10 Best Oculus Quest VR Games You Should Play
Although VR gaming has been around for quite some time, it hasn’t quite hit the mainstream yet. There are a lot of reasons behind this, including expensive hardware, a limited game selection, and the annoyance of having a cable trailing from your VR headset while you play.
While VR headsets haven’t quite resolved all of these issues, the Oculus Quest at least has done away with the need to have a tether to a gaming PC. For those who are still on the fence on whether they should be getting an Oculus Quest, then let us whet your appetite with some of the best games available for this one-of-a-kind VR headset.
What is the Oculus Quest?
The Oculus brand has been around for about as long as VR headsets have been a thing, so what makes the Oculus Quest special? The first thing you’ll notice is that it’s not a follow-up to their hugely popular Oculus Rift series.
The primary reason for this is that the Oculus Quest is a fully stand-alone, wireless VR headset. It does not need to be tethered to a PC, nor does it have to be paired with a mobile device. Every piece of hardware and software you’ll need to run VR games is built into the Oculus Quest. For this reason, the Oculus Quest is an excellent VR headset for those who don’t have a gaming PC right now, and for those who want to take the VR gaming experience on the go.
Can I download games for the Oculus Quest from the Oculus Rift store?
Unfortunately, it also means that the Oculus Quest is more limited in its hardware than the Oculus Rift. This means that the selection of games for the Oculus Quest isn’t quite as extensive as that offered by the PC-based Oculus Rift store.
Instead, Oculus Quest games can be downloaded from a special Android-based store. These games are designed specifically to work with the hardware limitations of the Oculus Quest. It’s not a huge loss, though, as the Oculus Quest library contains some of the best titles to have ever been developed for VR and continues to grow. Right now, here are some of the best VR games that we’re recommending to every Oculus Quest owner.
The top 10 best games for the Oculus Quest
1. Beat Saber
Price: $29.99
What better way to start this list than with the game that has caused a massive surge in the popularity of VR headsets? The modern rhythm game, what makes Beat Saber so fun is the fact that just about everyone can pick it up and have fun with it – even those who haven’t done any gaming their whole lives. Beat Saber is a game that we can recommend to everyone because of how simple and addictive it is. This is one of the first few games you should buy as soon as you get your Oculus Quest.
Using the Oculus Touch controllers, the game has you swing your “sabers” to the beat of a song as colored bricks fly your way. The base game has about a dozen or so songs from different artists, but you can readily expand the song selection with some downloadable music packs -the latest one features songs by Panic! At the Disco.
This version of the Beat Saber has been optimized to work with the Oculus Quest. There have been graphical downgrades, but you’ll hardly notice it with how smoothly the game runs. What’s more important is that the game runs with incredible fidelity and responsiveness.
Beat Saber is a great introduction to the world of VR gaming. Even when you’ve amassed a library of VR games, you’ll probably find yourself playing a round or two (or ten) of Beat Saber every now and then.
2. Moss
Price: $29.99
We’re suckers for adventure games with compelling characters, a good story, and satisfying puzzles, hence why we’ve ranked Moss as our number two games for the Oculus Quest. The game has you play as the companion to Quill, a swashbuckling mouse in a quest to defeat the fire-breathing snake Saffrog.
The game has you use motion controls not just to control Quill and battle her enemies, but also to manipulate the environment and allow Quill to move forward. You play a physical character in Moss, and Quill interacts with you through sign language and her reactions. The story of Moss is engaging but simple. If we have any complaint, it’s that we would have wanted the game to be longer.
Moss takes place in a world that looks like a children’s storybook. The environment of the game is one of its strongest suits. Everything in Moss looks charming – from the leaves that respond to your movement to Quill herself.
Moss is a more traditional gaming experience that uses VR for augmented controls. It’s great for a quiet night when you just want to play a game on your couch and not something that requires you to get up and move around.
3. SUPERHOT VR
Price: $24.99
If you’ve ever daydreamed about being surrounded by dozens of gunmen and coming out on top through your superior combat and shooting skills, then SUPERHOT VR is your dreams distilled down to its purest essence. SUPERHOT VR makes you feel like a real-life action here with all the gun skills to boot.
