Update: Today on Twitter Valve officially confirmed that Half-Life: Alyx is the name of its upcoming flagship VR game, details to come this Thursday at 10AM PT.
We’re excited to unveil Half-Life: Alyx, our flagship VR game, this Thursday at 10am Pacific Time.
Original: According to the unconfirmed rumor, the title is supposed to be named Half-Life: Alyx and will focus on the non-player character of the same name from Half-Life 2. This most recent rumor is by way of PCGamer and suggests a full unveiling would come on December 12 at the annual Game Awards hosted by Geoff Keighley, with release said to follow in 2020. There are also unconfirmed suggestions the game could be teased much sooner than the awards.
The rumor comes from an alleged transcript of a conversation/interview between an unknown person, Valve’s Robin Walker, and Keighley. In the conversation several details are discussed that will be easy to fact check when the time comes, such as the game’s title being Half-Life: Alyx.
Usually a rumor like this wouldn’t be worth giving too much attention, and to be clear we haven’t confirmed the rumor mill here, but last year sources told us Valve was working on a Half-Life VR game. At that time we also heard the possibility that you would play as a female character (such as Alyx), and that would likely place it after Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and leading directly into the next full installment in development. Valve founder Gabe Newell even joked about Half-Life 3 at the Valve Index launch event.
Other recent nuggets of information add weight to the rumor as well. Earlier this year a DOTA 2 update included mentions of a “hlvr_weapon_shotgun_prototype” and “SPORE damage” in its code. Further, just a couple months ago, intrepid fans found references again to Half-Life VR in an update for The Lab.
Valve told us earlier this year that their “flagship” VR game is in development and will be released this year for all headsets compatible with SteamVR. We’ve contacted Valve representatives multiple times for clarification of the game’s release timeline and haven’t received a response. Recently, Valve programmer Kerry Davis talked at length about how intricately simulated mechanics will be in the game, such as the doors.
Additional unconfirmed rumors suggest the game includes a lengthy campaign (at least by VR standards) and a new weapon called the “Grabbity Gloves” said to leverage hand tracking, with writing from Jay Pinkerton, who worked on Portal 2 and the Aperture Hand Labs project released with the Index Controllers earlier this year. Half-Life 2’s 15-year anniversary was last week and The Game Awards specifically posted about it.
Hopefully all of this adds up to an amazing game getting announced soon, but as of yet all of this remains unconfirmed rumors and second-hand reports. Half-Life would be a great fit for VR, so fingers crossed it materializes as a real product. In the meantime, at least you can play a modded version of Half-Life 1 on Quest.
Code uncovered in last week’s update to Valve’s The Lab may point to some kind of development related to Half-Life VR.
Tyler McVicker at Valve News Network traced indications of Half-Life VR code in various Valve updates and posted the below video today. In it, McVicker details a wealth of code he says was found in the “Hands-On” update of The Lab, which added Index Controller support to the free compilation of minigames.
Codename: Shooter
Found within the code is a reference to something codenamed ‘Shooter’. According to McVicker, the code contains references to known Half-Life characters like Dr. Breen and soldiers and enemies from Half-Life 2’s Combine faction. Fittingly, there’s even a reference to the elusive G-Man.
From the code on offer, McVicker suggests the game it refers to could be a wave-based combat title set within the Half-Life universe. Players would have been teleported to various locations around City 17 from Half-Life 2, which are simulated within a holodeck. The idea being that the simulated nature of a holodeck would allow the experience to scale to the player’s own VR space.
The game would then rely entirely on the player’s physical movement with no thumbstick or trackpad locomotion. Valve’s VR software generally relies on the player to physically move through a space to interact with it while also enabling teleportation for larger traversals.
However, it’s very possible that this code isn’t describing Valve’s unannounced flagship VR game for 2019. That project is rumored to indeed be a Half-Life VR game, but McVicker speculates that this code could very well be referring to an older prototype. It might have even been that this describes a cut minigame from The Lab itself, which might serve as the foundation for whatever Valve releases this year.
McVicker is still picking apart code and asking for help with it. Valve itself hasn’t issued an update about its game for months now. With 2019 starting to wind down, hopefully we hear more soon.
Valve is finally adding Index Controller support to its popular VR showcase, The Lab. But that’s not all.
