Sony’s PSVR headset has proven to be something of a white knight for VR. Despite being technically inferior to the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive on almost every level, PlayStation leveraged 20+ years of industry experience to create an awesome line-up for its PS4-based device. PSVR is home to many of VR’s best games and is one of the most accessible mainstream headsets available.
It’s important to get a list of the best PSVR games right, then. There’s plenty of obvious choices, but PSVR also houses many hidden gems. We wanted to make a list that reflected that. You’ll be able to get all of these titles from the PlayStation Store.
And so we present our new and definitive list of the 25 best PSVR games, replacing our previous, smaller version.
25. Statik – Read Our Review
Years on from its release and we still find ourselves staring out of windows, mentally picking away at Statik’s mysterious story. This is easily one of PSVR’s most inventive games, imagining the player’s DualShock 4 as a sort of pair of handcuffs that are laced with a series of puzzles. You need to experiment with what the various levers and buttons of each contraption do and then gradually solve your way out of your current predicament.
But it speaks legions about Statik that its fantastic puzzle design is outdone by the game’s sheer oddness. Supervised by the curious and world-weary Dr. Ingen, you’re left to piece together his seemingly random mumblings and musings into a cohesive narrative. It’s still got people picking it apart today, so much so that we’d love another game to help us fill in a few more blanks. Are you listening, Tarsier?
24. Red Matter – Read Our Review
VR has plenty of great exploration games, but none of them feel quite as finely-tuned for the platform as Vertical Robot’s Red Matter. In this intriguing adventure-mystery, you journey to an alien planet to investigate an abandoned enemy base in the midst of a Cold War-style sci-fi conflict.
But it’s the dedication to immersion that makes Red Matter shine. From the comfortable hopping locomotion that works given its setting to the way your variety of tools emerge from virtual representations of the controllers you’re holding. If you truly want to feel like you’re in another world, Red Matter is one place you have to go, making it one of the best PSVR games.
23. Accounting+ – Read Our Review
VR doesn’t get weirder nor more surreal than Accounting+, and we mean that in a very good way. This mad mashup from the minds behind Rick and Morty and Crows, Crows, Crows is a startling, erratic exploration of character presence in VR. In Accounting+, grotesque creatures scream at you and friendly abominations are gutted accidentally. It’s scary, awkward, hilarious and a wide range of other things that many VR games aren’t. That makes it one of the best PSVR games.
22. The Room VR: A Dark Matter – Read Our Review
Puzzle masters Fireproof Games knock it out of the park again with a typically excellent rendition of The Room series, this time for VR headsets. This short, sweet adventure is set in The British Institute of Archaeology, where you’ll solve challenging trials in search of a missing archaeologist.
What makes The Room VR work is its commitment to the platform it’s appearing on. This isn’t just a bunch of puzzles that would work on a traditional screen; each and every one has been thoughtfully invented with VR at its core. That makes it easily one of the best PSVR games, especially if you’re into puzzles.
21. Gorn – Read Our Review
There’s definitely an argument to be made for keeping VR games from getting too violent but Gorn basically rips any such debate’s jaw off and then beats it to death with its own arms. Before we step into the murky ground of ‘realism’, Free Lives has jumped all the way over to the other side of the canyon and spilled a frankly hilarious amount of blood in the process. Gorn is all about being the last man standing in a gladiator arena, and the game has little in the way of rules to stop you from doing that.
Want to pull a guy’s head off? Bash him in with a rock? Swing a mace into a face and knock some eyeballs out? Gorn lets you do all that and it feels wonderful, not because we have psychotic tendencies but because it’s all so stupidly over the top that you can help but laugh. Beyond the stupidity, though, there is actually a great structure in place here that will keep you coming back to unlock new content and make battles surprisingly tense affairs, too. It’s as stupid as it gets but Gorn’s a game you should take seriously too.
20. Five Nights At Freddy’s VR: Help Wanted – Read Our Review
Ever wanted to give yourself a heart attack? Firstly, what’s wrong with you? Second, Five Nights At Freddy’s VR is the closest you’ll get to that experience in the comfort of your own home. Most VR horror games try to be at least a little cautious with their jump scares so that people can actually play them. FNAF has no such interest in any consideration.
Across several minigames that include content from past games and new experiences, you’ll try to survive against a haunting army of abandoned animatronics, trying to keep tabs on them as they stalk you and trying to fix things without being eaten (wait, do they eat you?). If you’re looking for the ultimate VR scarefest, you can’t go wrong with this house of horrors, making it one of the best PSVR games.
19. The Persistence – Read Our Review
Firesprite’s VR debut is a tantalizing horror treat. It uses procedural generation to create a spaceship riddled with horrific enemies that you need to sneak your way through. Think Dead Space in VR. If the very thought of that doesn’t send you running for the hills then this could be for you.
