Until now, your only foe in VR sword-slasher Beat Saber was the music. A fight to the death against floating blocks hurled through the void in time to some boppin’ tunes. While you’ll still be decapitating cubes, the latest update for Beat Games’ virtual, musical fencer adds multiplayer, letting you test your moves against up to five other humans making fools of themselves in their living rooms.

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Ever since I squeezed my face into David Braben’s Rift hole (humblebrag), I’ve been a VR convert. I’ve moved house three times since then, and each time I’ve managed to tether up some sort of VR system, from the pokiest of rooms to my reasonably spacious home office. That last one is not a humblebrag, as I’m far too humble to do two in one paragraph. It’s just a brag.

I’ve been using VR for a long time, so I thought I’d ask myself what people might be worried about before committing to it themselves. What about those awkward tangibles, like wires, space, and PC power? Or troublesome intangibles, like what you look like when you watch a John Travolta movie in VR.

Here’s what I’ve learned in the past eight years.

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The best virtual reality game, probably.

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Virtual reality has had a bit of boom since the release of Half-Life: Alyx last month, so we’ve updated our list of best VR games to help reflect that. Indeed, whereas VR games used to be a wasteland of mini-games and glorified scenery wallpapers, there are now more great games than you’ll ever have time to play. To help you sort through the good from the bad, have a read our best VR games list below.

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Virtual reality has grown in a short few years from a wasteland of minigames to having more good games than you’ll ever have time to play. Thankfully we created this list of the best VR games so you don’t waste your time.

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The Oculus lords at Facebook have bought Beat Games, the makers of VR breakout hit Beat Saber. That’s the rhythm game where you gogg up to slash through blocks representing beats of a song – Guitar Hero meets Star Trek in cyberspace. Y’know, one of the games that people recommend a lot as a getaway to VR. That one. It’s Facebook’s. Beat Games say they’ll continue to update and support Beat Saber on all its current cybergoggles, not just Oculus sets, though it’s less clear what the acquisition might mean for any future games – or for Beat Saber mods.

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Beat Saber‘s $100 Bills is an obnoxious song that I cannot remove from my brain. It’s the musical equivalent of a bloke sidling up to you in a pub and asking if you want to see his armpits. Fortunately, Beat Saber has other songs, and makes slicing beats so satisfying that sometimes I don’t even care that armpit man won’t stop grunting about how wealthy he is.

If you own either a Vive or an Oculus and like either music, lightsabers or a good time, this is one of the best games to throw your VR moolah at. Especially now that it’s slashed its way out of early access with a level editor.

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Hullo! John is preoccupied with wizards right now, so I’m taking over for the rundown of last week’s top ten on Steam. It was an interesting week, bringing back some welcome old games and slamming in some shiny new ones. Largely, it’s all about robots and survival.

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My Vive, which once made me literally dance with joy, gathers dust. That’s less to do with how much fun I know I’d have if I set the damn thing up, and everything to do with the faff. I’ve got to deal with wobbly lighthouse stands, a PC that turns off if I bump into it and the hassle of putting contact lenses in. Why contend with all of that, when there’s so much I could play that’s only a few mouse clicks away?

Beat Saber will make me contend with all of that. It’s a VR rhythm game that equips you with two lightsabres and an urge to slice up blocks that fly at you in time to the beat, sometimes while dodging obstacles. It just came out on early access, and the devs say their goal “is to make players almost dance” – which is music to my ears.

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