The SteamVR creator today announced The Lab Hands-On Update. The Lab was a free experience that launched alongside the HTC Vive in 2016. Set in Valve’s Portal universe, the app featured several different minigames and experiences designed to showcase the potential of VR. To this day it remains one of the most polished and enjoyable VR games on Steam.
Hands-On is the app’s first major update in nearly three years. Headlining the update is support for SteamVR’s new skeletal input system. Yes, that means The Lab now includes full support for the Index Controller’s finger-tracking, but it also allows you to reassign actions on any given controller to find a configuration that works for you.
Moreover, Hands-On overhauls The Lab’s physics and interactions. Valve says that nearly every object in the game now physically reacts to your hands. That means you can’t freely pass your hands through, say a coffee mug. Instead, the object will be pushed by your hand as if it were a physical object. Items can, of course, also be picked up and toyed with in all the ways you’d expect (including, according to Valve, being smashed).
Elsewhere Hands-On also includes support for Steam Audio, bringing in better spatialized sounds. Valve is also promising optimization improvements, upgrading the game to a modern version of its engine. As such, the game will be able to run in higher resolutions. Better yet, support for different frame rates (other than 90 Hz) has been added. That means Index owners with beefy rigs should be able to enjoy it in 120 Hz.
Updated support for The Lab is welcome, but we’re still waiting on news about Valve’s flagship VR game. Last we heard it was coming this year, so hopefully we’ll hear more about it soon.
When HTC Vive went on sale in 2016 the first download any sensible owner should have started was Valve’s The Lab. The collection of mini-games was designed to showcase the virtues of virtual reality (VR), with roomscale environments and lots of items to grip and interact with. However, as the years have passed The Lab started to get a little dated, surpassed by new content which took The Lab’s ideas and expanded them. Today, the title gets the update it has long deserved, improving a raft of features.
With Valve Index now available as well as the Index Controllers Valve has obviously looked at hand interactions – hence why its called the Hands-on Update. It doesn’t matter whether the controllers you own fully track fingers or not, the update will represent hands ‘to the highest fidelity possible’ states Valve.
Another feature taken right back to the bare bones is the physics-based interaction. This means that most objects within The Lab can be grabbed, poked, thrown, smashed, stacked and discarded however you wish. Just as important as touching stuff in VR is the audio, creating a rich soundscape to immerse you in. So all the spatialisation tech in The Lab has been overhauled to create an even richer audible tapestry.
It’s not just stuff you can see and hear which Valve has improved upon. Originally The Lab was designed to run at 90 Hz, the optimum frame rate for most VR headsets at the time to provide a smooth experience. That has caused some issues so now all the code is frame rate dependent, ensuring a seamless experience across a wide array of devices.
Other under the hood improvements also include upgrading to a modern engine version. All of which should mean The Lab becomes just as relevant as it was back in 2016, and an essential download for any Valve Index customer. As Valve says in a statement: ‘The Lab is a playground, and one that you can now enjoy like never before.’
While the update is good it probably isn’t the news fans want to hear. Valve still has yet to release any details regarding the ‘Flagship VR Title’ mentioned in May, when it does VRFocus will let you know.
Valve launched The Lab as an experimental VR playground way back in 2016. Today the company is updating the game to bring it up to speed with the company’s latest VR tech stack, including Index controller support, overhauled physics, spatialized audio, and more.
Three years after launch, Valve’s The Lab still stands as one of VR’s best ‘first time’ experiences thanks to great art & sound, straightforward interaction design, and an array of fun mini-games which titillate the imagination with VR’s vast potential.
Today Valve is updating The Lab to bring it in line with the latest VR tech stack that the company has developed in the intervening years.
Image courtesy Valve
First up, The Lab now supports the SteamVR Skeletal Input system and SteamVR Input. Not only does that mean proper support for the finger tracking on the Index controllers, it also means that any VR controller will be animated more realistically thanks to the system mapping whatever controller tracking inputs are available onto the virtual hand model (inputs like sticks, buttons, grips, and capacitive zones).
Thanks to SteamVR Input, The Lab is future-proofed to work with VR controllers of the future which don’t even exist today; the system allows games to define their controls in a controller-agnostic way, and even allows players to make and share their own controller bindings.
Image courtesy Valve
Valve also says the physics interactions in The Lab have been “completely overhauled.”
“Nearly all interactable objects can be freely poked, thrown, bashed against each other, stacked, toppled, and smashed. You are no longer a ghostly visitor to VR, your hands are physical like everything else, grounding you in the universe and raising your immersion to new heights,” the company writes in the update announcement.
