not treated with kid gloves.

Like many story-driven VR experiences, Ghost Giant is fairly short for the price, and the puzzles are more little diversions than tough brain teasers. But the wonderful story, soundtrack, and visuals make the game worth experiencing. —Michael Hicks

Ghost Giant

Be the giant that young cat-boy Louis needs while also having fun taking apart and observing the dioramic village of Sancourt.

Half + Half

Hide and seek was never so surreal

Half + Half is a free multiplayer social game experience designed for all ages and skill ranges. It’s a collection of five mini-games that require players to use their body language to communicate rather than their voice. You certainly can talk in the game, but your voice purposefully gets garbled into unintelligible speak — one of the key tenets to making this a game for all ages.

So what do you actually do in Half + Half? Swim with the fishes in the ocean, dance among the stars, juke around on a paraglider while trying to knock a ball into a goal, and more. It’s all done in a colorful and minimalist art style that’s packed with character and joy, and it’s easy to jump in and play.

It’s a super casual experience that takes little time to learn and even less time to get set up. Few games are so intuitive that they require little to no explanation up-front, and Half + Half makes it simple to hop on and play a few quick games without much fuss. The game is available for both Oculus Rift and Oculus Quest platforms, so if you’ve got a friend that’s still on an older Rift headset, they can jump in and play, too. —Nick Sutrich

Half + Half

Free at Oculus Store

Bright and colorful worlds make way for a family-friendly multiplayer experience that’ll have everyone in the room — and in VR — laughing hysterically.

Moss

A VR classic that desperately needs a sequel

If we had made a best-of-the-best Quest 2 games category, Moss would’ve been one of our first inclusions before we debated the rest. In this game, you help guide Quill, a brave young mouse warrior, on a quest to save her uncle from the evil snake Sarffog. You are a spirit floating above that is there to help Quill succeed, and she knows you’re there. You can high-five her. If you wave at her, she waves back, and if she runs into a puzzle, she signs in ASL to tell you how to get past it. She feels like a living partner, not an avatar.

When Quill runs into obstacles she can’t get past, you move your head to look around the map and find ways past the obstacles, then guide her to them. When you run into combat moments, you’ll control Quill with the controller but must also use your omnipotent gaze to watch out for enemies that might attack from afar. You’ll also need to peek through walls if you want to find all of the hidden scroll collectibles. It’s a creative setup that other games have used since, but it works really well here.

In our Moss review, we had tons of praise for the game’s environmental design, difficulty spikes for the puzzles and combat, and the exceptional story — but it’s another VR title that’s relatively short. While we’re thrilled that Polyarc finally announced Book II earlier this year, it appears to be a PSVR exclusive for now, with no release date announced yet. We’ll just keep waiting, then. (Cries) —Michael Hicks

Moss (Quest 2)

Even heroes need help to succeed. In Moss, you’ll guide the young warrior mouse through tricky puzzles and deadly fights on her quest.

Racoon Lagoon

Everyone loves trash pandas

Do you like visiting the residents of Animal Crossing? How about farming crops in Stardew Valley? Maybe mining some ore in Minecraft? Racoon Lagoon has elements from all three and plenty of little mechanics of its own to enjoy. Racoon Lagoon puts you on an island filled with friendly animals, all of whom need help with one thing or another. Fishing, mining, and gardening are some of the key activities to take part in on the island, all of which create hours of fun gameplay for all ages.

The game has a multiplayer co-op option that makes it easy to join up with friends, making an already enjoyable game that much more fun. However, there isn’t as much customization here as you find in games like Animal Crossing. Instead, the game mainly focuses on interaction with the animals on the island and the jobs available to do, all of which are just more fun with friends.

Farming in a video game can be incredibly cathartic and rewarding, yet strangely relaxing — very much unlike real farming. Kids, in particular, who enjoy playing with their friends, will find this one quite fun. Just make sure you restrict their Oculus play to friends only, as the game features full voice chat for convenience, something that can be quite odious in a world filled with anonymous Internet trolls. —Nick Sutrich

Racoon Lagoon

$20 at Oculus Store (Job Simulator)
$30 at Oculus Store (Vacation Simulator)

What’s better than an island filled with cute and friendly animals? Wonderful ways to help them and have fun with friends at the same time, that’s what!

Vacation Simulator & Job Simulator

Great humor, tons of varied minigames, and brain-teasing puzzles

We decided to group these two, not because they didn’t deserve their own spots individually but because anyone who enjoys one will immediately want to invest in the other. Both games are set in a near-future dystopia where most of humanity has been replaced by robots who are now trying to recreate “jobs” and “vacations” to make the remaining humans happy — but are pretty bad at figuring out the specifics.

