I play a lot of PlayStation VR games as you can imagine, after all, I need to find as many cool games for you as I can, and a lot of them are AAA titles like Doom VFR, Skyrim VR and eagerly anticipated games like Moss. Sometimes though I like to delve into the PSVR library to find little gems you probably haven't heard of but will love to play.
This list is by no means exhaustive, after all, there are hundreds of PlayStation VR titles to choose from, but these are five games that I think are awesome that you may not have of heard of, much less played. A lot of these games may have a similar feel to them as well, static shooters seems to be the stable of the PSVR library and they make for some great games, but each one has its own variance that makes them unique and worth playing.
Blasters of the Universe
Blasters of the Universe is a wave-based "bullet hell" shooter that is crazy fun and just plain crazy. Set in what looks to be late 80's - early 90's, around the Lawnmower Man years, you play as a young arcade player who gets sucked into a machine to fight against the reigning champion of the game. As a premise, it smacks of Tron and the visuals have that 80's CGI effect that looks fantastic, to be honest. With a soundtrack that could be ripped straight from Thor: Ragnarok this game fills you with the feeling of nostalgia for old arcade halls while giving you a fresh VR feel to the gameplay.
The game itself is fairly straightforward, shoot bad guys as they attack you in waves, all the while dodging their weirdly geometrical shaped bullet volleys. Happily, as the game tells you from your start, only your head exists, so that's the only part you need to move to keep the bullets from hitting you. This makes the game at least playable because if you had to move your whole body to dodge the literally hundreds of bullets you would tire within minutes, as it is you get to feel somewhat accomplished as you dodge around while shooting and reloading your weapon of choice.
The weapons in Blasters of the Universe are completely customizable too, from the type of weapon to the barrel, ammo, sights and even the size of the magazine, all can be mixed and matched to never give you the same gun twice. You do have to unlock all the parts as you play but being able to adjust the weapons to your play style is a really great feature, for example, I like high powered three burst weapons with a power boost magazine. I have to reload more than normal but I can kill a lot of enemies with just one or two trigger pulls, but you might like to run a fully automatic gun with a large capacity magazine and seeking bullets or a single shot super high powered gun, there is so much to choose from.
Happy Drummer
One of the first games I have seen on the PlayStation VR that replicates music, Happy Drummer is a cute, light-hearted attempt at a drum simulator using a set of tribal drums to make the music. With its very cartoony graphics, upbeat tribal music and crazy dancing people all over the place, Happy Drummer is a great game to play with a group of people around. Kids and grown-ups will get equal amounts of pleasure from banging these drums and bouncing along to the happy tunes.
The game is simple using the Move controllers as your drumsticks you have to beat the drums in time with the little stars and arrows that the floating Shamen throws at you, the arrows are normal beats, the stars are both sticks beat the same drum. About halfway through each song the drums spin round and instead of the normal three drums you have five to contend with, upping the difficulty and the laughter, at least around my house. There are currently four songs with three difficulties each so it rarely gets repetitive, making it a great game to pull out at parties for everyone to try this new "VR Thingy" they have heard about. Infection vectors are important for new platforms people, infect as many as you can.
Fruit Ninja VR
Ok so you may have heard of the smash hit game Fruit Ninja that's been available on mobile devices for years now, but did you know they make a VR version that is far better than the mobile game? You do now. Fruit Ninja VR has the same basic gameplay has the mobile version, fruit pop up from the ground and you need to slice as many as possible to gain the highest score, but with the added fun of using two samurai swords to cut the fruit. Visually this is far more appealing but it also adds a new mechanic, spearing.
You can use the swords to pierce through the fruit, then cut them, maximizing your cutting power and looking darn good while doing it. You can also use the flat of your blade to knock away bombs, though it takes some time to learn and you will blow up a lot while learning it.
Fruit Ninja VR is another great party game for people new to PlayStation VR as it has a simple, yet endlessly fun mechanic that gives everyone a score to beat each time. I have a lot of cookouts where are live, Southern California sunshine FTW, and Fruit Ninja VR is a fan favorite with all my friends. It is well worth having in your gaming arsenal.
Dick Wilde
I make no bones about it, I love this game. It's dumb, crazy and very funny and as a game to play with a group of people. Dick Wilde is a wave-based shooter slightly similar to Blasters of the Universe but with a southern, swampy feel where you fight mutant gators, electric eels and seagulls that poop on your as you try to shoot them down. As you can see, this game is not going to be winning any awards for Best Story, but it doesn't need to.
Using a selection of weird, homemade weapons that normally have two firing modes you have to beat off the waves of enemies while shooting the golden carp that give you extra points. It's a simple style of game that lends itself to friendly competition, so much so, that they actually included a party mode where you fight against your waves of enemies to raise a high score, then pass the headset over to your friend for them to try her luck. This kind of pass-and-play is normal when playing VR, few people own more than one headset, except my Editor Russell of course, so passing it around really is the only option for parties. Dick Wilde has just made this a more formal affair with high scores and names for each person making it feel more communal.
Superhot VR
If you have used VR a lot in the past few years you may have heard of Superhot VR, if you are new to it you may not. That's my reasoning for putting this game in here and if that feels flimsy then so be it. Superhot is one of the best games to come out of VR since, well ever. Taking the "bullet-time" mechanic to its ultimate level and creating a voxel world of Matrix-style abilities, Superhot blows me away every time I play it. Graphically the game is extremely simple, just some red polygons and white surfaces really, but its gameplay draws you in and makes you want to play it over and over.
Essentially Superhot is a wave-based shooter like others on this list but your movement controls time. As long as you move slowly enough you can dodge bullets, catch guns out of the air and destroy voxel people with wild abandon. Move too fast, however, and the whole world speeds up and bullets whizz past and into your head. This creates a really intense paradigm where you are constantly contorting your body while trying to do it as slowly as possible to stay in control. It's exhausting frankly but so immersive, so much so that it's the first game I fell over playing, I was kneeling behind an imaginary box and tried to lift myself up using said imaginary box. Needless to say, the voxels did not hold my real world weight and fell on my face, much to the amusement of my Wife and child.
Really, if you don't own this already, you should get it now.
What did I miss?
So that's five of the most awesome games you probably didn't know about, but what did I miss? I'm sure there are more in the library of PlayStation VR games. Let us know what your favorites are down in the comments.
