Best Quest 3 & 2 action games
Most VR games tend to keep their gameplay slow and methodical because anything fast-paced can cause motion sickness. But that doesn't mean your VR game library should only contain the equivalent of arthouse films. You want action, adventure, and excitement! These VR action games deliver these in bucketloads.
Action games in best overall: Asgard's Wrath 2, Assassin's Creed Nexus, Blade & Sorcery: Nomad, SUPERHOT
Barbaria
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Caesar hopes you are thoroughly entertained
For years, GORN has been the darling child of VR gamers who wanted to relive the days of the Roman gladiators. But GORN, in all its glory, is a pretty shallow game that stops being fun the moment you’ve exhausted all the gruesome ways to kill your enemies. Thankfully, Barbaria came along and not only honed in all the great parts of GORN’s combat system but also added some brains to the equation.
Barbaria is an “asynchronous multiplayer game” which means that your actions in the game are “recorded” and played back for other players. In this case, you’ll be assaulting other players’ bases and attempting to get through their defenses to capture the power crystals scattered throughout. Your earnings from these raids will allow you to earn and purchase defenses for your own realm which, you guessed it, will get raided by other players when you’re not playing.
This makes Barbaria a fascinating mix of action, fighting, puzzle, and tower defense. Any time you raid another player’s base — or complete one of the story levels created by the developers — you can take first-person control of your barbarian or zoom out and control things from a bird’s eye view, and even use magic as a huge demi-god to turn the tide of battle.
Like GORN, Barbaria is brutal and often grotesque, earning that M rating every time you chop a goblin’s head off and attach it to the end of your war axe. The physics-based combat works incredibly well and the weapons never feel overly heavy or light. You'll also be regularly surprised at how enemies can interact with the environment, both with their own actions and by being thrown into something clever.
Budget Cuts Ultimate
The robots have finally taken over
You might just be a paper-pusher at TransCorp, but you quickly find out that you're seemingly the last human working at the massive conglomeration. One day, you receive a mysterious call at your desk that you're the next — and last — to go. Armed with only your teleportation gun and whatever "letter openers" you can find lying around, you must sneak your way up to the top of the building to discover what happened to your fellow colleagues and stop a dastardly plan to erase humans.
Budget Cuts was one of the first VR games to take advantage of roomscale VR movement. It does stealth better than any other VR game, even if some of the mechanics feel a tiny bit dated compared to more recent releases like Espire 2. After all, this is a Quest port of PCVR games that came out several years ago when VR headsets were tethered to expensive PCs and controllers were far simpler.
In the first half — which is actually the first Budget Cuts game — you'll traverse through office buildings, hide behind (and under) desks, and crawl through air vents. The sense of presence in this building is unparalleled, and you'll soon find yourself sticking your face on your floor to peer down through the ceiling in the game. It's wild.
The second half takes the formula to new heights with bigger environments, more weapons, and even scarier robots. You'll also finally figure out who that voice is on the other side of the phone — a twist I certainly didn't see coming.
Budget Cuts Ultimate is a perfect port of a near-perfect VR game and includes additional ways to play once you beat the story. Mutators modify the gameplay and add significant replay value to an already pair of incredible games, and Budget Cuts Arcade provides interesting side missions that score you based on your stealthiness. Can you get the highest score? —Nick Sutrich
In Death: Unchained
This roguelite is a heavenly romp through the gates of Hell
When it launched on the PC as In Death in 2018, many players proclaimed it their favorite VR game. Unfortunately, developer Sólfar Studios couldn't keep it updated and later transferred the rights to Superbright, which now runs the Quest version of the title. The subtitle of In Death: Unchained is a duality in itself, referring both to the freeing nature of untethered VR that's brought about on the Quest platform and the never-ending quest in the game to top the leaderboards with ever-improving skills.
Like most roguelites, In Death: Unchained features a procedurally generated world that's never quite the same round after round. Set in three main areas of a godless afterlife, players will find themselves fighting through levels with a bow as their main weapon and the ability to fight melee if the need arises. The bow isn't just used to kill enemies, though; it's also an excellent means of traversal, thanks to a special arrow that works as a teleportation device. Skilled players will use this movement in tandem with free-moving joystick controls to outsmart enemies and bosses alike, all with gorgeous visuals and compelling boss fights.
