A Green Mushroom

So Budget Cuts is a VR game that's not out yet but they have a free demo to try the gameplay and it's already a day one must buy for me. Basically you have a teleport grenade launcher in your off hand and you get to use your other hand to interact with environment or use throwing knives to kill robot guards.  I can't express how satisfying it is to toss a throwing knife at a robot and get a headshot instantly taking them out. This is a stealth game and I'm so excited to get my hands on the full release.

Virtual Reality art is fascinating to me, and that's what Tilt Brush is all about.  It's a "game" by google but really it's an art program. You draw in the air with different brushes and make whatever you want.  I've had a lot of fun with it even though I'm not a great artist.  And when you actually watch what a good artist can do with it... it's kind of amazing. I keep coming back to this game.  If you end up with a Vive you really need to get this one.

The two main adventure games I've played in VR so far are Vanishing Realms and The Gallery - Episode 1: Call of the Starseed. The Gallery is a game that a lot of people told me blew them away, and I thought it was alright.  But I actually had a couple technical glitches in it and that probably affected my overall enjoyment.  It was a great proof of concept about how good a VR adventure game can be though and I appreciate that about it. Vanishing Realms is another story.  I absolutely loved it!  It's a true dungeon crawl with atmosphere, puzzles, inventory, gold, treasure, swords, shields, enemies, skeletons.  All the typical (and stereotypical) things you would expect from a classic fantasy dungeon crawler are here but once you set that in VR it becomes a thing of magic.  I loved actually swinging a sword around and blocking with a shield.  I liked holding a torch to light my way or look in dark areas.  I liked reaching into my side pouche...

So there have been a couple Vive games I've played that felt very "Gamey" and that's not a bad thing, it's just interesting.  The main ones I'm thinking of are Space Pirate Trainer and Final Approach. Final Approach has you standing in an airfield drawing flight paths for planes and helicopters and directing them where to land.  It's similar to the iOS game Flight Control, but in 3D and in VR space with your hands.  It's an interesting concept and while I don't think they executed it perfectly it's still fun to jump in and mess around with it. Space Pirate Trainer is really fun though.  You get a selection of different settings on two blaster pistols and room-scale space to move around in while waves of enemies attack you.  There's not much else too it and it feels like an arcade game.  It's actually super fun.  I'm partial to the continuous laser setting myself.  I actually think Space Pirate Trainer is a really good intro ...

It's interesting to see the approach VR puzzle games have taken so far.  Besides a few puzzles in exploration games the true  puzzle games I've played so far are Waterbears VR and Fantastic Contraption. Waterbears VR isn't groundbreaking, but it adds a level of immersion that you don't get from most puzzle games.  This is a typical "use the pipes to direct the liquid flow to the correct place" type of game, but it is pretty cool to be able to walk around the puzzle while viewing and interacting with it using your hands.  It's very intuitive and makes it much more worthwhile than this game would be on a flat screen. Fantastic Contraption on the other hand feels like it could only be done in VR.  You're given tools and some workspace and you have to create fantastic contraptions (get it?) to get a special orb into the goal.  You have connection points and different types of materials to work with but the sense of space and perspective is truly ne...

There are a bunch of VR games that I've played on the Vive that I would classify more as "experiences" and not as much "games".  Not that it's a bad thing, it's just interesting. They're still super compelling and I've loved my time with them but they don't necessarily have traditional gameplay.  It's more about being in a space or experiencing a thing. I would say all these fall into that category: theBlu Apollo 11 VR The FOO Show Job Simulator Irrational Exuberance: Prologue Universe Sandbox 2 Of these I think theBlu and The FOO Show are coolest. Apollo 11 VR was a fun few hours experiencing key moments of the first Moon walk mission but didn't have much replayability.  Irrational Exuberance was basically just breaking apart an asteroid that you're inside of while a meteor storm happens around you.  And Universe Sandbox 2 was a cool looking space sim until I actually started trying to interact with it and t...

The Lab is the only game Valve has released for their own VR platform so far.  It's a sampling of VR ideas tied together with a lab that looks like it's from the portal facility. The Lab has a bunch of mini experiences, some are just being in a space, some are more.  There's a game where you grab a ship and move it around with your hand while it fires and dodges.  One experience has you walking around a room scale model of the solar system.  There's a robot repair room with ties to portal.  There's all sorts of little things. If you get an HTC Vive then The Lab is the perfect place to start.  It's easy to get comfortable in VR here and it doesn't ask too much of the player. The one standout for me is the Longbow game.  It's an archery game where you're given a bow, infinite arrows, and put on top of a tower near a gate you need to defend.  Stick figure men charge at it and you have to take them out. I started playing it like a game but...

Hover Junkers is right up there with Audioshield for my favorite game on Vive so far.  I have slightly less play time in it than Audioshield right now, but they're both tied for my favorite. Hover Junkers is an online multiplayer game, one of the very few on the Vive. In it you get a hovering vehicle made of mostly junk, some pieces of junk to put up around the edges to reinforce it, and weapons to destroy your enemies! The basic gameplay is: Quickly grab junk at the beginning of the round and put it around the edges of your hover vehicle. Grab the vehicle controls with one hand to steer it around Select a weapon with the other hand Drive the vehicle until you find someone else on the map Smash into each other while trying to shoot each other and duck behind your cover It's really really fun.  It's physical and perfectly fits in a room scale VR setting since you're never moving outside your vehicle area.  You wouldn't even need a big room scale se...

Audioshield and Hover Junkers are the two games in VR closest to "Killer Apps" at the moment for me.  Today, let's talk about Audioshield, since it's the game I have the most time with in VR. It's easily my most played VR game.  It's based on the same engine as Audiosurf and just like Audiosurf you can use any of your music or audio files to generate levels. In Audioshield you have two shields strapped to your arms, one red and one blue, while different colored orbs fly toward you to the beat of the music you're listening to.  Orbs are red, blue, and purple.  Block the orb with the correct shield (or both shields together if it's purple) to score points and get a multiplier going. And that's about it.  It doesn't sound like much but in VR it's very physical and the fact that you can use your own music means there's always a fun new level to dig into.  You can also compete in the online leaderboards with the top popular songs a...