Good Game Recommendations for New PSVR1 Owners

[ValkerianCreator]

I am going to share my psvr game recommendations with the community (after 4-5 years of owning a psvr1!).

I divided them in various subcategories that will be useful for anyone looking for something quick they will like. I also included what popular games I haven't played yet (which means those might be great, but they are not among my favorites at the moment). And I mentioned which ones I didn't like too.

 

PSVR1 Recommendations by Valkeriancreator (note: enjoy!!)

 

The most immersive experiences I had in psvr, which "literally" transported me to that place by playing the game:

<IN ORDER OF HOW IMMERSIVE IT FELT>

- Resident Evil 7 [in vr mode] (This is exactly like seeing yourself inside a horror movie; try playing the free 1 hour demo!)

- Deracine (A "play through this movie" game, but you are a protagonist that is like a spirit that can change things for everyone involved and even time travel to make more changes. Also, this was as realistic as RE7 for me, but it's not a stressful ride like RE7 in VR, so I highly recommend this; and, if you get stuck, like me, just look at a youtube walkthrough and keep going! This experience was definitely worth finishing!)
- Batman Arkham VR (This is how you make someone feel like the dark knight! It's short, but you will feel like you are at Gotham City with this stuff.)

- Time Machine VR (Hidden gem material in psvr and it has the best use of a "slowdown time" mechanic I have ever seen in games. Although it gets boring in the second half, the 5 story missions at first were great, felt realistic, and raised this one to this "immersive experience" tier for me.)

- Bound [in vr mode] (This was like playing through a surreal dream, and playing "the dream" in vr made it even better... download the demo, see it in VR, and if you think it's cool you will love the full game!)

- Astro Bot Rescue Mission (Immersive platforming experience that reminded me of Super Mario 64, but it was even better! Get this right away! This is the top psvr1 game for many people for a reason. It is that good!)

- Blood and Truth (Even better than pistol whip at giving you the epic "I'm John Wick!" or "I'm Neo!!" shooting experience; this is a must-play in psvr1)

- Rigs Mechanized Combat League (This really made me feel as if I was on a fast combat mech at an Olympic combat arena; very highly recommended! A top 5 psvr1 game if you ask me!)

- Red Matter (This made me feel like I was slowly uncovering a secret conspiracy at an unknown base in one of Saturn's moons. Just make sure that you use a youtube video walkthrough when you get stuck in one of those impossible puzzles. Although I enjoyed this, and found it very immersive, I would have never finished it without looking at a walkthrough. A couple of those puzzles were too advanced for me.)

- Ace Combat 7's VR missions (amazing vr airplane flying, especially the very 1st time, it's total wow material that 1st time)

- Moss 2 (my favorite VR sequel and one of my favorite sequels of all time in gaming; also, a beautiful game and it's definitely better than the 1st Moss!)

- Iron man VR (There are other better flying games, such as Squadrons and Ace Combat 7, but you pilot a vehicle in those; here you are the one doing the flying!! Do I really need to say more? That was all I needed to like this. If you want to see yourself flying play iron man vr  )

- Pixel Ripped 1995 (playing a game INSIDE a game is super immersive, and this title does it wonderfully)

- Statik (this is another puzzle game that feels quite realistic)

- Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin (getting inside other people's heads works great for a VR game, and that's exactly what Psychonauts does; it's a puzzle game, but the "get inside other people's heads" part is what makes it an experience, and you are constantly doing that here)
- Xing the land beyond (this might be the most beautiful game I ever played, very relaxing, and it's a great puzzle game too)

- Tumble VR (no big story here, but it is a super realistic puzzle game; objects feel as if they have real weight when you grab them using 1 motion controller; it was the most realistic psvr puzzler I tried; the physics were amazing! Highly recommended for sure.)