In Death: Unchained, unlike its predecessor, has been updated and even overhauled several times now to change things up and keep the action fresh for veteran players. The move to seasonal content has also proven quite successful for the game and its players. In fact, it was among the first batch of games that was heavily updated to support the Quest 2's enhanced processing power, a testament to Superbright's dedication to the game. —Nick Sutrich
Iron Man VR
Take to the skies and become an avenger!
VR is all about letting you go to places or be someone you could never be in real life. That's exactly why Iron Man VR is so dang amazing! Many Quest games will transport you to another place or time, but few games are able to make you feel like a completely different person altogether.
Embody Tony Stark and don the famous Iron Man suit in this action-adventure game that spans 8-10 hours with an original story and movie-quality voice acting and script writing. There's nothing quite like Tony's one-liners, and you'll hear plenty of quips and puns along with snarky replies as you make your way through the story. And don't worry, there are plenty of things to unlock and upgrade, including new suit abilities and entirely different suits altogether.
Iron Man VR's controls are wholly unique, as well. You'll be using each controller to propel yourself around each level with Iron Man's palm-mounted rocket thrusters, giving you the real feeling of flying anywhere you want. When you're not on a mission you can chill at Tony's bougie Malibu home and tinker around in the garage with the Iron Man suit thanks to your AI companion Gunsmith and his brilliant inventions. But will they be enough to stop the Ghost? You owe it to yourself to find out! —Nick Sutrich
Until You Fall
Either you'll fall, or your arms will fall off
Until You Fall is a unique take on the hack-and-slash roguelite genre. Taking thematic elements from high-fantasy epics like Lord of the Rings and injecting it with a thick serum of Tron-like neon highlights, Until You Fall will have your jaw on the floor with its stylistic beauty, up until the moment the first enemy makes you drop to the floor. Then, as the name implies, you'll battle your way through enemy after enemy until you fall. Then, you respawn back in the hub to upgrade your character and do it all over again.
Until You Fall utilizes seriously realistic physics modeling that makes you feel like you're actually swinging the weapons you wield. There's something trippy about feeling like you're fighting with a giant neon-drenched ax, and Until You Fall nails that feeling with every single swing and block. Enemies will ruthlessly attack you in groups, and the end of each section brings the choice of one randomized power-up to reward you with.
Players will make their way through dozens of levels, separated by three tiers of difficulty, color, and enemy types, battling bosses at the end and collecting Aether. This ethereal currency is used to make those weapons even more brutal, giving you the edge in battle — once you muster up enough patience, that is. The question is, which part of you will fall first, your mind or your body? Until You Fall will challenge both. —Nick Sutrich
Best Quest 3 & 2 horror games
Virtual reality is the perfect medium for horror games. Normally you can turn off the lights and try to make your home as horror-filled as possible, but there's still some objective distance between you and the screen. In VR, the monsters and nightmares are just an inch from your eyes, and there's no way to avert your gaze. The Meta Quest 2 and 3 have some genuinely frightening and fun horror VR games, but these are the first games you should try.
Horror games in best overall: Five Night's at Freddy's Help Wanted, Walking Dead Saints & Sinners
Arizona Sunshine 2
The long-awaited sequel to a VR zombie shooter classic — now with more doggo.
Many VR gamers' first VR FPS shooter/ horror game was Vertigo Games' Arizona Sunshine. It took about seven years for Arizona Sunshine 2 to amble its way onto the Quest 3 at a zombie-like pace. In many ways, it was worth the wait.
Fans of the original will love Arizona Sunshine 2. It retains the dark comedy essence of the first, complete with excellent dialog and one-liners. There's little funnier than the ramblings of a man who somehow survived the apocalypse and has gone a little crazy without other humans to talk to.
Like the original, Arizona Sunshine 2 has a core single-player experience, two-player co-op, and a four-player horde mode. That adds some important replayability, since the main game will probably take 6 hours or so, plus extra time for collectibles.
You do have new elements like a crafting mechanic and new weapons. But the biggest update to the sequel is Buddy, a dog companion who you can order to attack zombies or pick up nearby items. You can use him to stealthily take out zombies before they're alerted to your presence, or have him detect when a "dead" zombie is really biding its time. And you can store extra guns on his back, so you don't have to commit to one or two options.—Nick Sutrich
Jurassic World Aftermath Collection
Making dinosaurs scary again
I was still in elementary school when the first Jurassic Park movie came out, and I'll never forget the wonder and horror that ensued. The concept was so fresh, and the dinosaurs were absolutely terrifying; the latter, in particular, was a concept that none of the many sequels captured. The many tense moments in that kitchen scene alone can be felt throughout the entirety of Jurassic World Aftermath.