Like a smart Pixar movie, these games have bright, cartoonish visuals and easy-to-grasp tasks that kids will enjoy while also employing smart jokes that’ll get the biggest laughs out of adults. Some games have you complete tasks, solve puzzles, or design silly creations with the tools around you. Kids are encouraged to get creative, while anyone can hunt down secrets or waste hours on minigames. And the writing plays off of real-life in truly hilarious ways, especially in the free Vacation Simulator: Back to Job expansion.

If you’re looking for a game to start with, Vacation Simulator is a more complete and technically advanced experience. For the kids, Vacation Simulator has multiple saves and a “small human” mode that ensures the gameplay happens at the proper height for them. It also adds hand tracking, where Job Simulator relies on the Touch controllers to be your hands. And while Job Simulator keeps its gameplay focused on the arc directly in front of you, Vacation Simulator takes full advantage of wireless VR and encourages you to look in any direction. Still, Job Simulator is a great introduction to VR and a fun experience in its own right. —Michael Hicks

Vacation Simulator & Job Simulator

Clever writing, addicting mini-games, immersive graphics, and plenty of depth make Job Simulator and (especially) Vacation Simulator worth adding to your library.

The Best Strategy and board VR Games

The best Oculus Quest 2 games

Strategy games are oddly, frustratingly underserved on Quest headsets. While we could recommend plenty of PC VR strategy titles for you to play, this best games list only pertains to games that run natively on Quest headsets. That means that, while this won’t be the largest category we’ve written about, you can rest assured that every game in this list deserves your attention and brainpower.

Catan VR

Hexagonal land tiles never looked so good

Gather ’round the table with three other friends over the classic board game Catan, now fully playable in VR on the Oculus Quest or Quest 2. Catan VR has been around the block for several years now, with ports for PC VR and PSVR platforms. But it’s better than ever on the Quest, thanks to the fact that there’s no wire pressing against your back while you ponder your next move.

If you’ve never played Catan, here’s the lowdown: Players each take the role of a settler that has landed on the island of Catan and is determined to make it their new home. The problem is, every other player also has the same goal, putting players in a pinch to develop a tight strategy early on and adapt when necessary. The end goal is to amass a set number of points to win, earned by building settlements, cities, and roads that connect.

Catan VR is an exceptional way to play the game because it feels like you’re sitting at the same table with all three other players. At $15, it’s not a terrible expense to pick up, and it makes for a super easy game night with friends and family that might not live close enough to play in-person with you. —Nick Sutrich

Catan VR

The classic 90s game of The Settlers of Catan is now in VR, with a virtual game board and support for 4 players at the same table.

Chess Club

Everyone loves a game of chess with a few solid battles

Whether you’re a Queen’s Gambit junkie, a fan of that infamous scene at the end of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, a former chess club prodigy, or just a fan of the game, Chess Club is exactly what you were hoping for in a VR rendition. Thanks to some excellent hand tracking, players can use the Oculus Touch controllers or their hands to grab and move pieces across the board.

If classic chess is a little too vanilla for you, Chess Club features fantasy pieces that will attack each other in classic battle chess fashion. Personally, I remember playing battle chess on a friend’s DOS computer as a kid and relish the ability to be able to finally grab these pieces and look closely at them as they wreak havoc on one another.

Play against friends or AI opponents, change up your avatar, swap out timed rule modes, or just study your historical move list to become the next chess champion of the world. No pressure. —Nick Sutrich

Chess Club

Play head-to-head against AI or friends on classic or fantasy chess boards, complete with battle chess pieces.

Demeo

Far over the Misty Mountains cold, to dungeons deep and caverns old

Take to the dungeons and complete thrilling campaigns alongside three other friends (or random folks) in this Dungeons & Dragons-like experience. Players choose a character — each of which has a unique class and set of skills — that will be used to traverse through each campaign. Those campaigns are made up of multi-level dungeons filled with treasures and trials alike. Aside from the standard move-by-grid gameplay, players can look to their hands for special moves played with cards.

Demeo belongs in the multiplayer category just as much as it belongs to the strategy one, and that’s because it’s really meant to be played with other gamers. Sure, you could delve into the dungeons on your own, but you’ll quickly find that Demeo is a bit too challenging for just one player. Thankfully, if you don’t have any friends with the game, matchmaking will pair you up with the strategy experts and avid D&D fans that make up the Demeo community.

