The 12 best Oculus Rift games available now
Looking for the best ways to begin your life in virtual reality? Look no further...
It’s here! It’s here! Proper virtual reality is now purchasable by all – and there are plenty of games to go with it.
If you’ve read our Oculus Rift review, bought yourself a Rift and are still wondering which games you should get immediately, allow us to set you on the right path, right here, right now.
Oh, and there’s a nice video that we made a little while ago to show you our five launch favourites. Aren’t you lucky.
That’s enough waffle: get Rifting!
Eve Valkyrie
We’ve played this one a number of times now, and the latest build keeps it firmly at the top of our most-wanted list. It’s a dogfighting spin-off from the huge (and hugely complicated) Eve MMO, and it’s ludicrously gorgeous, fast and exciting.
Multiplayer is at the heart of the game, with teams of fighters facing off against each other, but CCP has confirmed that there’s also a single-player story mode and another mode dedicated to simply exploring the game’s beautiful recreation of outer space.
Battles are awesomely dramatic, beginning with a Battlestar Galactica-like launch from a huge battleship and involving seat-of-your-pants chases through fleets of cruisers.
CCP considers the Founder’s Pack to essentially be an early access title, with developments and tweaks being made on the fly, but it already seems pretty fully formed and has enough unlockable content – from ships to weapons to cosmetic customisations – to keep you hooked for a very long time.
Price: £44.99
The Climb
We’ve been fans of The Climb since first playing it at the end of last year, and this latest version confirms it’s an absolute corker.
Essentially a free climbing simulator, The Climb allows you to scale huge heights in the most beautiful locations without ever leaving your house. It’s a seriously good looking game that manages to really capture the essence of free climbing, without giving you too much vertigo.
It feels surprisingly natural when played with the gamepad, while Oculus Touch takes it to a whole new level of immersion, requiring you to reach for holds and get moving to make those ledges.
Price: £39.99
Edge of Nowhere
Edge of Nowhere is a third-person exploration adventure with HP Lovecraft-inspired horror – and, while it might be a little on the short side for some, it’s blend of scary story-telling and action make it a must for Rift gamers.
The snowy landscape is beautiful, the caverns creepy, and the creatures inventive and terrifying.
But, while there might be one or two jump scares, it’s the games general eeriness that’ll make you sweat most over the handful of hours it’ll take to complete the story.
Price: £29.99
Dead & Buried
Here’s a game that puts the Oculus Touch contollers to their obvious and best use: turning them into six-shooters in a Western.
Shooting it out in a saloon, for example, you’re able to duck and hide behind cover, standing up or leaning to fire at your opponents across the bar. Throw in runaway train robberies, co-op action and all sorts of ghostly goings-on and you’ve got yourself a VR hit worthy of attention.
The game’s got an awesome feel to it: aiming is accurate, firing is weighty and there are few things cooler than the reload mechanic, which involves flicking your wrist to the left to empty the cylinder and then right to click it back in.
Things hit their peak in multiplayer, with the option to battle your Rift-owning pals or work with them to fend off creatures.
Price: £29.99
Project Cars
At this point in time, everyone should be aware of Project Cars. It is, after all, one of the finest and toughest racing games ever made.
In VR it’s every bit as brilliant as you might imagine: as close to racing a real car as it’s possible to get in your own home, it makes you a better racer, too. You’re able to effectively monitor your mirrors and blindspots, and can better aim for the apex of each corner than with any on-screen racer.
And, because this is a game that’s already been around for a year, it has a huge amount of content (all of the extra content packs are included in the Rift version) and a proven, dedicated community to race against. It might not be the first game you show off to your mates, but it’s the one you’ll still be playing weeks and months after you get your Rift.
Price: £39.99
Adr1ft
Think of this as Gravity in VR and you’re on the right track. You play as an astronaut floating in the remains of a badly damaged space station – and your suit is leaking oxygen. You have to quickly make sense of your situation, attempt to get your station’s critical systems working again, and keep your oxygen levels topped up.