The definitive VR shooting game, SUPERHOT VR has you grab guns from mid-air, reload them however you want, and shoot down the dozens of enemies that are coming at you. Your fists are also perfectly good weapons in SUPERHOT VR. In our opinion, it’s even more satisfying to see your enemies shattering into pieces with a well-timed swing of your fist.
There’s a unique component to the action in SUPERHOT VR, in that you have the advantage of moving much faster than your enemies. This makes it possible to dodge bullets in slow-motion, as well as the fists of barehanded opponents. There’s something infinitely fulfilling about dodging a hail of bullets from three enemies, grabbing a gun from mid-air, and shooting them down with well-aimed headshots.
What makes SUPERHOT VR such an excellent game for the Oculus Quest is that it feels like how SUPERHOT VR feels like it always should have been. Free from the shackles of hardware tether, you can duck, spin around, and weave left and right without feeling like you are, in any way, restricted from moving. If you’re feeling stressed out at the end of the day, then we’re telling you – this is going to be your new favorite way to release that stress.
4. Creed: Rise to Glory
Price: $24.99
Is there a sport more suited to VR gaming than boxing? Tack on the Rocky franchise on that concept and you have the excellent Creed: Rise to Glory VR game.
Creed has you step in the shoes of Adonis Creed, an inexperienced but talented boxer with a chip on his shoulder. The gameplay with the Oculus Touch controllers should be intuitive for anybody – dodge or block your enemy’s punches while you wait for an opening to deliver a blow to the head or body. The mechanics aren’t any different from the previous generation motion-controlled boxing games, but Creed just feels smoother and more realistic with its punches the feel like there’s actual heft behind them.
Aside from being insanely fun, playing a few minutes of Creed can give you a really good workout. Creed is one of the games that have made us realize the potential of VR gaming as legitimate fitness activities. Even though you will find that the first few rounds you play on Creed aren’t particularly challenging, slowly and surely, your movement will start to become sluggish as fatigue sets in and your controllers become heavier.
5. Star Wars Vader Immortal
Price: $9.99
One of the best things about VR gaming is that it can bring you inside worlds (or galaxies) that used to only exist in your imagination. What could be better than being in the world of Star Wars? This is exactly what the Vader Immortal game offers, which is now available in two episodes priced at $9.99 each.
From the onset, activating your own lightsaber and swinging it around is just about the best geek-out moments we’ve had. Vader Immortal puts you in the shoes of a small-time smuggler who inadvertently lands up in Mustafar – known to Star Wars fans as the home of Darth Vader. From there, Darth Vader enlists your aid to obtain an artifact to help him achieve immortality. The story is appropriately epic for the Star Wars universe, with a few twists and surprises thrown your way.
The creators of Vader Immortal that everyone goes into their game for the lightsaber combat, and they did not disappoint. From the hum of the lightsaber as you swing it around to the tactile feedback as you deflect blaster shots back to your enemies, lightsaber combat in Vader Immortal feels just like how we imagined it. The game also brings you face-to-face with Darth Vader himself – an encounter that feels so much more intimidating in VR.
As excellent as the first episode of Vader Immortal was, the second one was even better. This has been announced as a three-part series, so we’re very excited for the final installation. For only $9.99 per episode, Vader Immortal is likely to be enough to convince any Star Wars fan to get an Oculus Quest.
6. Tilt Brush
Price: $19.99
We’re apprehensive about calling Tilt Brush a game. After all, it doesn’t have an objective – no puzzles to solve, no enemy to beat, and certainly no princess to rescue. However, we simply don’t have the heart to not include Tilt Brush in this list. While it may not be a VR game, it’s certainly a VR experience – and what an experience it is.
What we love about Tilt Brush is that there’s so many ways for you to use it. You can stream it on a TV during a party and play a game of three-dimensional Doodles. You can use it to create a piece of art in 3D space, however big or complex you want it to be. The works you’ve made can also be created and shared. Wouldn’t it be cool to walk around a house that someone else designed and modeled in Tilt Brush?
The Tilt Brush isn’t just a simple 3D doodling program. It comes with a lot of sophisticated features for those who want to create professional-grade work, such as image referencing, inverse scaling, and fixed-axis rotation.
We’ve always been amazed at what artists have been able to accomplish with the Tilt Brush in its past iterations. With the untethered Oculus Quest, perhaps there are so many more possibilities that are yet to be explored.