- Farpoint (with the aim controller, which is a must-have for this game, this is a superb VR first-person shooter)

- Unearthing Mars 2 (This game's bosses were awesome with the aim controller! Also, it helps to beat the first Unearthing Mars first, but that one is not anything special and this sequel is much more action-packed, more immersive, and a much better experience. The boss battle with Black Sword in this game is still my favorite boss battle in VR.)

 

My personal favorites (top 25):

1. Astro Bot Rescue Mission (this was true vacation material! a must-have on psvr1)
2. Dance Collider (I loved dance collider!! I am one of its top 3 scorers, so I might be biased here, but yeah, it was that good!!)

3. Sprint Vector (best active cardio game on psvr1 and best true VR racing game, in my opinion; this was spectacular on psvr1, but it has a challenging learning curve at the beginning)
4. Rigs Mechanized Combat League (very action-packed and it really feels like you are on a fast battle mech at an Olympic arena; very highly recommended!!)

5. Beat Saber

6. To the Top
7. Moss 2 (awesome sequel, it's better than Moss 1!)

8. Raw Data

9. Bound (the vr mode in this game is like playing through a surrealist dream, it has tons of awesome views at a geometric dream-like realm!)
10. Stardust Odyssey
11. Blood and truth

12. Tumble VR (amazing physics! if you use one motion controller it feels like you are holding the objects for real!)

13. Fujii / Electronauts (top 2 cozy/relaxing games on the psvr1, in a tie for me!)
14. Farpoint (with the aim controller this is one of the best VR fps's available)

15. Vader Immortal
16. Iron Man VR

17. Time Machine VR

18. Deracine
19. Red Matter
20. Wanderer (technically, it's top 10 material in many ways, but I couldn't advance in it without looking at youtube videos and that turned me off big time; that's why I am putting it at 20, expect having to use a guide or youtube videos to be able to beat this)

21. Racket Fury Table Tennis (if you have even the slightest interest in playing table tennis and you own a psvr1, you need to have this in your gaming catalog, trust me about that)
22. Shadow Legend

23. Unearthing Mars 2 (Use the aim controller! This is 5-7 hours long and the plot is a mess, but the gameplay and the bosses were awesome and action-packed! This game has my favorite boss battle in VR, which is black sword, the villain in UM2. I recommend it and I liked it primarily because of how much I enjoyed that boss battle. Also, this was far better than Unearthing Mars 1, which was mediocre.]

24. Pixel Ripped 1995 (this title proves that SNES-era rpgs remade in VR with their original SNES-era graphics, but in full 3d, would be really good)

25. Until You Fall

 

Honorable mentions (excellent material too, worth playing for sure, but they are not my chosen ones for my personal top 25 list):
Moss 1 (it's great, but I liked Moss 2 A LOT more), Pistol Whip, The Persistence, Until Dawn Rush of Blood, Resident Evil 7, Saints and Sinners, Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin, Skyrim VR, Playstation VR Worlds [includes Danger Ball, which is VR Pong with awesome upgrades], Rush VR, Wipeout Omega Collection, Batman Arkham VR, Spiderman Far from home VR experience [free], The Playroom VR [free], Ace Combat 7's VR missions, Star Wars Squadrons, Dreams, Synth Riders, Driveclub VR, Catch & Release, Republique VR, Chromagun VR, SuperHyperCube, Tripp, Form, Xing The Land Beyond, Curious Tale of the Stolen Pets, Pinball FX2 VR, Tetris Effect, Sairento, Audica, No heroes allowed VR, OhShape, O my Genesis VR, Super Stardust Ultra VR, Thumper, Budget Cuts

 

Best psvr1 games by sub-categories. Select your favorite subcategory for some gems:

 

