From the stunning precision of SteamVR tracking to the frankly ludicrous amount of games to play, the HTC Vive and its bigger brother, the Vive Pro, are arguably the best place to experience high-end VR gaming today. Sifting through the seemingly unending amount of titles on Viveport and Steam to choose just 25 apps was an impossible task but, as Vive crosses two and a half years on the market, we thought it was time to celebrate the games that have defined it.
Throughout the week we’re going to be updating this list with five games a day in ranked order, leading up to the game we’ve crowned as, yes, the very best game on the platform. Once we’re done, this will be our new and definitive list, replacing our previous, smaller version. Updates will appear on this very page so make sure to check back through the week.
So, without further ado, here are UploadVR’s 25 best HTC Vive games.
25. Redout – Read Our Review
PC VR gamers might not have a Wipeout game to call their own, but Redout is a more than worthy substitute. This futuristic racer has you bombing along eye-popping circuits at blistering speeds. It’s a brutal, no-compromise speedster that throws you straight in at the deep end and demands your stomach keep up with the 80-level campaign that keeps its foot on the pedal from start to finish.
Redout’s secret sauce is the fact that its VR support is optional, which meant developer 34BigThings was able to ladle on the stunning visuals and heaps of content without having to rely solely on sales from the fledgling VR market. This is a big game with tons of content that’s absolutely worth your consideration.
24. Job Simulator: The 2050 Archives – Read Our Review
You know how people look back on the early days of PlayStation with fond memories of Crash and Spyro? Or get all nostalgic for Super Mario World on SNES? We’d bet that Job Simulator will be remembered in a similar way one day. Owlchemy Labs gave us arguably the first game that showed us what high-end VR (spearheaded by Vive itself) could do by creating virtual simulations of the mundanity of modern jobs and then letting you make your own fun.
Job Simulator orders you to throw responsibility out of the window. It lets you trash your office desk, make the biggest, most ridiculous sandwich known to man or light fireworks inside a convenience store with no real repercussions. Not only are these fun activities in themselves, but the game’s masterful design keeps the friction between you and the virtual world to a minimum. Most tellingly, it remains a key cornerstone of how to make an immersive VR game well over two years since its original release. Job done.
23. Creed: Rise to Glory – Read Our Review
Few sports go hand-in-hand with current VR systems as well as boxing, and Creed: Rise to Glory is undeniably the best entry into the genre yet. Developer Survios was able to build upon its three other VR releases (each of which was in consideration for this list) with a game that didn’t just let you live out the boxing champion fantasy but is also smartly made to keep you grounded in VR.
Creed uses what Survios calls the ‘Phantom Melee’ system, which is designed to do away with those awkward spamming issues that many VR boxing games struggle with. It simulates fatigue and places restrictions on your character, forcing you to fight with fairness and strategy. That makes for thrilling multiplayer that isn’t just a chaotic free-for-all. The best thing we can say about Creed is that you could strip the movie tie-in right out of it and you’d still have something every bit as thrilling. The proof is in the punch.
22. Transpose – Read Our Review
After the bullet-dodging thrills of Blasters of the Universe, Secret Location had its work cut out for it maintaining its standards with Transpose. Fortunately, the game passes the difficult second album test with ease; Transpose is a mind-bending puzzle game in which you record your own actions, store them as echoes, and then work together with your past self in order to solve a series of challenges.
Hyperbole be damned; we were often reminded of Portal as we trekked through the game’s ethereal world, defying gravity and gradually being introduced to new concepts that shift the core mechanics in clever, enlightening ways. This is an example of a VR game that feels demonstrably made for the platform it’s appearing on, providing gameplay experiences you simply won’t have seen on a TV or monitor before. That’s something every VR developer should be considering at the heart of their projects.
21. Apex Construct – Read Our Review
If you’re looking for a full adventure that plays to VR’s strengths and puts you right inside of your own action movie, you could do a lot worse than Apex Construct. Fast Travel Games’ debut project feels like an amalgamation of two years of VR game development learnings packed into the kind of journey that early adopters have been craving ever since they picked up their HTC Vives.
Here you explore a post-apocalyptic world overrun with vicious robots. As you uncover more about an ongoing battle between two sentient AI constructs you risk life and limb in razor-sharp archery combat that will have you ducking and dodging incoming attacks. Apex Construct is far from perfect but it’s one of the few VR games to adopt the kind of structure and design that modern gamers expect out of mid-range titles, and that’s an achievement good enough to earn its place here.
Tagged with: htc vive, HTC Vive Pro
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