Demeo launched with a single campaign and received a second just a few months after release. That second campaign, called Realm of the Rat King, introduced a new sewers area, new enemies, a new boss, and plenty of new items to use. Developer Resolution Games says it’s committed to keeping the game feeling fresh with new updates and has teased several new classes and environments that the devs will add to the game for free. —Nick Sutrich

Demeo

Demeo is a classic dungeon-crawler modeled after a thrilling night of Dungeons & Dragons in your friend’s basement.

Eternal Starlight

The closest you’ll get to Homeworld VR on the Quest

If you’re a fan of the PC RTS classic Homeworld — and how could you not be? — Eternal Starlight will help fill a void in the Quest’s library that’s as wide as a black hole. This spacey RTS title gives players a “Neural Link” that unlocks an omniscient view of the battlefield that feels straight out of Ender’s Game command school. It’s even got full hand-tracking support, which makes the battles feel more authentically sci-fi.

You won’t be able to get in the cockpit and pilot ships as you can in PC VR’s House of the Dying Sun, but you can get super close to ships during battles and enjoy the action up close — not unlike Demeo above. Between missions, you’ll be interacting with NPCs via dialogue portions that remind me of the classic 90s Star Control games. Strengthen alliances with alien races by completing missions (or saying the right things in conversation), and you’ll even be able to enlist their help to complete some of the more difficult missions.

This one has some lighter production values when compared to some of the bigger-name games on this list. Still, if you don’t mind a very indie-feeling title, this one is a solid way to jump into space and boss around some ships into shooting each other. —Nick Sutrich

Eternal Starlight

Control a fleet of space ships in this indie RTS VR game, conquering enemies and making new allies in the process.

The Best Puzzles and Relaxation VR Games

The best Oculus Quest 2 games

As VR games get more advanced, developers are starting to focus more on “realism” and “immersion” to make players live out fantasies and explore worlds. But VR got its start in many ways on puzzle games, with players encouraged to interact with their environment to solve mysteries and get past obstacles. These best Quest 2 puzzle games will challenge and tease your brain in the best way.

Arcsmith

Give your brain a proper mental workout

Puzzle games always have to strike the right balance between difficulty and fairness. Easy puzzle games are boring, but plenty of them have unfairly illogical solutions you can only find with trial-and-error (or online walkthroughs). Arcsmith is the rare puzzle VR game that hits the right balance. It can be tough to master, but its solutions are always fair and consistent with the world’s physics and electrical engineering concepts.

For each puzzle, you use Lego-shaped block components and fashion them into sci-fi-esque creations. For them to work, you must use energy-emitting parts to power other components while ensuring the emitted heat doesn’t rise too high. If the energy or heat is imbalanced, the project will break, and you’ll have to do some rebuilding. Early levels have more rudimentary blueprints to help you master the concepts, but each new project adds new components that further complicate things.

Story-wise, you play as an engineer (or arcsmith), learning from world-weary mentor Korith Dinn on a remote space station, constructing projects for galactic refugees fleeing a major conflict. The story isn’t profound and mostly comes from radio broadcasts and Dinn’s monologues, but the voice acting is solid, the electronica/ hip-hop soundtrack is wonderful for ambiance, and there’s nothing more satisfying than when everything clicks and you figure out how to build your next project. —Michael Hicks

Arcsmith

A brain-blasting puzzle game that challenges you to build functioning engineering projects, Arcsmith is meant for gamers looking for a more realistic, logical challenge than most point-and-click style puzzlers.

Cubism

Tetris no longer has a monopoly on colored shapes

When you think of puzzlers, your brain almost indelibly goes to Tetris. The catchy tunes and hypnotizing movement of the pieces are only broken by the speed you have to keep up to win. So what if you took Tetris and made it decidedly more zen? That’s maybe a semi-decent description of Cubism, a 3D puzzler that only makes sense in VR space, as it makes you feel like you’re picking up physical colorful shapes and trying to fit them into another hollow shape.

What seems like a straightforward formula at first makes way for a brain-teasingly good time that’s earned the game a nearly flawless score on the Oculus Store — and earned it many awards in the process. There’s nothing quite like getting lost in the zone of solving puzzles only to find yourself emerge from VR a few hours later. Later puzzles are deceptively difficult, especially given the ease at which the game pulls you in.

It’s truly the perfect example of a pick-up-and-play VR game since you can jump in for a few minutes at a time. Built-in hand-tracking support is fun and lends credence to this feeling, although you may want to stick to using controllers if hand tracking gets wonky, which happen son the Quest. Cubism developer Thomas Van Bouwel has been teasing “hand tracking 2.0” on Twitter lately, which means it might get a second wind as a must-use feature for the game. Either way, pick it up. Your brain will thank me later. —Nick Sutrich

Cubism

$10 at Oculus Store

Exercise your brain with Cubism, a delightfully challenging puzzler that inserts some much-needed zen into the world of puzzle games.

