PlayStation VR debuted in late 2016, and since then has amassed an impressive library of games that show off how unique, fun, and enthralling VR can be.
Below, IGN’s staff has compiled our picks for the top 25 best PSVR games you should play, whether you’ve owned a headset since day one or are just looking for reasons to pick one up. This list has collectively been chosen by and written about by Jonathon Dornbush, Jon Ryan, Tom Marks, Brian Altano, Max Scoville, Dan Stapleton, and Mark Medina.
Be sure to let us know your favorite PSVR games in the comments, and read on for our favorites.
[ignvideo url=”https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/04/23/the-10-best-psvr-games”]
[poilib element=”accentDivider”]
[widget path=”global/article/imagegallery” parameters=”albumSlug=top-25-psvr-games&captions=true”]
25. Batman: Arkham VR
One of the oldest entries on this list, Batman: Arkham VR is still a strong introduction to the world of VR, largely because of how great it is to step into Batman’s boots. Solving crimes as the Caped Crusader makes fun use of VR, but it’s whenever Arkham VR really dives into the Dark Knight of it all that it shines. Walking into Wayne Manor, descending into the Batcave, and putting on Batman’s cowl — only to then dance like a fool in the mirror — is as simultaneously cool, goofy, and memorable as most VR experiences that have come after it.
24. Everybody’s Golf VR
Everybody’s Golf VR takes the beloved PlayStation franchise and throws it into VR for a time that, while brief, is fun for both newcomers to the links and seasoned pros. Everybody’s Golf VR is best in short bursts, and offers a variety of setups — number of holes, clubs, etc. — to tailor the virtual greens to your comfort level.
23. The Room VR
The “escape room” puzzle format of the long-running The Room series translates into VR seamlessly, giving you plenty of lovely puzzle boxes to poke and prod as you work your way through its increasingly complex (and creepy) challenges. There’s tons of detail in its worlds, and the fact that you’ll have a handful of puzzles to hop between at any given time makes them feel like an intertwining web of solutions waiting to be found – often relying on previous ones to find them. It’s not the longest puzzle game out there, but it’s tricky and clever the whole way through.
22. Arizona Sunshine
If you’re looking to truly answer whether you’d survive a zombie apocalypse, Arizona Sunshine is one of the more fun ways to test your skills out. With a small but realistic arsenal, Arizona Sunshine’s gunplay is a treat amidst the need to loot for food and supplies, maintaining a tense loop as you battle your way through waves of the undead.
21. Ghost Giant
Ghost Giant isn’t necessarily revolutionary in its use of VR, but it does have touching heart and beautiful artistry going for it. Placing you in the eyes and hands of, well, a giant ghost, Zoink’s VR adventure plays out across a gorgeous set of locations that look like Tim Burton dioramas come to life. With a charming sense of humor, a memorable cast, and engaging puzzle solving that has your giant form messing with the world in fun and wacky ways, Ghost Giant has plenty to offer under its bright exterior.
20. Moss
At a glance from outside of VR, Moss looks like your standard 2.5-D puzzle platformer with gorgeous art direction, but when you’ve actually got the headset on, it clicks: it’s like playing a puzzle-platformer if your head were inside the TV. Mechanically, it’s all familiar enough to anyone who’s played a video game in the last 30 years – you use the controller to move the adorable mouse protagonist Quill around the world – but in terms of presentation, Moss is stunning. Your role is that of a giant, looming, benevolent ally of this darling mouse heroine, which is immediately more engrossing than the conventionally detached act of navigating a character through a video game level.
19. Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality
Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality is one of the best attempts at translating the wacky, hilarious TV series into the form of a video game. Owlchemy Labs, of Job Simulator fame (another entry on the list!) smartly takes the hallmarks of the show, like Mr. Meeseeks, Rick’s garage lab, and more, and marries them with a plethora of familiar but fun VR gameplay modes like environmental puzzles and shooting galleries. If waiting for new Rick and Morty episodes is too tough of a challenge, it’s worth diving into Virtual Rick-ality in the meantime.
18. Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
As far as party games go, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes may be one of the most insane – and a big reason for that is because most of the people playing won’t even be looking at the screen. The information asymmetry of one person defusing a bomb while the others actually tell them how to do so is as stressful as it is fun. Using the naturally isolating experience of VR to give one player a unique perspective is compelling in its own right, but Keep Talking’s true stroke of genius is how it doesn’t just encourage teamwork: it requires it. This isn’t a co-op puzzle game where one player can just play quarterback and solve it all. There’s really nothing else like this game.
