Thrill of the Fight 2, the upcoming sequel to Quest’s most popular VR boxing sim, seems to be gearing up for release, as studios Sealost Interactive and Halfbrick Studios tossed out its first teaser trailer.

Update (September 16th, 2024): Announced early last year, we’re still waiting on gameplay, although the studios are chumming the waters now with a new live-action teaser, stating to “Prepare Yourself.”

The game is coming to Quest first, however original creator Ian Fitz says the team plans to bring it to other platforms eventually, which he notes isn’t due to “any contractual exclusivity or anything like that.”

Additionally, Fitz notes the Sealost Interactive team officially started work on Thrill of the Fight 2 in July 2020, but scaling the studio was an issue. “I abandoned that [internal scaling] plan and started working with Halfbrick, and we restarted the project together in January 2023,” Fitz says in a Discord post.

There’s no release date yet, however Fitz says we’ll find out “soon! ! and I mean soon!” The original article detailing the initial reveal and Halfbrick’s involvement follows below:

Original Article (January 23rd: 2023): Created by Ian Fitz and his studio Sealost Interactive in 2016, Thrill of the Fight focuses on realistic boxing mechanics, eschewing arcadey things like stamina bars and unrealistic knockout blows.

Thrill of the Fight 2, which is now in co-development by Halfbrick Studios, is bringing the much-requested feature of multiplayer mode. In a development update video (below), Halfbrick CEO Shainiel Deo reveals a few more features coming to the sequel: improved audio and visual feedback, changes to how combinations are scored, more gameplay variety to keep players coming back for more.

Halfbrick is known for developing both the flatscreen versions of Fruit Ninja and Fruit Ninja 2 and also their respective VR adaptations. The studio’s bread and butter however has been its slew of mobile games, including Jetpack Joyride, Battle Racing Stars, Dan the Man, and Shadows Remain.

In an update posted to Reddit by Sealost Interactive, series developer Ian Fitz discusses Halfbrick’s involvement.

“The reason I’m partnering up with Halfbrick on this is because I was comfortable it would help make the game I wanted to make. They want to make (and play) the same game I do,” Fitz says.

Fitz also broke down the division of labor, and how the sequel is being made in cooperation with Halfbrick.

“I made the blueprint. Sealost prototyped and proved out many of the mechanics and tech challenges. Halfbrick is putting together a release-worthy product and supporting it into the future. I’m in meetings with them every workday building the product right alongside them and making sure we don’t deviate from the original plan (which hasn’t been a problem because, again, they want to make the same game I do).”

Fitz notes the partnership with Halfbrick “doesn’t have anything to do with funding. This is just about having a solid production team and a plan in place to support the game post-launch.”

The studios say they’re aiming for release “later this year,” although that’s admittedly “just an estimate based on current progress,” Fitz says.

It’s still unclear which platforms are initial targets, however if the original is any indications, we’re liable to see it on Quest 2/Pro, Steam VR, and possibly also PSVR 2.

Human Fall Flat (2016) is getting VR support soon, bringing the whimsical, wobbly physics-based platformer to all major headsets. And you can thank VR modder ‘Raicuparta’ for that.

Raicuparta reveals Human Fall Flat studio No Brakes Games actually bought experimental VR support from the modder after having seen a video of some early control concepts at work. Although the mod was never released, it was enough to get the studio interested in hiring Raicuparta.

“I showed the video to the creators of the game, and they were very excited,” Raicuparta reveals in a Patreon post. “They offered to hire me, but that wouldn’t work for me at the time.”

While Raicuparta wasn’t directly involved in the development of the official VR port as it is today, the studio did implement the third-person control scheme featured in the recently released trailer, seen below.

“They then offered to buy the mod from me, so that they could eventually use the same “puppet controls” concept on an official VR port,” Raicuparta says. “I don’t think they really needed to pay me at all, so that was really nice of them.”

Raicuparta is known for adding unofficial VR support to number of games over the years, such as The Stanley Parable, Outer Wilds, and Neon White. Raicuparta also served up the game and mod management tool ‘Rai Pal’ to go along with their Universal Unity VR mod currently in development, which, much like Praydog’s Unreal Engine VR (UEVR) tool, makes it possible to inject VR support into flatscreen games running in the Unity game engine.

Working with Flat2VR Studios, an Impact Reality studio dedicated to porting flatscreen games to VR, Raicuparta also had a major hand in porting the soon-to-release Trombone Champ: Unflattened to all major VR headsets, which is slated to come among a rash of official VR ports, including WRATH: Aeon of Ruin VR, Roboquest VR, and Flatout VR.