Best for weight loss or fun cardio exercising: Sprint Vector, Beat Saber, Dance Collider, Creed
Best for racing: Sprint Vector, Rush VR, Driveclub VR, Wipeout Omega Collection
Best for relaxing: Fujii, Electronauts, Tripp, Catch & Release
Best for a challenge: Racket Fury, SuperHyperCube, vr rhythm games in expert modes (beat saber, dance collider, audica) 
Best for platforming: Astro Bot Rescue Mission, To the Top, Lucky's Tale VR, Windlands
Best for puzzles: Tumble VR, Xing the land beyond, Chromagun VR, Form
Best for old-school gaming atmosphere: Pixel Ripped 1995, Sega Genesis Classics, Polybius, Space Pirate Trainer
Best for action-shooting: Blood and truth, Raw Data, Farpoint, Pistol Whip
Best for action [without shooting]: Until You Fall
Best for sword combat: Vader Immortal
Best super short games: Bonfire (for kids), Theseus (for adults)
Best super long games: Skyrim VR, No man's Sky, Borderlands 2 VR
Best low-price games: Tumble VR, Dance Collider
Best free games: The Playroom VR, Spiderman Far from Home VR experience, Pirate flight, O My Genesis VR demo
Best for adults only: Rush of Blood, Resident Evil 7
Best for kids: Lucky's Tale VR, Fujii, The Playroom VR, Astro Bot, Curious Tale of the Stolen Pets
Best for online 2-player co-op: Stardust Odyssey, Farpoint (with aim controller), Sairento 
Best for the story: Moss 2, Red Matter, Shadow Legend, Republique VR, Deracine, Wanderer, Iron man VR, Batman Arkham VR (note: these are not in order of "best," all of these were great for the story, in my opinion)
Best for flying: Ace Combat 7's VR missions, Star Wars Squadrons, Iron man VR, Eagle flight, Stardust Odyssey
Best for stealth genre: Budget Cuts, Republique VR (think of this as Metal Gear Solid VR, but with a girl and without guns or big boss battles, so it is all stealth + story), Stardust Odyssey (it's completely optional, but great if you go at it stealthy)
Best VR sports games: Racket Fury Table Tennis, 2md VR football, Everybody's Golf VR
Best for arcade-like feel in VR: Polybius, Holoball, SuperHyperCube, Space Pirate Trainer
Best for exploration: No man's Sky
Best for offline multiplayer: The Playroom VR
Best for online multiplayer with more than 2 players: Zenith the last city
Best for online VS. (competitive): Sprint Vector
Best Rpgs: Zenith, The Knight of Queen (a NES rpg in VR)
Best RTS (strategy) games: No heroes allowed VR (don't be fooled by the really crappy name, this was a great and really fun strategy game on psvr1)
Best educational stuff: Human anatomy VR, Time Machine VR
Best in the "this game is only doable in VR" category: Rush VR, Sprint Vector
Best for dog lovers: Good dog Bad dog
Best in the "has an excellent ending" category: Moss 2, No heroes allowed VR, Shadow Legend
Best games that can be played with the headset only [without using controllers, just with your head!!]: Danger ball (found in Playstation VR Worlds), Rush VR (use the headset locomotion option!), Headmaster, Manifest 99
Odd/whacky games that are very good: Job Simulator (note: it's waaay better than vacation simulator), Budget Cuts, Virtual virtual reality
Best for very happy vibes and atmosphere: Fujii, astro bot rescue mission, curious tale of the stolen pets
Best music game (that is not a rhythm game): Electronauts

Best vr boss battles: Black Sword in Unearthing Mars 2; Final battle in Moss 2; Lord Adaroth in Shadow Legend; the Alien in Astro Bot Rescue Mission

Best for the aim controller: Farpoint, Unearthing Mars 2, Borderlands 2 VR
 
Other [probably great] psvr games that I haven't played, so I can't rank them: Dirt Rally VR, Zone of the Enders 2nd Runner Mars (in vr mode), Transpose, Windlands 2, Doom VFR, Doom 3 VR

Other awesome psvr games I haven't played for longer than 1-3 hours, so I can't rank them very well yet: Skyrim VR, TWD Saints and Sinners, The Persistence, Battlezone, I expect you to die, Star Wars Squadrons

 