Plus, compatibility with traditional game controllers over VR motion controllers does give The Persistence a mechanical, refined edge compared to a lot of its contemporaries. If you’re looking for a genuinely deep, calculated VR game, this is worth enduring the scares for.
18. Farpoint – Read Our Review
It may be the wonderful rifle-shaped Aim controller that elevates Farpoint from a relatively simplistic first-person shooter to a wholly immersive experience, but that experience is powerful enough to earn it a place on this list. In Farpoint you crash land on an alien planet and must find a way home, shooting your way through hordes of spider enemies as you go.
Yes, spider enemies. It’s a little Starship Troopers, but there’s a genuine thrill to the Colonial Marines-style panic-fire battles. Surprisingly, though, there’s a hugely engaging story at the center of Farpoint that manages to strike a chord despite focusing on characters other than the player’s speechless shell. This was a promising start for developer Impulse Gear, but we’re hoping to see more from them in the future.
17. Moss – Read Our Review
Moss is one of a handful of 2018 games that proved that third-person VR experiences don’t just work but can make for some of the absolute best content out on the platform right now. You guide an adorable little mouse named Quill through diorama-sized levels, solving puzzles and taking on fearsome critters in sword-based combat.
While its mechanically refined, Moss’ real claim to fame is the bond you build with Quill over the course of the adventure. Playing as a larger companion to the tiny protagonist, you really start to connect with her as you work together to overcome obstacles. It feels very much like a team effort, which is quite a remarkable feeling in itself. Bring on Book 2.
16. Paper Beast – Read Our Review
Another World creator Eric Chahi is back with a similarly transformative VR adventure. In Paper Beast, you immerse yourself in a virtual ecosystem consisting of digital animals born into a breathing world you can reach out and feel. What follows is a magical safari ride through an impossible universe, complete with some of VR’s most natural puzzles.
What makes Paper Beast really sing, though, is just how believable its menagerie of animals is in VR. Interactions with them are seamless and natural, and each makes a dent (sometimes literally) in the surrounding world. Paper Beast might be a little on the short side and it might not have any explosions, but it’s one of the best explorations of the new types of experiences VR can enable.
15. Iron Man VR – Read Our Review
Tony Stark finally took flight in VR in 2020, and the wait was worth it. This PSVR exclusive offers a full campaign with surprisingly deep combat, an interesting story and plenty of cinematic moments designed specifically with VR in mind. True, there were technical problems, but the game itself was good enough to outweigh the cons.
Published by Sony itself and developed by Republique studio Camouflaj, Iron Man VR literally managed to circumvent PSVR’s tracking limitations with clever techniques that allowed players to spin around on the spot and shoot or fly in any direction. Combined with the considered combat mechanics, you had something that balanced the pure joy of being Iron Man with the kind of demanding gameplay we’d expect from traditional games. This is easily one of the best PSVR games from 2020 – bravo.
14. Beat Saber – Read Our Review
Who would have guessed that, with everything developers could do, the closest VR has yet gotten to a ‘killer app’ is a rhythm action game with knock-off lightsabers? It seems ridiculous but just one go on Beat Saber and you’ll understand why it’s such a hit; it’s an utterly entrancing experience that makes you feel like a master. That’s all you need VR to be.
You slash notes that arrive on time with a beat. It sounds simple but, in practice, there are few things more satisfying to do in VR. It won’t be long until you’re throwing your motion controllers around like a ninja. Plus you’ll be working up a sweat and instinctively dancing to the given track. Many people will tell you Beat Saber is one of the best PSVR games, and they’re absolutely right.
13. No Man’s Sky VR – Read Our Review
No Man’s Sky promised to bring its entire universe of billions of procedurally generated planets connected by unending oceans of space that can be explored by yourself or with friends all into VR. It’s had a few technical hiccups, but you can’t deny it delivered on that hugely ambitious premise. You can lose endless hours here journeying to the top of mountains, scouting below the oceans and duking it out in spaceship battles.
Better yet, Hello Games put incredible effort into this VR update, making it feel native to the game instead of tacked on. Still, remember this is No Man’s Sky; there are plenty of beautiful sights and sounds, but also a fairly punishing survival loop and resource-gathering grind to fight back against. If that sounds up your street, No Man’s Sky will probably be one of your most loved VR games. The console version is slightly toned down from the PC release, but it’s still one of the best PSVR games.
12. Blood & Truth – Read Our Review
The London Heist minigame in PlayStation VR Worlds remains one of the most polished and engaging pieces of story-driven VR content out there. Lucky for us, developer Sony London decided to take its short tale of crime capers and turn it into a full game. The result is Blood & Truth, one of the most polished and immersive shooters yet seen on any VR headset, let alone PSVR.