Launching “soon” on Quest 2/3/Pro, PSVR 2 and SteamVR headsets, Human Fall Flat is coming with all levels from the game’s original release as well as extra content created by community members. There’s no release date yet, but you can now wishlist on Steam and the Horizon Store, with a PlayStation Store listing still pending.

The past few months has brought little speculation surrounding the name of Meta’s next headset, primarily due to a number of leaks from Meta’s periphery. A new leak, courtesy of serial dataminer Luna, however seemingly confirms what we all knew all along. It’s called Quest 3S.

Meta’s support pages now confirm the “Action Button” on Meta Quest 3S that I had previously leaked: https://t.co/vaCWeoksnv pic.twitter.com/uKuhluk4nC

— Luna (@Lunayian) September 13, 2024

The image above reportedly comes from a Meta support page detailing an ‘Action Button’, which seems to allow the user to switch between virtual reality and passthrough, an action that’s done with a tap of the headset on Quest 3.

Provided the image is genuine, it makes for the most direct confirmation of the Quest 3S name among a torrent of strong, but equally questionable leaks.

Back in March, an image from a now deleted Reddit post (preserved by Luna) showed an ostensible mock-up of a French language Meta store landing page, wherein ‘Quest 3S’ is both seen and named.

It’s still not clear the provenance of the image, although an official image of the headset itself cropped up in files found within the Meta PC client, confirming that the initial leak originally derived from either Meta or a close partner.

Then, in May, Meta-owned studio Magnopus briefly listed ‘Quest 3S’ as a supported device in their fitness game Alo Moves XR.

So now we’ve seen the headset, and we now know with confidence it’s actually named Quest 3S, what else is there to find out?

Here’s the rumor mill’s take: Quest 3S is said to have the same Fresnel lenses and display as Quest 2, although runs the same Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chipset as Quest 3, and comes with color passthrough for mixed reality experiences. It’s also rumored to target a $299 price point, and be offered in a both a 128GB and 256GB model.

With an FCC certification already on the books, we’re now waiting for confirmation of those specs and a big reveal at Connect 2024 kicking off September 25th – 26th, which seems all-but-confirmed to be the event to watch for all things Quest 3S.

Curve Games and No Brakes Games, makers of indie hit Human Fall Flat (2016), today announced an entirely new version of the game targeted at all major VR headsets.

Called Human Fall Flat VR, the puzzle-filled platformer sends you wobbling through whimsical dreamscapes, letting you control your wibbly arms, where you can leap, climb, and swing around by using your VR controllers.

The game is slated to arrive “soon” on Quest 2/3/Pro, PSVR 2 and SteamVR headsets, bringing with it all the levels from the game’s original release, along with a wide selection of Extra Dreams created by some of the most talented community creators, the studio says, noting that it will feature an “intuitive 3rd-person view specially designed for VR headsets.”

Like the original, there will be both solo and online multiplayer, letting you team up with three other friends to navigate the game’s tricky traps and mind-bending physics puzzles.

While there’s no release date on the books yet, and store pages for Meta and PSVR 2 are still coming, Human Fall Flat VR is available to wishlist on Steam, priced at $13/£10/€13.

Meta CTO and head of Reality Labs Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth says the company is currently working on a “glasses form-factor” mixed reality headset.

In an Instagram Q&A, Bosworth confirmed the company is working on the device, although didn’t provide any concrete timelines:

“I don’t think a mixed reality headset, even in a glasses form factor—which we’re working on—is going to disrupt the smartphone. But I do think augmented reality is going to at some point, and we’re also working on that—but I can’t tell you the timelines.”

Two weeks ago, a report from The Information citing two Meta employees alleged the company is now considering a mixed reality device resembling “a bulky pair of glasses,” codenamed ‘Puffin’, which could release as early as 2027.

Puffin allegedly incorporates pancake lenses and includes an “External Processing Puck and Battery,” which would ostensibly offload weight from the user’s head.

In his Q&A, Bosworth also highlighted that a “ground breaking” AR announcement is set to come during Connect 2024, which is due o kick off September 25th.

“I think the AR announcement will be very ground breaking. We’ve already kind of teased it, but I think when people start to be able to experience it, I think that it’s really going to turn some heads,” Bosworth said.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed in an interview with YouTuber Kane ‘Kallaway’ Sutter back in July the company was showing off a pair of prototype AR glasses soon, which now appears to point to a Connect reveal.