The update also brings upgraded audio via the made-for-VR Steam Audio system, which the company says enhances the spatial accuracy of sounds in The Lab. This should also bring real-time sound modeling to the experience, which more accurately simulates the sounds heard by the user by taking the geometry of the scene into account.
Valve says it’s also tuning up The Lab to be more friendly to new users.
“Thanks to extensive user testing and three years worth of feedback, we’ve smoothed over the few bumps in the experience to make the game even more welcoming to new users.” That includes “innumerable changes to improve gameplay and performance […],” and support for arbitrary refresh rates; The Lab‘s physics system was initially designed to run at 90Hz, and could get thrown off at higher or lower framerates. With recent headsets covering a wider variety of refresh rates (like Rift S at 80Hz and Valve’s own Index at 144Hz), the company has made the physics system framerate independent.
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It’s quite likely that we’ll be seeing much of this same tech stack incorporated into Valve’s upcoming “flagship VR game” which the company has said will launch in 2019; though we’re now entering the fourth quarter of the year, Valve has yet to reveal any specifics about the title.
A few weeks ago I had the privilege of presenting for the second year in a row alongside my good friend Paola Paulino as a part of the BETT MEA Conference in Abu Dhabi. Paola is the Founder and President of the VR/AR Association – Shenzhen Chapter, the Chief Innovation Director at XR Pioneer Ltd. And founder of #isnsVR where she launched one of world’s first virtual reality (VR) pilots in IB World Education. It’s always great to work with people who exude energy and passion for what they do and that is definitely Paola!
This was a one-off presentation that won’t be repeated so Paola and I thought it would be nice to share some of the content and ideas from it here on VRFocus. We’re going to take a look at 10 Marvel superheroes, each with distinct powers, and correlate them to virtual reality experiences that modern students have access to. So let’s dive in…
Captain Marvel
Power: Flight
App: Google Earth VR
STEVE: Pretty much every kid wishes they could fly and virtual reality can give them this experience. Using Google Earth VR students can fly around the planet and visit thousands of locations that they may never get the chance to visit in real life. The flight mechanic within Google Earth VR can take a little getting used to but students will quickly learn to swoop and soar across the Australian outback, the streets of Manhattan and any other location that draws their attention or relates to an area of study. If you’re looking for a jaw-dropping way to welcome learners to the world of VR, this is it!
At JESS Dubai I recently used it as a part of an Explorers unit with Year 3 students. They had “flying lessons” first to acclimatise to the UI and then got to visit the destination of their choice. It was definitely an experience that they won’t forget in a hurry.
Nightcrawler
Power: Teleportation
App: The Lab by Valve
PAOLA: Beam me up Scotty! Imagine the capability to instantly transport from one location to another. In room scale VR, the most common locomotion is the superpower of Teleportation. Recently, we introduced students to room scale VR using The Lab by Valve at a recent visit to the American International School of Guangzhou in collaboration with our XR learning partners and tech innovation team – Diana Beabout, Dave Navis and Robert Bauer. Students found the locomotion mechanic to teleport from location to location very intuitive. Students explored half a dozen mini-VR experiences teleporting around an Icelandic wilderness, a lava cave, and even a town square in Venice. Later we showed them Victory XR’s Frog Dissection Class, where the students could use teleportation to jump around the virtual science classroom.
Dr Strange
Power: Time Manipulation
App: Timelooper
STEVE: Being able to manipulate space is pretty well established as key power that VR boasts but the manipulation of time is also incredibly exciting for educators. For the first time ever we have the technology to transport learners through time to engage with history in an authentic and engaging way. What better way to learn about Ancient Rome than to walk its streets and experience it first hand?
The app I often use as a touchstone for this concept is the brilliant Timelooper which works on mobile VR devices. Cleverly blending CGI and re-enactment footage, Timelooper lets students step back in time to witness dozens of key events from US and European history play out around them. What makes this app particularly potent is its use of modern day 360 video footage at the start of experiences to contextualise the location before the world melts away to reveal the place’s significant moment in history.
In the clip below you can see some Year 2 students from JESS Dubai using Timelooper with me to kick off a topic on The Great Fire of London.
