Category Archives: Oculus Game Reviews

A Rogue Escape Screenshot

Best VR Games for Quest 2 If You’re Just Getting Started

I Just Got An Oculus Quest 2 What Games Should I Get?

It was the question that rocked the internet the day after Christmas 2021. After years of speaking about VR’s promise and it often being declared dead on arrival, VR and more specifically the portable wonder that is the Oculus Quest 2 mobile Virtual Reality headset had become as seemingly popular as Cabbage Patch dolls, or the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in decades past.

So you just got an Oculus, er, Meta Quest 2 for Christmas and after a few rounds of Beat Saber and themed rollercoasters, you’re wondering what else there is to do. Here are some great choices to try out if you want to go beyond the front page of ideas! Some of these we just find ourselves going back to time and time again, while others we discovered off the beaten path at festivals like FIVARS or IndieCade.

Of one thing we are sure – you will find hours of delight for any mood with the choices below! Hopefully, this list will help you discover a few choices off the beaten path to level you up from day one!

Scary and Exciting

These are not for the faint of heart!

Want a deeply immersive and thrilling horror adventure? Resident Evil 4 was ported over to the Quest just for you. Goes especially well with Halloween or people who like scary action.

You might also want to check out Cosmodread a VR survival horror roguelike that procedurally generates its haunted horrors experience in space.

Affected: The Manor has been around for a while and scared the lights out of almost anyone who has dared enter the super haunted halls of this seemingly endless house of eerie dread from another plane.

Fitness

Supernatural requires a monthly or annual subscription but there is a reason Facebook paid 500million dollars for this easy-to-pick-up and social-friendly fitness titan. Beautiful 3D vistas surround you as you swing your bats at targets or box to hundreds of big hit songs ranging from Kanye to Bono Jovi to Swan Lake.

If you really want to knock yourself out try Thrill of the Fight boxing. Warning though, it will seriously raise your heart rate.

Storytelling

Often people ask why bother purchase a story that you can’t even affect. Well, it’s not unlike buying a movie on DVD or from Video on Demand. You can always be sure that it’s yours to keep, even if they stop renting it. I mean unless of course the entire store goes down, in which case we have bigger problems.

That said the following are some form of story or interactive story or game as story. They are experiences that are worth experiences more than a couple of times before you inevitably reach for them the next time you want to share the wonders of VR with a non-gamer or someone who just wants to get blown away within moments of putting on the headset.

Moss is one of the original and still most beguiling story-type games to play on Quest. 3D dioramas in a rich and wonderfully realized adventure tale about your little mouse going on a big quest.

Debuted at the FIVARRS festival in 2018, but only commercially available for the first time in 2021, Battlescar is a must-see story set in the 70s – 80s punk music scene of New York. This is VR storytelling at its best. It also stars Rosario Dawson in the title role alongside a killer soundtrack.

In Madrid Noir a young woman arrives at the apartment of her estranged and deceased uncle. Tasked with picking up the pieces of her life, she is unexpectedly thrown back into the past to relive a summer she spent with him as a child. It’s a wonderfully thematic adventure game with fairly simple puzzle and lots of interactivity.

If you want pure hilarity in the style of something you might find on Adult Swim – check out Trover Saves the Universe. Though sometimes its sheer abstract comedy might make it a little confusing as to how to proceed, if you can swing it, (or borrow a playthrough guide) that laughs are legitimate and the world-building is great.

Music and Rhythm

Beyond Beat Saber – try Synthriders which has a great catalog of electro, trance, even electro-swing punk from bands like Rancid. This neon glowing world is great for workout, player vs player and 360 spin modes.

We also love Dance Central from Harmonix which has you dancing to songs from artists like Dua Lipa in various rooms of a nightclub, checking your cell phone, and making new friends while it tracks your dance moves. Super fun night out.

Audio Trip is a hand-crafted dance-style fitness game worth checking out for its creative movements.

Sports and Leisure

We love Real VR Fishing for its beautiful 360 setting and high precision fishing experiences – feeling the tension on the line and playing give and take with your catch. Successfully catching new fish leads to adding them to your giant aquarium for later study and viewing pleasure.

If you ever wanted to take your date to mini-golf but were too afraid to ask, now you can make your wish come true with a gorgeous look VR experience anyone can enjoy: Walkabout Mini Golf has nice physics and fun and (mostly) harmless mental timeout playtime.

Puzzles

ROOM VR: A Dark Matter is a series of complex puzzles in what could be seen as an Escape room game but also feels connected to the classic Myst series. Room and VR are a match made in heaven.

Not quite puzzle not quite action is A Rogue Escape – the name kinda says it all – you will be attempting to pilot a craft with a lot of unlabelled interoperable controls as you flee from dark forces that don’t want you to get away. Thrilling and fascinating.