Games that I don't recommend because I didn't like them!
Virtugo (It's a mediocre puzzle game; tumble vr and tetris effect are 50 times better!)
Separation (It starts quite promising, but it quickly becomes a boring walking simulator where you are likely to be stuck forever if you don't like using an online walkthrough. I don't like following walkthroughs, so I simply stopped playing it.)
Ultrawings (Star Wars Squadrons and the VR missions in Ace Combat 7 are miles better than this! Also, I found this pretty frustrating to play, not fun at all.)
Superhot VR (Pistol Whip, Sairento VR, and Raw Data are a lot better and much more fun; superhot felt more like a memorization exercise than like a fun shooting game. Also, don't even get me started about the "forced suicide" ending. Worst VR ending by far! What were the developers thinking!!??)
Neonhat (This is the only vr game I ever saw that looked better in the youtube review videos than inside the actual vr game! Wipeout omega collection is far better than this.)

Other PSVR games I enjoyed, even though the majority of VR reviewers hate them:

Vrog (simple, short, repetitive without a doubt, but it is fun arcade stuff, like one of those early 1990's arcade games, but in full VR)

Theseus (just 2 hours long, very linear, and it was sold for $29.99 for a long time, so I honestly understand why everyone hated this, but I got it for just $1.99 during its greatest discount ever, and those 2 hours rocked!! It's literally a God of War clone in VR during 2 hours. I highly recommend this during a discount!!)

 

Edited May 20 by ValkerianCreator
I updated it to my current Top 25 on Psvr1 now, in 2024 ; )

[Moomba]

My favorite is I Expect You to Die. I need to buy the sequel soon.

[ValkerianCreator]

On 10/27/2021 at 4:22 AM, Moomba said:

My favorite is I Expect You to Die. I need to buy the sequel soon.

I think it's a puzzle game, isn't it? I believe it was in a big discount for like $7 very recently, so I will go see if the discount is still available and if it is I will buy it and keep it in my VR-to-try queue for another time. The PSVR is great for people who love puzzle games. I like them (not necessarily love, just like) and I thought Tumble VR, Xing, and SuperHyperCube were awesome. Statik is very good too, but I don't think it's my type. I get hopelessly stuck forever, lol.

[wltrsjcwvita]

Aside from the large amount of VR rhythm games on the market (how's Audica going btw lol) and bad VR ports of AAA games (Skyrim, Borderlands 2 etc.) one of the VR games that I've been enjoying a lot of recently is a game called 'Stride', which is a VR parkour game that you can tell has been heavily inspired by the game Mirror's Edge, which is another one of my favourite games of all time.

 

It's only on PC and Quest at the moment, but there is a PSVR version in the works that I will definitely try to platinum when it comes out. The new update actually includes achievements, so it should give anyone a good idea of what a platinum will look like.

 

[ValkerianCreator]

8 hours ago, wltrsjcwvita said:

how's Audica going btw lol

I have 10 out of the 33 gold stars, so I think I can do it. However, it will take a while... ?... I definitely can't do that challenge with a time limit haha. I am capable of completing it, but I don't know when it will be done for sure. I'm guessing I can get it by the end of the year. Two other players passed my total global score at #97 however, so I am pretty sure that one (or both?) of them will end up getting it before me. I'm guessing those two must be shimabusters and matrixrider, who are 100% like you and mikecheck for this kind of stuff, lol. Honestly, the only people who will go for that Audica platinum AND get it are those who already have a prior history of getting other ultra hard and ultra rare VR trophies, and passing other challenges at that same level of difficulty, without giving up on it. Everybody else will give up (unless it is their favorite game for real), because it really isn't about the fun when it comes to the 33 gold stars in Audica, it is about passing the crazy challenge. In case you are wondering why I think I can do it: completing Racket Fury and SuperHyperCube's trophies was at that same level of difficulty too. Also, I used to be in top 10 highscores in Beat Saber. I think I still have like 5 or 6 of those that survived and are still there today. So, like I said, I have a "prior history" of completing some of these crazy vr challenges like you guys. It's not a coincidence that I think I can get this stuff, lol. I need to take my time and take it easy though haha. Like, if you asked me if I can get the other 23 gold stars next week the answer is no, even if all I did was play Audica. However, in 3 months (at a rate of 2 or 3 gold stars per week), I can almost ensure that I will get it. By the way, I will add you in psn. You can check how I'm doing yourself haha ?. Also, I want you to tell me how you managed to platinum BoxVR in less than 24 hours. I did it in 6 days as a "physical fitness challenge" and I honestly think I lost real weight with all the squats I did for that 10,000 calories trophy within the 6 days. To do it all in just 1 day you must have figured out some easier way to speed up that calories meter (obviously without putting in all the physical work). I'm sure you can't be an Olympian, but hey, you never know ?.