A Fisherman’s Tale

A dream within a dream within a dream

There’s really just no comparison to how perspective can be used in VR, and A Fisherman’s Tale is the perfect example of a game that thrives on the aspect of perspective and scale that VR can bring. What starts as a tale of a simple fisherman who mans a lighthouse quickly evolves into a tale of psychological wonder.

Players will interact with every object in the lighthouse, but beware: you may not be controlling who you think you’re controlling. Are you the fisherman himself or the puppet in the model lighthouse? Are these stories real, or are they tall tales from a sailor who has seen too many days lost at sea?

Riddles, mind-bending mysteries, tricky puzzles, and bizarre situations await you in one of the most unique puzzle games you’ll likely ever play. This one isn’t just about matching shapes up to complete a goal. It’s also about living through an adventure story and adapting to the realities you begin to uncover. —Nick Sutrich

A Fisherman’s Tale (Quest 2)

In this collection of tall tales, you’ll find yourself wondering if you’re the fisherman telling stories or one of the many seemingly identical characters within the tale.

Gravity Lab

In space, no one can hear you scream… when you can’t solve that puzzle

What could be a more perfect setup for roomscale VR than a giant do-it-yourself Rube Goldberg machine? A giant do-it-yourself Rube Goldberg machine in space with zero-gravity! Gravity Lab was one of the first roomscale games on PC VR platforms back in 2016 and received a marvelous port to the Oculus Quest.

Gravity Lab puts players in a defunct Moonbase that was clearly used for some weird science experiments. Are you supposed to be here? Are you part of the experiment? There’s only one way to find out: Get to solving those puzzles so you can move on to the next! Most puzzles involve getting some ball or another item from one point to the next, but the limited number of pieces you can use make it a challenge.

After the first few levels, you’ll have to really start thinking out of the (gravity) box as puzzles begin to increasingly evolve into ones that don’t rely on gravity. The clever puzzles are injected with humor to spice things up a bit, and the simple narrative helps carry players from one level to the next without getting convoluted. —Nick Sutrich

Gravity Lab

Fans of Rube Goldberg machines will find themselves at home on the defunct Moonbase, solving puzzles and forgetting all about gravity along the way.

I Expect You to Die 2

James Bond meets MacGuyver … again

I’ll always love 2016’s I Expect You to Die, one of the first VR games I ever played. While it’s still worth playing, its newly released sequel makes major leaps forward and claims its spot on this list. I Expect You to Die 2 begins where the first game ended, but you can understand the story well enough from context if you want to dive right into the superior sequel. It adds better graphics, more fun set pieces, amazing voice acting, and a blast of a story.

Named after Goldfinger’s famous line to James Bond, the game makes the homage obvious with an amazing psychedelic intro complete with a ballad by Puddles Pity Party. You play as a secret agent who must navigate a series of escape room-like traps and scenarios, facing off against a nefarious foe voiced by Wil Wheaton. The sandbox-esque levels are full of objects you can pick up telekinetically and pull to you, and you never know what random item will save you from death.

Be prepared to die a lot — the game does warn you — as you try to find unorthodox solutions to deadly situations by trial and error. At times frustrating and illogical, I Expect You to Die 2 feels triumphant when you finally find solutions — and if you keep a sense of humor, your deaths are frequently hilarious. The game is relatively short, but you can replay levels to find trophies and alternate solutions to puzzles that give you achievements.

In terms of VR games released in 2021, this one tops our list so far. It’s charming, well-acted, and enjoyable gameplay; I only hope the 3rd game will come out sooner than 2026.

—Michael Hicks

I Expect You to Die 2

One of the most charming games on the Quest 2, I Expect You to Die 2 is a must-buy and a more-than-worthy successor to the original game. Take on cartoonishly evil villains and defy the odds as you survive outlandishly deadly traps and schemes.

Myst

It’s a mystery why this took so long to make it to VR

Myst is the original adventure game for puzzle nerds, now completely remade for VR. Unlike the 1993 original — a point-and-click puzzle game with static, pre-rendered environments — Myst for Oculus Quest is a fully 3D game that works exactly as you would expect from a modern VR adventure game.

In Myst, players begin by exploring a strange island filled to the brim with puzzles. Solving some puzzles unlocks something new, while others unravel clues that solve other puzzles. You will even find yourself traveling across space and time before the truth is revealed.

Despite the complete graphical overhaul and new freedom to explore, all the environments and puzzles are identical to the original PC game. Nostalgic fans will marvel at being able to step into this world without restrictions, and the puzzles are just as tricky and clever as you remember them. I, for one, hope that at least one of Myst’s sequels gets the same VR remake treatment in the future. —Nick Sutrich

Myst

The classic point-and-click reimagined. Completely free-roaming, Myst has the same tough-to-solve puzzles as the original.