Captain America
Power: Enhanced Strength
App: Blocks by Google
PAOLA: In the physical world sculpting takes some heavy lifting, but in Blocks by Google you can have superhuman strength! Students can easily move and sculpt material such as clay, to skyscrapers like the Burj Kalifa, or even planets. At one of our @XRpioneer learning partner schools – @ISNS_school, we collaborated with Visual Art students to explore Google Blocks in the preproduction process for an Art Exhibition. Students could lift, examine, and sculpt things to scale that helped them plan and model their pieces for the exhibition. Some students fully integrated VR in their final exhibition pieces, using both Google Blocks and Google Tilt Brush to create blended reality experiences. These students are #FutureReady
Scarlet Witch
Power: Telekinesis
App: Engage
STEVE: I’ve been using Engage for my #CPDinVR events for almost two years now and I’ve seen the platform evolve immensely in that time. One constant though has been the integrated banks of 3D IFX assets which can be inserted in the space and puppeteered using the controllers. This functionality was originally only available to the session host but since the major update to the platform in June 2018, it can be granted to anyone within the space. Being able to control and manipulate assets – be that moving them or manipulating their size – provides learners with the opportunity to use them effectively as a part of demonstrations of learning. Using Engage’s lesson editor feature you can even create recorded sessions where object movements are mapped and triggered to create an immersive learning experience.
In the clip below, you’ll see me demo some simple IFX manipulation… whilst dressed as Tony Stark!
Storm
Power: Elemental Manipulation
App: Tilt Brush
PAOLA: What if you could change the environmental climate in a matter of seconds? Or manipulate the elements? Google Tilt Brush centralizes the students’ imagination in a world where they can manipulate their environments in an instant — from a starry night to a bright snowy day. Students are presented with a variety of extraordinary virtual brushes that allow them to effectively design and manipulate the elements to recreate their dreams. In our first pilot year, XR Pioneer students used Tilt Brush across IB subjects such as MYP middle school Math, DP high school Visual Arts, Digital Media class, and DP Biology.
In Visual Art, students integrated Tilt Brush in their preproduction process to visualize their DP layouts on an exhibition focused on dreams. One student used Tilt brush to recreate a scene from their dream using a 3D spatial digital painting. A manifestation from dream to reality. The student used Tilt Brush and Blocks to construct the layout of the experience. To add a tactile component to the installation, a real physical chair was placed in the exhibition space. This chair was calibrated to match the position of a virtual chair. This provided physical and virtual means for guests to experience the student’s vision. Here, the chair could be felt in the physical world while seen in VR.
It was the first time a student integrated “blended-reality” in an IBDP Visual Arts exhibition in Asia. Check out some behind the scenes of our Visual Art (XR Pioneer) student’s Tilt Brush reflections.
STEVE: Just as VR can be used to manipulate space by transporting users to distant lands, it can also be used to manipulate the virtual traveller themselves. Just like The Ant-Man himself Scott Lang, in VR we can shrink or grow to any size to view and interact with content in ways that have never been possible before. Apps like Sharecare VR and The Body VR let students shrink down and travel inside the human body, Fantastic Voyage-style whilst The Extraordinary Honey Bee lets you experience life from the perspective of a bee.
Micro Cosmic Worlds is one of the best ways to demonstrate this virtual superpower though. It allows learners to move through a series of scenarios, getting progressively smaller – from the size of an ant to that of pollen, bacteria and ultimately you stand atop a vibrating molecule. It’s a stunning way to view the world and get a closer look at the world around us that we cannot see.
Loki
Power: Shapeshifting
App: Mindshow
PAOLA: Every student has the power of becoming—now they can in VR too! In Mindshow developed by Name Mindshow Inc, a student can shapeshift into the body of different characters and craft a fully-animated performance. Using the VR headset and controllers, the student’s body position and arm gestures are tracked and re-targeted onto a virtual puppet.
Students can take on production roles either on stage or behind-the-scenes. Onstage, students can be actors and animators by becoming the characters and performing. Backstage, they can be production designers, designing environments and importing custom models that they have created and saved on Google Poly to use as props. Students can be a camera operator, filming the action with virtual hand-held cameras within Mindshow. Teachers at the International School of Nanshan (ISNS), a learning partner of XR Pioneer, have observed that even their shiest students come out of their shell and exude confidence as they embody their Mindshow roles from onstage to backstage.
We also piloted a VR performance with ISNS’s Drama Department. Shout out to the @ISNS_school’s immersive tech integration, @MagicMrFernweh and MYP Drama teacher, @ms_wenn for the collaboration!
