With a trippy art style reminiscent of the LSD-enhanced art of the 1960's and a unique musical sound, GNOG is a game that doesn't take itself too seriously and encourages you to just play with it, and maybe even solve a puzzle now and then.
Wreckfest offers the eRacer something not available anywhere else: the ability to race on the computer in cars and at tracks that are accessible to the common man. Don't let the 70's era rust buckets fool you, though - the driving and damage physics are quite good, the damage models are entertaining, and the racing is close and brutal. It's astonishingly fun!
It's easy to scoff at the idea of VR making any appreciable difference in a VR game, but you would be wrong to do so. Moss, a combination platformer/audio book, is exactly that, and it is very, very well done. If asked if I would have enjoyed it as much "flat," I have to say that I wouldn't have. The VR aspects are subtle, but still make large contributions to the overall game play. It appears to be a small kid's game at first, but the difficulty does ramp up to a fairly challenging level.
While it is provably true that VR can be a good fit for shooting games, it is not true that a game can simply be built for a VR platform without putting a lot of thought into the vast differences between a flat, finger-based model and the VR model. Sniper Rust VR does not demonstrate that any such thought went into at all. Do yourself a favor - try the free demo before paying for this one.
Prime Mover provides a programming/puzzle game based on a handful of logic components. The puzzles start out with a shallow difficulty climb to get you used to the mechanics of the game, but ramp up quickly as you get deeper into the game. The 4-bit artistic motif makes screen legibility an issue, in addition to it being a "love or hate it" kind of look. If the low-res graphics don't offend, this one is worth a look for the puzzles alone.
While notably short, 39 Days to Mars is a lot of fun, delivered in an attractive artistic design. It's really more puzzles than adventure, but the puzzles are satisfying to solve and never caused one of those "how was I supposed to know that??" moments.
With choices between flat or VR, solo or co-op, and Explore vs. Engage, Downward Spiral: Horus Station can be tailored to the player's preference. I found the solo VR mode to be an amazing VR experience that amply demonstrated the incredible immersion value of VR in a spooky, broken space station. The Engage mode, which translates to "you get shot a lot" when playing, was not as compelling - the shooting aspects weren't all that good and served only to detract from the somber, creepy mood.
Starship Corporation has the features you would expect from a vehicle designer / guy-in-charge game, provided in an easy to use set of menus and helper screens. A thorough tutorial gives the player a good background for moving forward. We did encounter some stability issues, though.
The pieces were all in place for ARK Park to be something brand new and highly compelling in the VR market, but fails to maximize on the opportunity. While it can be spectacular to look at, the gaming elements just feel tacked on as if there was a checklist of features to build in, whether they made sense or not.
If you're looking to build a fishing industry empire, this is not for you. On the other hand, if you find yourself daydreaming of making your living by farming the oceans, you might enjoy Fishing: Barents Sea. It offers a fairly easy learning curve and an almost completely stress-free playing style that allows you to play the game the way you want to.
While selecting individual cases from the full game leaves the player with a disjointed and incomplete story, enough of the 1940's ambiance and the rough and tumble crime fighting of that era is included to offer up a compelling preview of what will hopefully become LA Noire 2: VR. There is some work to do on some of the mechanics, most notably the way in which weapons are handled, but this weakness is easily offset by the compelling, immersive world and some of the action sequences that occur in it.
With a great balance between playability, ominous ambiance, and well-designed VR elements like mobility and weaponry, The Wizards is an excellent model of the compelling and enjoyable things that can be done with VR. It is attractive and enticing without being too easy or too hard. Level designs are challenging but fair, although they may not feel that way at first exposure.
While technically competent and armed with a good story to tell, Apex Construct doesn't provide a compelling reason to keep going after the first few levels. A couple of upgrades to your single weapon appear, but the primary increase in challenge is simply more of the same.
The room escape part of Room Escape VR: Stories is very good. There can be some quirky behaviors with the Touch controllers, but none that go so far as to ruin the experience. The unnecessary disruption from interstitial cutscenes, on the other hand, can be a mood wrecker.
It its current form, Sailaway is an adequate way to learn about complex sailing vessels, travel the world by sea, and race online with other skippers. It is fairly straightforward to learn, but the limitations of controlling a complex boat with a keyboard and mouse are very evident. Sailaway is not for the casual player.
It's always a pleasure when the storyline is as intriguing as the gameplay. The Station is good at both in equal measure. The solutions to the sundry problems on The Station are just challenging enough—not too easy, not too hard.
I Expect You to Die provides everything I want in VR room escape type of game. Objects are easy to manipulate, the puzzles don't require great leaps of non-intuitive logic to solve, and the experience itself is quite entertaining. It can look spendy at full price, but it's on Steam so it' just a matter of waiting for a sale.
While I celebrate the attempt, The First Class VR suffers from poor design choices, a user interface that will prove difficult for novices, and a disjointed and shallow presentation of one of the most significant technological developments of mankind.
Reign: Her Majesty is a simple game mechanically, but don't let that fool you. Your decisions are not always easy, and the consequences for bad decisions are often fatal. Tread lightly, My Queen, tread lightly indeed!
GUTS is gory, messy, bloody, violent, and... did I say "gory" yet?