Red Matter

Relive the Cold War — but in space!

Red Matter is a puzzle adventure game set on a frozen planet far away from Earth. You find yourself in the shoes of Agent Epsilon, working on behalf of the Atlantic Union and having been dispatched to investigate what’s clearly a top-secret research base. It turns out the Volgravians abandoned it, and now it’s your turn to find out what they were doing there and why they all suddenly left.

Both countries represented here are obviously portrayals of the U.S. and the USSR during the Cold War, but things have been given an obvious sci-fi twist and a big change of scenery. To call Red Matter a puzzle game doesn’t do it justice. You won’t be matching up colored blobs or creating rows of oddly shaped cubes. Rather, you’ll be freely walking around the abandoned base and exploring at your will — not unlike the recently remade classic Myst.

Red Matter feels authentic the entire way through. The visuals are astounding, and you’ll often be wondering why most VR games don’t look this good. The puzzles require clever minds and focused thought to complete, and it feels like there’s some battle lurking around any given corner just waiting for you to float around it. It’s a no-brainer choice to buy because you’ll need all that brainpower to finish it. —Nick Sutrich

Red Matter

Red Matter isn’t your typical adventure puzzler, and it doesn’t take place during a typical Cold War, either. Will you be outsmarted?

Tetris Effect: Connected

Do you dream of Tetriminos? Then, this Tetris remake is for you.

AC’s pick for the best puzzle game on the PS4, and winner of 2018’s game of the year on several gaming sites, Tetris Effect, took the classic Tetris formula and added some beautiful visuals and gameplay twists to make it even better for modern consoles. Successful block-breaking leads to explosions of color across the screen. The Tetriminos descend to match the music’s rhythm, and everything combines to make the experience feel magical, and that effect’s only compounded in VR.

The newest feature is called Zone, which freezes falling blocks in place. You can use this respite to figure out your next move or place multiple blocks before they take effect, which lets you blow up more than the maximum four lines of blocks if you play your Tetriminos correctly. The game itself has a ton of different modes and over 30 levels, so there’s plenty of replay value. It’s also fun to join in on the Weekend Rituals and try to unlock new perks with your fellow players.

What took this game from fun to near-perfect is the new Connected mode with cross-platform multiplayer. There’s a Connected mode where three players work together to beat a boss, Score Attack to beat fellow players’ scores in real-time, or Zone Battles where you send garbage blocks to opponents’ boards. Plus, the devs finally optimized the graphics for the Quest 2, making it more beautiful than ever. —Michael Hicks

Tetris Effect: Connected

This ain’t your parents’ Tetris! Tetris Effect has attractive visual effects and many game modes that switch up the core gameplay and keep things fresh.

The Best Sports VR Games

The best Oculus Quest 2 games

Some sports-themed games in VR might be exercise-focused — like Creed with its Endurance Update — while others are created purely to recreate a specific experience in VR. These games are all designed to focus on the experience rather than delivering the intensity that some sports can. Don’t be fooled, though; even though these games may not focus on intensity, that doesn’t mean you can’t get a good workout from a few. Play these by yourself or with friends!

Eleven Table Tennis

It’s seriously real table tennis

Eleven is VR table tennis for table tennis enthusiasts. That doesn’t mean amateurs like myself won’t have fun, though — quite the contrary, actually — as the game truly feels like a realistic representation of the actual sport. Since a paddle weighs pretty close to the same amount as an Oculus Touch controller, and a ping pong ball ways basically nothing, the vibrations from the controller felt when the ball hits the paddle feel real.

If that weren’t enough, the ball moves and bounces in a way that feels wholly authentic and realistic. Despite the realism, some players might find that they need to adjust the bounciness, spin, or even the throw coefficient to fit their own personal style of play better. It’s these bits of customization, complete with the realism of regular play, that makes Eleven Table Tennis stand out from the pack.

Once you’ve faced off against the best AI in the game — opponents that don’t feel robotic or cheap in any way — you can hop online and play against your friends or random players. Just watch out, though, because even professional table tennis players agree this is the real deal, so you might just run into one of them in your online forays. Try playing it at 120Hz for an ultra-smooth, ultra-realistic feel! —Nick Sutrich

Eleven Table Tennis

Eleven Table Tennis is the most realistic way to play table tennis in VR. Authentic physics, weight, and solid single and multiplayer round this out as the best of the best.