Another fun and unique puzzle game is Squingle – where you maneuver glowing different colored spheres through translucent tubes, to their goal point. It is absolutely awesome in 3D. You can find Squingle in the App Lab.

Travel

Wander is the Google Earth equivalent for Quest. Travel all over the globe and get facts and walkthroughs of actually 360 photos and 3D scans of locations you may never otherwise get to visit in your lifetime. If you’re lucky, you might even find your childhood home!

Creative Tools

The original creative breakout smash hit – Tilt Brush created a cottage industry of its own for painting in 3D space. It was eventually abandoned by Google and released free to the public.

Gravity Sketch is for designing actual 3D models and lets you import images, videos, and 3D files (.jpg, .png, .mp4, .obj) and export snapshots and 3D files (.png, .obj, .iges).

Multiplayer Action

Cookout: A Sandwich Tale is like Job Simulator meets Space Team meets Cook, Serve Delicious. If you have no idea what any of those references mean – you and your friends have different prep stations and are attempting to fulfill sandwich orders for an ever-growing lineup of hungry anthropomorphic (animal characters) villagers. You can also hear each other when you play so the hysterics can be shared across the network as you collaborate to chop, sautee, dress and serve your sandwich orders on time!

Demeo is a good tabletop-style dungeon crawler to play with your friends where you roll dice as you fight an increasingly dangerous dungeon filled with monsters and treasure. If you survive you can level up with new cards to add to your deck before you descend to the next floor!

Mind, Body, and Relaxation

Tripp is just what the name says – a lot of trippy soothing visuals created by different artists, designed to elevate your thoughts and mood.

Nature Treks is a relaxing way to get away to virtual nature retreats. An early title for Quest, the animation quality may not have aged as well as with some titles, but it still does the job of dropping down your stress levels as you interact with and enjoy nature and its inhabitants.

We hope you enjoy these suggestions – let us know your favorite VR games in the comments!

Karnage Chronicles splash image

Karnage Chronicles VR Review

Karnage Chronicles header

TITLE: Karnage Chronicles
GENRE: Action, Adventure, RPG
DEVELOPER: Nordic Trolls
PUBLISHER: Nordic Trolls
RELEASE DATE: July 31st, 2020

Karnage Chronicles is a classic fantasy adventure game in which the goals are to collect treasure, complete quests and generally survive a world jam-packed with murderous creatures.

Kavernous Karnage

It takes place in a rocky cave setting peppered with over-sized organic plants and minerals and mushrooms, all of which are breathing or swaying or glowing. The ground itself – when you first log in – is the least believable aspect. But once you get into the game and are looking out for enemies and coins, you no longer notice the ground.

The plants and mushrooms are familiar but alien in their luminescence. They give tangible life to the environment.

Karnage Chronicles Mushrooms and skulls

The NPCs in the game are similar in style and reminiscent of The Dark Crystal – Jim Henson’s 1980s fantasy, life-sized mechanical puppetry. The usual cast of characters is present: trolls, goblins and wizards. There are also handsome, lion-like wolves which I regretted having to kill and pretty – but truly terrifying – giant spiders, as well as extra aggressive bees which I mistook for mosquitoes.

The sound is visceral and presence-inducing – cavelike dripping and echoing – and when the whispers and the music come in, it increases the tension and suspense. There are both menacing sounds and satisfying ones, like the sword cutting through the air with a swoosh.

Kumulative Karnage

As is common in VR, you can choose to move by gliding forward or teleport ahead in jumps. Jumping is less taxing on the brain (in terms of cumulative nausea), and you can see a shell of your armored character ahead as you advance into each jump.

There is a wealth of options in terms of levels and paths and portals, and it seems you could play for weeks. The incessant battling has the potential to become monotonous – as in Hobbit 1, 2, and 3 – but Karnage is the name of the game.

The adventuring, collecting, and discovering part is quite enjoyable, and though I played alone, I imagine it would be even more so with friends.

The gameplay is intuitive and the weapons are extremely effective. It is so fun to physically pull the bow and shoot an arrow that really flies and hits the mark – or doesn’t. (The trolls can duck really well.) Either way, it brings you right into the cave and into the game.

You carry all the items you find and collect on a belt that you can hide and unhide.

Komedy Miskalculations

One word of caution to whoever writes the script: girls might like to play this game, too, and gratuitous jokes about female anatomy – even very small jokes – can serve to alienate and subtly say “this world is for boys.” Not to mention what it says to the boys.

The default – and really only – character gender is male. Some choice would be nice. But, at least respect for all humans and players is, in itself, valorous.

Karnage Chronicles combat

Karried off into a Fantasy World

It is like a lot of treasure-seeking adventure/battle games. It has all of the same elements – quests, keys, weapons, potions, puzzles, food to nourish you, foes to battle, challenges to face – but the medium of VR raises the stakes and the visceral quality.

