The best PSVR 2 games on PS5

Sony’s flagship launch title and a PSVR 2 exclusive, Horizon Call of the Mountain is a graphical showcase. It’s also a very good game, so that’s nice. Placing you in the shoes of a Carja tribe member, you’re thrust into a world filled with mechanical dinosaurs to shoot with a bow and massive mountains to climb. You haven’t experienced VR properly until you’ve seen a Tallneck stride over your head. 

Hello Games can’t stop updating No Man’s Sky and the experience is better than ever now. Playing this spacefaring survival game in VR really highlights its strengths. Really, it’s a game about vibes, and those vibes are immaculate in PSVR 2. Breaking through the atmosphere of a planet as the headset vibrates and the cockpit shakes, with your actual hand on the joystick, controlling your descent, is worth the price of admission alone. 

This is another one you’ll want to stick on to show your pals how cool VR is. It can be a little nauseating because your brain is doing zoomies and your body is perfectly still, but it’s genuinely convincing otherwise. Driving through the Tokyo track at night is a particular highlight, watching the road as neon lights flash by in your periphery. 

I didn’t find Resident Evil Village all that scary at launch, but VR changes that. Wandering through darkened woods as werewolves skitter in the dark is enough to get your blood pumping, and my god, wait until you see all of Lady Dimitrescu up close. Mommy. 

If you like Beatsaber, this Viking-themed rhythm game takes that concept, plonks you on a longboat, and tasks you with banging the drums to make your ship go faster. The music is a bit hit or miss, but there are some real bangers in the thematically relevant original soundtrack. It’s one of those ‘just one more go’ games. 

Another VR game that’s more than just an experience, Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge casts you as an engineer who’s caught up in the illicit side of the Star Wars universe when some bad guys attempt to steal your cargo. Combat is built around blasters and droids, and there’s some cool puzzle-solving involving your engineering gadgets as well. 

If you’ve always fancied playing Left 4 Dead in VR, After the Fall is about as close as you can get. Teaming up with three other players, you take on waves of zombies as you make your way through varied levels and upgrade your gear. Harder difficulties require solid cooperation, and there’s some real fun to be found in the way other players like to mess about, too. 

My first game of Pavlov – a CS:GO-style multiplayer shooter – started with a teammate shouting “crap, run” because he accidentally dropped a grenade on the floor at the spawn location. Imagine playing Call of Duty, but you can drop your guns if you’re clumsy. It’s a laugh a minute, and you feel extremely cool when you successfully flank another team and mow them all down with an LMG. You just have to figure out how to reload the thing first, because each gun has its own quirks. Good job there’s a shooting range where you can hone your skills.

Tetris in VR probably doesn’t sound all that exciting, but give it a chance and you’ll love it. It’s like being dunked into a vat of hallucinogens, where you’ll be seeing spectral dolphins swimming around you as every Tetris block pulsates to the music and your movements add to the cacophony. It’s a synesthesia delight. 

Townsmen is the closest thing to Lionhead’s Black & White that I’ve played since Black & White. The tutorial levels are a bit laborious, but it’s worth sticking at it for this excellent village-building game. You’re a godlike figure overlooking islands full of villagers, who you can pick up and fling about, or plonk next to buildings to give them new tasks. It takes some getting used to the movement controls, but Townsmen shows the potential of the god game genre in VR.

Another rhythm VR game, Unplugged hands you a guitar and asks you to strum away to a bunch of licensed tracks. It’s like Guitar Hero, but without the need for another peripheral, and you actually have to hold proper chords. It probably won’t teach you to play in real life, but it’s nice to pretend to be a rockstar, eh? 

If Pavlov and After the Fall feel a bit too hardcore for you, Zombieland harkens back to the lightgun games of old. You don’t move manually, instead working your way through levels ‘on-rails’, popping zombie heads as you go. Pull off two headshots in quick succession and time slows to a crawl, allowing you to chain even more together. It’s all about a quick trigger finger, accurate shots, and high scores.