The minds behind Mindshow understand the value of creators sharing their work, and they’ve streamlined the process by allowing users to upload their Mindshow movies directly onto social media platforms such as YouTube. In a similar sense, students will be able to share their stories and collaborate with others as they craft their VR films from beginning to end. Check-out our XR Pioneer students at @ISNS_School thoughts and reflections.
Much has been written about VR’s power to foster empathy and whilst I don’t think it is the silver empathy bullet implied by the infamous “Ultimate empathy machine” moniker, studies have shown that the immersive, visceral nature of virtual reality really can help people to feel what it is like to walk in someone else’s shoes for a little while which in turn can have a tremendous impact on their attitude and outlook in the real world.
One app that looks to harness this power is Equal Reality which puts the user in the shoes of various groups that may experience prejudice – be it based on gender, race, age or disability. As workplace-based scenarios play out, the user has to identify moments where people are subjecting them to unconscious bias. It can even generate post-session reports and provides some telling diagnostics about both the way you were treated and the way you yourself acted (e.g. did you focus your attention on one character more than another.)
Groot
Power: Being a tree!
App: Tree VR
PAOLA: Empathy is not limited to just the human form–in Tree VR, you can become a tree-like Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy. Tree VR from New Reality Company shows off the potential of VR as a tool for empathy and education. In Tree VR, the lifecycle of a tree can be experienced, explored, and ultimately felt. The student’s arms become the branches as they grow taller and wherever they turn is Mother Nature herself.
In this immersive story, the students cannot alter their location or any objects outside of their tree self. The reason for this is clear–it prompts the student to feel the frustration of being rooted and unable to move. You could say, in this experience, the students get the opposite feeling of superpowers—that is a feeling of powerlessness.*Spoilers alert* This powerlessness feeling culminates in the end of Tree VR, as forest fires rage closer and closer to you and all the viewer can do is see it coming. Tree VR is a multi-sensory example of taking on another living thing’s perspective by experiencing life through a lens that is very different from their own.
We introduced Tree VR to students when VIVE President of China, Alvin Graylin, visited us at our partner school ISNS where he invited XRpioneer students to enter the “My VR Dream” National Youth Creative Contest in China inspired by VR for Impact. Check-out Steve Bambury’s playthrough of the entire Tree VR experience.
We rounded out the presentation by discussing the potential impact of putting all this power in the hands of students. We don’t want our students becoming the Thanos of this narrative after all. It seemed logical therefore to end with the classic Uncle Ben quote from Spiderman – “With great power comes great responsibility.” VR is a hugely powerful medium for education but it needs to be harnessed carefully and moderated by well-informed educators. If we do that, it can genuinely bring some Marvel into the classroom.
Content is king. That’s the truism we’ve come to learn from decades of hardware success stories and near-equal amounts of failures. Virtual reality (VR) may yet be waiting to find its ‘killer app’, but there’s still plenty to be excited about. A swathe of videogames, 360 degree videos, healthcare and education applications are already available for both Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, but which is the head-mounted display (HMD) that will offer the most content that appeals to you?
Hacks and mods aside, the Oculus Rift has access to content via Oculus VR’s proprietary storefront, Oculus Home, as well as Steam. HTC Vive has Steam and the lesser-used Viveport, but of course not every title is available for both HMDs. There’s free content, demo content and paid content; Early Access and experimental content; ‘experiences’ and videogames. All of which combined makes a compelling argument for each format.
Free Games for Oculus Rift
VRFocus has previously offered up a guide to the best free Oculus Rift videogames; however this was published prior to the launch of Robo Recall. Epic Games’ robot-smashing first-person shooter (FPS) has taken the VR community by storm, and the recent 360 degree update just pushes the bar even higher. Future FPS titles in VR now have a standard to achieve, if not excel beyond, and the difficulty for developers is even greater when realising that Robo Recall is free for all owners of an Oculus Rift and Oculus Touch.
Free Games for HTC Vive
The HTC Vive also has a large variety of free content available, but ‘free’ doesn’t always mean ‘good’. This is an argument that can’t be levelled at The Lab however; Valve’s launch title for the HTC Vive which continues to provide a thrilling VR experience a year after release. Essentially a mini-game collection set in the Portal universe, The Lab can be taken as a whole piece or enjoyed as one-off challenges; ideal for showcasing the capabilities to newcomers. Each of the mini-games is instinctive: fire a bow-and-arrow; launch a catapult; throw a stick. It’s hardly high-octane action, but The Lab remains a highly impressive VR title.