What makes Blood & Truth great is that it isn’t ‘just’ a shooter. Every level has new types of interactions and mechanics to explore, fleshing the virtual world out and bringing it closer to the real one. Its story might be on the cheesy side, but its character models are unmatched and the stunning setpiece moments are often Uncharted-worthy. Don’t let the Guy Ritchie accents fool you; Blood & Truth is one to take seriously.
11. Pistol Whip – Read Our Review
Pistol Whip may be the new kid on the block but, for our money, its sharpshooting, sharp sounding, beat-based gameplay proves to be even more hypnotic than Beat Saber. In this neon-lit shooter, you stream down corridors, blasting bad guys to grizzly tunes, avoiding incoming fire and trying to rack up the best scores.
Pistol Whip’s key is to take influence not just from the VR sales king but also Superhot and, most prominently, John Wick. Whereas Beat Saber wants to make you a dancing Jedi master, Pistol Whip aims to teach you gun-fu with style, elegantly fusing the rhythmic and cinematic together into a pulsating, vibrant monster of its own. Pistol Whip is definitely one of the best PSVR games.
10. Dreams – Read Our Review
Dreams is a tricky one to rank in a list like this. Depending on what you want to do with Media Molecule’s game creation platform (which is essentially its own development engine), you’ll have different experiences. We wish the tutorial content was more VR-native, and there’s a lot of shovelware to sift through, just like in the main game.
But at the core of Dreams is a set of genuinely accessible and incredible tools than empower a vibrant community to make incredible creations. Whether it’s fun tributes to beloved franchises or the handful of fantastic original ideas, Dreams proves itself to be a powerful, if messy VR playground.
9. Firewall: Zero Hour – Read Our Review
Virtual paintball in your living room. That’s the pitch behind a lot of VR shooters these days, but none of them realize it quite as well as Firewall: Zero Hour. It has a few hiccups, but First Contact’s multiplayer shooter is one of the purest expressions of leaving your own body and stepping into the role of someone else entirely that you’ll find in VR. This is the intense S.W.A.T. simulator you’ve always dreamed of experiencing.
It’s PSVR’s excellent Aim controller that makes Firewall a real standout. The unmatched sensation of holding an assault rifle in your hand makes you feel incredibly powerful and draws you back in time and again to recapture the rush. It might be more on the tail-end of its life and it never saw some of the bigger updates we were hoping for, but Firewall is one of the best expressions of what VR gaming is all about and, for our money, one of the best games you can currently get on PSVR.
8. The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners – Read Our Review
We would have never pegged a game based upon The Walking Dead to carry some of the best design and user-interaction you’ll find in VR, but Saints & Sinners delivers all that and then some. This sets the bar for VR zombie games with Boneworks-style, physics-based combat that has you wrestling with hordes of undead, throwing every ounce of effort you can into every swing and stab.
But this isn’t just a wave-based survival game (though it has that too) or silly sandbox. Saints & Sinners packs its action into a full, meaty VR campaign that sees you trekking through the remains of New Orleans. Add in human enemies, side-missions and the ability to kill zombies with a spoon, and you have one of the deepest native VR games on the market. Saints & Sinners will be one of the best PSVR games for some time to come.
7. A Fisherman’s Tale – Read Our Review
As great as VR is, its initial novelty is bound to wear off after your first few weeks or so. If you want to recapture the magic of putting on the headset for the first time, though, there’s one destination that’s bound to deliver: A Fisherman’s Tale. This is a mind-bending puzzle game unlike anything you’ll see elsewhere. That alone makes it one of the best PSVR games.
In A Fisherman’s Tale, you solve intricate, scale-based puzzles in which you work… with yourself. Its best puzzles utilize a miniature model of the lighthouse the game’s set in. Lift the roof of the model and you’ll see a mini-you, imitating your every move. Just try and keep your brain from breaking as you hand yourself giant objects, or reach down to poke your own head. It’s a trip to say the least. Throw in a poignant story about self-acceptance and you have a short, sharp VR game that will stay with you much longer than most multi-hour epics.
6. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard – Read Our Review
Capcom’s 2017 soft-reboot of its beloved horror franchise hit hard in the scare department. Switching to first-person put the horror right in front of you, daring players to fight their way through the Baker mansion. But on PS4 it went a step further with full PSVR support. To this day it remains probably the scariest thing you can see in VR.
This is very likely still the most high-profile VR game out there. It’s a full AAA production with some of the best visuals you’ll find inside a headset and a full campaign with heaps of variety. It’s well-paced and incredibly tense, harkening back to the series’ roots with a focus on limited resources and genuine scares. If you’re looking for a top tier PS4 game with full PSVR support, Resident Evil 7 is as close as it gets.