17. Superhypercube
Like all good puzzle games, Superhypercube is easy to learn, difficult to master, and downright frustrating to describe in a way that actually sounds fun. But here’s the pitch: You control a small cube, hurtling through the infinite void of abstract space, and your goal is to put it in the right position to pass through a hole in a rapidly approaching wall. Each time you pass a wall, another cube affixes itself to your existing cube, forcing you to rearrange and reconfigure your increasingly cumbersome Superhypercube to fit through the next hole. It’s somewhere between deconstructed Tetris and those wacky Japanese game shows where the people have to position themselves to slide through holes in walls, but a hundred times more stressful and psychedelic than that.
16. Rez Infinite
The beauty of Rez Infinite is that it succeeds in justifying why VR as a platform for escapism is so perfect. It can be played as a challenging and chaotic arcade shooter or a totally freeing and relaxing drift through stark, minimalist worlds brimming with bursts of neon and hypnotic music. Both options are equal in the way they deliver utterly sublime experiences and there’s no wrong to enjoy them, really. For years now, legendary game designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s Rez franchise has delivered catchy, lucid, and surrealist rhythm games across various PlayStation systems but Rez’s first PlayStation VR outing might be the series’ most captivating triumph yet.
15. No Man’s Sky Beyond
It’s hard to describe how No Man’s Sky feels in virtual reality without actually feeling it. Exploring dank, dark caves becomes horrifying, and flying at full speed in your ship is absolutely exhilarating. On top of that, you’ve probably never realized just how big things in No Man’s Sky are, but from this perspective, it’s impossible to miss. Your ship now towers above you and the creatures you encounter are more intimidating than ever. Just be sure to look straight ahead when flying your ship, or you might start feeling a little velocity sickness.
14. Vacation Simulator
After simulating jobs in Job Simulator, Owlchemy has offered us a chance to simulate time off too, with the fun and expectedly wacky Vacation Simulator. Visiting Vacation Island and its many unique locations and weird, oblivious robot inhabitants to perform recreational activities like painting or controlling a geyser water show is certainly a good way to get away from it all.
13. Falcon Age
Falcon Age would be a great PSVR game deserving of a spot on this list solely for how fun it is to interact with its titular bird in VR, petting it, putting on adorable outfits, and watching it perform incredible tricks. But it also delivers outside of its birb, offering a deep, touching story about oppression and colonization and some smart and engaging first-person combat. Outerloop’s knack for building a distinct, beautiful world has us excited for what the studio creates next, and, perhaps foolishly, contemplating getting a falcon of our own.
12. Trover Saves the Universe
Platformers are a great fit for VR, but Trover Saves the Universe makes particularly good use of its knowledge of exactly how you’ll be playing. It casts you as a flying chair-bound alien who can only move using a suspiciously familiar-looking controller, but has you interacting with the world through a separate character – Trover – who does all the actual platforming and combat bits. That cleverly gives you the immersion of a first-person perspective and the clarity of third-person control at the same time. Couple that with Justin Roiland’s signature insane, rambling sense of humor and you’ve got one of the most entertaining VR games available.
11. Thumper
The relentless rhythm adventure Thumper practically becomes a horror game in VR, as its sleek, intimidating track takes on massive form in front of your eyes. Dashing around Thumper’s tight corners, viewing the endless void of its darkness around, and keeping time with the beat is enthralling in one of those ways that VR games can be hard to describe unless you’re in the midst of it.
10. WipeOut: Omega Collection
One of Sony’s more successful attempts at taking a long-running franchise and transplanting it to VR, WipeOut: Omega Collection does a fantastic job of transporting you into the cockpit of its many various futuristic rides. The closest thing we’ve experienced to being in the world of Speed Racer, WipeOut is not just a fun thrill ride in VR but a great racer, with plenty of track variety and exciting designs that will test your skills.
9. Firewall: Zero Hour
Firewall: Zero Hour is one of PSVR’s most engaging games: it’s a team-based tactical shooter that does a great job of encouraging teamwork, which results in some tense, close-quarters firefights. Thanks to frequent content updates from developer First Contact Entertainment, Firewall often offers new goals and new reasons to play. But its core, which slows down the pace most non-VR multiplayer shooters have adopted this day without sacrificing any of the tension and thrills, remains as fun to play now as it was at release, making it absolutely worth jumping into if you’re looking for an exciting FPS experience.
