Sony has recruited the fledgling indie studio Impulse Gear to build a game for the company's new PS VR "Aim" controller. After spending some time with Farpoint, it's one of those rare, solid demos that made me seriously contemplate buying an unnecessary accessory. As someone who has grown weary of useless plastic tat cluttering up my living room, that’s no small praise.

You may recall the PS3's Sharp Shooter attachment, which was mostly a shell that players would stick a PlayStation Move wand into to resemble a gun, but this new VR Aim accessory is its own dedicated, wholly moulded piece of kit. As a result, the gun feels really sturdy—and has more comfortable button placement (plus, it now has two analogue sticks, as opposed to the Sharp Shooter's single joystick).

Farpoint is the only demonstrated game for this accessory, and it sells the thing by offering a competent, nausea-free take on a first-person shooter. Impulse Gear has been very careful to build its first-person shooting levels as forward-walking experiences as opposed to free-roam ones, which means players can press forward on the joystick to simulate walking without feeling queasy. At the same time, players can still easily look around and negotiate a hectic scene when enemies start flying in. Having the sturdy controller to hold onto may very well anchor the brain-to-body situation here, and the mix of the controller's nicely distributed rumbles and the game's accurate, powerful gunplay made me feel at home blasting Starship Troopers-like bugs.

-- Sam Machkovech

Psychonauts: Rhombus of Ruin

Double Fine's efforts to bring its cult 3D platformer to VR take the franchise in a very different direction. Rhombus of Ruin is more of a VR point-and-click adventure seen through the lens of Psychonauts' brain-based powers. Thus, you can project yourself into the brain of other humans (or animals) to change your first-person perspective around the room, which is necessary to see puzzles from different angles.

Using a DualShock rather than PlayStation Move controllers means you can't reach out to touch the environment directly, but you can use your telekinetic powers to pick up objects and levitate them to new locations. You can also project your will via "force pokes," psi blasts, and fiery pyrokinesis, which means I got a chance to fling some flaming toilet paper to a needy toilet-goer in my short demo.

The short slice of game being shown at E3 was primarily a tutorial of sorts, but it still showed a lot of the wit and charm that made the first Psychonauts so popular. I'm hoping the full game expands on this with some truly clever puzzles.

- Kyle Orland

Batman Arkham VR

Yes, you can be the Batman in Arkham VR. Well… sort of. When Sony flashed up Rocksteady's name alongside a chuckling Joker, there was a hope that Arkham VR would be a proper Batman experience, a full-on adventure set within Rocksteady's impressive vision of decaying Gotham. Sadly, that's not quite the case. But if nothing else, simply speaking to Alfred before slipping into a secret chamber via a mechanised piano to don that famous cowl is something of a dream fulfilled.

You step into the batsuit, arm yourself with batarangs and scanning guns, and frantically wave at a reflection of yourself—fully kitted out in Batman garb—in a floating mirror ahead. You're asked to test the suit's systems by bataranging targets before the computer declares you worthy to enter the batcave via a long and impressive glass elevator. The sense of scale as you descend into the cave is nothing short of breathtaking, but that sadly is as far as the demo goes.

There is another demo, which goes into more of the gameplay—an extended detective mode where you find clues by scanning a crime scene—but this too is decidedly light on content. Ultimately, it appears Arkham VR is simply another VR "experience," a trimmed down version of full-blown game that'll last just a few hours. It's a few hours spent as Batman, mind you, which might just be enough for some.

- Mark Walton

Tethered

Real time strategy and god games have never fared all that well on console. Whether it's the difficulty in mapping keyboard and mouse controls to a controller, or simply that console gamers don't care, the humble strategy game has remained one for the PC audience. Tethered changes that. It is a strategy game inspired by the likes of Populus and Black and White that manages to pair an innovative control system with a cute and cuddly aesthetic that's hard not to fall in love with.

You're tasked with birthing, raising, and defending peeps, a bunch of cute little animals that hatch from eggs that fall from the sky. The first peep egg that falls needs warmth, which introduces you to the game's key mechanic: tethering. As a sunshine cloud floats above a small island, you're asked to move it to the egg by turning your head to look at it, holding down X to highlight it, and then turning your head to draw a line to where you'd like it go. It's a surprisingly intuitive system, one that manages to keep all interactions mapped to just a single button.

Gathering resources, building farms, or battling the slugs that periodically threaten your peeps is all accomplished by tethering your peeps to other things. That might sound overly simple, but the challenge is in how the game gradually ramps up the difficulty by increasing the amount of peeps you have to manage at once and changing what resources you require to build buildings like, say, a watchtower, which helps keep the slugs away at night.

It's all insanely cute, well-designed, and just plain fun to play. It seems like it'll be a properly deep experience too, one of the few so far on PS VR. Tethered is definitely one to check out on launch day.

- Mark Walton

PlayStation VR launches on October 13 for the PS4, priced at £349, $399, €399.