Tetris Effect

The familiar game of high-speed block organisation, but enveloped in psychedelic visuals and sound. VR isn’t strictly necessary, but it wraps the game’s astonishing visuals – glittering forests, neon cityscapes, constellations of lights that move like whales – all around you, helping you sink into the trance-like state of concentration that gives the game its title. The cumulative effect is quite emotionally overwhelming. As a fringe benefit, if you turn out to be one of the players who reports crying at Tetris Effect, the headset will help hide your tears from anyone else in the room.

Astro Bot: Rescue Mission

Like Super Mario 64, the game that laid out blueprints for every 3D game to follow, Astro Bot reinvents how the camera works – by attaching it directly to the player’s headset. You’re a physical presence in the world, dodging projectiles, headbutting obstacles and peering round corners while controlling a tiny robot who jumps over gaps and on to the heads of villains. Astro Bot himself might not be as recognisable a mascot as Nintendo’s primary-coloured plumber, but Rescue Mission has the same sense of charm and invention.

Astro Bot: Rescue Mission Photograph: Sony

Resident Evil 7

As thousands of YouTube reaction videos will attest, scaring the life out of people has always been one of VR’s most obvious raisons d’etre. Resident Evil 7 leverages that to create the scariest instalment in the horror series’ history, switching to a first-person perspective and bayou setting that is, at least initially, grounded in reality. The bulk of the game takes place within the grounds of a creepy house in the Louisiana swamps, a horrifyingly convincing space that will stick with you long after the headset is removed.

Superhot VR

A shooter where time moves only when you do, allowing you to pull off some remarkable action-movie feats. Lean backwards to dodge bullets, or slice them out of the air using a motion-controlled blade. Punch an enemy, grab their pistol as it tumbles through the air, and then use it to explode the head of your next target into red crystals without even looking. The closest you’ll ever come to starring in The Matrix – just make sure you’ve cleared the living room beforehand.

Superhot VR Photograph: Superhot VR

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes

VR can be an isolating experience, locking you inside a bulky headset, but this co-operative multiplayer game smartly takes advantage of that. The player in a headset is presented with a virtual bomb that is only visible to them, while in the real world their teammates shuffle desperately through an on-screen manual trying to find the instructions for defusing it. The digital equivalent of a good escape room, right down to the pleasures of yelling “don’t you even know the Greek alphabet?” at someone who used to call you their friend.

Moss

A fantasy adventure set in a Redwall-esque world where heroic knights are mice in adorable little suits of armour, their trusty steeds are squirrels, and their foes clockwork beetles. The game combines jumping, exploring, combat and puzzles into a sort of bonsai Zelda, as you guide large-eared heroine Quill on her quest through a string of tiny diorama-like scenes. There’s a wonderful sense of scale to the world, which can be surveyed from above or peered at closely to admire the intricate details.

Moss Photograph: Polyarc

Raw Data

An ambitious sci-fi shooter that succeeds by putting the emphasis on the physicality of its arsenal. It’s not just a case of aiming and pulling the trigger, but also slamming a clip into the bottom of your pistol to reload, or pumping the next round into the chamber of your imaginary shotgun. You can pick between four character classes, each with their own signature weapon – including a futuristic bow and laser sword – and unlockable abilities. Movement is limited to point-and-click teleporting in order to avoid motion sickness, but given the minor workout each firefight already offers, that’s probably for the best.

Déraciné

This quietly gothic fairytale about schoolchildren in a Victorian orphanage is unexpected and weird. You play a fairy that these children are attempting to befriend, existing in between moments in time and giving the events of each frozen vignette a subtle nudge. VR steeps you in the game’s unique atmosphere – as delicate as the filigree of a fairy’s wing, but with a subtly sinister edge – which is the real reason to play.

Job Simulator

Less a game than a set of brilliant toys that showcase the silly slapstick potential of VR. As the title suggests, it’s a faithful recreation of modern workplaces … as devised by robots from the year 2050, whose understanding of human civilisation suggests the whole thing has been described to them second-hand. This creates an air of Douglas Adams-ish comedy perfectly in line with your own bumbling attempts, flailing around with motion controllers, to photocopy documents and construct sandwiches.

Job Simulator Photograph: Owlchemy Labs

Wipeout: Omega Collection

Once upon a time, the Liverpudlian-developed anti-gravity racer Wipeout – think Mario Kart set in a gleaming neon future, with missiles instead of banana skins – was the cutting edge of the original PlayStation’s lineup. Omega Collection restores the sense of speed and, occasionally, vertigo you might remember from those days, dropping you right in the cockpit of a ship – you then race along tracks that loop up and over themselves, or drop at sudden 90-degree angles. That can, naturally, lead to some motion sickness – so if you’re susceptible, it might be best saved until you’ve found your VR legs.

Beat Saber

VR’s initial promise might have been the chance to live inside a realistic simulation, but one of its best applications has actually turned out to be abstract rhythm games – and there’s none better than Beat Saber. The game arms you with two of the Skywalker clan’s weapons of choice, which you use to slice colour-coded blocks in time with the music. It’s like being inside a particularly intense Guitar Hero track, as you bounce, swing, sweat and forget how ludicrous you must look to the outside world.

For more recommendations, see our picks for the best PlayStation 4 games and the best games of 2018.