360 Degree Video on Oculus Rift and HTC Vive
Right now, there’s little to choose between the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive in terms of video content. Both have a variety of applications – Within, Jaunt, Littlstar, etc. – offering both shared and exclusive content, and both have a selection of 360 video content offered as unique products such as Penrose Studios’ The Rose and I. The difference, of course, comes down to Oculus VR’s own internal production team at Oculus Story Studio. Lost and Henry made waves some time ago, but the recently released Dear Angelica that has truly impressed.
Industry Application for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive
Oculus VR has been courting enterprise, education, healthcare and more for some time. The HTC Vive however, while it has a significant amount of applications already available outside of entertainment – most noticeably in real estate thanks to its roomscale technology – has largely been left to the guile of the independent development community. More is to come, that’s for sure, but right now you’d be hard pressed to bet against the Oculus Rift for content outside of the entertainment sector.
Now that the HTC Vive has been out for a while, we’ve seen a tremendous amount of content flow onto Valve’s flagship VR headset. Hundreds of games live on Steam with HTC Vive support, although it’s worth clarifying that the majority of them offer very little in the way of engaging content beyond a simple gameplay mechanic that’s fun for 30 minutes.
As a result, we feel the need to provide a definitive source with an up-to-date list regarding the very best Vive games that you can play right now. We’ll keep an eye on the VR gaming landscape and update this list over time, as appropriate, to better represent what’s available.
Obviously, it goes without saying that the first three Vive games you should play are the original three that came bundled with the Vive’s very first preorders: Tilt Brush, Job Simulator, and Fantastic Contraption. While these titles may not be bundled any longer, they’re still awesome demonstrations of what VR can accomplish by focusing on very specific concepts. Additionally, The Gallery: Episode 1 – Call of the Starseed, and Zombie Training Simulator were included with Vive bundles for a long time and also deserve recognition as being excellent games in their own right. Plus Google Earth VR, The Lab, and Rec Room are three of the best apps period, but since they’re totally free we opted to leave them off this list for now.
But this list is focused on games you don’t have access to out of the box. If you just got a Vive or are cruising for something to play, you already tried the bundle games. You want something more. And that’s where this list comes in.
None of these games come bundled with the device, prices will likely change depending on which week or month you’re reading this list, and chances are they’ll all receive updates and patches making them even better than they are today. But the fact remains that at the time of writing, these are the 9 must-play Vive games available right now, in no particular order.
What else can be said about this game that hasn’t been said already? It’s amazing. If you for some reason don’t know about this game, it goes like this: you’ve got a red and blue lightsaber, one i neach hand, and you’re tasked with slicing blocks that come cascading towards you to the rhythm of the music. It’s like DDR with lightsabers, basically.
Beat Saber is easily one of the most addictive VR games to date and it’s dead simple to pick up and play by anyone regardless of VR experience. And in the PC VR version you can download amazing custom songs!
As the winner of our 2017 Vive Game of the Year Award, it was only appropriate that we commemorate the occasion by adding the title to our Best Vive Games list as well!
In LA Noire VR you take on the role of Cole Phelps as you explore 1940s-era Los Angeles solving crimes, inspecting crime scenes, and interrogating people. The massive, sprawling city is one of the largest sandboxes in VR to date and it sports some of the best, most immersive visuals we’ve seen.
It’s not a perfect game, but it’s a strong indicator of the direction VR is headed if AAA game studios like Rockstar are getting involved with adapting their IPs to the VR format.
For a game that wasn’t originally designed for VR at all, Skyrim VR is nothing short of impressive. This really is the Skyrim that you know and love, but now you can enjoy it like never before with the immersive presence of a VR headset. With a large variety of control schemes to choose from and hundreds of hours of content, this is a game that all RPG fans should play as long as you can look past the wonky controls, downgraded visuals, and frustrating UI. Not to mention all of the mods for the PC version!
There is just something special about the sensation of walking down the dirt road to Riverwood in VR for the first time, or staring down the throat of a fire-breathing dragon, or even gazing out upon Tamriel from the top of the Throat of the World. Whether you’re a Skyrim-veteran or one of the lucky few that get to see this world for the first time, Skyrim VR is enrapturing.