“The glasses are, I think, going to be a big deal,” Zuckerberg said. “We’re almost ready to start showing the prototype version of the full holographic glasses. We’re not going to be selling it broadly; we’re focused on building the full consumer version rather than selling the prototype.”

We’ll also be looking forward to learning more about the all-but-confirmed Quest 3S, which is likely set to be the company’s next affordable headset. There’s also a fleet of third-party Quest-like headsets running HorizonOS still sitting in the wings, which will arrive from partners ASUS, Lenovo, and Xbox.

Beat Saber is getting ‘Shock Drops’, something Meta calls a “new-ish hit single to keep things fresh,” the first of which is Eminem’s Houdini.

Houdini, the chart-topping song from Eminem’s twelfth studio album The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce), has had over over 138 million views on YouTube and over 340 million listens on Spotify. Meta notes in the annoucement it was a “natural choice for Beat Saber to wrap up brat summer.”

Houdini arrives with an updated version of the environment from the Hip Hop Mixtape, which was launched back in April and included tracks from the likes of Snoop, Dr. Dre, Eminem, The Notorious B.I.G., and 2Pac.

Like all of Beat Saber’s music packs, Shock Drops are coming to all supported headsets, including Quest, PSVR 2, and PC VR headsets. You can find them over in the new game section ‘Shock Drops’, priced at $2 a piece.

Note: like the Hip Hop Mixtape, Houdini is uncensored, which means it won’t show up for people with parent-managed Meta accounts.

Hitman 3 VR: Reloaded flopped pretty hard when it launched on Quest 3 last week, currently garnering it a [2,7/5] star user rating to go along with an overwhelmingly negative reaction from reviewers far and wide. Now developer XR Games is pushing out its first big update which hopes to address a myriad of issues.

In our full review we gave Hitman 3 VR: Reloaded a [3/10], where we noted that while technically playable on launch day, it was simply not advisable due to some pretty terrible optimization—not to mention the woeful amount of gloss stripped from the original to make it work on Quest.

During our review, the studio mentioned there would be a ‘Day 4 Patch’ confirmed to drop on today, September 9th, that would address some these ills. We haven’t gone hands-on with the patch yet, although we’re looking forward to seeing it in action when it rolls out, presumably later today.

Check out those patch notes below:

Day 4 Patch

Major Additions and Changes

• Significant improvements to LOD popping (adjusted LOD distance — world elements will appear from further away)
• Added stabiliser for the sniper rifle while aiming down sights
• Increased crowd sizes and cull distances
• Fixed Dartmoor Library agency pickup

Small Tweaks

• Adjusted lighting to better balance light in dark areas
• Data Core Chamber area brightened [Chongqing]
• Outdoor area brightened [Final Test]
• Gun no longer visible in the left hand while dragging bodies
• Adjusted the grip on multiple Sword type weapons to better match player’s hand position
• Reduced animation slicing for distance NPCs and crowds

Fixes

• Fixed occluders in all levels to reduce issues with flickering, floating, and invisible environment elements
  • Fixed assets in all levels to remove Z-fighting and gaps in environments
  • Fixed holes in different areas of the terrain geo as well as as floating assets
  • Bikes no longer clip into the ground [Berlin] The ‘Yuzhong Square’ Neon sign renders correctly [Chongqing]
  • The Microphone Asset in the centre of the Asado now displays [Mendoza]
• Improved textures in all levels
  • Water textures added to Carpathian Mountains
  • Texture displays when shooting bullets while flashbanged
• VR pointers no longer appear behind UI in certain options
• Fixed possible crash when exiting to main menu through pause menu when cinematic is playing
• Cinematics now play on first-time selection of Mendoza and Chongqing
• Window frame assets now display in both eyes from a mid-far proximity
• Player can no longer see items they hold when entering the “Dance with Diana” mission exit [Mendoza]
• Completing “The Final Test” now plays “Call Me 47” cutscene
• Environment no longer clips through the train floor [Carpathian Mountains]
• Selecting ‘Continue Story’ after completing mission from loaded save will now play cinematic
• Adjusted light emission and VFX in all levels
  • Antique Cannon smoke VFX corrected [Mendoza]
  • Torches have correct light emission VFX [Berlin]
  • Improved VFX for water bottle explosions
  • Added water VFX to fountain [Dubai]
• Loading screen graphics no longer display tilted or at the wrong height if HMD is tilted before they appear

Next year VR will get its first big Batman VR game, exclusively on Quest 3. We went hands-on with the game and found out what it’s like to be the brawler behind the mask.

My first impression of Batman: Arkham Shadow is that it was hard on my back.

