The 18 best VR games to play in 2025

Here, you’ll travel through dense jungles, awe-inspiring caverns, and towering structures, all shaped by a man who sees himself as a god. The more you uncover, the deeper you’re drawn into a tale of betrayal and power struggles, where every part of the environment helps tell the story. Unlike traditional games, where you press buttons on a controller, VR allows you to use your hands and body to interact with the game. Special controllers track your hand movements, letting you pick up objects, throw things, or perform actions like shooting or swinging a sword.

With a VR headset covering your eyes and ears, you are transported into a digital world where you can look around, move, and interact with the environment as if you were physically there. Instead of using a standard controller, you often use specialized handheld controllers that track your movements. These controllers allow you to perform actions in the game in a more natural and intuitive way. For instance, if you need to pick up an object, you simply reach out and grab it, just as you would in real life. This kind of interaction makes the gameplay more engaging and brings a new level of realism to the experience.

Here’s hoping it’s ported to be a bit more widely available though, as many simple don’t have the hardware to run it. Each level has its own distinct flavor, with music and visuals tailored to its theme. For example, you can play an underwater level and hear soothing underwater noises, while sparkling whales float around your head. Arizona Sunshine 2 takes everything that made its predecessor great, and improves upon it.

Fluid gunplay combines with awesome gore effects to great effect, making the game a must-play for those with a VR headset. It’s the most successful VR adaptation of Hitman yet, with a bunch of new mechanics that completely change how you interact with the world. For one, you can dual wield weapons and items, allowing you to incapacitate two guards at once, and giving you an edge in combat.

What was your favorite VR game of 2025?

Schell Games combines elements of these games with approachable VR gameplay, charming NPCs, and highly detailed VR object interaction to create a concoction that is greater than the sum of its parts. Because of this, Lost Recipes is an excellent entry point into the world of VR gaming, that will also entertain experienced users with its meditative gameplay and historical tidbits. Hooking up external headphones (our list of the best headphones can help you there) is a must so you can enjoy tracks from Billie Eilish, Skrillex, and Beat Saber’s genre mixtapes to the fullest extent. Thumper came out all the way back in 2016, and it certainly made a huge impression when it landed. All these years later, it’s still one of the most unique games you can play on VR, even if sheesh casino it is, at its core, just a rhythm game.

Beat Saber

• The game’s gorgeous planets and space generation are a sight to behold in VR, and flying your ship in first person is a real joy.
• It’s a psychedelic and hypnotic experience, and one that everyone should have the privilege to play especially if you’re looking for one of the best VR games that gives you a more meditative VR experience to enjoy.
• Walkabout Mini Golf is an excellent golfing simulator, offering you eight varied courses (plus DLC) set in unique locations from a pirate cove to outer space.
• The combat is intense, the humor perfectly captures Deadpool’s signature style, and the voice acting by Neil Patrick Harris as Wade Wilson and John Leguizamo as Mojo is just the icing on the cake.

VR gloves take VR controllers a step further by detecting micromovements in the user’s hands and fingers and transmitting those to the game. This adds small motor skills to VR video games and enables users to grasp, pick up and carry small items in a game. Some gloves contain haptic technology that let users feel the virtual world of the game. The gloves create vibrations on the fingertips to simulate the presence of an object. Some also contain tiny actuators that displace the user’s skin and apply significant resistive force.

When song plays, colored blocks come at you, and you need to slash them with the correct saber in the right direction. It’s a game that anyone can start playing easily, but as the levels get faster and more challenging, it becomes even more exciting and rewarding to master. Another aspect that makes VR gameplay stand out is how it involves your whole body. In many VR games, you’re not just sitting still; you’re moving around, whether it’s walking, ducking, or dodging obstacles. It’s not just about what you see or hear—your body becomes part of the experience.

While 2025 saw the release of several high-profile first-person fantasy games like Avowed and Oblivion Remastered, fans of the genre may have slept on Arken Age. A VR take on the first-person fantasy genre, Arken Age is an action-adventure game set in the Bio-Chasm, a world corrupted by the Grand Arborist and overrun with plant life. Players can utilize both guns and swords infused with Arkenite to battle botanical foes while utilizing the game’s unique physics system to freely access the game’s open world. Virtual reality and augmented reality have some significant overlap, but there are key differences between the two concepts. Like virtual reality, augmented reality can be used in gaming and a variety of other contexts. He uses his broad range of knowledge to help explain the latest gadgets and if they’re a must-buy or a fad fueled by hype.

The universe is procedurally generated, so every planet is one of a kind, and you never know what you’ll encounter next. You can also mine resources, build bases, and trade with alien species to survive and thrive in this vast galaxy. Our experience with VR gaming, alongside the time we have spent within the games themselves, mean we have opinions you can really trust when it comes to recommendations. The team at TechRadar Gaming spend a lot of time testing out the best VR titles, and with hundreds of hours spent across different headsets, so we know exactly which titles are worth recommending.

The most obvious is finding out whether the game you have your eye on works with your virtual reality system. To help you out we’ve listed what platforms these games are on under their entry with links to their storage. The best VR games intend to take your gaming experience one step further, bringing the dream of stepping into your favorite games to life.

As a looming overseer, you’re tasked with scanning the game world for the optimal, safest route for the Wall-E like robot, leaning in and around obstacles to make sure Astro Bot can come through unscathed. This adds a whole new twist to the 3D platforming genre, in a way that could only have been done in VR. Virtual reality creates a completely simulated environment that a user perceives as approximating reality through their senses.

By offering up an original and genuinely bombastic soundtrack, Thumper has heaps of personality, matching its weighty, beat-based gameplay perfectly. By now there are not only a lot of games to choose from, but also different headsets to consider – if you haven’t made your choice yet, let us help you find the best VR headset with our definitive list. Whether you’re playing on a Meta Quest 3, Valve Index, or PSVR 2 headset, this list has games for any kind of VR platform. After Tetris Effect proved in 2018 that a simple puzzle game could be transformed into a mesmerizing VR experience, co-developer Monstars followed up on this formula in 2025 with the release of Lumines Arise. Like Tetris Effect, Lumines Arise combines the classic puzzle gameplay of Lumines with psychedelic sounds and visuals that envelop the player to create a hypnotic, zen-like experience. The placement of puzzle pieces synchronized to the beat of its soundtrack makes it incredibly easy to get lost in Lumines Arise’s sensory feast.

More complex VR rooms may include treadmill floors or similar methods to further the user’s sense of freedom of movement and feelings of immersion within the virtual environment. In other VR gaming setups, the user may be confined to a limited area surrounding a computer but have free range of motion within the area. Walkabout Golf is a competent golf-simulator with some seriously fun courses to play through. The great thing about the game is its variety of worlds, ranging from outer space to more classic offerings. One to check out for fans of golf games, especially those played with motion controls. You’ll need to optimize the tactile gunplay the game offers while facing off with hoards of the undead, making for a fast-paced frenzy of zombie slaying.