These are our favorite games for the Oculus Quest
The Oculus Quest has a growing library of games ranging from first-person shooters to musical saber swinging. There's no shortage of excellent titles for the VR system, but there are some games that stand out above the rest. Some games, like Arizona Sunshine, became popular on other systems and are now on the Oculus Quest. Other titles launched on the Oculus Quest, like the trilogy of Vader Immortal games. Our top pick, Beat Saber, was available on other systems long before the Quest came out, but provides an incredible on the Quest experience thanks to the headset's lack of wires.
Best Overall: Beat Saber
Beat Saber is an incredibly addictive game. In it, you swing sabers through blocks to the beat of popular music. Much like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, Beat Saber is easy to enter but difficult to master. As a result, it's fun for newcomers to VR and gaming experts trying to skyrocket up the leaderboards.
The untethered nature of the Oculus Quest improves Beat Saber because you won't have wires in the way when you're swinging your arms around. Also, because the Oculus Quest is so easy to take with you on the go, you can take Beat Saber with you anywhere. The only real downside to Beat Saber is that it doesn't officially support custom songs. You can still add custom songs, but it requires another device and a few extra steps.
Pros:- Easy to jump right into
- Difficult to master, increasing replayability
- Fun for solo gaming or parties (if you cast it to a TV)
- Custom songs require sideloading
Fun for everyone
Because Beat Saber is easy to jump into but difficult to master, it's a great game for beginners and hardcore gamers.
Best Strategy Game: SUPERHOT VR
This game received a massive boost when jumping from console to VR headsets. The Oculus Quest's lack of wires made it even better. You can completely lose yourself inside this game as you dodge, dip, duck, dive, and dodge again. In this game, the world moves at the same speed you do. That means you can pause to make a plan to take down enemies or to dodge a bullet. It requires precise planning and exact movements to clear many of its levels. Alternatively, you can speedrun as you master all of its levels.
The game supports full locomotion, meaning you can freely move throughout levels. In fact, you can move to areas of levels that you can't on some other platforms because the Oculus Quest is wireless. That's mostly a positive, but it means you can't get as good of an experience within limited space. It's still an incredible game, though, and a must-have for Oculus Quest owners.
Pros:- Incredibly immersive
- Unique and challenging
- Huge range of motion
- Good for slow and steady gamers or speedrunners
- Requires more space
Living in the matrix
Because the Oculus Quest is wireless, you can freely dodge bullets and move to defeat your opponents in this game.
Best Unique Shooter: Pistol Whip
What do you get when you combine John Wick-style action and dubstep? Pistol Whip. This game lets you shoot your enemies to music while flowing between shots. You can dodge bullets, mow down foes with a machine gun, and feel like you're in an action movie. It's earned an almost perfect rating in the Oculus Store for a reason.
Pistol Whip calls levels "scenes" because each level combines combat with a cinematic experience. While Pistol Whip has some great scenes and recently got an expansion, it only has 13 scenes in all. Those scenes are fun, but there aren't enough of them right now.
Pros:- Brings a unique style to the shooter genre
- Makes you feel like an action movie star
- Incorporates fun music
- Not enough scenes yet
Shoot to the rhythm
In this rhythmic shooter, you shoot, dodge, and dance your way through levels while feeling like you're in an action movie.
Best Free Game: Rec Room
Don't let the simple graphics fool you; Rec Room is a great game on the Oculus Quest and it's free! It has several different play areas, so you can jump into different games. There's also a lounge to hang out in with other people. One of my favorite games is paintball, which lets you play capture the flag with sniper rifles, pistols, and shotguns.
The biggest downside of Rec Room is the other people in the game, at least some of the time. While playing online can be fun and provide an easy way to play multiplayer games, many people in Rec Room are rude or offensive. Unfortunately, I've seen people make vulgar comments and motions in the game on several occasions.
Pros:- Free
- Has a variety of games
- Has a low learning curve
- Community can be toxic
Rec Room packs several games into one, including paintball, a pirate ship adventure, laser tag, and many more ways to play.
Best Arcade Shooter: Robo Recall: Unplugged
In this game, you have to stop an outbreak of out of control robots. You can use pistols, shotguns, mecha suits, and more weapons to dismantle - I mean, cough, "recall"- robots. You can also pick up a robot, bash it into the ground and throw it at another robot. It's all-around robot mayhem that'll get you laughing as you smash them to bits.
The game plays best when you plant your feet and fire away like an arcade game. It struggles a bit when it comes to moving around, especially against quicker enemies. It would benefit greatly from a locomotion option.
Pros:- Laughably fun, 'smash ' smash'
- Has a varied set of weapons
- Let's you jump into a mecha suit and fire lasers
- Movement can be awkward
This bullet storm game has you to spin 360 degrees to destroy killer robots en masse.
Best Melee Fighter: Ironlights
This game tosses you in an arena to combat fighters from a range of classes. You can play as a ninja, knight, crusader, monk, or duelist, each of which has a unique set of weapons and fighting styles. Ranged combat is full speed while closeup melee combat is slowed down. This slower combat mode makes you strategize how to hit your opponent rather than just hacking and slashing at a manic pace.
Ironlights has a campaign mode, which can help you learn the basics of the game, but multiplayer provides the game's best experience. You can battle opponents in real-time over the web and compete on online leaderboards.
Pros:- Unique fighting mechanics
- Online multiplayer
- Multiple fighting classes for varied combat
- AI isn't that challenging
- Can be difficult to sync movements to weapons
Strategic slashing
Ironlights combines unique melee combat with different classes of warriors in campaigns and online battles.