It works brilliantly in VR, with your helmet visible as you move your head, giving you a real sense of being in a spacesuit. The zero-gravity environment makes movement tricky and disorienting, but not especially uncomfortable, even though Oculus has given the game an ‘intense’ rating.
What’s really amazing is the sense of isolation and loneliness you feel – another similarity to Gravity. This is a deeply immersive, involving and affecting experience, and a great showcase for VR.
Price: £14.99
Lucky’s Tale
Lucky’s Tale has got everything a cartoon platformer should have: an endearing premise and characters, colourful, solid graphics, and gameplay that’s simple and challenging all at once, especially if you’re working to hunt down all of the coins and other collectibles in any given area.
The solid three-dimensionality of the worlds and super-cute characters makes playing an absolute joy, especially when something comes right up close to your face.
Ballpark playtime is apparently 4-6 hours, which obviously isn’t super-long, but for a game of its type is perfectly reasonable, especially when you factor in that it comes free with every Rift.
Price: Free
Elite Dangerous: Deluxe Edition
This is another game whose appearance on VR is as an addition to an already huge and hugely successful title – and all the better for it.
The Deluxe Edition contains a load of extra content above the original title – and let’s remember that this is the game in which you can explore the entire Milky Way, mining, fighting and trading at your leisure.
This is one of a handful of VR titles that offers months of gameplay, rather than just a quick and dramatic first experience, and looks amazing while doing it.
Price: £39.99
Job Simulator
This is the game to use when you want to show off your new VR toy to someone who doesn’t really play games.
The concept is this: the year is 2050 and robots now do all of the blue collar work. To learn what it was like to do a job, humans enter a simulator and are given an interractive history lesson by JobBot. Yes, this is really, really silly stuff.
It’s all about using the Oculus Touch controllers to interract with your environment – whether that’s completing the tasks that JobBot gives you (photocopying some work, making a sandwich, etc), or just messing around with all of the objects around you. There are four jobs to do, including office worker, diner chef and mechanic, and every one I’ve played has been equally hilarious.
Price: £22.99
Chronos
About 12hrs in length, this is an interesting RPG that combines a Resident Evil-like fixed camera system (albeit one you can look around by moving your head) with Dark Souls-inspired sword and shield combat. It doesn’t initially seem terrifically deep, but it is very quick to pick up, good fun and nicely presented, with a lovely sense of scale to the environments.
There are some neat ideas here – die and you age a year, and as you get older you unlock more traits to make your replay a little easier. In other words, the better you do the harder the game becomes. You can play as male or female and there’s a decent range of weapons (swords, axes, hammers, etc) and shields, too.
Price: £29.99
Arizona Sunshine
Resident Evil VII hasn’t done much for the family-friendly reputation of VR zombie games – but Arizona Sunshine is rated as ‘comfortable’ by oculus. Whats the deal?
Well, while there’s plenty of anti-zombie gun-toting involved – with more than 25 weapons to lock and load – there’s also a whole load of free-world exploration that sees you traipsing through deserts, mines and more. There’s not quite as much terror and tension as in Res Evil (slow, lurching zombies help) but there’s no lack of blood splatter.
There’s multiplayer, too, so you and your mates can grab the Oculus Touch remotes and hit the hordes.
Price: £29.99
The Unspoken
Play The Unspoken and, before long, casting glowing, destructive spells in engrossing urban environments will feel like exactly what the Rift was made for.
Using nothing but a floating pair of VR hands – controlled by Oculus Touch – you’ll take part in spectacular duels, using objects around you to do battle with rival wizards and improve your status in the magic fighting communty.
The only problem? The game will make you feel a master of magic, so much so that you’ll probably try and levitate the kettle to silence your in-laws.
Price: £22.99
Tom Parsons
Contributor, Stuff.tv 
