Welcome to UploadVR’s Better of VR Awards for 2024.
2024 has been a busy yr for VR and the broader XR trade, delivering new {hardware} releases and a powerful set of latest VR video games. As 2024 involves an in depth, we’re as soon as once more utilizing our Better of VR Awards to focus on essentially the most distinctive picks throughout {hardware} and software program this yr. Every class will characteristic one winner and related honorable mentions.
Similar to final yr, our acknowledged winners and nominations are principally video games or experiences at the moment in full launch. Nonetheless, we have included awards for particular early entry initiatives, and in addition established some new classes this yr.
On Wednesday, we famous our favourite newly launched platform favorites for Quest, PCVR, and Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional. We acknowledged the excellent achievements of Batman: Arkham Shadow, Underdogs, and Thrasher in 2024 throughout these platforms.
On Thursday, we targeted on the rising classes of combined actuality apps and hand monitoring. We acknowledged the breakthrough work of Maestro with hand monitoring and Figmin XR with combined actuality, and in addition highlighted some early work like Airspace Defender and Laser Dance that we’re hoping to see proceed to develop in 2025.
Now on Friday, we have ready UploadVR’s picks for Better of VR 2024.
Greatest Up to date VR Sport
Whereas 2024 has delivered an unprecedented wave of latest releases, loads of current video games have acquired noteworthy help. New music packs hold coming to Beat Saber, Synth Riders, Smash Drums and Drums Rock, Hellsweeper VR circled a rocky launch on PS VR2, whereas Asgard’s Wrath 2 and Amongst Us VR usually added new occasions. That is earlier than contemplating No Man’s Sky, which delivered a constant slate of updates that proceed constructing this bold journey recreation.
There’s been loads however there can solely be one winner, and it is Walkabout Mini Golf. Walkabout established an $8 per season launch schedule for a pair of latest locations, with the latest Vacation Hideaway DLC and 8-Bit Lair programs showcasing pleasant new gameplay concepts. Walkabout’s paths by way of VR carry folks into headsets for normal journeys and the latest iOS model connects gamers on-the-go as nicely, as improvement studio Mighty Coconut strikes towards supplying you with new causes each week to spend time collectively in VR.
Walkabout Mini Golf Evaluate: Important VR Value Scheduling With Associates
Walkbout Mini Golf is out immediately on PSVR 2 and certainly one of VR’s important video games on any platform. Our assessment:
Greatest VR Developer
Lucas Martell is the founding father of Mighty Coconut and, as of 2024, he’s using just a few dozen “coconuts” on the studio making Walkabout Mini Golf, together with some latest hires close to the tip of the yr. With headquarters in Austin, Texas, the coconuts embrace artists constructing from house as distant as Australia.
To construct new programs, which take greater than a yr to stack up from fundamental blocks in Gravity Sketch, Martell joins fellow artists on the studio to begin the method in VR putting the basic blocking of the world. Martell additionally drops into the code himself to implement some concepts instantly, as one “coconut” defined to me, simply as he did when he was first engaged on the sport by himself in 2020.
Martell tells UploadVR that Mighty Coconut stays totally self-funded, with no traders nor intentions to promote the corporate. Meaning when the studio releases a brand new course for Walkabout on any platform, we count on a majority of the per course per platform price to return instantly underneath Martell’s management to help and develop the inventive course of he is constructing with this crew.
Walkabout options forward-thinking design throughout releases on Steam, Quest, Sony, Pico, and iOS – there’s even help for iPad – and whereas they’re sticking to their six-week launch cycle as a lot as for brand spanking new programs going ahead, the studio can be exploring methods to unlock new content material and occasions within the recreation on a weekly foundation.
Based on the studio, “60% of VR classes” in Walkabout are multiplayer with a majority of customers enjoying the sport for two hours and plenty of of them till the battery runs lifeless. Learn our story in regards to the twins who geared up themselves with prolonged USB cables to maintain themselves linked throughout every new Walkabout course.
Why VR? Flying By way of The Eiffel Tower With Your Sister
The twins reside a time zone aside in lives pushed by their schedules at work. However they find time for mini golf in VR.
Final yr, we chosen Zach Tsiakalis-Brown at Zulubo Productions as developer of the yr, and be sure you take a look at Vertigo 2: Into The Aether in 2025.
As VR grows bigger in 2025 and also you’re searching for one thing to do, whether or not you are getting along with pals, placing along with your iPhone, or dropping into VR for a fast 9 holes of focus and leisure, we’re studying to count on the sudden from the reliably ingenious improvement crew at Mighty Coconut led by Lucas Martell.
The studio tells us gamers collectively spent greater than 6 million hours within the recreation in 2024. Whereas we do not usually write about vainness metrics like these, we expect it is notable so as to add that Mighty Coconut tells us this quantity is up 23% from the yr prior.
Greatest Early Entry Sport
This yr’s seen just a few promising contenders at the moment accessible in early entry. Bootstrap Island has began sturdy for PC VR survival, Frenzies presents an pleasurable multiplayer shooter that helps six participant groups, whereas different highlights embrace Into The Radius 2, Final Stand, One True Path, and Mecha Pressure.
This goes to Downtown Membership, a simcade racing recreation by Commuter Video games that options full digital controls. Although we believed the preliminary launch was a bit sparse, we discovered a promising racer that is gained us over to date, and we won’t wait to see the place it goes subsequent.
Downtown Membership Evaluate-In-Progress: A Stable Chassis On Which To Construct
Downtown Membership is a enjoyable however sparse early entry VR racer with full digital controls, stunning visuals, and a promising future. Our review-in-progress.
Greatest New VR/AR {Hardware}
This yr included a number of notable {hardware} releases.