Best Story: Moss
While you can have a lot of fun hacking and slashing in some excellent titles on the Oculus Quest, Moss brings a different feel to the headset. It's a charming story that you get to work through alongside Quill, an adorable little mouse. In the game, you help Quill solve puzzles, defeat enemies, and journey through the woods filled with relics and magic.
Moss is built for VR, but instead of just focusing on movement mechanics, it immerses you into a heartfelt story set inside a virtual environment. Some might dislike the fact that it's a VR game that has you control the main character through a third-person view. That doesn't seem to have bothered many considering the game's nearly perfect rating.
Pros:- Incredibly charming
- Has a unique story
- Features clever puzzles
- Has beautiful designs
- Uses a joystick to move the main character
In this game, you lead a charming mouse around a beautiful world full of puzzles and a gorgeous story.
Best for Artists: Tilt Brush
It's hard to say if this is a "game" in the strictest definition, but it's a lot of fun either way. Tilt Brush allows you to create beautiful artwork inside a 3-D virtual space. Whether you're an experienced artist or a beginner, you can have fun playing inside Tilt Brush. You can flow through your artwork with your Touch Controllers to create anything you want.
While Tilt Brush can be immersive and fun to use, it's a little limited by its lack of some tools. Many have asked for additions like copy and pasting, a better toolbar, and other artists to make creating easier.
Pros:- Has easy to learn basics
- Allows you to create vast pieces of art
- Works well with immersive nature of the Oculus Quest
- Lacks some tools that would make art easier to create
Tilt Brush takes advantage of the wireless nature of the Quest and lets you create on an almost infinite canvas.
Best Horror Game: Arizona Sunshine
Arizona Sunshine is a tremendously popular title from other VR platforms, so Oculus Quest users met it with anticipation. It's a zombie thriller with a complete campaign mode that you don't normally see on the Oculus Quest. It has a large arsenal of 25 weapons that allow you to blast away zombies in several ways.
Arizona Sunshine has a campaign mode, horde mode, and allows you to play in co-op multiplayer. In some ways, it's one of the most comprehensive games on the Oculus Quest. With that, though, comes a high price. It's one of the most expensive games on the Oculus Quest. Many won't feel like that's an issue, though.
Pros:- Large arsenal of weapons
- Supports co-op and solo modes
- Has campaign and horde modes
- Quite pricey when compared to the competition
Sunny zombies
This game is a high action, high scare zombie shooter based in the beautiful Arizona landscape.
Best Rhythmic Shooter: Audica
There are plenty of good shooters on the Oculus Quest, so picking the best one for you can be a bit difficult. Audica has you blast targets and bat them down with your Touch Controllers. It's set to the beat of club-style music, so you can get your groove on while shooting things up. As opposed to a game like Pistol Whip that encourages dancing around, Audica is more focused on destroying targets perfect to a song's rhythm.
While Audica has some great music for shooting around, the songs that it comes with generally fit into a limited set of genres. If that music isn't your scene, you can grab its DLC packs that have more "normal" music.
Pros:- Focuses on shooting
- Just a blast to play
- Visually striking
- Music can be repetitive (though DLC is available)
From the makers of Rock Band and Dance Central, this game has you shoot blasters to the rhythm of songs.
Best Sci-fi Game: Vader Immortal Trilogy
Generations of sci-fi fans have pretended to swing a lightsaber. Now, you can wield a lightsaber, use the force, and battle the most iconic character from Star Wars, Darth Vader. In this trilogy of games, you can take your skills to the dojo and block laser blasts and destroy robots, or play through story modes. The conclusion of the series has you raid Vader's castle with an army of forces.
Each title in this trilogy adds abilities that make fighting more fun, such as the Force push. That's the biggest downside of this set of games, that it's a set. If you want to play all three, you'll have to purchase each one and jump between them through your Oculus Quest's menu. Luckily, the trilogy is complete so you can buy them all instead of having to wait.
Pros:- Let's you fight with a lightsaber
- Features incredibly fun training dojo
- Adds abilities throughout the trilogy
- Decent Star Wars story
- Split between three games
In the third installment of the Vader Immortal series, you raid Vader's fortress alongside an army and learn how to use the Force.
Force FunVader Immortal: Episode IILearning from Vader
This second entry in the series has you learn the Force from the Sith Lord himself, learning how to throw people and objects.
Lightsaber AnticsVader Immortal: Episode IBecome a padawan
This game allows you to slash your lightsaber through foes and swing it to block lasers. Just don't sleep on the training dojo!
Bottom lineThe Oculus Quest has a vast and growing library of games. Whether you're old, young, an experienced gamer, or completely new to VR, there's a title that you can enjoy. Developers have done an excellent job supporting the Oculus Quest. As a result, the system has almost 200 apps and games you can use. The untethered nature of the Oculus Quest brings new life to older titles and makes it easy to move around inside games.
If you're just getting started, Beat Saber is an incredible game that's easy to play but difficult to master. It's an excellent title for beginners or hardcore gamers and is made even better by the wireless nature of the Oculus Quest. If you get bored with its library of songs, you can sideload your own into the game.
Credits - The team that worked on this guide
Sean Endicott has been on the Oculus VR beat since the Gear VR. As the platform evolved and more games came out, he ended up spending more and more time inside a headset. When he's not within VR, he's hunting for tech news and trying to control his whole house with his smartphone.
Nick Sutrich Nick is a news writer and contributor to Android Central. He's been writing about tech since 2011 and virtual reality and any kind of gadget that's connected to the Internet. Find him on Twitter at @Gwanatu.