The Arkham series is well known for its “freeflow combat,” where you’re able to freely attack in any direction at any time. You manage violence in these games like an orchestra conductor, where you’re always in control.

The first big hurdle for adapting Arkham into VR, as an exclusive for the Meta Quest 3, was how to handle freeflow combat. The developer Camouflaj’s answer was to turn the game into a boxing simulator.

I’m only about half kidding. When you enter combat in Arkham Shadow, you open by throwing a punch, which makes Batman lunge at your targeted opponent. From there, you can punish them with a flurry of lefts and rights.

If one of your opponent’s buddies goes for a sucker punch, you’re warned by a blue icon that shows up directly in your field of vision. When you swing your arm in the indicated direction, Batman instantly abandons his current target in favor of countering the incoming punch. You’re never off-guard and, just like the rest of the Arkham series, you’re always in control.

However, you’re also always shadowboxing. And I felt the results in my back muscles for the rest of the week. I might grab a couple of light wrist weights before I pick up the full version, so I can pretend to be Batman and get a work out at the same time.

I played a short demo of Arkham Shadow at Meta’s offices in Bellevue, Washington, a week in advance of the game’s first gameplay reveal.

Arkham Shadow is a canon entry in the Arkham series timeline, set a few months after the events of 2013’s Arkham Origins. At this point in the series, Batman (Roger Craig Smith) is still relatively new to fighting crime, without the network of allies, equipment, and hidden lairs that he’ll eventually develop.

As the game opens, Batman’s only ally is his butler Alfred, who serves as his mission control for an investigation that’s taken Batman into Gotham’s sewer system. The Rat King has organized dozens of Gotham’s dispossessed citizens into an anarchist movement, which has recently kidnapped several policemen.

The demo I played is primarily about rescuing those policemen, then returning to the surface, in a short sequence that also serves as Arkham Shadow’s tutorial level.

Batman’s basic equipment in Arkham Shadow includes Batarangs, which you can retrieve by grabbing them off of your chest. These automatically return to Batman’s hand once thrown and are primarily used to target distant switches or destructible objects. If you toss one at an enemy, it’s good for a short stun, which can be useful in a pinch.

Batman is also equipped with his grapple gun so you can zip to distant ledges. And there’s the “detective vision” that’s built into his mask. This is activated in Arkham Shadow by bringing your right hand to your head and pushing the trigger button on the controller. In detective vision, interactive objects in your environment are highlighted, you can see opponents’ alarm levels and equipment, and you can track electronics by their power conduits.

The detective vision also lets you see hostile opponents through walls, which gives you a necessary edge. Batman’s armor can’t handle incoming gunfire, so you’re at a distinct disadvantage whenever street punks show up with rifles.

At this point, you’re advised to use stealth, confusion, and the environment to your advantage. Batman can travel unseen through vents, land stealthy silent takedowns if he gets the drop of an enemy, or leave opponents dangling from Gotham’s trademark Gothic statuary. If you’re caught off-guard, you can hit B to drop a smoke bomb from Batman’s left gauntlet, which obscures enemies’ vision and stuns them for long enough that you can retreat to the shadows.

As Arkham Shadow plays out, you’ll gradually accumulate more gadgets and tools. The demo ends before what the studio told me was the game’s first big plot twist. Shortly after that point, players are introduced to Arkham Shadow’s hub level.

From here, you’ll be able to take on the game’s antagonists in whatever order you prefer, and will unlock more of Batman’s arsenal along the way, such as a pistol that shoots the trademark Arkham explosive gel. That in turn lets you revisit old locations in search of more bonuses and collectibles, which are hidden throughout the environment. I was able to find a couple of rat statues and propaganda radios made by the Rat King’s followers, which I got to smash against the ground or wall for achievement progress.

The game’s developer, Camouflaj, deliberately dodged the issue of what other antagonists would appear in Arkham Shadow, and are focusing for now on Batman’s fight against the Rat King. The game will also feature appearances by Ratcatcher (Khary Payton), Commissioner James Gordon (Mark Ralston), Harvey Dent (Troy Baker), and Harleen Quinzel (Tara Strong), the latter two of whom have yet to become supervillains at this point in the Arkham timeline.

You’ll also receive backup in Arkham Shadow from a pre-Batgirl Barbara Gordon, who serves as computer support for Batman. Part of the game’s plot reportedly involves Batman having to keep secrets from both Barbara and her father, neither of whom want the other to know that they’re working with Batman.

That all matches with something that’s conveyed very well by the demo: in Arkham Shadow, Gotham is just on the edge. Everything in the city, and about Batman, is about plate-spinning. Everything could fall apart at any time.