Even though it is classic fantasy fair, there is a real sense that you are actually gathering when you scoop things up and collect them; there is a sense of danger, knowing that any kind of terrifying creature might run at you from behind a rock. And when you are fighting in battle, you are right in there.

Karnage Chronicles puzzles

There were a couple of times when I was exchanging arrows from a distance with an enemy, and I felt just like I was inside a movie. When he shot at me, I could actually jump behind a pillar and then jump out to quickly aim my arrow at him before he got a chance to shoot again. That was amazing.

A little bit later, when the giant spiders jumped on my head, I screamed out loud and had to pull off the headset as they piled on top of me. A great game for lovers of the fantasy genre – and for those who like to battle and quest.

-Pearl Hyacinth

Raccoon Lagoon game screenshot courtesy official site

Top Oculus Game Releases – July 2019

While many were justifiably excited about the release of Oculus Quest, it carried over the same problem of a lack of content. Some might call it the Beat Saber toy. Then we had the controversy around Oculus’ aggressively “curatorial” stance, which was accused of being overly like a walled garden that shunned experimental, indie or otherwise unproven titles. Going into month two and three, however, we are starting to see some interesting new titles pop up, and blow through a much needed air of novelty and refreshment. Here are some of our top picks.

Defector

from Twisted Pixel

Incorporating a little of every sort of action – from high tech gun play to down-and-dirty fisticuffs – as well as stealth, deception and even psychological warfare, Defector is a plot-driven spy thriller with multiple diverse missions.

While some of the promotional material compares this to Mission Impossible, the combination of futuristic weaponry and Middle Eastern setting had us thinking of George Alec Effinger’s stories set in the Arabic cyberpunk metropolis of Budayeen.

In any case, this is a polished FPS action experience for VR players looking for something a bit more meaningful than wave or rail shooters, and its setting is close enough to the “real world” to make its action all the more immersive.

Oculus Rift, Oculus Rift S | 25 GB | $19.99 from Oculus

Journey of the Gods

from Turtle Rock Studios

We’ve all been on our fare share of heroic fantasy quests where the fate of the very world itself hangs in the balance, but we’ve never seen one that looks quite like Journey of the Gods.

This game’s bizarre vistas and weird, angular – and occasionally tentacled – inhabitants are as far from the usual elves and dragons as you can get, with color schemes and creature designs drawing less from the usual European myth than from recent indie games like Hyper Light Drifter and even Sundered.

No doubt the titular Journey of the Gods – and the related quest to save the world or whatever – is plenty compelling, but the setting alone is worth giving this one a look.

Oculus Rift, Oculus Quest | 970 MB | $29.99 from Oculus

Raccoon Lagoon

from Hidden Path Entertainment

Raccoon Lagoon game screenshot courtesy official site
Raccoon Lagoon – screenshot courtesy official site

Based on the title, I was expecting Raccoon Lagoon – from the same studio behind Defense Grid and Brass Tactics – to be nonstop trash pandas. It isn’t, but my disappointment wore off quickly when I realized that it’s actually an incredibly charming farm simulation for VR.

The relaxing rural chores of the Harvest Moon series combine with cute, Pokemon-inspired creatures and a pastoral island setting that gives you plenty to do but doesn’t hurry you along.

This is VR gaming at its most relaxing; go on quests, turn your island into a thriving home…or just take off and spend the day fishing.

Oculus Rift S, Oculus Quest | (COMING SOON)

Accounting+

from Crows Crows Crows

So happy to see the continued success of the wacky stuff: Accounting+ comes with tremendous game dev pedigree – William Pugh (The Stanley Parable), Dominik Johann (Minit) and Justin Roiland (Rick and Morty).

The game started as a jam, but has ballooned/blossomed into a much bigger experience in its two years. It also has a killer soundtrack. Give yourself a little Dada, Po-Mo joy and hop into this zany world. You will laugh. Your mouth will be agape. You will swim in meta. Just do it. Account.

Oculus Quest, Rift, Rift S | 1.93 GB | $11.99 from Oculus

Gravity Sketch

from Gravity Sketch

Excited to see this exacting design tool get the Oculus Quest port treatment. Of course, we don’t like having to pay for stuff a second or third time for device-specificity, but at the same time, we know that devs, investors and Facebook/Oculus have spent money on not only making these ports but improving the experiences in the process. We also note that slowly the prices are coming down from their nose-bleed heights and many of these tools/games are now quite affordable – about the cost of a lunch for two.

Gravity Sketch is not just another Tiltbrush or Quill – it is geared towards creating detailed models, scenes and artwork that can be exported into other design tools, CAD software, game engines, or 3D printing platforms.

It will be amazing to see what the combo of this kind of design software can do when combined with tetherless, free roaming hardware.

Oh and did we mention that it’s a tiny download?

Oculus Quest, Rift, Rift S | 121.6 MB | $29.99 from Oculus

What VR games did you play this month (excluding Beat Saber)?