Quest 3S lowered the worth of entry to combined actuality and higher-quality standalone VR to simply $300, and introduced the flexibility to make use of hand monitoring in the dead of night to a Meta headset for the primary time. In the meantime, Pico 4 Extremely provided the primary true Quest 3 competitor, Logitech’s MX Ink delivered a brand new form of enter for spatial artwork, and Sony turned PlayStation VR2 right into a PC VR headset with a $60 adapter.
However one {hardware} launch stands out as essentially the most vital by far: Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional. Not solely does it mark the entry of the world’s largest tech firm into XR, it additionally launched quite a few vital firsts, most of which might be customary in all headsets finally.
Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional Evaluate: A Heavy Transportable Cinema & Monitor
At $3500, Apple units large expectations with Imaginative and prescient Professional. However does it ship? And what’s it actually prefer to personal and use? Learn our in-depth Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional {hardware} & software program assessment right here:
Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional is the primary headset with extremely excessive decision micro-OLED shows, making it the primary really suited to show bodily screens into software program, together with watching motion pictures and conjuring no matter productiveness setup you need, irrespective of the place you’re.
Its working system is simply as vital. visionOS goes far past any Android fork and even any main PC VR runtime, introducing a brand new idea of a Shared House the place as many home windows as you need can run alongside a number of volumetric apps, and others can be part of you as practical Spatial Personas to work together inside a shared coordinate area.
Additional, visionOS leverages Imaginative and prescient Professional’s eye monitoring for a gaze-and-pinch interplay system that the remainder of the trade is ready to observe, together with Google & Samsung, Meta, Immersed, and extra.
Sure, Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional is a $3500+ product for rich tech fans and early adopters, not a mass market gadget, and thus it is not having a direct affect for many shoppers. However its clear affect on the trade, together with Meta’s Horizon OS and Google’s Android XR, and the longer term that it proves out, earn it our {hardware} award for 2024, and can nearly actually guarantee its place within the 2024 part of each historical past of know-how e-book ever written.
Greatest New Multiplayer Sport
We have seen just a few sturdy contenders for VR multiplayer throughout 2024. Spatial Ops delivered a promising combined actuality shooter, Exploding Kittens VR and Simply Dance VR delivered pleasurable variations for his or her respective collection. Different highlights embrace Contractors Showdown, Into Black, Ghosts of Tabor, Human Fall Flat VR and Iron Revolt.
In the end, we’re selecting Model. Quick Journey Video games delivered a inventive tackle Prop Hunt that is significantly entertaining whereas making nice use of VR, as two brokers attempt to seek out three shape-shifting aliens that may freeze into place. That is solely continued bettering since full launch because of common updates like mod help, new modes and extra maps.
Favourite PS VR2 Sport Of The 12 months 2024
As PlayStation VR2 enters its second yr, it has been a yr principally held up by multi-platform launches. My First Gran Turismo is the one first-party title we have seen with PS VR2 help, whereas third-party publishers introduced quite a few large hitters like Arizona Sunshine Remake, Skydance’s Behemoth, Max Mustard, Trombone Champ: Unflattened, Vertigo 2, and Alien: Rogue Incursion.
For 2024, we’re naming Metro Awakening as our PlayStation VR2 Sport of the 12 months. Vertigo Video games’ prequel to the long-running flatscreen collection delivered sturdy atmospheric storytelling for a “mesmerizing story of survival” within the Moscow underground.
Metro Awakening Evaluate: A Mesmerizing Story of Survival in Moscow’s Darkish Underworld
Go deep underground into the Metro and expertise the dystopian way forward for a post-nuclear apocalyptic Russia in Metro Awakening.
VR Sport Of The 12 months 2024
And so, we attain our largest award for this yr. Very similar to 2023, this was a troublesome name with fierce competitors throughout the board. Arizona Sunshine Remake, Skydance’s Behemoth, Max Mustard, Trombone Champ: Unflattened, UNDERDOGS, Metro Awakening, and Iron Revolt.
Similar to on Quest, our final winner for VR Sport of the 12 months 2024 is Batman: Arkham Shadow. Whereas the preliminary launch had some efficiency points which have since acquired quite a few fixes, Camouflaj’s action-adventure hit delivered one of many strongest experiences we have seen but that feels at house within the Arkham universe.
Batman: Arkham Shadow Devs Speak Rescue Imaginative and prescient, Distant Work & New Sport+
Batman: Arkham Shadow devs discuss by way of Rescue Imaginative and prescient, managing manufacturing and the opportunity of a New Sport+ mode.
It is a good second go for Batman in digital actuality and very similar to Camouflaj, we might like to see the studio make a sequel within the coming years. Enjoying because the caped crusader has by no means felt this good, the gripping narrative combined with strong motion mechanics hold you invested.
For that motive, Batman: Arkham Shadow is our a lot deserved VR Sport of the 12 months for 2024.
Batman: Arkham Shadow Evaluate – A Triumphant Return
Batman: Arkham Shadow is an excellent return for the Darkish Knight, and it expertly adapts the collection for VR on Quest 3 and Quest 3S.
Most Anticipated VR Sport of 2025
Whereas 2024’s introduced a powerful line-up of upcoming VR and MR video games, 2025 and past already appears good. Aces of Thunder, The Midnight Stroll, POOLS, Orion Drift, Silent North, Glassbreakers, Ghost City, Roboquest VR, and Arken Age are all displaying appreciable potential. Although we do not depend DLC, let’s not overlook Vertigo 2: Into The Aether, both.
Our winner is a time journey journey recreation, Wanderer: The Fragments Of Destiny by Mighty Eyes. What we have seen to date appears like a promising remake of Wanderer, and it is at the moment concentrating on a Q1 2025 launch throughout Quest, Steam, PS VR2, and Pico.