8. Blood & Truth
To date, Blood & Truth is the best blockbuster action movie experience I’ve had in VR, and it strikes a wonderful balance of translating explosive setpieces and shootouts into virtual reality while also delivering an enjoyable story brimming with personality that never takes itself quite too seriously. While it absolutely nails bread and butter action standards like car chases, explosions, machine guns, grenades, and so on, it keeps the experience fresh, grounded, and varied by giving just as much interactivity to ordinary details and household objects. Ever wanted to fiddle with the car stereo during a high speed chase? Or vape while breaking into a museum? Don’t let the Blood & Truth’s overly dramatic title fool you, this is a big, loud popcorn movie in VR.
7. Superhot VR
Even if you’ve played Superhot, you haven’t really experienced it until you’ve played Superhot VR. The concept of an action game where the world only moves when you do is superb, and works fantastically when you can actually move your head out of the way of an incoming slow-motion bullet or deflect an uzi’s spray with your own gun. It’s like being John Wick, but being able to take your time to make what would actually be split-second decisions about which enemies to shoot, which to shatter with a punch, and which to hurl a frying pan at.
6. Doom VFR
Doom VFR is one of the first games to prove that VR shooters don’t have to be stand-in-place shooting galleries (with all due respect to Space Pirate Trainer). Built from the ground up with VR in mind, it puts the satisfying arsenal of Doom (2016) and puts it in your hands for a fairly meaty and energetic battle against the familiar legion of hellspawned enemies. It works with a DualShock 4, but if you have Moves or the Aim controller it’s a real treat.
5. Resident Evil 7
On its own, Resident Evil 7 is a truly creepy and deeply disturbing first-person take on the classic survival horror franchise. But in VR, it becomes one of the most terrifying video game experiences ever made. Sneaking around a festering and dilapidated backwoods house while increasingly deranged locals try to mutilate, maim, and straight-up kill you is absolute nightmare fuel. Leaning in and out of corners, running full speed from disgusting foes, and coming face to face with sickly, twisted monstrosities is very much not for the faint of heart. But if you can stomach it without yanking off your PSVR headset to scream, you’ll be rewarded with a masterclass in video game horror.
4. Job Simulator
The two worst things about working a mundane retail or office job are that they’re usually soul-suckingly boring and also you’ll get fired if you decide to just completely trash the place. Enter Job Simulator, a game that allows you to circumvent those pesky rules and regulations and instead attempt to accomplish simple work tasks with big cartoon hands, slapstick, ragdoll physics, and an utter disregard for your work environment without the fear of being fired – because it’s all just a simulation! Job Simulator turns simple tasks into incredibly hilarious spectacles, whether you’re sending hot dogs flying in every direction at a faux 7-11 or karate-chopping donuts across an office desk. While many VR experiences pride themselves in recreating reality, Job Simulator revels in absurd hilarity and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
3. Tetris Effect
It’s pretty tough to improve upon Tetris, but Tetris Effect finds a variety of ways – including its ability to be played entirely in VR. Tetris Effect is all about transforming your moves into music, with an iTunes visualizer-like screen similarly reacting to your decisions. It can be both frenetic and zen-like, but it’s always engrossing, pulling you out of your living room and absorbing you into its world of dancing lights and pulsing rhythm.
2. Astro Bot: Rescue Mission
In Astro Bot: Rescue Mission, Studio Japan’s Team Asobi has taken the basic framework of a 3D, Crash Bandicoot-like platformer and made you not only the camera but an active participant in this world. Guiding your bots to the finish line requires you to look all around you to find new pathways and hidden secrets above, below, and behind the environment in a way that truly takes advantage of the user being in VR. It’s undoubtedly PSVR’s best exclusive, and has left many – ourselves included – itching for a sequel.
1. Beat Saber
Beat Saber is the ultimate “pick up and play” VR game to immediately sell people on the idea of why it can be fun in a way that no other type of game can. The concept is simple: slice blocks flying at your face with the color-appropriate off-brand lightsaber in the proper direction in time to the beat of the music like a dancing Jedi. But when it ramps up, the skill ceiling is in the stratosphere and perfect execution is a huge rush.
[poilib element=”poll” parameters=”id=1d84eb4d-118e-47f8-8917-967dfd54e6ff”]
[poilib element=”accentDivider”]
Be sure to let us know what your picks are for your favorite PSVR games in the comments below.
