I see your point but I think both need to happen. My guess is that the best VR games will only show their real appeal when played, because people don't have a great frame of reference otherwise.

I can look at a PS5 game and decide to buy a PS5, because I know what controller based consoles are like, I know the types of games, I know what I like. I can't do any of that with a VR game because I don't know what sort of headset I like, how it feels, what's important in a VR game that isn't in others and vice-versa.

I largely agree with you, however Superhot is the closest thing I've experienced to the "can't do it outside VR" games. I did previously play the browser version of the same game, and it was fantastic still, but there's something different about moving around in space like that.

HL:Alyx got close to the "only in VR" sort of mechanics, but change 2-3 big set pieces, and it could very much be done on a 2D screen.

Well, it doesn't only have to be "only in VR" mechanics, it also has to be a really really fun game compared to almost all the other games you could at the moment purchase and play on your normal PC with a normal monitor and no extra $1000 investment in hardware..

I've tested VR sporadically ever since the first Oculus Rift came out, and I just get a headache after 15 minutes and that kind of has ruined it for me forever I guess as I now associate VR with motion sickness, bad ergonomics etc. That's very personal of course, I know there are others who can run around in VR fine for a whole day without these reactions.

Anyway... the game has to be outrageously good for me at least to use a VR version instead of just sitting on my chair staring on the screen with a cup of tea next to me.

Weird to say the barrier to entry is “an extra $1000” when the headline is exactly half that, which is similar to the cost of a console or decent GPU.

Edit: and the Quest 2 will be reduced to $300 in a couple days from now

It was $300 before Facebook raised its price. Completely worth it.

I will buy the Quest 3 as soon as it is released, but just for my stack of fitness games that are in my daily routine.

You can get back into it. I get motion sick too with some stupid games (like X-Plane that has this really annoying opposite movement when it's loading, GRR). But just do it slowly and don't keep going the moment you get even a hint of sickness. Soon you'll be running aroudn with no issue.

> I just get a headache after 15 minutes

That usually means your IPD isn’t setup properly on your headset. It’s more common on HTC headsets or any others that have really fresnel lenses

I tried Alyx and it was just not fun. Not for the game or anything, but I was really just uncomfortable being in a virtual reality environment where I was hunting/being-hunted by aliens. That's really not my idea of a good time - more like a nightmare.

VR needs some less intense and some more fun, low-stress gaming experiences to draw in the casuals like me.

> VR needs some less intense and some more fun, low-stress gaming experiences to draw in the casuals like me.

You’re in luck because those types of titles form the majority of VR titles today. The more common complaint is the lack of AAA content like Alyx which is due to the lack of users

I think it's amazing. I played through about 5 times now. And a lot of the user-generated content too.

But I feel like there's a lot more for people like you. Moss, Beat Saber, Red Matter etc.

IMO this is true for all “games”, not just VR.

The industry is surprisingly conservative in terms of content/genre outside of indie studios. It’s basically Hollywood.

Bizarre that the industry keeps pumping out the same kind of games that alienate casuals like me as well as women. That’s a massive untapped market.

The only game my wife ever played was The Sims and was completely baffled when she learned there were no other games similar to it.

And yet they’ll spend $200M making yet another military FPS

It's not like other games in the broader genre don't exist. eg Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing, My Time at Portia all come to mind.

Yes they exist, with laughably meager budgets compared to “mainstream” games.

I’ll concede animal crossing is a good exception to the rule, but this only serves to prove our original point that there’s room for AAA-grade games in this market segment.

Stardew Valley is the perfect example. It took an indie game developer to make a game with broad appeal.

What are these big studios even doing? Why didn't their customer research tell them that there's demand for games like Stardew Valley?

I'm right there with you in terms of wanting lower-stress gaming options.

Thankfully, there's quite a few to choose from! Demeo has been popular within my gaming group.

https://www.resolutiongames.com/demeo

You need to play Demeo.

They have a Non-VR version now so people without headsets can get in on the fun, but it's just not the same.

What makes Demeo great? I'm considering getting it.

If you have ever played D&D with miniatures, it's like that, only the miniatures are glowy and sparkling and animated, and the board is very detailed. You pick the pieces up with your VR controllers and move them around.

