Executing fast and artful kill combos is basically the reason for Bulletstorm to exist in the first place, but sadly the VR version doesn't deliver the same flow state as the original, making it feel more tedious and less fluid overall. Combine that with some very iffy visuals, which feel demonstrably worse in VR than on flatscreen, and you have a game that's not only uglier than the original, but less fun overall.

Warhammer: Age of Sigmar – Tempestfall brings some good ideas to the table but only executes a few of them well. While the game’s ranged spellcasting is satisfying and fun, most of the focus is put into a shoddy melee system that’s functional at best and frustrating at worst, with enemy design and variety only exacerbating the issue. With inconsistent art direction and asset quality, weak sound design, amatuer-level animations, and poor writing, Tempestfall feels like a clear case of trying to do too much with too little.

Rhythm of the Universe: Ionia guides you through simple one-off puzzles and frontloads an embarrassing amount of exposition and cutscenes that stubbornly put cinematic pretense ahead of user immersion. Ionia talks of big game, but this musical adventure is over before it truly begins, which considering the level of pretense isn't the worse thing about this meandering 45-minute experience.

Gnomes & Goblins delivers a delicious appetizer but is spoiled by a rotten main course. After a lovely little prologue, the game opens up into a beautiful world with frustratingly little gameplay direction which is likely to drive players away rather than bring them back for more. To enjoy the game's best aspect—its visuals—you'll need a hefty rig; be sure to check the Minimum and Recommended specs before considering Gnomes & Goblins.

The Walking Dead Onslaught unfortunately suffers from a bad case of being overstuffed with filler, making you grind through inconsequential missions to move forward in the story. Although there's some fun to be had mowing down zombies and hunting for useful items in the wasteland for a while, after the first few hours it begins to feel like a chore, and not an exploration of the world envisioned in the TV series. This is offset somewhat by the game's excellent character design, weapon variety, and physics-based zombie killing, but it does little to mitigate the hours spent loading up on items that never seems like just recompense for the time spent gathering them.

In its early access state, Gadgeteer is both a fantastic Rube Goldberg-style reaction machine builder and, at its most gripping moments, a true example of VR Presence—where the act of building and testing a machine becomes so engaging that you forget you’re playing with code instead of physical toy dominos. The collider occlusion bug within the physics system should still be addressed, and continued improvements toward the locomotion system would be nice. But, content-wise, Gadgeteer is already a complete package out of the box. At $15, I consider it a steal.

I walked away from Final Assault feeling that all of the basic ingredients were there to make for a truly engrossing and fun game. The addition of a campaign mode though, which is promised to release sometime between now and its March 2019 launch, will make it much more appealing for players like me who would rather play offline. That said, I’ll definitely be playing more on the game’s road to launch.

Blade & Sorcery strongly demonstrates that physics-based melee can work in the right conditions. It’s not clear at this point whether it will stay on the tech demo side of things instead of a more fleshed-out game though. Early adopters of the game GORN don’t seem to have a problem with that in the slightest, so hopefully those impressive slow-mo combat gifs will keep on coming.

Déraciné is one of the finest examples yet of someone setting out to create a VR game before actually finding out what's fun or interesting to do when you have a headset on your head and motion tracked controllers in your hands. Although comfortable to play and decent looking, the game is designed in a way that perfectly deprives the player of any agency, leaving it as little more than a point and click simulator where you watch a woefully scattered story about characters you have no reason to care about. If nothing else, Déraciné offers up several concrete examples of how not to design a VR game.

Beat Saber is stylish, fun and hits all the right notes for a VR-native rhythm game. In its Early Access state, it’s missing out on some variability when it comes to songs and visuals, but lays the foundation for a game that has the potential to charm a pretty wide audience. Gameplay is intuitive, but also difficult to master, making it a title worth revisiting, and passing around to anyone regardless of age or gaming background.

For under $10, it’s hard not to take a chance on some WW2 deathmatch action. As it is now though, Front Defense: Heroes needs some serious TLC to become a trusted VR shooter that people will come back to. The core premise of the game is valid—essentially Day of Defeat in VR—but whether Fantahorn is able to put in the hours to make this rusty wheel eventually spin before its true consumer release… well … we’re hoping for the best.

AliceVR blurs the lines between fantasy and reality with a certain amount of competence in its loose sci-fi adaptation of the classic tale Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, but pushes too hard to put you into a world where up is down and down is up. Bodily discomfort is a serious concern once you go down this rabbit hole. [Tested with Oculus Rift]