I wouldn’t say it’s the best piece of VR content I’ve played, but certainly my most fondly remembered is a scene during PlayStation Worlds’ 'The London Heist' where you're forced to sit down in a pub while an East End mob boss just talks at you for ages. I love it because, while he drones on about someone called French Tony, the game just stops paying attention to what you’re doing. You’re at this table with a lighter, a cigar, a phone and more, and no one tells you can’t just throw them at this guy. So you do. I’ve spent more time than I’d care to admit laughing as I bounce that phone off his forehead, or pretend to set fire to his groin. It’s a pure, inconsequential act of messing about. I love it.

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Ghost Giant: 9 Screenshots 9 IMAGES

I’m glad someone’s realised that could be a game in itself. Where other developers try (and mostly fail) to create totally immersive simulations, to perfect some technological magic trick where you’re suddenly somewhere and someone else, Zoink Games ( Fe Flipping Death ) is content to give you two big hands, the power of invisibility, and a miniature world to fix or mess up at your convenience. Welcome to Ghost Giant It’s a simple but intoxicating premise. You’re the eponymous phantom, towering above a series of quiet pastoral scenes. Zoink’s pulled the canted angles and hand-drawn style from its previous games, but leant them a newly pastel-hued, cutesy edge. Each scene is a densely packed set of dollhouse-sized elements, filled with anthropomorphised animals going about their business. It’s entrancing just to watch the world work around you, and you’ll quickly become a sort of G-rated voyeur, able to peek into the windows of houses to see what their inhabitants are up to, or peer around corners to see if there’s anything tucked away for you to find. Sound design is a big part of this: stand at full, giant height and the hubbub of the world washes over you, but lean in close to the tiny denizens of these towns and you’ll be able discern individual conversations, even foot (or hoof) steps.As a game, it’s pitched as something like a point ‘n’ click adventure, although Zoink developers prefer to call it a “poke ‘n’ grab”. Anything coloured with brass is a key interaction in the world, ranging from bin lids to handles that open the entire fronts of houses. That also extends to chunky levers (which feel amazingly good to clank around because of the mandatory Move controllers) that can raise, lower, rotate, or generally mess with bigger structures. But you can interact with far more than that. Hats can be pinched from the tops of pedestrians’ heads or if you’re particularly cruel, you can just empty out trash cans and watch as the street cleaner has to come and tidy it all up. I’m that cruel. Repeatedly.While there’s no stated goal to any of this, there are some collectables along the way – including the very Nintendo-y addition of hidden pinwheels you have to pick up and blow into to activate (did you know the PSVR had a microphone built in? I didn’t). Practically everything looks tactile and that’s because it mostly is - Zoink wants you poke ‘n’ grab everything you can.But with an estimated runtime of 4-6 hours, even messing things up could get a little stale, so tying this all together is the story of Louis. Last time I played the game, our adorable child protagonist (and the only person who can see the enormous ghost that’s suddenly started breaking stuff for fun) was just that: adorable, a child, and not a great deal more. Since then, Zoink has brought young adult fiction writer Sara Elfgren aboard, and Louis’ story is decidedly more impactful than before. The slapstick silliness of your part in the story remains, but your reasons for doing it feel grounded, even important.Louis lives on an idyllic little farm with his mother, but something is wrong. We don’t see her, and no matter how many adults ask Louis where she is, he dodges the question. He’s determined to keep the day-to-day farmwork ticking over – so determined that we can tell something isn’t quite right. Why should a child be having to act so adult? And so, naturally, you want to help him.That help ranges from the practical (fix Louis’ treehouse), to the obtuse (help him disguise himself as an adult so he won’t be stopped when he borrows him mum’s car to drive to town), to the plain friendly (invent a secret handshake together). Puzzles seem to go by a mantra of ‘simple, but satisfying’ - a perfect example being when you’re asked to make it rain. Look up, grab a marshmallow-y cloud in your left, and another in your right, then rub them together to start a thunderstorm. And if you ever get tired of Louis’ chores, you can always stop to freak out a talking otter with a quick invisible prod.That cadence of silliness and seriousness is enough to have me intrigued, but it comes with one concern: laughing at my own idiocy already makes me sweat while inside a VR headset, so I’m honestly a little worried about what’ll happen to the hardware when Ghost Giant inevitably makes me cry, too.

Joe Skrebels is IGN's UK Deputy Editor, and he will physically or virtually fight anyone who tries to hurt poor Louis. Follow him on Twitter