 

Note: These are some of the things I loved and love about all this VR stuff. You can actually do REAL fitness challenges and REAL skill-based challenges that do transfer to real-life skills outside of the vr games. After playing plenty of expert+ in Beat Saber I started to notice that I was seeing the balls at the racquetball court move a little slower (even though they move very fast), just like the blocks in beat saber's expert+ mode. I wasn't even playing racquetball that much during those times, so I know the gain in my eyesight seeing the balls slower was 100% from my top highscore hunts in beat saber, not from playing racquetball more often. With Racket Fury my table tennis reflexes went up without a shadow of a doubt. And now with Audica I'm pretty sure my ability to aim better at a target in real life went up too. That's probably why I stayed with it. It really isn't just about collecting psn trophies for me. I try to see if I can gain or train some transferrable skill from the vr games to real life. That way it wasn't just "game time," it was also "improving shooting abilities" ?.

[wltrsjcwvita]

Nice! Glad to see you've found some real world uses for these VR games. I wouldn't say I'm quite at that point, but maybe after I finish the Rock Band series I might try to pick the guitar up again lol.

 

With what you said about BoxVR, there are definitely tactics to get 10,000 calories easily. I set the workout time to like 60-90 minutes, and if you set your weight to the maximum in the game menu, any movement burns off calories to a much larger degree. All I did was shake the move controllers around randomly for the duration (without the headset on) and it made for a very easy trophy. That was the easy part, as trying to get the 100% in 10 songs trophy was absolutely agonising without taking regular breaks. Way more than when I did Beat Saber, not just due to the track lengths but how poor the hit detection was in that game. Quite a shame too, as from what I've seen of the PC and Quest versions, the hit detection isn't that bad, it's only the PSVR version that seems to have issues. Regardless, not one that I would do again haha.

 

I'll accept your FR, I am currently on and off practicing Audica myself as I am planning to get the record for that on a second account. If you want, you can add me on there too: @KirbyTwoSecond.  I was also planning on doing some sort of guides or at least videos where I get the gold stars in Audica, but after buying a capture card to bypass the recording prevention, I noticed just how bad the footage of the game looked. Here's an example of what I mean. So my options are either to record on the PC version where the videos will be easier to watch, or record on the PSVR version and keep it authentic to the PSVR experience, especially because there's very little footage of this version of the game available on YouTube. So feel free to let me know what you think.

 

Also just to keep the thread on topic, a fun game that I've been meaning to go back to is Salary Man Escape, which is a fun VR puzzle game similar to echochrome or the like. I've found a guide for it while searching, so if you get stuck there's definitely help available.

Edited October 31, 2021 by wltrsjcwvita

[ValkerianCreator]

I re-edited the top 25 here to reflect my current top 25 in 2023 (after 4 years of owning psvr1 and trying at least 120 psvr games).

My first post at the top is truly a gold mine for new PS VR1 owners who arrive at this topic looking for recommendations.

Enjoy!

[ValkerianCreator]

Looking back at this now, it's awesome how many great VR games the psvr1 had. And I still have a backlog, lol...

