Our 10 Favorite VR Moments at GDC (In No Particular Order)

Fantastic Contraption is a room-scale game that asks you to build machines to complete increasingly complex objectives—it's wondrous to be able to walk around your budding jalopy, adding structural stability and jousting poles, until it's able to do what you need. But the game isn't just room-scale; thanks to some good thinking from the team at Radial Games, it's also usable at standing-scale, sitting-at-a-desk-scale, and even sitting-on-the-floor scale, in which you're a giant with a virtual Tinker Toy/Capsella set. Bring on playtime.—PR

While Crytek's forthcoming The Climb will eventually support motion controllers, it's starting out as a timed Oculus exclusive, which at release means Xbox gamepad only. But free-climbing mountain passes via trigger push doesn't erase the sweaty-palm vertigo you'll feel as you scramble for a handhold, jump to an adjacent rock face, and even dangle by one hand as you re-chalk for a better grip. And when you get to the top of a stage as I did and look out over a stunning vista, you'll be on top of the world—in more ways than one. —PR

We played a non-VR version of PS4 rhythm game Thumper at Tokyo Game Show and came away mighty impressed with its intense musical beat-matching action. The VR version, though? That's like riding Space Mountain on LSD. The craziest part was the final boss fight, in which the scary demon-face that fires volleys of notes at you becomes, in virtual reality, a massive fire-and-brimstone creature emerging from the maw of hell itself and towering over you. —CK

Even though Edge of Nowhere is a third-person game, it felt a lot like it was me climbing up its massive walls of ice. Probably because the pulled-back camera lets me see the vertiginous drops and the dizzying heights. Getting to the top of one of these walls, coming over the edge and finally seeing what's up there is a thrilling sensation, doubly so because this is a horror game and there's a possibility that grotesque Lovecraftian monsters are up there to ruin the vistas. —CK

I harbor a secret desire to be a short-order cook. Job Simulator lets me live that dream, in a world of robots with unorthodox desires. Pull the ticket off the clip, get out the blender, add in a variety of ingredients like steak and plums---you're a robot cooking for robots, so nobody much cares about the specifics---and serve it up, ringing the bell for service when you're done. The combination of Oculus Touch controllers and room-scale VR makes for an engrossing, hilarious cooking competition. —CK

The advent of tracked controllers means that VR will finally bring us away from the clumsy metaphors of conventional gamepads. (Good riddance, buttons!) It's tough to imagine a better use case than Survios' co-op shooter Raw Data, in which Vive controllers become everything from laser pistols to crossbows to shotguns—and even, when you're out of ammo, a katana you pull out of the harness on your back to cut down that robot who's bearing down on you. —PR

Valve and ILM have teamed up to create Trials on Tattooine, a Star Wars-themed VR demo that lets you do what motion controllers were meant to: Deflect Stormtrooper bolts with a lightsaber. R2-D2 pops in to hand you the iconic weapon, but the coolest moment by far is that sense of anticipation when you’re about to press the button on the Vive controller that will cause the blade to extend out with that glorious pssssh sound. And it does, and you wave it around to hear it go wommm, and you now know that true happiness is possible. —CK

Back when a quarter could buy you a videogame, I had a weakness for Block Out, a top-down, three-dimensional twist on Tetris. Kokoromi—a four-person team that includes Fez's Phil Fish—must have loved it too, because Superhypercube brings that spatial-disgracial smackdown to Playstation VR. Sony's ability to render and map a Dualshock 4 controller in virtual space is much needed here, and plays perfectly into the game's neon-drenched ’80s aesthetic. —PR