Best Meta Quest 3, Quest 2 Games, Apps and Experiences

It comes free with Quest 3 purchases, but anyone else should snap up this epic, beautiful and massive game for their own collection. The Egyptian-themed game, full of gods and beasts, has a mix of puzzles and combat and a lot of secrets to discover. While its price is high, there’s a ton to do, with cinematic worlds and puzzles and a roguelike mode that randomly generates battles in case you somehow finish the dozens-of-hours main story. The graphics aren’t quite as good as the PC-only first game in the series, but few Quest 2 or Quest 3 games have looked better.

The number of fitness experiences in the Quest is multiplying, and the Quest is a pretty fantastic way to get a home workout if you don’t mind something on your face and have enough free space. Supernatural, a subscription-based fitness app, is like Beat Saber with holographic real coaches and heart-rate tracker pairing. It’s also full of so much great music and challenges that it can become an amazing way to really stay in shape. Dance-type workouts, boxing and meditation are included. It’s worth the subscription ($10 a month, or $100 a year) if you treat it like a home gym.

Dreamy, a bit surreal, tactical, randomly generated: The Light Brigade is everything I like in a VR experience. Much like In Death: Unchained, which is archery-based, The Light Brigade keeps changing every time you play. The minimal interface and design keep it feeling mysterious and yet clear to understand. I can’t survive for very long, but I want to play more.

What The Golf? is one of my family’s absolute favorite indie games. Its spiritual sequel has arrived for VR with What The Bat?, and it’s the type of whimsical, random fun I wish VR had more of. It’s about living life with baseball bats for hands, and everything else is best left as a surprise to discover. Expect lots of rapid-fire, clever-weird puzzle challenges — the average quick experience here is much shorter than the typical hole in What The Golf?

Ever dreamed of being Iron Man? This game will have you hovering around in a jetpack, using your hands to aim and blast through a series of missions that are surprisingly kinetic and fun. Iron Man was originally a game on the PlayStation VR, but the move to Quest 2 is far more fun because there are no wires to worry about getting tangled in. 

Moss was one of my very favorite VR games and has been a classic on Quest for a while. There’s a sequel now, and its graphics look even better on Quest 2 headsets. The gameplay, which involves moving a sword-bearing mouse hero named Quill on a quest to save her world, is mostly the same: Move through massive miniature worlds and solve puzzles. It’s a great sit-down-and-play experience and fun to share with family.

Devolver’s adorable VR game turns you into a sea monster living near a seaside town. Your hands are tentacles. The sensation of bodily transformation works wonderfully, and you’ll find yourself flip-flopping your sucker-filled arms to grab things and try to help your little cartoony townspeople as you navigate a dollhouse-size world all around you.

A bunch of wild VR instruments you’ve never seen before, recording tools and the ability to multitask: Virtuoso isn’t just a toy, it’s a music platform in VR. It’s soothing and fun to play on the fly, but digging deeper is surprisingly rewarding, too. Setting up drums, a weird VR xylophone and a Theremin-like music cube side-by-side to jam with is really cool.

Instead of sculpting or drawing in 3D like many VR art apps do, Vermillion focuses on the canvas. It feels uncanny to paint with a palette and an easel, even more so if you use the mixed-reality mode to make the painting feel like it’s sitting in your home. Bringing up video tutorials while you paint feels like a preview of our AR-overlaid future and can be surprisingly calming.

I had no idea how a VR jigsaw puzzle would feel or whether I’d care to play one. While I don’t love this game’s limited number of puzzles or its strange interface, its 3D environments that you can piece together (with up to hundreds of pieces per puzzle) are weirdly hypnotic. Also, passthrough camera modes let you float the pieces in mixed reality while you see the rest of your home.

VR is a great format for escape room experiences. I Expect You To Die is a game you can play seated, leaning over desks and flipping switches, using telekinetic powers to control items from afar. The puzzle designs can be as challenging as any escape room I’ve ever been in. There are three games in the series now, but you might as well start with the newest one.

My overall favorite VR game just might be mini-golf. Walkabout’s multiple golf courses are brilliantly designed, with extra-hard challenge modes and hidden golf balls to collect. The game’s golf physics are perfect. The multiplayer modes are great for having friends join in online. Several increasingly good courses keep arriving as DLC, from one based on Jim Henson’s Labyrinth to a series of Jules Verne courses. Every time a new course comes out, I get excited. Seriously, you have no idea how good VR mini-golf is. And the Meow Wolf course is absolutely wonderful.