7. Robo Recall: Unplugged
Price: $29.99
Robo Recall was one of the most popular titles for the Oculus Rift, so we’re glad to see it ported for the Quest. The Unplugged version comes with downgraded graphics, but the enhanced immersion afforded by the lack of wires on the Quest more than makes up for it.
Robo Recall is a first-person VR shooter in the same vein as SUPERHOT VR. It’s not quite as stylish, putting you instead in a futuristic world besieged by deranged robots. Robo Recall requires a bit more skill with aiming, although you still have the option of simply bashing the robot’s heads with your fists or knocking them down with some debris.
Gameplay is mostly points-based, with the game rewarding you for certain types of kills or for maintaining a continuous kill streak. One thing we really like about this game is how customizable the weapons are. There are dozens of different types of guns and missiles to mess around with and trying each one out is reason enough to keep playing.
If you’ve played Robo Recall for PC, then you might feel underwhelmed because of the graphics downgrade. Textures and surfaces are much more simplistic, and the world just feels a tad bit more polygonal. The same old fast-paced gameplay is still there, though, if you can manage to look past its simple environment.
8. Job Simulator
Price: $19.99
Why in the heck would you play a VR game that puts you on a desk doing a boring office job? If this sounds too close to real life for you, then this is what we have to say: Job Simulator is a game that’s meant for you to mess up, often to hilarious results
Job Simulator is set in a future where robots have taken over the mundane jobs that humans used to do. Thus, humans have to go to a museum to experience what it’s like to do these jobs in a virtual world. Whatever job you choose to take – as a chef, office worker, or mechanic, among many others – you’re free to mess around without consequence.
What sounds like a simple and stupid concept is going to give you hours and hours of entertainment and roll-on-the-floor laughter. Have you ever wanted to shred everything in sight at your desk job? Curious about how you’re going to handle a robbery in a convenience store? Then try out Job Simulator to try out endless ways of messing up. As your handy robot companion will say: Time to job!
9. Apex Construct
Price: $19.99
Most VR games don’t tell much of a compelling story and this is one of the reasons for why Apex Construct stands out so much. A story-driven game, Apex Construct puts you in the role of the sole human survivor in a future where humanity has become extinct and the world has been ruled by machines.
Apex Construct is a first-person shooter where your primary weapon is a bow with arrows, and you’ll be facing off against a bevy of dangerous robots. Combat is nicely broken up by a series of puzzles and secrets to discover. The story of Apex Construct is one of the intriguing and compelling in the world of VR games. Finishing the game’s story and discovering all of its secrets could take you between 12 to 18 hours.
Once you’ve completed everything that the single-player campaign has to offer, you can test your combat and traversal skills in the Cygnia Cup, an arena where you can rack up scores based on your accuracy and see how you compare with others in the global leaderboard. The excellent replay factor is just another reason why this is one of our favorite VR games.
10. I Expect You to Die
Price: $24.99
I Expect You to Die is a first-person puzzle-solving game that puts you in the shoes of an elite secret agent who somehow always hilariously finds himself in life-threatening situations. It will up to your quick thinking and problems solving skills to find your way out of the situations – or die trying.
The game is composed of five levels, each of them essentially an escape room where you need to defuse a deadly hazard. The puzzles are challenging enough that you’ll need to go through each level several times before you can figure out all the solutions, but they never feel unfair or illogical. This also means that you’re bound to get several hours out of these games – a great value for $25.
Originally developed for both PC-based and PS4 VR platforms, the port to the Oculus Quest suffers from no downgrade in performance. In many ways, we consider the Oculus Quest version to be superior because of its increased freedom of motion. Even if you’ve played the earlier iterations of I Expect You to Die, we can still confidently recommend it for the Oculus Quest.
Final thoughts
The Oculus Quest could represent the latest generation of VR headsets – independent, wireless, yet highly capable. We have to give credit to Oculus for making sure that there’s a still a huge library of content for the Oculus Quest. Despite many of these ports being designed with downgraded graphics, the gameplay experience with the Oculus Quest is still nothing short of amazing.
With so many excellent games for the Oculus Quest, the biggest challenge of making this list is selecting just ten. If you’re still on the fence about getting an Oculus Quest, then content is one area you won’t need to worry about – you’re going to get it in spades.