video game

Valheim took the gaming world by storm when it hit early access in February this year. A complex survival game crafted by the (then) five-person strong Iron Gate Studio out of Sweden, the launch nabbed a 9/10 review and by March had more than one million players per team member.

Seven months later, and it’s streaking back up the player count charts on Steam again thanks to the release of “Hearth and Home”, Valheim’s first major update. The content drop brings with it an array of changes for all facets of the game — new building possibilities, new items to find (particularly in the Mountains), new food to cook and more.

For some, seven months is a long time to wait between drinks, though veterans of other survival games like Subnautica and The Forest will probably think nothing of it. And for Iron Gate Studio, it was a question of priorities.

The Valve Index is finally available in Australia, and still represents one of the best VR solutions money can buy. I’ve spent several weeks playing with the hardware* and testing a wide variety of games, and have come away impressed by the quality of the system’s tracking, its controllers, the built-in speakers and the resolution and refresh rate of its display. Almost all the points made in IGN’s full Valve Index review absolutely still stand, but a couple of things have changed since then.

Firstly, we now have local pricing. The complete Valve Index kit will set you back AUD $1899.95 and comes with the headset, two Index controllers and two base stations. Those components are also sold separately, so if you already have compatible Vive base stations, for instance, you could stick with those and buy everything else.

Secondly, there are way more games that take advantage of the Index controllers now, including the incredible Half-Life: Alyx, so you can really make a call about whether you want to get an Index based on a more rounded software lineup. That said, while this feature will include games that take advantage of the Index controllers specifically, it’s more of a broad set of recommendations. If you’re thinking about picking up an Index, these are the games I’ve been most impressed by to date. There’s a lot more out there, obviously, but consider this a good starting point.

Must-Play

Half-Life: Alyx

Oh Half-Life, how I missed you. This prequel to Half-Life 2 places players in the shoes of Alyx Vance, on a desperate mission to rescue her father from the clutches of the Combine. City 17 has never been so striking. There’s a whole new sense of scale when seeing Striders stalk about the city, for instance, while combat has a tension all its own driven by the physicality of the experience. Sure, you’re teleporting to move around, but you’re physically ducking down to take cover from Combine soldiers, and you’re aiming down the sight of your pistol to snipe Headcrabs off zombies. Getting caught with an empty clip mid firefight means frantically pulling a new one out of your backpack, slotting it into place and cocking the gun, all of which takes time and ratchets up the tension.

The pacing is spot on, with some great puzzle design breaking up the action, plenty of secrets and collectibles to uncover, and frequent shifts in mood. One minute Alyx is joking around over voice comms with Russell – voiced hilariously by Rhys Darby – the next the game goes full survival horror, with Alyx inching through a pitch black, squalid facility, her torch the only source of light. I love the inventive little touches too, whether that’s being able to target things in the environment with the Gravity Gloves and flick them to yourself, or holding a holographic globe with one hand while tracing a path on it to solve a puzzle with the Multi-tool in the other. Half-Life: Alyx is a killer app for VR.

Superhot VR

While the premise of Superhot VR is the same as it was for Superhot – time moves when you move, this is transformed by the physicality of room-scale VR. As you’re whisked from short vignette to short vignette you’re in the thick of the action, thinking on your feet as enemies come at you from all sides. You might jab a fist to clock the nearest foe in the head before picking up a bottle to fling at another which sends his gun arcing through the air. You catch it before ducking down behind cover and take out the enemies firing on your position by reaching up and out of cover with the pistol.

Gameplay comes in blocks, with which means you may need to run through a sequence of vignettes several times before beating the scene and moving on. This repetition works in Superhot VR’s favour, as you can blaze through scenarios you’ve already done a few times without thinking about it – a choreographed dance of death. Few games make smoothly dispatching enemies – or discarding used firearms – feel this effortlessly cool. After all, you’re in control of time, which means that time only moves when you have purpose. You are the protagonist of every moment and that’s an empowering thing… when you get it right.

Pistol Whip

I resisted the urge to compare Superhot VR to John Wick so I could instead use that comparison here. Pistol Whip is another game driven by ultra-stylish violence, but here it’s all set to a rhythm-action beat. Every track is a shooting gallery – the player moving on a straight path through it, using a single pistol to dispatch enemies in time with the music. While I didn’t love all the music on offer here, that tracks that really work had me bouncing on my heels with the rhythm; the crack of each shot giving extra punch to the percussion. And when enemies get shots off you’re ducking or weaving out of the way as the bullet slowly moving towards you (the positional audio sounds amazing as it zings by your head too) while still firing off shots as more enemies pop up.

The reason Pistol Whip is so great is that it’s less interested in clinical accuracy and more interested in empowering the player to have a great time stringing together shot after shot. I felt like a complete bad-ass firing off shots from the hip while bopping along to the music. And if accuracy – and shooting on the beat – is your thing, the end of level stats are there to show you how you went. And, of course, the difficulty scales as you would expect too.

Beat Saber

Beat Saber is a similarly revelatory rhythm action experience, and where Pistol Whip and Superhot VR are both John Wick-esque action hero simulators, Beat Saber dives into the fantasy of being deadly with a lightsaber. Or, in this case, two. Slashing away in time with the music really is satisfying, and the Index’s high refresh rate options, incredible motion tracking and excellent display all help elevate this experience.