Sometimes, I really miss Wii Sports or real bowling alleys. ForeVR Bowl is the best simulation of both, with online play and solo challenges, and a mix of realistic and weird environments. The ball physics is more realistic than Wii Sports could have ever dreamed of, but it’s also forgiving enough to have fun. Just leave some elbow room in your home play area; you need a bit more free space than you think.

This isn’t Overcooked, but Cook-Out is a charming and immersive cooking game where you race to put sandwiches together using a grill and tools right in front of you. Other players can join in, up to four players at once. At full speed, it feels like a theme park attraction created in VR just for you.

Cyan Worlds’ new version of Myst is the same game you’ve probably played a million times, but the environments here are really beautiful to move through. Consider this a puzzle game that doubles as a meditative escape. Read our Myst VR hands-on.

The multiplayer battle royale experience of Population One is very Fortnite-like. In fact, it’s extremely Fortnite-like; that’s a good thing. There are few large-scale multiplayer VR games right now, and this is one of the best. Dropping down from above, navigating the shrinking map, climbing and hunting for supplies and excellent controls make this a must-play team shooter. Plus, there are frequent season updates.

It’s expensive, and the file size can get up to 8GB on the Quest 2, but this is console-quality VR shrunken down into a portable headset. Saints & Sinners was already an acclaimed PC VR game, and the transition to the Quest keeps its polish and RPG-like feel. It’s freaky, but it’s also deep. There’s a lot more going on than simple shooting, and the sequel (Chapter 2: Retribution) is just as good.

This is the Quest’s killer app, and if you want to get moving, love lightsabers or just want a fun dance challenge, this is it. Plenty of tracks keep you busy, the lightsaber tracking is fantastic, and there are extra music packs to buy if you feel compelled. I’m still exhausting myself trying to beat my nephew’s high scores.

Bullet time, grab the gun, wait — the faster you move, the faster everything else moves. Get it now? Superhot was one of the first games that hit the Quest, and it’s still amazing. Runner-up pick: Pistol Whip. (Sorry, I still like Superhot more.)

Seriously, ping-pong in VR is so good; the table physics, the size of the play area and the way VR matches what you need perfectly. You can play online with real people, and the gameplay is shockingly unforgiving. The Quest 3 update adds a mixed reality mode that projects the table into your home, which is surprisingly useful for playing in cramped spaces.

With other people in your home, VR can be a solitary disconnect. Keep Talking involves others by having people not in VR handle a bomb-defusing manual while the person in VR tries to communicate and stop the bomb in time. It feels like a weird board game, which is something most VR games never succeed at.

An endless and randomly generated set of castle enemies meets you every time you play, and this roguelike game uses a bow and arrow as your only method of navigation and attack. The mechanics feel great, and being surrounded by enemies you’re firing arrows at can be incredibly intense.

Talk about a game that never seems to get old. While Space Pirate Trainer has been around since the launch days of the HTC Vive, the simple arcade design is perfect. You stand still, shoot at aliens and shield yourself. Survive as long as you can; it’s perfect.

Want to revisit ’90s games, including the experience of sitting on the floor with a controller playing games on a TV? You can do that already with a little retro 16-bit console, but Pixel Ripped pulls it off uncannily in VR. You’re a kid in a house, playing games that don’t exist. Then you enter the pixel world, and it gets stranger. The original ’80s-set Pixel Ripped 1989 is now inside as an add-on DLC, too.

VR can turn your sense of reality inside out, and A Fisherman’s Tale is the best type of out-of-body experience. A room with puzzles to solve also has a dollhouse, which is a perfect model of the room you’re in. You can reach into your own space and as you do, a larger hand from above enters your room. It’s like living in your own weird puzzle dollhouse universe, and it’s fantastic. There’s a sequel, too, but we like the original one best.

Red Matter was one of the best-looking Oculus Quest games, and Red Matter 2 pushes the graphics even further, especially on Quest 3. The puzzle-solving, atmospheric and brooding adventure is set in an alternate-timeline Cold War in space. Your tool-filled space suit glides around and grapples with the brilliantly evoked world, which often has Half-Life vibes. It’s one of the most stunning visual experiences you can have.