Except you can zoom in to stick your face super close-up to the action to see it going down.

When you zoom out, you are, indeed, in someone's basement. When it's not your turn you can enjoy all the geeky easter eggs sitting around the basement.

It sounds cool like this, but I can assure you it's cooler than that. I first played it non-VR and enjoyed the game, and then played a game the second time in VR and literally said aloud, "Holy Shit!".

For me Beat Saber is that game. With mods and community-made songs/beatmaps which can be quite intense and it's how I get in some cardio on a regular schedule (~1h30m on a two-days-on-one-day-off cycle).

Currently I do this with a Quest 2 attached to a Vive Deluxe Audio headstrap with 3D printed adapters and a counterweight on the back to take pressure off my face (a setup dubbed "frankenquest"). It works well enough but there's a lot of room for improvement.

I think the experience just isn't mainstream enough. I think there are a lot of people that would drop $200-$300 to get a beat sabre experience if they were aware of the option. Is there any reason it should be less compelling than the "Wii as exercise" craze, for example?

The Wii was heavily marketed as a family entertainment system. A 'Family Computer', if you will. It's even in the name. People were buying it because it's something your grandmother could play alongside your five year old son. VR is still marketed as ages 13 and up, gives some people nausea and can only be used by one person at a time. There's also extra hygiene concerns that make them awkward to use at parties as you have the extra step of wiping the headset down between users. The controllers are also pretty intimidating for new users because you can't see them. I was showing PSVR2 to my dad and told him "Push R2 to select" before realising that if you didn't know where the R2 button was already, you had no hope of finding it because you're physically incapable of seeing the controller.

It's a long way from the ultra-casual Wii experience.

> you have the extra step of wiping the headset down between users

You wipe it down? Is that normal?

For germaphobes. If you have people at a party, the higher likelihood one will be.

I'm old; I ate dirt, swam in lakes and drank from a garden hose! My immune system is superman.

Huh. Wild. I'm unaware that I have ever even associated with anyone even close to that level of germaphobe.

People that are that level of germaphobe tend to avoid people that are obviously the opposite way. It’s easier than explaining and getting them to do it your way (because there’s no meeting in the middle in these scenarios, it’s either clean enough, or it’s not)

Fun fact about wiping the headset down —- there’s a study at Yale to determine whether the Oculus mask can be sufficiently sanitized for safe use in pediatric cancer wings (a high bar) because of it’s form factor and immersive experience. Turns out it absolutely cannot. Sanitizing that mask is practically impossible.

Yeah I highly doubt you could sanitize to medical needs levels but the casual user should be fine.

Is this with or without a silicon cover on the foam face guard? Silicon has worked really well for me from a cleanliness perspective.

VR just seems too intense. I legitimately don't want to immerse myself in a new world. I'm perfectly fine sitting in front of the TV for an hour and mashing buttons from a distance and walking away after I'm done.

In case you didn't know, the PSVR2 has a button on the front right side that switches the display to that of a camera coming out the front face of the unit so you can see around. It's a huge improvement over the previous generation. However, the resolution isn't great. While you certainly can see the controller, you wouldn't be able to read the "R2" imprint on it.

> For me Beat Saber is that game.

Yeah, Star Wars Squadrons was what sold me a VR headset. No regrets.

I didn't hear good things about that game... is it that good in VR?

If you ever wanted to feel like you're flying in an X-Wing, it's pretty incredible. I play for a couple hours at a time with a basic joystick, a Lenovo Explorer headset, and an Nvidia 1070. I'd like a bit stronger of a graphics card but it's still very clear and sharp. All the control screens in the cockpit are quite large and easy to understand, not a lot of tiny numbers to squint at.

I think some people set their expectations like it's a $60 + battlepasses live service game instead of a $40 game that got a complete release and had no plans for future content.

If you're looking for a long-lived multiplayer game, probably not. If you're just excited to sit in an X-Wing cockpit and blow up some TIE fighters then it's really great in VR.

I think the issue is that Beat Saber has been the answer for the last four years and if you are not into rhythm games then... It's kind of a hard sell.