Racket Fury

Don’t let the robots fool you

Despite initial appearances — you are playing ping pong against robots, after all — Racket Fury is no less realistic than Eleven Table Tennis. If anything, some players might prefer one game’s style over the other without worrying about losing the realistic feeling that comes with accurate paddle weight handling and ping pong ball bounces.

The style differences are obvious, but you might be surprised to find that the gameplay difference between Eleven and Racket Fury lies mainly in the focus of single versus multi-player. Eleven treats its AI bots as more of a way to practice your skills, while Racket Fury offers a full tournament mode against 16 of the smartest robots you’ll ever sling a ball at.

Racket Fury really shines in the additional modes it offers — namely the arcade mode — which is exactly what it sounds like; a break from the ultra-realistic physics calculations and difficulties of the standard mode. Instead, you’ll be more focused on just having fun, and that’s something that might, ultimately, be more important for gamers will less time on their hands. —Nick Sutrich

Racket Fury

Whether you’re looking for ultra-realistic physics or arcade glory, Racket Fury has you covered.

Real VR Fishing

A relaxing trip without the long commute

Who wants to wake up before the crack of dawn just to drive somewhere and sit for hours at a time? Not me, that’s for sure. While fishing is supposed to be a relaxing way to spend your time, it’s hard to think of something less relaxing than getting out of your bed at 4 a.m. on a weekend. That’s part of why Real VR Fishing is so darn good. It replicates that feeling of relaxation in environments that look incredibly real. You just won’t be able to eat what you catch after you’re done.

Real VR Fishing ranks among the most consistently updated games you’ll find on the platform. Aside from being one of the very first games to receive big graphics upgrades on the Quest 2 when it launched, the developers have regularly updated it with new areas, new fish, new clothes to wear in the game, and all sorts of other goodies to earn while fishing.

It’s also got a really fascinating in-game “tablet” of sorts that lets you browse the web, watch youtube, or even just listen to music on your favorite streaming service while you play. The multiplayer mode means you can hang with your best buds, even if they’re far away, and have a great, relaxing fishing session at any time. —Nick Sutrich

Real VR Fishing

Free demo at Oculus Store
$30 at Oculus Store

Fish by yourself or with friends in stunningly gorgeous locations, all without having to leave your couch.

Sports Scramble

All your favorite sports…just all mixed up

It’s probably safe to say that most adults have played Wii Sports at some point in their life. The simple gameplay made it easy to drop in, get a few quick games off, host parties, and do high score battles between everyone in the room. Sports Scramble looks visually similar to Wii Sports in some ways, with its vibrant colors and cartoony aesthetic. In some ways, it even plays similarly to Wii Sports, but with one big exception: None of these sports are using the normal equipment!

You can bowl with a basketball, play baseball with a golf ball, swap out your tennis racket with a golf club, and so much more. Sports are all scrambled by default, making multiplayer incredible amounts of fun when you literally have no idea what’s coming next, but you can always opt-out for vanilla sports with all the correct equipment, too.

You’ll find that even the arenas you play in will get scrambled. Try throwing a football through the mouth of a clown while simultaneously hitting the pins in bowling for a real challenge! This one is best played with friends via the online multiplayer, like any sport by yourself can get old pretty quickly, even with as many zany combinations as Sports Scramble offers. —Nick Sutrich

Sports Scramble

Sports Scramble takes three of your favorite sports and swaps out everything you’ve come to expect from them.

Topgolf with Pro Putt

It’s like golf, except it’s really the exact opposite.

If you’ve ever been to a real-world Topgolf location, you know how much fun it can be. Grab a drink, take a seat, and shoot for the best score with friends or family and have a great night out. But what if you don’t have a location near you or don’t have anyone close by to play with? The Quest version of Topgolf is an incredible recreation of the experience, complete with perfect 8-player multiplayer functionality and even some great hats to wear during the experience.

Just like real-world Topgolf, you’ll be hitting golfballs toward a uniquely shaped target that surrounds a traditional golf pin. Play for the best score, or shoot further out to see if you can nail some huge points while still getting close to the pin. Is the experience more about playing golf or hanging out with friends? There’s even a YouTube player so that you can goof around between rounds!

If that wasn’t enough, the Pro Putt potion of Topgolf with Pro Putt lets players take to a full putting course — complete with sand traps and other obstacles — to take their putting game to the next level. When you can’t get to the course, this is the next best thing. —Nick Sutrich

Topgolf with Pro Putt

Hit golfballs toward giant targets with friends and see who can get the best score, or take it to full putting courses and master the green.