5. Skyrim VR – Read Our Review
It turns out that the Skyrim of VR is, well, Skyrim in VR. There are definitely some awkward quirks to Bethesda’s port of its ever-popular fantasy RPG, but we were more than willing to put them to the back of our minds as we explored Tamriel like never before. With hundreds of hours worth of content, full autonomy to make the kind of character you want and an enormous world to explore, Skyrim VR is the closest we’ve come to fulfilling every adventurer’s dreams (outside of taking an arrow to the knee).
Not to mention that this has some of the best Move integration we’ve yet seen in a PSVR game, getting us as close to natural locomotion as possible without those much-requested thumbsticks. The fact that it fits inside the headset at all is simply astonishing. Skyrim VR is going to be hard to top for some time.
4. Ghost Giant – Read Our Review
Upon first glance, Ghost Giant appears to be a charming little puzzler that makes the most of its diorama-sized worlds. And that’s very much the case; in this adorable papercraft world you help your young companion out with different chores and tasks. That includes tickling clams and making intentive art in wonderfully tranquil locations. It’s whimsy, delightful and amazing in VR. But that’s only half the story.
Ghost Giant also hides a thoughtful take on depression, smartly communicated through this new medium. The game uses intimacy, scale and connection in engaging ways that bring you closer to the world and characters around you. It’s surprising and responsible, delivering some incredibly powerful moments. All told, it’s one of the most striking and unforgettable examples of VR storytelling yet seen.
3. Wipeout: The Omega Collection – Read Our Review
Since the day PSVR was announced, Wipeout seemed like an obvious fit for the platform. This would be the chance to realize the dreams we’ve all been having since the sci-fi racing series began on the original PlayStation. But even then we didn’t quite expect Wipeout: The Omega Collection to be quite the tour de force for VR it ended up being.
Sony expertly tweaked several of its older games to fit inside PSVR here. The result is a package with heaps of content, all of which you’ll want to see because the game is a flat out thrill to experience. Shooting around circuits, air-braking across corners and letting machine gun fire rattle out in front of you is unbelievably exhilarating. Pair the extensive career modes with online play and you have one of PSVR’s meatiest and most polished games.
2. Superhot VR – Read Our Review
Superhot is, without a doubt, the most instantly rewarding game to play in VR. The flatscreen original was great but, by bringing your whole body into this groundbreaking shooter, the developer completely flips the game on its head. In Superhot (stop me if you’ve heard this before), time moves only when you do. That means that when you’re still, the world around you is too. Every time you raise your arm or duck your head, the world crawls into life. You’re essentially a human video playback device.
Superhot gives you a stark realization of the physicality of VR and what that means for gaming. It’s an experience in which you are aware of every inch of your body. It also makes it effortlessly easy to feel cool in VR; every catch of a handgun or toss of a ninja star comes with an incredible strand of slick satisfaction you won’t find anywhere else. Superhot VR is currently the gold standard for VR shooters and, in our opinion, one of the very best games on PSVR.
1. Astro Bot Rescue Mission – Read Our Review
Sony Japan’s Playroom VR compilation held a lot of delights when it launched on PSVR in 2016, but everyone agreed that the third-person platforming minigame, in which a small robot saved his friends with help from the player, deserved its own title. Astro Bot is the result of those requests, and it’s even better than many had imagined it would be. 26 levels of Mario-quality platforming await you here.
It sounds like hyperbole but it’s true; each one of Astro Bot’s levels packs new ideas that range from endearingly novel to properly groundbreaking. It’s an absolute joy to play from start to finish that never ceases to amaze you. Plus there’s power to the bond you’ll form with Astro on this adventure, breaking down the barrier between players and characters in ways not yet seen in gaming. For that reason, we’re crowning it as the best game on PSVR.
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Update 08/12/20: The Exorcist, Virtual Virtual Reality, Vacation Simulator, Transpose, Bow To Blood and Rec Room were removed from the list. Iron Man VR, Five Nights At Freddy’s VR, Pistol Whip, Gorn, The Walking Dead: Saints & sinners and Dreams were all added.
Update 04/08/20: Borderlands 2, Groundhog Day, Dirt Rally, Downward Spiral and Tetris Effect were taken off the list. They were replaced with Vacation Simulator, Virtual Virtual Reality, Red Matter, The Room VR and Paper Beast.
Update 12/04/19: Deracine, Thumper, Creed: Rise to Glory and Rez Infinite were removed from the list. Borderlands 2, Groundhog Day, No Man’s Sky VR and Accounting+ replaced them.
Update 08/01/19: Borderlands 2 VR and Arizona Sunshine were taken off the list and replaced with Blood & Truth and Ghost Giant. Astro Bot and Firewall traded places.
Do you agree with our list of the best PSVR games? Let us know in the comments!
The post The 25 Best PSVR Games And Experiences Available Now – Summer 2020 appeared first on UploadVR.
Source: The 25 Best PSVR Games And Experiences Available Now – Summer 2020
