If you’re shopping for VR games, you’re probably also on a budget. That might go double if you just bought an expensive VR headset. When your wallet is stretched, it’s even more important to be selective.
The less money you spend on games that you don’t play, the more money you have to spend on games you do. At the end of the day, gaming on a budget is about the ratio of time spent and enjoyment created per dollar you spend. So, here’s four types of games that might not be for you:
Experience games:
If you’re wanting a VR game that’s going to keep you coming back, and gives you gameplay that doesn’t go stale quickly, stay away from this genre of games altogether.
Experience Games, or games that offer more of an experience rather than actual games are the definition of something you’ll pick up once or twice, then never again. A few examples of this are Batman Arkham VR, Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality, Surgeon Simulator, etc.
While these games aren’t horrible they aren’t necessarily replayable either. Most of them are cheaply priced, but in kind, don’t deliver a huge amount of content. They tend to be one-trick-ponies.
Being Batman or rooting around in Rick’s garage is fun, until you interact with everything in sight and do the game’s few built in objectives. Then, when you’ve done pretty much everything; you don’t get the $15 you spent back.
A multiplayer game of a genre you personally enjoy will have much more longevity. I’ve played Population: One for almost 150 hours. That’s over ten times the time I’ve played for all the experience games I’ve bought put together.
That large of a difference in hours is worth the small difference in price ten times out of ten.
Arcade Game:
These kinds of games are fun novelties and sometimes work well in groups, but they still don’t tend to give you much bang-for-your-buck. These are games like shooting gallery games, Tetris, and various wave spawners.
Games like Killing Floor: Incursion, with a few story missions that just amount to spawning more waves, don’t tend to hold my attention long in VR. They’re usually a companies’ lazy attempt to cash in on VR using their IP’s Fanbase.
For the right price this category of game could be a fine purchase, but they also aren’t going anywhere so maybe just wait for the next Steam sale.
It’s also easy to fall into the logic that they’ll be fun party games, but it takes a very specific group of people to want to pull an all-nighter playing VR one-at-a-time trying to beat each other’s score on an arcade or wave spawner.
Beatsaber is one game that manages to dodge most of these pitfalls. It looks and plays so well, while managing to be a fun party game that’s dynamic and accessible for many types of people, but even Beatsaber is $30 full price. So, for those trying to pinch pennies Beatsaber might not even be for you.
Sandbox games:
Games like Bonelabs and most famously Blade and Sorcery are some of the best VR sellers on Steam. However in most scenarios, these games are better for content creators to get that 45 seconds of neat looking footage you saw that probably made you want to buy the game.
Sandbox games are fun and have their place in VR, at the moment, but they aren’t that great for the player on a budget because they lack content.
I must admit that they are good for content creators and people with imagination that really get enjoyment out of staging dramatic fight scenes but the mechanics aren’t always the best.
There also isn’t much inherent content to these types of games. It’s essentially just in a sandbox, playing against various waves of enemies that aren’t much smarter than punching bags.
You can download free mods that extend the playability of Sandbox games for a bit, but they aren’t the first genre I’d dip my toe into on a budget.
Party Games:
These games are like Arcade games, but the important distinction is that party games are specifically designed for groups to play in person. I’m really impressed by the innovation of some of these games, but ultimately they’re more situationally fun.
Most of these games will have one person in the VR headset, and the rest of the players on their phones interacting in some way with the VR player’s experience. In some the person in the headset is a giant working together with the mobile players. In others you’ll be design a bomb in VR while your friends tell you what wires to cut.
You’re really only going to play these games when you have people over that are also willing to play something like that. In my experience those aren’t two conditions that are usually met at the same time. I don’t know any people IRL that are as into VR as me. For that reason, I don’t tend to even buy these games.
I still think they’re really neat. Some of the ideas people come up with are amazing. Many of these games are finding innovative ways to blend mobile gaming with VR to make really awesome party experiences.
Also, if you are the kind of person who has a friend group that would love these kinds of games, I’d imagine, they’d be fantastic. So, if that’s the case for you … Go for it!
Conclusion:
None of the games I listed in this article are just flat out bad, but with finite money/income these are games I try to stay away from when looking to add to my collection. If any of these types of games have a special place in your heart and give you a lot of enjoyment; than that of course is what you should spend your money on
In my experience, games that have a repeatable multiplayer or have replayability tend to give more bang for your buck. This tends to hold true even outside of VR games.
Myriad Media 