Somewhat hot take… I’d argue Boneworks (not Bonelab) was “better”, at least if you’re used to VR and if you judge by freedom and replay value. Don’t get me wrong, playing through Half Life Alyx was fun and engaging, but to me it had little to no replay value, since for all it did great in visuals, audio, accessibility, and especially story, it failed dramatically in physics. Since I played Alyx right after Boneworks, I kept trying to pick stuff up which I ended up not being able to for larger objects, and the first time I tried to knock a Combine over the head with a pipe I was so sorely disappointed. Alyx has absolutely everything Boneworks is missing, yet that physics core is what kept me coming back to the latter. It really clicked for me when I noticed how many things in Boneworks one can solve in alternate ways by “abusing” physics. Climbing is a learned skill and combat can be as much shooting as it can be using knives, fists, shoving someone off a ledge, or grabbing an enemy and throwing it at others. It’s what truly made me realize how much potential VR had, being able to interact with a full physics simulation, where even your own body is a physics object, with your physical hands is amazing.
I feel like most people who sing praises for Alyx only do so because it was their first VR game. (a lot of people bought a headset just for it.) It’s decent game, but without VR it’s nothing special.
Sucks that VR is still a niche product, despite it being an obtainable consumer product for almost a decade now (edit: and affordable for over half a decade now). When the OG Rift and Vive first dropped, I imagined it being as popular as traditional gaming within 5 years. Yet here we are 9 years later and we still don’t have epic, 50+ hour AAA experiences in VR because hardly anyone owns a headset. Every VR game feels like an indie title.
FFXIV, but this doesn’t mean much because it’s dependent on what genres you like.
Most historically significant? Ultima 4, Wizardry 1, Pool of Radiance, Mario 1, Metroid 1, FF4, Chrono Trigger, FF7, Mario 64, Zelda OoT, Counterstrike, Starcraft, Diablo 1, WoW, Cave Story, World of Goo, Minecraft, Skyrim, Dark Souls, Zelda BotW
That list is old school solid. I played every one of those except M64 and Counterstrike. Add a few like Adventure, Rogue, Civ 1&2, Populous, Wing Commander, Star Control 2, King’s Quest, Sim City, Katamari Damacy, and Deus Ex. Every one of those titles changed gaming in new ways.
I Expect you to Die (James Bond themed virtual escape rooms - 3 games in the series so far, all of them are good)
Super Hot (slo-motion first person combat puzzle game)
Beat Saber (a unique rhythm game)
Pavlov (CS:GO but in VR with extensive modding support)
There are other good ones out there but that’s the list that justifies the headset to me.
Also there are some good VR ports of non-VR games out there such as Myst and The Talos Principle. Also there are some good Minecraft mods that add VR support (Java edition of course). Stay away from the Skyrim port though.
Any flight/racing sim (this is actually the biggest selling point I can make. Seriously if you like flight/racing sims, please get one. It’ll change your life)
The headsets have (if you can stomach Meta). Thanks to the combines efforts of Nvidia, scalpers, crypto-bros and AI-nerds, the hardware cost has been sailing into the distance and shows no sign of stopping.
I remember that the dev of Legend of Grimrock added an option for movement with the mouse because a disabled gamer wanted to play. Maybe that second friend should check that and the 2nd game out.
Using a mouse with your non dominant hand is annoying…
Yeah, for PC they’ll probably have to grit their teeth and power through the discomfort. An alternative is getting a hand in some old emulated games. Anything from the NES era can be mapped to 4 movements + 4 buttons (start, select, A, B), which on a keyboard could be WASD + Q, E, R and F. Dunno how to set something similar on a Deck.
For the friend who enjoys BG3, you can play Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous pretty much entirely with the mouse. The base game is 90% off on steam right now too.
Pathfinder has a massive learning curve compared to DnD 5e though, but that just means you can get an extra 50 hours of entertainment out of the game before you start the story, just by figuring out all the options when creating your character lol
Edit: whoops, seems like the steam spring sale just ended. The game is still absolutely worth it at full price though
WotR is so fucking good. But a quick PSA for anyone interested: Install the Bubble Buffs mod so you don’t have to spend 5 minutes casting your 37 buffs before every large fight.
Anything with a server software you can host can be played on LAN (okay probably not some things because they’re being weird but in general this is true).
That means counter strike, Minecraft, supertuxkart, xonotic, enshrouded, pal world, etc
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