September 2020’s Best Releases for the Oculus Quest

Now that we know the Quest will be discontinued for its younger, sleeker, cheaper successor, creatively named the…uh…Quest 2, this almost seems like a fruitless exercise. But we can console (no pun intended) ourselves with the fact that there are roughly 700,000(source) Quest users out there, hungry for new fodder.

Cubism

by Thomas Van Bouwel
Release Date: September 17th, 2020

Essentially a series of Tetris-like puzzles in 3D, Cubism scratches that itch for puzzles that are both thought-provoking and relaxing.

The compulsive need to fit blocks together will have you “playing” this on your inner eyelids as you’re falling asleep, long after you’ve taken off your headset and put your controllers away, but the clean, pastel color scheme and gentle piano score will keep you relaxed enough that your waking Cubism dreams will be a pleasant experience, not a lingering effect of psychological trauma.

Falcon Age

by Outerloop Games
Release Date: September 3rd, 2020

Falcon Age was a pretty cool indie game release, but it clearly always wanted to be a VR title. That has now become…er…reality. We love the story, the setting and the central concept here. As a young revolutionary on a dying planet, it’s your job to fight against the oppressors and bring freedom to your people.

It’s not all grim and political, though, because you have a bird friend, and you can put a hat on the bird!

In all seriousness, Falcon Age really does do a wonderful job combining cute bits – the falcon uses her beak to put the hat on! Sometimes she also wears glasses! – with sci-fi Western robot-fighting action, and the combat, which involves both falconry and an electric whip, is more innovative and interesting than the typical double-wielded pistol VR developers usually settle for. Also, learning increasingly nuanced behaviors that you can teach or understand about your Falcon creates what feels like a true relationship with the avatar.

Sphere Toon – VR Comic

by Studio HORANG
Release Date: September 10th, 2020

Just in time for Halloween, Sphere Toon is here to offer you loads of scares. This free program acts as a platform for the animated supernatural horror comics of Studio HORANG in Korea.

There are currently eight short, sweet web-comics available in English, weighted toward ghost stories with titles like Ok-Su Station Ghost, Bongcheong-Dong Ghost and Ghost in Masung Tunnel, plus loads more Korean-language material.

Holopoint: Oculus Edition

by Alzan Studios
Release Date: September 10th, 2020

Holopoint was a game that we returned to over and over again on the now-venerable HTC Vive. Now, on the tether-less Quest, it all makes so much more sense.

If Beat Saber is a physically active game with Star Wars influences, Holopoint takes things back to one of George Lucas’s original Jedi inspirations: the venerable Samurai epic. In fact it predates Beat Saber!

You’ll barely have time to appreciate the minimalist but beautifully presented Kyudo dojo, though, because you’ll be firing arrow after arrow, hoping to defend yourself against that last wave of swordsmen before keeling over with exhaustion.

Void Racer: Extreme

by Coplanar Games
Release Date: September 17th, 2020

Look no further than Void Racer: Extreme to get your fix of arcade hoverbike racing action…if you’ve got the legs for it.

Inspired by franchises like Wipeout and F-Zero, Void Racer features over a hundred levels, a dozen tracks – with individual comfort ratings, if you’re the type who gets motion-sick while riding hoverbikes – plus multi-player modes.

And of course, there are weapons to take out rival racers, if speed alone isn’t quite giving you the adrenaline rush you need.

What were your favorite new Quest releases in September 2020? What did you think about Facebook Connect? Will you buy a Quest 2? So many questions….

I Want My Plex.tv

In what is either a terrible decision, misprioritization, or submitting to strong arming by entertainment industry pressure (Paramount/Big Screen/Facebook – who knows we are speculating) popular streaming and meta-aggregation service Plex.tv has stated officially, via its forums, in response to a growing demand for Quest support, that is NOT developing the app for ANY VR platform now or in the foreseeable future.

This, from a financial or marketing perspective obviously makes no sense, since the Oculus Quest tetherless VR headset has been selling out as fast as Facebook can produce it. Plex allows users to bring in their own copies of TV and Film titles and then compares them to various databases to assign their metadata, cover art and even audio theme songs to let them essentially make their own private OTT Netflix-style media server.

In what is most definitely a too-good-to-be-true product, this can certainly lead to murky licensing and copyright territory. Nonetheless, recently Plex has introduced ad-supported official licensing deals for many film and TV shows, free to users of the product, and will likely be launching an a la carte storefront in the near future.

At first users were up in arms that Plex was losing its soul, selling out to the man, selling them short and turning into yet another iTunes wannabe. But Plex went to great marketing lengths to reassure its userbase that this was not the case.

So why would Plex, which is a perfect and much needed solution for streaming personal videos to an HMD, with a functional product already on the now slightly antiquated Oculus Go, not want to hop on the Quest train? You probably don’t have to think too hard to figure it out.

For now we have to deal with the limited, canned and expensive rental content on Bigscreen’s official Paramount licensing deal. You CAN also use Bigscreen to stream your desktop content, but it isn’t the same as what Plex offers; a beautifully organized gallery of custom personal content, perhaps backups of your DVD collection, or favorite recorded TV shows, or best of all 3D movies, that looks and sounds great in a VR virtual movie theater.

Too bad for us, too bad for VR. too bad for cineastes who want to watch something other that what the commercial deals allow, be they classics, indies, mondo cult films, training videos, hard to get stereoscopic content or otherwise.

Category Archives: Oculus Quest

Top New Releases for Oculus Quest – September 2020