Oculus announces the first games that will launch with its Rift VR headset

Ben Silverman
image

We’re less than two weeks out from the March 28 launch of the Oculus Rift, and while much has been made about the VR headset’s tech specs, pricing, and long-term potential, the reason most people will get one this year is to play games.

And right out the gate, they’ll have a ton of titles to choose from. Oculus has revealed the final list and pricing of the 30 games waiting for the lucky few who jumped on Rift pre-orders back in January:

image

Bundled (Free)
Lucky’s Tale
Eve Valkyrie

$5
Adventure Time: Magic Man’s Head Games

$10
Albino Lullaby
Audio Arena
Darknet
Dreadhalls
Esper 2
Eve: Gunjack
Herobound SC
Shufflepuck Cantina Deluxe VR
Vektron Revenge

$15
Dead Secret
Fly to KUMA
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
Omega Agent
Rooms
Pinball FX2 VR

image

$20
ADR1FT
Smashing the Battle
Windlands

$25
Radial G
VR Tennis Online

$30
Defense Grid 2: Enhanced VR Edition

$40
AirMech: Command

image

$50
Chronos
Project Cars

$60
Elite Dangerous: Deluxe Edition
Eve: Valkyrie Founder’s Pack

PRICE TBD
Blaze Rush
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

It’s an impressive list covering a wide range of genres — action, racing, strategy, platformers, sports, adventure, horror — though what also stands out is the pricing scale.

Most new platforms embrace one standard price point with a few outliers, but that’s clearly not the case here. It looks like $10 to 20 is the sweet spot for the smaller, more experiential games, while some of the more complete, full-fledged titles, like the massive space game Elite Dangerous, sit at the traditional $60. (Though in that particular case, if you’ve already purchased a non-VR version of Elite, you’ll get a code to redeem the Rift version free of charge.)

At a press event earlier this week, Oculus also rated each game’s ”Comfort” level, a nice euphemism for, “Will it make me barf?” The highly-anticipated outer-space disaster game ADR1FT, for instance, is considered an “Intense” experience (having played it a few times, I can vouch for this), whereas the strategic AirMech: Command is “Comfortable.” It’s a smart move, though in my experience VR comfort is very much subjective. I never got queasy playing ADR1FT, but I did get a little dizzy playing the racer Radial G.

We’ll have a full review of the Rift and a look at some of the coolest launch games in the coming weeks. Until then, here’s a quick/spastic look at the launch lineup:

Ben Silverman loves VR but hates what it does to his hair. Seriously. He complains about this on Twitter @ben_silverman.