Walkabout Mini Golf

The mini golf game from mini-golf enthusiasts

Mini golf is all about fantastical themes, crazy course designs, and a whole lot of bantering. You’ll find all of these things in Walkabout Mini Golf, the mini-golf game from mini-golf enthusiasts. Half a dozen courses can be played through by you and up to four other friends, or just jump on an online quick game if you’ve only got a few minutes to spare.

Realistic physics make these wholly unrealistic courses even more fun than you might imagine, and challenging your friends only gets crazier when you unlock night mode. Along the way, you can over 100 missing balls to add to your collection, solve puzzles and find treasure. You can even play mini-golf in space!

90Hz on Quest 2 and crossplay make this the best experience you can get, and the latest updates enable smooth locomotion and even the ability to fly. There’s nothing mini about this experience! —Nick Sutrich

Walkabout Mini Golf

Walkabout Mini Golf lets you and four other friends experience challenging, fantastical mini-golf courses during the day or at night.

The Best Oculus Link Games

The best Oculus Quest 2 games

We’re extremely happy with how Oculus Quest, especially Quest 2, games look despite the limitations of a mobile chipset. However, you can’t deny that certain games just look better as PC ports. Oculus Link requires a PC with decent specifications to work, but assuming you have one, you can invest in Oculus Rift S or even SteamVR games on your headset, greatly expanding your library of games.

Asgard’s Wrath

This isn’t your typical Viking game

When Asgard’s Wrath was announced, it looked like just a fantastic Viking-themed action game. Visceral combat, including swords, shields, magic, and even giant monsters, looked to be the core of the gameplay from a surface level. Less than an hour in, though, you’ll find out that Asgard’s Wrath simply doesn’t fit into any single paradigm of game design. Instead, it has tomb exploration and puzzle-solving, a slice of real-time strategy, a pinch of a god game, and plenty of violence and combat on top.

The narrative here is that you’re a Norse god who must assume control of several different mortal characters to fulfill their destinies. So why in the world would you stoop to something so seemingly low? Because of that trickster, Loki, of course. Following Loki’s guide grants you his protection as well as a host of powers to wield and creatures to inhabit and control.

Even describing it in this way doesn’t truly do it justice. It’s easily one of VR’s most ambitious games and one of the most unique titles you’ll play on any platform. It’s a scope rarely imagined by VR developers — although that is changing as VR adoption has grown considerably with the Quest 2 and with game releases like Half-Life: Alyx — and it’ll take you several nights of play to truly feel like you’d explored everywhere and done everything. Oculus even gave the game away for free to new Quest 2 owners for months! But it’s still worth buying at full price now. —Nick Sutrich

Asgard’s Wrath

$30 at Oculus Store (Budget Cuts)
$30 at Oculus Store (Budget Cuts 2: Mission Insolvency)

Asgard’s Wrath might look like your typical Norse Viking title on the surface, but its unique blend of gameplay genres and massive scope defies definition.

Budget Cuts 1 & 2

The robots have finally taken over

You might just be a paper-pusher at TransCorp, but you quickly find out that you’re seemingly the last human working at the massive conglomeration. One day, you receive a mysterious call at your desk that you’re the next — and last — to go. Armed with only your teleportation gun and whatever “letter openers” you can find lying around, you must sneak your way up to the top to discover what happened to your fellow colleagues and stop a dastardly plan to erase humans.

Budget Cuts was one of the first VR games to take advantage of roomscale VR movement. Although the initial demo took several years to manifest into the full game, it does stealth better than almost any other VR game. In the first title, you’ll traverse through office buildings, hide behind (and under) desks, and crawl through air vents.

Budget Cuts 2: Mission Insolvency takes the formula to new heights with bigger environments, more weapons, and even scarier robots. You’ll also finally figure out who that voice is on the other side of the phone — a twist I certainly didn’t see coming. Both Budget Cuts titles include mutators, which can modify the gameplay and add significant replay value to an already pair of incredible games. —Nick Sutrich

Budget Cuts 1 & 2

It’s an ordinary day at work when you realize all your co-workers have been replaced by robots. Sneak to the top while avoiding (or dispatching) the deadly supervisor robots along the way in this stellar stealth action-adventure series.

Half-Life: Alyx

Yes, you can play the best VR game ever on the Quest

Before you go buying this, keep in mind that figuring out how to play Half-Life: Alyx on the Oculus Quest is a bit of a process — especially if you want to play it wirelessly. However, it’s worth the effort.

You don’t need to be someone who’s been waiting for Half-Life 3 for over a decade to want to play this. Yes, it ties into that larger world and gives you tons of context of Alyx’s contributions to Gordon Freeman’s quest, but Half-Life Alyx stands alone. In many ways, it redefines and improves the old games, making old enemies that much more frightening and improving on the original’s already excellent physics. From Alyx’s handy gravity gloves to the superb graphics and facial animations to the seamless inventory system, Valve made a nearly perfect game. Plus, at around 15 hours, it lasts far longer than most VR campaigns.