Of course, your mileage with any rhythm action game will vary based on your taste in music, and to be honest, a lot of what Beat Saber has on offer left me pretty cold, which was disappointing given just how much fun I had with the tracks that were more to my taste. For a game this successful I’m surprised there isn’t more to choose from on the official store, too, as the options that were there didn’t really do it for me. All that said, the game does have an active mod scene, so I can always dive into that in search of more compelling grooves.

Thumper

Yet another rhythm action game, but Thumper is kind of the odd one out. It can be played without VR and is very much a seated experience, as opposed to room scale. It is, however, a masterpiece, and while playing in VR isn’t necessary, it greatly adds to the experience. And what is that experience? Careening along a ribbon-like path that stretches into the distance, “thumping” and banking around turns in time with the booming drums and otherworldly synths of its incredible score. The visual design is striking – the action is all clean lines and chrome, the backdrop otherworldly. Thumper is a true reinvention of this genre – yes, its gameplay demands precision and skill, but it is a game defined by its rich atmosphere and malevolent mood, in which players face off against Lovecraftian horrors in an unknowable void.

Worth a Look

Trover Saves the Universe

How much you’ll enjoy Trover Saves the Universe is very much predicated on how much you like Justin Roiland, because this game is all about his comedic voice. Sure, there’s basic platforming and combat, but Trover Saves the Universe is driven by its personality and its quest to make you laugh. Personally, I really enjoyed its twisted Rick & Morty-esque scenarios, its self-aware dialogue and its stuttering ad-libs. It’s a shame it doesn’t do more with its gameplay, but there are some fun moments, like smashing through a locked door instead of completing an entirely arbitrary set of (non-)puzzles. I also enjoyed the fact that it’s a seated VR game that actually has fun with that fact, casting the player as a Chairopian – “a race of humanoid aliens confined to chairs” – which means you follow Trover around in your hover chair and direct him, instead of doing things yourself.

Along the same lines as Trover Saves the Universe, Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality is also worth checking out, as is Accounting+.

Job Simulator

The year is 2050 and robots now do all the jobs. How to experience what it was like to actually work in the before times? Through a job simulator of course! This amusing premise sets up the foundation for Job Simulator, which is rooted in absurdism, with a side order of physical comedy as you toss stuff around and generally see what’s possible in each of the four scenarios – office worker, gourmet chef, automotive mechanic and convenience store clerk. Whether you’re cooking the books or putting together a Powerpoint presentation as an office worker, or constructing truly inedible food as a chef, Job Simulator very successfully walks the line between developer-led humour and comedic player-driven moments. It also cleverly utilises 360 degree play spaces that are dense with things to interact with.

I also really enjoyed Vacation Simulator, which saw developer Owlchemy Labs deliver a much more expansive concept – set in 2060 this time – in which you’re actually exploring a host of vacation locations – beach, forest and mountain. It very much picks up where Job Simulator left off in terms of gameplay and sense of humour, and also comes highly recommended.

Gorn

Gorn is at once one of the most brutally violent games I’ve ever played AND one of the most comical. The gameplay is physics-driven gladiatorial combat, in which you face off against waves of semi-naked, impossibly-proportioned, muscle-bound warriors while a bizarrely cartoonish king and crowd of disembodied heads watch on. You can hold a weapon or shield in each hand, so perhaps one fight might start with a mace and sword, or a shield and bat, or a simple bow with arrows. Enemies enter the ring and you pull yourself, hand over hand, towards them, before bludgeoning them repeatedly in the head or slicing them into pieces. It’s incredibly graphic and intense, yet this is softened by the visual style and by the hilarious animations and physics – enemies swing their arms around like soft noodles, while your melee weapons bend and wobble like they’re made of rubber.

At first I didn’t like the fact that I had to physically reach out and pull myself to move around (as opposed to teleporting or another common VR solution), but it actually gives movement a gratifyingly visceral element. There’s a mad bloodlust in frenetically dragging myself towards an enemy as quickly as I can, so I can stave his head in or send him flying into a wall of spikes, before moving on to a fresh target. And there’s also something darkly grim about having to acknowledge the crowd before each stage of a fight begins. You’re simply a blood-crazed puppet trapped in a brutal theatre.

Budget Cuts

Can I find a way to get out of this damn office? It’s a question many of us have asked ourselves, but in the case of Budget Cuts it’s a life or death question. In this office complex all the human workers are disappearing, and weaponised robot sentries have started patrolling the hallways. Budget Cuts brings stealth gameplay into the VR mix, with a cool teleport-based movement system that can let you get up into the crawl space above rooms or through tiny vents and into concrete serviceways. Each level has a bunch of options for moving around without being seen, although I found the cat and mouse game of taking out guards using throwing knives pretty compelling. Budget Cuts also has a sequel – Budget Cuts: Mission Insolvency.

Of course, all of the above are just the tip of the iceberg, but will give you some good options to get started. It’s also worth trying out the many solid – and free – tech demos, such as Aperture Hand Lab (an introduction to finger tracking with a great sense of humour), The Lab (a collection of mini-games and experiences – the archery in particular is a favourite) Google Earth VR (a bit rough around the edges but it’s pretty incredible interacting with the Earth in VR) and Tilt Brush… which actually isn’t free but is pretty affordable for immersive room-scale art creation software.

*IGN AU was sent an Index by Valve for testing purposes.

Cam Shea has worked at IGN since the before times, and has played more Breath of the Wild than just about any other game. He’s barely on Twitter.