The Exorcist: Legion VR is without a doubt one of the best VR horror experiences available. The slow-building tension is expertly paced, each and every scare feels visceral and dangerous, and the sheer sense of terror you feel while methodically exploring the richly detailed environments is staggering. It honestly felt like I could hear the voices inside my own head and I could feel the heat from my crucifix as I stared down the faces of demon and eradicated the evil within.
The Exorcist: Legion VR will turn even the most hardened horror fans into whimpering piles of fear.
This is the hardcore VR shooter for hardcore VR gamers. If you grew up playing games like Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, SOCOM, and other similar tactical military shooters, then you’ll feel right at home in Onward. It has much more in common with the grueling teamwork of those games than the run-and-gun hip firing found in modern shooters like Call of Duty, and it was all created by one guy.
From holding your rifle with both hands and using your walkie talkie on your shoulder, to pulling out your knife to sneak up on an opponent, Onward is the visceral, realistic VR game many people have been waiting for. It uses full roomscale tracking with motion controllers and artificial locomotion attached to the trackpad — no teleporting here. The community is healthy and fun, making this one of the clear standout titles for the HTC Vive so far.
SUPERHOT VR is a pure, distilled, injection of unadulterated adrenaline that will get your blood pumping just as quickly as time stops in the game itself. With every movement you make, time creeps forward ever so slightly, and everything from the level design to the way it feels to dodge a series of bullets in slow-motion is orchestrated to reinforce the core ideals of the experience. From start to finish it plays out like a fantasy ripped from the screen of every action movie; an indulgent cacophony of visual and gameplay excitement.
This is easily one of the best titles available for Rift with Touch and the recent Forever update makes it even better with expanded game modes, more challenges, and an improved sense of replayability.
This is a VR game that really came out of nowhere and surprised us this year. Ninja Theory went from being hush-hush about projects to announcing and releasing Hellblade in VR within a manner of just a couple of weeks. And oh boy are we glad that they did!
Hellblade may not have been made originally for VR, but it adapts so perfectly. The game tells the story of Senua on her journey to save the soul of a loved on as she slowly descends deeper and deeper into both the bowels of celtic hell and the depths of her own mind. Voices constantly talk to you and pull you in various directions and it all sounds incredible with the 3D spatial audio that VR affords.
Undoubtedly Hellblade VR is an experience like no other.
You may have heard of most other games on this list at some point, but I’d be willing to bet you’re not familiar with Transpose at all. Allow me to introduce you to one of the most mind-bendingly cool puzzles games you’ll see this side of Portal. In Transpose you create “echos” of yourself and your past actions to solve a variety of puzzles.
An excerpt from our review:
“Transpose is a stunning VR puzzle game that elevates the genre and delivers an out-of-body-like experience about manipulating gravity and bending time. There isn’t much of a story to follow and not all of the puzzles are as satisfying as the rest, but fans of the genre would be doing themselves a disservice to not play this excellent adventure from Secret Location.”
These two go hand in hand and should be experienced in sequential order. The Gallery is building towards becoming one of the best, most intimate narratives experienced in VR thus far and does an excellent job of showing how the “adventure” genre has evolved over the years to allow for something beautiful and emotional.
You can get through each episode in just a handful of hours but you’ll be left with your jaw on the floor after it’s all over. We can’t wait to see where the story goes next.
11/22/18 Update: This is a big, long overdue update. We’ve removed Star Trek: Bridge Crew, Arizona Sunshine, Island 359, Project Cars 2, and Raw Data from this list to make room for Skyrim VR, Beat Saber, Hellblade VR, The Exorcist: Legion VR, and In Death.
12/27/17 Update: Vanishing Realms has been removed from this list and replaced with LA Noire VR.
11/23/17 Update: Redout, AirMech, The Brookhaven Experiment, and Chair in a Room: Greenwater have been retired from this list and replaced with SuperhotVR, Star Trek: Bridge Crew, The Gallery Episodes 1 & 2, and Project Cars 2.
4/5/2017 Update: The Lab and Rec Room have been retired from the formal list and added to the intro section of free titles. They were replaced by Arizona Sunshine and AirMech Command.
8/30/16 Update:The Gallery was moved into the ‘bundle’ paragraph at the start of the article, while Unseen Diplomacy, Space Pirate Trainer, and #SelfieTennis have been retired. The list has also been expanded from 7 games to 9, opening up 2 new spots. In the 5 total vacant slots, we’ve added Raw Data, A Chair in a Room: Greenwater, Island: 359, Battle Dome, and Rec Room.