 

This is my current psvr1 backlog: Farpoint (never finished it back then because it gave me motion sickness, but I'm sure I can finish it now), Blood and truth (I never finished it), Iron man VR (same, didn't finish it yet), Wanderer (tried it for 3-4 hours, got 100% stuck in a puzzle, left it there, I will need to look at a youtube playthrough if I ever want to finish this), Archangel, Transpose, Doom VFR, Doom 3 VR, Just in time incorporated, Windlands 2, Altdeus Beyond Chronos, Gun club vr, Blind, Mervils, Hatsune Miku Future Live, Evasion, Cyberpilot, Detached, Loading Human, Skyworld, Robinson the journey, Megaton Rainfall, Boxed in, In death, and Apex Construct. I'm probably missing 4-7 more that I don't remember now.

 

I seriously doubt I will ever go through the whole backlog, but hopefully I won't miss at least trying the best stuff available. At this point, I am more interested in just trying it (and beating the main story/campaign if I like it) than on full completions. However, if I see that the full completion is just 2 extra hours, after beating the campaign, I'll probably do it. I think that the obvious ones I shouldn't miss are finishing Farpoint, Blood and truth, Wanderer, and Iron Man vr (just the main story levels).

[Qwertyui606]

As someone who only got into VR last year, it's always great to see lists of games. I think my favorite games were both of the saints and sinners games. I've already racked up quite a few platinums. I still have about 30 games to get around to. And that doesn't include the vr2 if/when I get one of those. I guess having more games than time isn't a bad problem to have.

[ValkerianCreator]

I have been very casual with psvr2 because when I bought it last year, I already had a huge backlog from psvr1 discounts over the years. And I am interested in that backlog, not just from a vr collector's point of view, but also as someone who likes to tryout the VR games to see what's available there. This ("trying out" vr games) definitely became one of my most enjoyed hobbies since I got a psvr1 on 2019. The backlog grew more than I anticipated however, because if you buy at least 1 or 2 vr games from the psn discounts every month, after 5 years you end up with +120. At this point, I have almost every psvr1 game I had any amount of interest in trying out, and I got most of them from discounted sales, but obviously, I never had the time to go through all of that.

 

I have no complaints about the backloggery (like Qwertyui says above, this is not a "real-life problem" at all). However, this "growing backloggery" (not just for me, but for a lot of you as well) is a side-effect of the new gaming industry's sales strategy: discounts every month, most people will buy something because it's good and it's the cheapest, but then everybody is buying something from your digital marketplace every single month, over and over again, so you've got a great sales strategy going on there. Also (and this is the part that I don't like) it's all going digital because that way Sony and Steam don't have to compete with resellers (you can't resell your downloaded copies) and they don't have to lose money on making physical cases and discs. However, this makes it much easier for people to "lose their games and their collection" over night. I myself have the majority of my psvr1 collection in a 2 TB external hard-drive and I use it from there, but if one day Sony closes their downloads all of a sudden and that 2 TB fails, I immediately lose access to the entire VR collection that I bought, or most of it. This would not happen with discs, but most VR games are downloads anyways, so there was never much of a choice about it for VR.

 

Another trend that I am far less supportive of (than buying digital) is buying games that require extensive online play from other players in order to complete them, or they require being connected to the game's servers and the internet constantly in order to play it. That already showed why it was problematic when Eve Valkyrie and Sparc stopped working cold turkey when the servers went down. In that case, even the disc of Eve Valkyrie stopped working, meaning that even physical media gets blocked access when the true requirement to play it is "be connected to these servers" or "be online 100% of the time to play this." In those cases (games with "online play required" + "connection to these servers required" from the main menu) you literally don't own the game. You just bought "access" to play it while it lasts. This is a worse thing than even "digital only" and "buy DLC to get the full version" of the game that you already bought. Hopefully, this won't become the new trend... For the record, this is definitely the case with Genshin Impact and with many of the free games, but at least those are given for free, so it's not too much of a scam if servers shut down for those. The people with +500 hours in those games are going to feel like they were shot though 🤣🙃...