2016 was the year that consumer-grade VR went from something most of us just read about to something that started appearing in stores and homes. In the past, articles about VR proclaimed, "You can't convey the effect on a flat screen, you'll have to trust us!" and "It's magical, we promise!" But the praise was impossible to verify since you probably couldn't stick your own eyes into a pair of pricey goggles. Even as one of VR's biggest early fans, I empathize with that caged-hype feeling. Enough! Let's see how this stuff actually plays out.

Quality consumer-grade VR systems are finally landing in significant numbers, right next to amusement-park rigs, free store demos, and even half-decent smartphone rigs (from Google Daydream to a newer, slightly sharper Samsung GearVR). Enough VR content came out this year to merit a full-blown best-of report for 2016. Because the industry is still nascent, I'm skipping the list format and opting to break this up into a few sections—including projections about what to expect from VR in 2017.

Best current system?

We've already written a few guides comparing the "big three" VR systems—as in, the Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR. (That designation comes from how all three are powerful enough to render "real" VR content, complete with comfortable head tracking, and all three ship with solid controllers.) Ars has yet to declare a winner in the VR race, and I'm not going to alter that call.

Each system has its advantages. PlayStation VR may offer the best bang for the buck, especially if you already own a standard PlayStation 4 console. (In a pinch, you can forgo the PlayStation Move motion wands, as many of its best games don't require the wands.) PSVR's tracking can be very wonky, whether because of lighting or because of a random, full-system desync. But its headset is possibly the most comfortable of the three, and it's the friendliest to anybody who wears glasses, no question.

The biggest issue: PSVR's tracking stability degrades significantly when you stand up, which is where the other two expensive options take a lead.

First-gen Oculus Rifts and HTC Vives have their own issues, and in our dream world, we'd get a set that combines the best of both. The Rift has a comfier headset; its integrated headphones are dynamite; and its (optional) motion-tracked Touch controllers feel better than the Vive's wands. However, the Vive's tracking boxes are superior both for how well they track a user in real-life space and for not requiring a direct USB connection to your computer. Also, Vive's games are all built with a motion tracking expectation, and its screen is a teensy bit clearer.

Click here for a longer hardware comparison, which talks at length about each system's setup process, among other factors.

Guns up

Gunplay dominated VR's first official year, mostly for practical reasons. Primarily, developers for Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR made games with an expectation of seated players and gamepads, which meant cockpits, cockpits, cockpits. On the Vive side, the system's default wands are meant to replicate hands. But with a headset on, Vive's handle-and-trigger setup pretty much feels like guns.

Eve Valkyrie wins out as the year's best sit-down cockpit shooter in VR, both because it's damned good and because you can buy it for all three systems. This space-deathmatch shooter doesn't offer much depth, but its mix of slick interface, comfortable play, and bombastic combat make it an obvious leader in the "I want VR to feel awesome and simple immediately" department. Honorable mention goes to a special X-Wing mission on PSVR, free to owners of Star Wars: Battlefield on PS4. It's short but oh-so-sweet, and it makes us hopeful that EA will squeeze out a fully fledged VR game while it still has Star Wars' gaming rights.

The stand-and-shoot VR genre, meanwhile, has a whopping four top contenders. (Seriously. So many guns this year.) The first, Space Pirate Trainer (Vive, Oculus Touch), is the best among a huge field of similar arcadey games in which players obliterate waves of computer-controlled enemies with a variety of guns. SPT launched as a sublimely tuned rush of high-speed action, particularly with its bullet-time "you're about to die" moments. The game has only gotten better after a series of patches and the addition of weapons like a grenade launcher, an electric whip, and a scatter-happy shotgun. The sound design, the enemy patterns, the responsiveness of each weapon—no other VR arcade-shooter comes close.

Next is Superhot VR, which is currently an Oculus Touch exclusive. What was already a thrill as a standard keyboard-and-mouse affair becomes a sense-overloading masterwork in VR and one of the best honest-to-goodness "full VR games" this year (as opposed to so many quick-burst arcade experiments). Kyle Orland's year-end blurb about Superhot VR has more info about the game's "time moves only when you move" gimmick.

My other two stand-and-shooter picks are online multiplayer games. Hover Junkers (Vive) wins out in spite of user-unfriendliness. New players don't get coaxed with a tutorial or a mission that naturally introduces HJ's disparate systems—shooting guns, picking loadouts, driving a floating tank platform, and using scrap to build defensive cover. Its sheer physicality is also daunting; no VR game on any platform requires this much real-life movement. But ye holy gods, man. Once you know Hover Junkers' ins and outs, you're in for one of the most thrilling deathmatch experiences ever made (which has only gotten better thanks to an ever-increasing selection of guns over the past few months). Building, driving, and duck-and-covering around your own ramshackle hovertank truly works, thanks to surprisingly reliable netcode performance.

The only multiplayer shooter to compare this year is Rec Room (Vive, Oculus Touch), which is still, for some insane reason, completely and totally free. After landing in a neighborhood recreation center with an automatically generated instance of other online players, you can either pick from a few hardcoded multiplayer games (paintball deathmatch, racquetball, "3D charades") or just goof off with games like basketball and table tennis. (This is similar to the game Destiny's lobbies, but Rec Room's lobbies actually have fun things to do.) Rec Room's paintball mode is fun because it allows teams of players to VR-teleport around giant deathmatch arenas and blast each other while picking up new weapons on the ground.







Rec Room is clearly still in tuning mode, with things like ammo regeneration, object physics, and teleportation delays constantly in flux. But its fun factor and player population are currently high and easily recommended, especially with its incredibly low learning curve.