Pixel Ripped 1978 is another love letter to the bygone era of classic gaming as it resurrects a handful of Atari classics under the full auspices of the iconic brand. While its first-person RPG focus is a little underbaked, it's hard to knock such a charming buffet of novelty that pays heartfelt homage to gaming's second console age.

True to its name, Sniper Elite VR delivers strong sniping mechanics, but the surrounding action doesn't do it justice. With a great VR sniper scope implementation and the franchise's signature x-ray kill cam, delivering those long shots can definitely be satisfying. Unfortunately the homogenous enemies and weapons blur together against a backdrop of unmemorable levels and story. The game's graphical presentation on Quest is surprisingly good, with long draw distances, sharp imagery, and great performance. Sniper Elite VR is also a very comfortable game with a wide range of comfort options, but the teleport mode is painfully slow—to the point that I wouldn't recommend the game if you must play it with teleport.

Seeking Dawn is a VR sci-fi shooter with an ambitious list of features on top of its single or multiplayer campaign mission: weapon crafting, base defense, resource management, and survival elements. While all of these are certainly present, some feel shoehorned in for the sake of making a full length game. At its core though, it's a standard sci-fi shooter brought to life in VR, and done so with enough care and attention that would make it a really fun experience if it weren't for the crafting drudgery.

Detached is good-looking game that could deliver more of what it does well, but instead bites off much more than it can chew in an effort to fill out functionality. The game primarily suffers from a lackluster single-player mode and a promising but feature-starved 1v1 multiplayer. The biggest barrier of entry is the game's locomotion style which is brutally unforgiving. [Tested with Oculus Touch, HTC Vive]

Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond proclaims to be a AAA production (and is priced as such) but falls well short of that bar. With simplistic core gameplay, uninteresting & daft enemies, and a lack of polish, the bulk of the game feels like a shooting gallery. The set-piece sequences which are supposed to deliver epic WWII moments are foiled by bad writing, pacing, and lack of player agency. A meaningful portion of the game (roughly 10–20%) largely ignores best practices of VR comfort and won't be comfortable for some players. Competitive players might find some fun in the game's fast-paced and largely competent multiplayer component, and the 'Gallery' mini-documentaries are exceptionally well produced, but a shame that they are locked in with a game that conflicts with their reverent tone.

Downward Spiral: Horus Station presents a visually rich world in this shooter-meets-adventure game hybrid, but crucially fumbles both story and gunplay elements to a very middling overall effect. While gunplay is optional, I hasten to think that based on storytelling alone, that Downward Spiral just doesn't have the guts to be anything but a very beautiful, but unfortunately boring exercise in opening doors, pushing buttons, and retrieving keycards.

Bonelab is similar to its predecessor in key ways—both the good and the bad. The game's physics driven world can be refreshingly immersive in the way that almost everything interacts together. But physics sometimes make the game less fun and even frustrating to play, especially when it comes to the game's many climbing segments. While there's lots on offer, including a campaign and several replayable mini-modes, they all suffer from the same core problems which is boring enemies with little variety, poor encounter & puzzle design, and bland weapons. In lieu of having those things provided for you, you'll have to extract your own fun by challenging yourself to execute stylish kills and physics-shenanigans with the game's all-you-can eat slo-mo feature. While the game repeats most of Boneworks key issues, this time around if offers proper modding support which could improve things significantly— that is... if the game's community is willing to spend the time building the toys this sandbox should have had from the start.

Although Star Wars Vader Immortal - Episode III is meant to be an exciting conclusion to the series, with massive robot battles, escapes down cavernous tunnels, and duels to the death, it's hard to feel too excited when these experiences crash head-first into its paint-by-numbers locomotion scheme and general lack of player-to-character interaction, which effectively muffles what should have been a resounding and climactic finish. It still however serves up one of the most visually stunning VR experiences to date, although its flaws ultimately compound in the third episode, making it somewhere between good and great.

Against expectations, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City turns out to be a genuinely great VR beat ’em up, not just fan service for longtime Turtle disciples. Cortopia Studios delivers fast, flexible combat, light RPG progression, and a strong comic-book presentation that punches well above its price point. It’s not without some padding and design quirks, but the core experience is energetic, accessible, and totally radical. Possibly tubular.

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.

People with play areas at least 3 metres square will have the best time but, even then, compared to the standouts in the VR shooter genre the fun is limited. [Tested with HTC Vive]

Twilight Path wants to deliver something grand, but doesn't give itself enough time to set up a world that you can connect with (and therefor care about). Without that, the game is purely reliant on its puzzles for delivering engaging gameplay, but misses a key opportunity to train the player with core concepts that are expanded and challenged as the game progresses. While the player is imbued with special spirit powers, they ultimately don't make you feel very powerful or part of the world.