For more context on all the different areas that this game succeeds, you can check out our Half-Life: Alyx review. Just make sure that your PC has enough power to run it, then invest in an Oculus Link cable if you want the simplest method to play. PC VR-specific headsets like the Valve Index may make the game look slightly better than on a Quest 2, but this way, you’ll save a grand buying a new headset. —Michael Hicks

Half-Life: Alyx

$60 at Steam

In City 17, you and your father Eli Vance mount a resistance against the Combine. Survive deadly encounters with enemy forces, zombie headcrabs, and other foes as you work to free humanity.

Lone Echo

The best way to experience zero-gravity on Earth

Developer Ready at Dawn has really come into its own over the years. It might have started porting games and creating fun spin-offs like Daxter and the PSP God of War games, but games like The Order: 1886 and Lone Echo have proven that the studio has what it takes to create AAA epics. In fact, Lone Echo isn’t just the first game that truly nailed the feeling of zero-gravity in VR. Instead, it’s the only game to date that makes it feel as authentic as it can while your feet are still firmly planted on the ground.

Lone Echo puts you behind the visor of an AI construct inside a robot chassis. You might have heard this terminology before; it’s the same concept found in Lone Echo’s multiplayer spin-off, Echo VR — a game that’s also on this list of best Quest games. You’re helping Captain Olivia Rhodes finish her final two weeks aboard a remote mining facility orbiting Saturn when something goes wrong. While investigating the problems, more things go wrong, and you must embark on a journey only an AI construct with semi-disposable robot bodies can undertake.

The magic here isn’t the story, per se — although it is rather good — it’s the movement. You’ll mostly be pushing yourself around in zero-gravity by grabbing onto objects and holding onto them for dear life. There’s really nothing quite like the fear and hopelessness you might feel when letting go in space and running out of things to grab onto. This one’s a keeper, and we hope Lone Echo II lives up to the original once it finally arrives! —Nick Sutrich

Lone Echo

This is a space epic with one human and a robot marooned on a mining facility orbiting Saturn. Lone Echo’s story is just a gateway to a gameplay experience that’s simply unparalleled.

Lone Echo II

An incredible improvement on the fantastic original

Lone Echo II could be the last Oculus Rift exclusive, now that Meta has pivoted to focus on the more profitable Quest. But if you have a VR-ready PC and a Quest 2 with Air Link set up, this sci-fi epic will blow you away for 10-15 hours with incredible graphics, voice acting, and gameplay with perfected zero-G mechanics.

If you haven’t played the original, the game quickly explains the story thus far and the necessary controls before throwing you directly into the action. And compared to the original, its gameplay adds much more variation and scope. Levels are much larger and feel less like an on-rails experience, with sections that will remind you of Echo VR, and the enemies are a more dangerous and immediate threat.

In our minds, only Half-Life Alyx matches Lone Echo II for its high production values, compelling story, and awesome space movement and combat. It’s a must purchase so long as your computer can handle it. — Michael Hicks

Lone Echo II

Play again as the android Jack as you and Captain Rhodes confront new danger around the rings of Saturn, where you’ll discover the source of a dangerous threat to humanity.

Stormland

This time, you’re the robot

So many sci-fi games and movies pit robots against humans, but this time around, you’re the robot in a world filled with them. Insomniac Games, the studio behind incredible series like Ratchet & Clank and Marvel’s Spider-Man, have crafted an exquisite VR title that’ll blow you away — both literally and figuratively. Stormland was one of the first major games to incorporate true full-body physics and on-body inventory systems, as well as a movement system that makes you truly feel like you’re living in the world of Stormlands.

The Stormlands are floating islands in the clouds that you’ll ascend to any time you’re ready to begin missions. A full 12-15-hour fully-narrated story awaits you in this sci-fi world and dwarves many other VR games with its sheer scope. Players will find themselves flying through the clouds — a sea-like body that makes players almost feel like Superman — climbing mountains, exploring caves, and salvaging scrap to upgrade their parts. Remember, you’re a robot, so tearing your arm off and replacing it with a new one is a literal pull and pop.

Stormland has full co-op support, so you and your friends can adventure through the land together. It feels a bit like a Metroidvania title in some ways since you’ll only be able to access certain areas once you have the right upgrade. This one requires serious VR legs, though, as flying, leaping, and the more advanced combat mechanics will certainly leave some newer players feeling like they’ve been lost at sea for a bit. —Nick Sutrich

Stormland