One issue is that Beat Saber is a waste of money if you don't get the custom songs/mods/etc. This is easy if you're playing on a PC, it's a one-click thing which has wink-wink tacit endorsement from the devs. It can be done on Oculus devices too, but it involves a convoluted jailbreak that regular users won't bother with, and without that Beat Saber runs out of appeal pretty quick.

I think the included songs are the best and I have bought many packs.

Yeah I agree. The first-party maps have been getting better since Beat Games started hiring from the community mapmaker talent pool, but prior to that the stock maps felt kinda clunky and lacked flow.

Also while the variety in stock maps is better than its ever been, it still doesn’t hold a candle to the thousands of community maps.

I only played stock for a long time

You're exaggerating.

> which has wink-wink tacit endorsement from the devs.

Is that true? A kinda competitor to Beat Saber is Synth Riders, and it's not wink-wink, there is official support for custom songs (and mods I think? I'm not sure). And when I get back to Beat Saber (because I like both Beat Saber and Synth Riders' game play), I feel like I'm owning an iPhone: a beautiful object but I can't actually do what I want with it

Tried Beat Saber once in a VR lab type thing, it's really hit and miss.

With some practice, you get fewer misses. :-D

Feels more like Half Life Alyx would be the killer app for VR instead, but I'm not sure what the replayability is. Maybe with a VR gmod based on it or something?

I played Alyx some and it was neat, but I didn't get terribly far into it as it wasn't very compelling for me. Maybe because I've never played the other Half Life games?

Absolutely. To truly appreciate Alyx, you need to know a few things about the Half-Life universe.

HL:A showed what a AAA FPS is in VR.

I wouldn't call it a killer app simply because these days, FPS is all about multiplayer, and a FPS multiplayer in VR is just...meh? It doesn't really work.

Really, any sort of action-packed combat is just not going to work in VR. Jumping behind cover works fine outside VR because the medium acknowledges the limitation. But in VR, trying to jump behind cover doesn't work when you have to worry about being next to the edge of your play space. VR tries to immerse you, but that immersion is limited when you can't touch your surroundings. Being crouched behind cover and peeking over it to shoot feels unnatural and immersion-breaking when you can't lean against the wall you're hiding behind.

Even as a VR supporter and owner of a Valve Index (And the HTC Vive before that), I don't know what the killer app for VR would be. To be honest, I'm not sure I'd even EXPECT there to be a true single "killer app" for VR, but rather, a collection of apps that work incredibly well in VR, or don't work without VR. Beat Saber comes up a lot, and it's fun, but I wouldn't call it the "killer app". It's just an example of something that only works in VR.

Super Hot manages to pull off immersive combat in VR like to other game, it’s absolutely fantastic - but it only works for this particular type of game mechanic.

SUPER

HOT

SUPER

HOT

SUPER

HOT

Yeah, SUPER HOT VR was amazing. It really makes you feel like you're in a kick-ass slow-mo action scene.

Beat Saber is the most successful successor to DDR. DDR worked without VR obviously, but requires an expensive and easy to break input device. Also, downstairs neighbors are less likely to complain when you are playing BeatSaber vs DDR.

From having friends try different things in VR, Beat Saber has been far and away the biggest hit with the most people relative to any other type of game or experience.

Out of ~20 people, I think there has only been one who liked something else better (the X-wing mission in SW:Battlefront).

> For me Beat Saber is that game. With mods and community-made songs/beatmaps which can be quite intense

Some people seemed hesitant to trust Meta due to it's Facebook account requirement (now removed), but for me their behaviour with Beat Saber is one reason that I'm kinda hesitant to trust them going forward.

e.g. Beat Saber has an update appear and all your mods stop functioning for a bit until verified to work with the new release. (From what I recall on the Quest version trying to mod results in some warning messages that stuff like this might result in your account getting banned, though I've never heard of them actually doing this to Beat Saber players). i.e. it's annoying and cumbersome to do, needs to be repeated for each update, and you're threatened with having your account banned (though I suspect that they'll continue to not follow through with those threats).

They'd also previously promised they were gonna add custom level support on Quest (e.g. https://twitter.com/BeatSaber/status/1182645623683727360) but despite tweaking stuff like this multiple times in 2019 that support never materialized.