You (stupidly) take a job to recover some lost data on good old Isla Nublar — two years after the fall of Jurassic World, might I add — and predictably crash land when a group of Pteranodons obliterates your aircraft. Once you make it to the facility, you realize the raptors are still hanging around and are ready to play cat and mouse with you while you are just trying to escape for your life.
Like any good stealth survival horror game, Jurassic World Aftermath makes you feel totally helpless against these creatures. There are no weapons and no real way to defend yourself. You just have a wrist-mounted gadget that can be used to activate old electronics remotely, along with a series of lockers, desks, and other debris to hide yourself in during the adventure. It's an astounding sensation of fear that's primal in nature and nearly flawless in execution.
Jurassic World Aftermath Part Two gives you more of the same story, scares, and gameplay, clearing up the first part's cliffhanger and adding new dinos and puzzles to keep things fresh. —Nick Sutrich
Lies Beneath
Forget survival; this is pure horror
If you're a fan of Japanese horror manga, you've likely heard of names like Junji Ito and Shintaro Kago. If you've not heard of these names, go ahead and Google their work — you'll immediately understand what you're about to undertake in Lies Beneath, a survival horror game inspired by these works. From the comic book style to the onomatopoeia that flies around the screen as you run, shoot, and kill, Lies Beneath will immediately transport you to a world gone wrong and completely upend your sense of reality.
Lies Beneath is a first-person survival horror that'll have you trekking through the woods and deeper into madness as you recover from the ashes of a fiery car crash. The demons you encounter could be real or just a figment of your imagination, but they're no less deadly regardless of their otherworldly appearance. You'll have to be savvy and sneaky on your journey if you're to avoid being overwhelmed, both by enemies and the thoughts that constantly grow louder in your mind.
Few games master the feeling of panic that Lies Beneath delivers. The game was developed with Meta Quest in mind, and, amazingly enough, all the character models were created completely in VR using Medium by Adobe. That's important since VR can give you an understanding of scale like no other visual medium can, and creating the enemies you face solely in VR has allowed the team to make models that are more convincing than what you'll find in other games. —Nick Sutrich
Silent Slayer: Vault of the Vampire
A puzzler-horror combo we've never seen before
Silent Slayer has a straightforward premise. You want to kill a vampire ensconced safely in its coffin. To do so, you must disarm the protective traps, find and reassemble relics to bind the vampire, and find its weak point to stake, all without alerting it to your presence.
It feels like a more in-depth and murderous version of the classic board game Operation. The Quest has plenty of action-horror and straight-up horror experiences with some puzzles tacked on, but this feels like the rare experience where puzzles are naturally baked into the experience, and become more tense than usual because of the setting and stakes.
Rest assured that this is a scary experience. Silent Slayer: Vault of the Vampire has plenty of jumpscares, and you should be ready to fail over and over before you manage to succeed. Schell Games took its "I Expect You to Die" template and applied it to gorgeous, fully realized rooms in an ancient castle.—Nick Sutrich
Wraith: The Oblivion - Afterlife
You thought death was scary? Wait until you see what's after.
When I first played Wraith: The Oblivion - Afterlife as part of a hands-on event in March, I really only had an inkling of how scary the game could be. Turns out, the final version (check out our Wraith: The Oblivion - Afterlife review) is considerably scarier than I could've imagined. There are few words to describe the feeling of dread the game paints at every corner, and you'll be turning quite a few of them as you roam the halls, rooms, and courtyards of the massive Barclay Mansion.
Wraith is set in the World of Darkness universe, including games like Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, and others. In Wraith, you play as a photographer that woke up dead one day and found himself trapped in the last place he was still alive: Barclay Mansion. As you roam the halls, you'll unravel the story of what happened, narrated by a very dead, very scary shadow of your former self. You'll quickly find out that everyone was a part of a mysterious seance, led by a woman tasked with calling upon the dead to heal the owner of the mansion. But, in true horror fashion, something went terribly wrong, and everyone was brutally murdered — or were they?
Along the way, you'll find spectres destined to rip and tear you to pieces if they spot you, and you've got no good defense against them. Thankfully, you do have the special powers only bestowed upon a Wraith at the time of death — powers you'll only earn as you progress through the story. I'm not a horror fan, but the story here was compelling enough to pull me through the terror and keep me wanting more, giving it the honor of being on the list of best Quest 2 games. —Nick Sutrich