Star Wars: Beyond Victory - A Mixed Reality Playset has the production value of some of ILM's greatest virtual reality games, but seems to fumble with the reason for why it actually needs mixed reality in the first place. While a two-hour story mode nails the Star Wars feel and packs emotional punch in VR, its limited MR gameplay keeps it from reaching lightspeed.

John Wick Chronicles proves itself to be a fun and extremely svelte-looking entry into the wave shooter genre. If not for its extremely short story mode and a few ham-handed, immersion breaking moments, this would be the sort of AAA title that VR has been waiting for, but in the end is just another short but sweet VR demo.

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.

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]

Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot has plenty of style and atmosphere to rely upon, which is probably more thanks to the recent entries in the franchise than work generated specifically for the game. As a title that takes only 1.5 hours to complete though, it struggles to flesh out any of the concepts introduced to the player, and feels less like a complete game and more like the beginning tutorial levels for each vehicle. When dialed in correctly, visuals can be cohesive and even pretty immersive, although it's hard to really care about a world you can only visit for such a fleeting amount of time. It is admittedly priced at $20, however there's basically no replay value once you've beaten it on its hardest mode.

Siegecraft Commander is a tabletop strategy game that may look like a competent VR port of the PC game on first blush, but the game's core launching mechanic proves to be too encumbered and laborious to be truly fun in fast-paced play. Maps and units are well rendered, but an over-reliance on labeling units detracts from the game's immersion, culminating in an experience that just never hits its stride despite its innovative core mechanic. [Tested with HTC Vive, Oculus Touch]

Bravo Team is a cover-based shooting gallery wrapped in a paper thin narrative. You can only kill so many faceless baddies before things become dull, and the game's limited number of weapons do little to mix up the monotony. It's nice to have another cooperative option on PSVR (and with PSVR Aim support to boot), but with the game's diminutive length and minimal allure of replayability, it'll be a one and done playthrough for many.

Stranger Things VR is basically only for fans of the show who don't mind a four-hour recap of the past two seasons set to some admittedly excellent surrealist art, which deftly nails the nightmarish vibe of the Upside Down. Although there are hints of engaging mechanics at the beginning, none of them come to a satisfying conclusion, positioning Stranger Things VR as more of an extended commercial than a story truly worth telling.

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.

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.

Despite a host of redeeming qualities, including a cohesive art style, beautiful scene work and a no-gravity locomotion scheme that left me feeling completely nausea-free, you can't help but shake the feeling that there should be at least 10 times the amount of gameplay in the single player mode. In the end it feels more like a vertical slice, or a demo. [Tested with HTC Vive, Oculus Touch]

Drop Dead is an adept Gear VR port for Oculus Touch, and feels more at home on the tethered headset with a gun in your hands instead of the Gear's gaze-shooting gameplay style. The storyline and art direction are self-aware in their cheesiness, and while graphics aren't incredible, the game is good at getting your heart pumping with the thought of swarms of zombies coming at your face. Glaring technical flaws aside, it's a fun shooter that's easy to pick up, but hard to put down. [Reviewed with Oculus Touch]

Syren certainly has a few flaws, but this made-for-VR survival-horror game is a competent stab at the genre, and proves to be terrifying as it is exciting. An engrossing story, and a flair for the dramatic makes Syren a worthy addition to any horror junkie's VR collection. [Tested with HTC Vive and Oculus Rift]

It's not perfect, and it's clear Unearthed Inc: The Lost Temple isn't as clever or polished as other critically acclaimed VR puzzlers like Obduction (2016) or The Gallery - Episode 1: Call of the Starseed (2016), but it certainly has its own character and allure that merits further exploration in future installments. Boss battles however are a welcome addition, and help punctuate some of the game's less than enthralling fetch quests. [Tested with HTC Vive, Oculus Rift]

ROM: Extraction is an interesting new twist on the wave shooter genre with its multiple bouncy exploding orbs and tactical bullet time feature. With only a single environment, single pistol, and no coop multiplayer (coming in 2017), you'll be relegated to competing against the leaderboard for the time being. 'ROM' could use a shine-up with more weapons and greater enemy variety to keep things interesting. [Tested with HTC Vive, Oculus Touch]

Werewolves Within is a clever and well-balanced VR adaptation of the popular party game 'Mafia'. While fundamentally based on deception, even the best liar can get caught if he/she is unlucky enough. The cartoony atmosphere is both approachable and extremely well polished, although the game makes poor use of natural input controllers. [Tested with HTC Vive]