Net result is that I'm mostly a Synth Riders player and tend to advise people purchasing a headset to avoid Beat Saber when looking for rhythm games.

(Synth Riders, Audio Trip, Boombox all allow custom songs out of the box and Pistol Whip finally has that scheduled for release this month - https://twitter.com/PistolWhipVR/status/1664037754550771717)

This is why even though I'm using a Quest 2, I don't bother with the Quest-native Beat Saber and instead play the Windows/Steam version through PC link. Well that, and the Quest version will chug on some maps that are a bit too much for its midrange smartphone CPU to handle, while my PC tower doesn't even break a sweat.

On Windows there's several utilities to keep your Beat Saber version and mods frozen. The utility I use, BSManager[0], also symlinks your beatmaps folder so it's shared between versions, making it easy to switch between arbitrary versions at will.

With that setup I play one setup for extended periods and only upgrade when custom maps start using frills from newer versions. I'm currently playing on 1.27.0 even though the current version of Beat Saber is up to 1.30.0.

[0]: https://github.com/Zagrios/bs-manager

bsmanager is a perfect name for the stuff it helps me put up with...

I'd agree, but Beat Saber with mods and community songs bumps the whole package to around 2000 bucks worth of material for someone who doesn't own a windows PC.

That's bummer, and it was worse when GPU were costing an arm and a leg, so I'd totally understand people being hesitant to jump in.

aka, there is no killer app in VR.

Some games give me that experience:

1. Thrill of the Fight. Boxing standing up throwing fists and blocking with precision just doesn’t exist with controllers.

2. Blaston believe it or not. I really enjoyed hiding behind barriers dodging shots and leaping out to grab power ups.

3. The table tennis game. Swinging my arm like a real paddle was so realistic and the shots are just not reproducible with such precision.

4. Golf with the cut down iron shaft. Again, the fidelity of the shots just isn’t possible otherwise. You can get the same thing at some sports bars but it costs way more :)

Try "In Death: Unchained". You'll be blown away. By far the best game on the Quest

I second this. I never tire of this game.

Thrill of the Fight is such an amazing game.

It's fun but it's also an intense workout, especially if you crank up the difficulty level. I've purchased fitness games for the Quest, and while I enjoy them, they don't give the same intensity of workout that Thrill of the Fight does.

I hope they'll make a v2 of this excellent game.

Thrill of the Fight is brutal. Never thought I would sweat so much in a VR headset. It's a great game and an intense workout.

They are making a v2! You can follow progress and add suggestions on their subreddit. I’m hoping that the apple headset is a target device for them as I think it would be an excellent pairing.

There is a killer app for VR which isn't usable without VR, it's just NSFW.

To be honest the way this is being eschewed is stupid. It's holding back the tech. Oculus bans it from its store, Sidequest had it for a while but caved in due to stupid pressure from payment providers and their deal with oculus.

Yet it's a perfectly valid usecase and one where VR adds value. Despite current tech not making perfect use of what VR offers (no 6DOF for example). There are also motion-synced peripherals available to add an extra factor to it. It's a booming industry.

Meta are shooting themselves in the foot by ignoring it. There's a big urban myth that VHS won over betamax because Betamax limited the types of movies available for its system. While I believe the story is BS, there is undeniably a huge market for it.

I’m still waiting for a good immersive VR game that I can just play while sitting on a couch… all those games that require me to move my entire body all the time get exhausting really fast.

Try Trover Saves The Universe from Rick & Morty's authors

More games have sit down modes now. Walking Dead Saints and Sinners, as well as I Expect you to Die (fun puzzler) are two examples off the top of my head.

I think vehicle sims are the best case for these things. They really do play better in vr.

Yet even so, of course you can still use a monitor, and of course that's good enough.

It's hard to imagine what a vr exclusive that couldn't be enjoyable on a monitor or TV might actually look like.

What have you tried?

Into the Radius is that game I think.. It is like Stalker Shadows of Chernobyl in VR .. I just think lots of people don't know about it. But its the game

Beat Saber, Echo VR and Walkabout Minigolf are standouts