This article was originally published on 4/13/16.
Editor’s Note: Another version of this list, specifically focused on multiplayer games, has been retired and will no longer be updated. This list is our definitive collection of the overall best Vive games we’ve identified as of the last time the list was updated.
Welcome to the Daily Sketch! We’ve teamed up with Sketchfab and expert VR artist Elizabeth Edwards to produce one new piece of 3D art per weekday throughout April you can view with your VR kit.
So grab your headset and take a look.
Who brought the cake? It’s Vive’s birthday. The roomscale headset turns one today, and HTC is celebrating the right way by giving fans free content and offering its headset at a reduced price. It’s been quite a year for the Vive, and so Edwards has gathered all of our virtual friends to celebrate. Whoever knew the JobBot and The Lab’s robo-dog could be such good friends?
It’s an urban myth that Valve hates 3’s. The beloved studio has taken us up to Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Portal 2, Left4Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, and DOTA2, but it can can never quite bring itself to complete a trilogy. This week, though, the company announced that it’s breaking that curse in a way; it’s currently working on three VR games.
That’s enough to get anyone that’s been playing games over the last five to 20 years very excited. Over that period, this developer has released some of the most celebrated and popular games of all time, including pretty much all of the above. More recently, it’s turned its attention to VR and built the SteamVR system seen in the HTC Vive, as well as The Lab and Destinations. We’ve long wondered when Valve would combine its brilliant new hardware with its famed game making skills for a more robust experience, and now we know it’s really happening. One of these three could be Valve’s killer app.
But what is Valve actually making?
That’s the real question here, and one that we’ll go mad thinking over in the coming weeks and months. We’re expecting at least one of these games to be revealed this year but, until it is, we’re all going to be guessing as to what the studio is working on. Let’s get our thoughts in order.
New IP
This is probably the safest bet for at least one or two of these games. VR gives developers a whole new set of tools to play with and, while we desperately want to see some Valve franchises in VR, it makes more sense to build a universe from the ground up, or at least a new property in the existing Half-Life/Portal-verse. You shouldn’t turn your nose up at that thought; all of Valve’s celebrated series had to start somewhere. Think about how incredible the first Portal was, and then imagine if they could pull that off again in VR.
Team Fortress 3/Counter-Strike VR
At first we thought these were the least likely sequel options out of Valve’s stable of IP, but then we recalled the early days of the Oculus Rift, when development kit owners tried TF2 running on the headset. I also remembered that Valve recently invited the developer of one of VR’s most popular online FPSs, Onward, to work at their studio over January, seemingly legitimizing their belief in the genre. Could TF3 really be in the works?
DOTA Spin-off
DOTA2 already has some basic VR integration, but it doesn’t allow you to actually play the game. While we’d love for DOTA3 to fully support headsets, there’s no reason for Valve to make the sequel while this MOBA remains so popular, and certainly not restrict its popularity. But it could still put the series’ colorful cast of characters to work in VR with a spin-off adventure. There’s a lot of potential there we hope they’ll explore.
Left4Dead 3
It’s been a long time since we had a new entry in the Left4Dead series, unless you count the arcade installment that hit Japan a few years back. VR is the perfect venue for its return although, frankly, we’ve seen a lot of shooters that try to distill the series’ intense combat into a stationary experience. If Valve is making L4D3 in VR, we’d want it to be the full experience with full locomotion. How could they possibly pull that off? That’s up to Valve to solve.
The Lab 2
Valve assures us that these new games will be full experiences, but that doesn’t mean one couldn’t build on the world(s) it established in its free minigame compilation. The Lab still features some of the most compelling mechanics in VR and, if the company were to build some of these into full games, they could definitely create something compelling.
Portal 3
Personally, I’d bet that this is one of the three games; a trailer for the HTC Vive last year seemed to drop a pretty big hint that a Portal VR game was in the works. We’ve had a glimpse into what the mind-bending world of Portal can look like in mixed reality, but the potential for an amazing VR experience is almost too good to pass up. Imagine more intricate puzzles that have you sticking arms and heads through multiple portals to solve challenges. There’s a lot of great opportunity here. There is a solid but short VR mod for Portal 2 to tide you over in the meantime.
Free Games for HTC Vive
360 Degree Video on Oculus Rift and HTC Vive
Industry Application for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive
