Despite a few setbacks like horrendous load times, sometimes janky controls, and a few missed opportunities with its (surprisingly excellent) story, Iron Man VR is an absolute triumph. Camouflaj absolutely delivered a AAA-quality campaign-driven VR game featuring one of the world’s most iconic superheroes, all while showing him in a new light with an original story that isn’t weighed down by the baggage of the MCU and comics. Flying as Iron Man feels amazing, talking to characters as Tony Stark is full of wit and humor, and from top to bottom it’s an exhilarating and well-paced adventure that feels like it only grazes the surface of how high this developer can fly in VR.

Far-fetched as it may be, Phantom’s fantastically immersive design makes for a VR mission well worth accepting, even if its campaign is shorter and simpler than hoped for. But what it lacks in gameplay complexity, it often makes up for in its giddy role-playing, going a step beyond many other VR games to convince you that you’re really in its (admittedly daft) world. A deeper sequel with more advanced gameplay would elevate the series to essential status, but Phantom already navigates the rough waters of VR stealth better than most.

The Wizards never lets you forget you’re playing a VR game. Rarely do more than 10 seconds pass without the need for grand hand gestures to summon magic or for you to reach out and interact with things around you. They’ve got a great magic system that’s intuitive and fun to master in a fantastical world that provides a unique type of adventure you won’t quite find anywhere else.

Spaceteam VR is a proven formula on an unproven platform, which makes it a pretty fascinating experiment. Inevitably, some of the same-room companionship is lost in the transition from physical to virtual, but not nearly as much as you might think, and thoughtful additions made possible by headsets go a good way to making up for it. Spaceteam VR will break friendships, ruin your vocal cords and raise your blood pressure. That is to say, it’s quite a delight.

War Remains delivers perhaps as much you could ask of a historical experience for VR headsets in 2020, then. Without the time nor resources for substance, it instead centers on explosive presentation, offering an assault on the senses not easily replicated outside of VR. But ultimately this only captures the surface of a war with all the violent viscerality you’d expect. Anything deeper remains out of reach for now.

If you’re able to optimize your setup and come in with the right expectations, I’d still say Gorn is an easy recommendation for PSVR fans. No, you’re not getting an epic adventure comparable to the bar-raising The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, but there’s still some of VR’s most entertaining combat on offer here.

Thanks to a generous amount of options and a welcome bit of structure, Mini Motor Racing X is an easy recommendation in the middle of a slow time for VR releases, especially when it so quickly and efficiently demonstrates just how cool VR can be on a base level. But don’t expect anything more than a game that does a decent job imitating its influences, with little ambition to surpass them. Like a box of Micro Machines itself, Mini Motor Racing X helps pass the time, but when something shinier comes along it will soon be forgotten.

At $9.99, Baby Shark VR Dancing isn’t asking a lot from you and what’s here is genuinely well-made, if a little insufferable to the more mature mind. But the point remains that many VR headsets makers set an age limit of 13 for use. This appeals to a much younger audience, one that I certainly wouldn’t be comfortable leaving inside an Oculus Rift or Valve Index, especially when they’re essentially playing a shooter with training wheels. As tempting a lockdown distraction this may seem for families, I’d exercise extreme caution all the same.

Dead GroundZ does at least score some points for having a genuine campaign in which you move through some surprisingly well-realized environments. Even with three more campaign levels to come, though, it’s hard to recommend a game that feels years old on arrival. If Dead GroundZ is to become more than a footnote in a respectable library, its dated design is the real zombie to slay.

Pixel Ripped 1995 is a bigger, bolder, and even more nostalgic walk down memory lane that shifts the focus from the late 80s to the early 90s — perhaps the most iconic and formative decade of the video game industry to date. By mixing together riffs off of popular games such as Castlevania, The Legend of Zelda, Streets of Rage, Sonic the Hedgehog, Mario, and more, Pixel Ripped is a sleek and powerful blast of nostalgia that brings back potent memories of hunching over CRT TVs in the dead of night playing games. I want to spend more time in this world and get to know its characters even better and this is a truly solid improvement over Pixel Ripped 1989.

If you’re a hardcore horror fan with an iron stomach desperately looking for 2-3 hours of content to whet your appetite, there’s something here for you, but otherwise I’d recommend looking elsewhere. There are far better VR horror games out there. Layers of Fear VR may technically be a horror game, but the scariest part is the dismal missteps made in bringing the game to a VR platform.

Ultimately, Ironlights has set itself up very well as an enjoyable game with lots of potential for improvement. For all its faults, it still has good bones – it just needs to make some changes here and there before it can call itself a sparkling piece of armor.

There’s a fun focus on planning and improvising in Final Assault, making it an engaging, albeit somewhat less involved, entry for the genre even if it wasn’t on a headset, but in virtual reality, the RTS shines as an imaginative chest of colorful toys. Just make sure when you’re planning your attack to call in a supply drop of dramamine.

In 2018 I said A-Tech Cybernetic: “is a sci-fi zombie shooter that, simply put, feels great to play and has an actual campaign. That’s not something you can say all that often in VR.” Well, you can say that pretty often now, and that’s one wave of enemies A-Tech Cybernetic can’t fend off.

Good Goliath does what it sets out to do; it’s a simple VR game with an arcade flavour and easy to learn controls. It’s accessible, and that’s good, but it’s also very basic, and that’s bad. The moment to moment gameplay can often feel frustrating as you simply duck and dodge incoming objects and throw them back, but in the boss fights it gives you a glimpse of the technical skill and excellent design that the team is capable of. If Good Goliath had been a boss rush only game it would be far easier to recommend, but it’s sadly just a little too limited to be worth your time if you’ve played much else in VR.

The Room VR: A Dark Matter is an exemplary puzzle game that not only serves as a prime example of what makes puzzle games so compelling in the first place, but elevates the genre via VR with supreme interactivity, excellent visuals, and a palpably mysterious atmosphere. It’s only held back slightly by some minor frustrations with pacing and difficulty, but is otherwise one of the best puzzle games available in a VR headset. It carries the torch lit by Myst and demonstrates how engrossing a puzzle game can be when done right.

Even Down The Rabbit Hole’s sheer existence seems like lunacy. It’s as strange a VR game you’ll find, one that refuses to be pegged down to any one demographic or tick any certain box. There might be a touch of tameness to some of its puzzles and the adventure is over a little too soon, but when the game tips its box of ideas upside down, magic usually falls out. Down The Rabbit Hole is as Mad as a Hatter, and that’s exactly what you’d want it to be.

Alyx leaves you with the lingering suspicion that there is yet more ground to cover, that there’s far more this series and this developer can do with this new set of tools and that this is only the first part of that story. Though you’ll find yourself hungry for more, there’s something comforting in the knowledge that, for Valve, this is the dawn of a new era. Half-Life: Alyx makes good on its second chance, it is as essential a VR game as you’ll find in 2020, but perhaps the most exciting thing about it is the message is that the best is yet to come.

With Paper Beast, Eric Chahi goes for a holy trinity of VR development. It is a game not content with just one miracle, be it the authentic, almost documentarian approach to a virtual ecosystem, nor the technical milestones such a feat requires. Even its set of puzzles somehow emerge as a remarkably natural extension of its core themes and systems, creating a cohesive and curiously precious VR game to be preserved and savoured. Though it usually comes with unintended pitfalls, Paper Beast proves playing god can be great from time to time.

Mostly freed from the limitations of early mobile VR, the console and PC versions of Covert finally feel like the game it should have been two years ago. This an often amusing, occasionally engrossing bit of local VR collaboration that will have friends reaching the tops of their voices, if rarely doubling down on deep spy work. Still, if you’re looking for something to play with a friend that doesn’t own a headset or if you want more experiences like Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes, you should accept this mission.

While it might not have the finesse of a AAA title, it has the charm, uniqueness and personal connection that only indie games can offer. In that way, Bizarre Barber feels more like it belongs in an art gallery than on a top 25 list, and that’s the best thing about it.

Space Channel 5 VR should have been a glorious return to form, but this cult hit series can’t keep up with the beat set by its competitors. The surprisingly brief campaign coasts on by without ever pushing your skills and, once it’s over, there’s very little else to do. Ulala and co are long overdue a return to the main stage, but this isn’t it.

Separation is a game with something to say, it just spends too long trying to say it. While I wanted to fall for its wistful mountain climbs and poignant canyon descents, I became too frustrated with its tedious core treasure hunt to stop and pay its wider implications much mind. I suspect that some will make those connections, lost in the game’s alluring fog, but many more will be done with this pilgrimage long before it’s over.

It’s a smart, straight, no-nonsense rhythm game with an energetic core mechanic and plenty of options to tailor the experience to your liking. There’s a few presentation hiccups and the initial track list could be more inspiring, but these are minor and very fixable issues. If you’re growing tired of slashing or shooting beats in VR, then you should definitely try throwing some shapes here instead.

Ghost Giant remains a delicate balance of charm and poignancy; an important story told with the right amount of sensitivity, steeped in the power of VR connection and companionship. Solving its puzzles might present the occasional road bump, but you’ll otherwise be swept up by its marvellous world of miracles and the characters that live in it. And, thanks to Quest, that’s easier to do than ever.

If you’re looking for a cinematic agent-style action game for your VR headset, Defector is a better bet. Silicon Rising could drastically improve with some simple changes over the course of Early Access, but it needs far more work to give it any sort of meaningful substance.

Hello Puppets! didn’t blow me away, but it also didn’t have to. While not everything is perfect, it makes up for the areas it lacks in with some exciting and refreshing elements that add some levity to the horror setting. If you enjoy the horror genre in VR, it’s probably worth checking out for the slightly different take on the genre and humorous addition of Scout the puppet. In many ways, Hello Puppets! has a lot of parallels to how you might approach a blockbuster horror movie — while not particularly groundbreaking, if you have a few spare hours on the weekend, it might be worth checking out for a bit of fun, a few scares, and maybe even a laugh.

As it stands Audica is definitely something different, for better and for worse. The gameplay mechanics are enough to make it stand out, especially if you dedicate the time to really dig into it, but in a crowded VR rhythm game market the circumstances surrounding how and why it’s different aren’t always in its favor. If you’re a big fan of VR rhythm games, make no doubt: there is plenty to sink your teeth into and you’re gonna have fun, but if you’re picky about finding your flow in a game or already enamored with Beat Saber, there may not be enough to pull you in.