That mirrors the combat system; it’s got a certain ragged desperation to it. In the later Arkham games, you’re able to play Batman as a sort of violent chessmaster, where you dance between opponents and beat up six baddies at once. In Arkham Shadow, however, you have to deliver each individual punch and takedown yourself. Not only does that encourage you to do whatever you can to stack the deck in your favor ahead of an open confrontation (like silent takedowns or opening with a Batarang) but it really sells the illusion that you’re in a back-alley fistfight. When I got tired halfway through an encounter, and realized there were still two guys left to fight, there was a distinct moment there that I remembered I wasn’t Batman.

I’d go so far as to say that it’s a more interesting version of Batman to me than the older version from the later Arkham games on the timeline. Developer Camouflaj has taken advantage of Arkham Shadow’s status as an interquel to write Batman as experienced but still quite raw, in a city that barely makes any sense: the sewers are nicer than the city streets, the cops are more dangerous than the crooks, and the most moral person in Gotham is a 20-something vigilante.

I’m genuinely interested in seeing where the Batman superfans at Camouflaj plan to go with this. The overall atmosphere feels very different than the high-concept dystopia of, say, Arkham City. Arkham Shadow is about rolling around in the dirt.

Beyond that, Camouflaj kept much of Batman: Arkham Shadow under wraps. Most of the team was dying to talk more about it as its 75-person team has been living and breathing Batman for the last four years. If there was one impression I had as I walked away from the demo, besides the feeling in my back muscles, it was that Arkham Shadow was a labor of love.

Batman: Arkham Shadow is scheduled for release this October as an exclusive for Quest 3.

The Unity Cube is an objectively terrible game that was built to test the limits of what Quest content Meta would allow into its uncurated App Lab program. The experiment continues to prove its worth; now that Meta has dissolved App Lab, The Unity Cube has moved to the main Quest store and shown that Meta is truly hands-off when it comes to the scope or quality of what can get listed in its VR game store.

For a long time the only official way to distribute an app on Quest was to submit it to Meta for manual review. But Meta would only accept applications which met opaque quality criteria, like how much content the app offered and whether it was appropriately polished. This made it difficult for developers to get smaller or experimental apps in front of the Quest audience, leading to significant developer outcry for a more open process.

That prompted the creation of ‘App Lab’, an alternative distribution approach for Quest which allowed developers to submit applications for distribution without any judgement on quality or scope. But it came with the caveat that App Lab apps wouldn’t be shown in the main Quest store, leaving it up to developers to point their audience to the app’s page.

To test whether Meta was going truly hands-off when it came to the quality of App Lab apps, developer Tony “SkarredGhost” Vitillo created The Unity Cube.

As the name implies, the app is simply a blank Unity environment with a grey cube—that you can’t even interact with. Even at the great price of free, this app would have never stood a chance of making it onto the main Quest store. But could it make it onto App Lab?

Indeed, Meta allowed The Unity Cube into App Lab, proving it would let just about anything into the program, as long as technical requirements were met and content guidelines were respected (ie: no adult or illegal content).

It was good news that developers could submit any app to App Lab for distribution on Quest without worrying that Meta would block an app on the grounds that it wasn’t complete or polished enough. But sentiment remained that having this ‘unlisted’ Quest store made it unnecessarily difficult for developers to find customers.

After several years of App Lab, developer pressure finally pushed Meta to dissolve the program, ultimately merging the App Lab store with the main Quest store. This meant anyone could submit an app of any quality to the main Quest store where it would be visible to customers through browsing and searching.

Last week The Unity Cube completed its journey and became listed on the main Quest store, along with other App Lab apps, again proving that Meta would be truly hands-off on curation.

And though it’s still possible for developers to mark their Quest apps as “Early Access”—to tell customers to expect something experimental or incomplete—The Unity Cube’s creator joked that “it’s not even in Early Access because it is perfect as it is!”

The developer of Gorilla Tag, one of VR’s most popular and commercially successful games, has revealed the first clear look at its next game. Previously codenamed ‘Project A2’, the title has been officially dubbed Orion Drift, and aims to take Gorilla Tag’s social structure to the next level.

Another Axion is the indie studio behind Gorilla Tag, the viral VR game that’s taken on a life of its own and earned more than $100 million in revenue—making it one of VR’s most successful titles.

And while most studios would be reluctant to disrupt such a massive success with their own new title, that looks like exactly what Another Axiom is up to with Orion Drift. A newly released teaser shows how it will work.

Orion Drift is built atop Gorilla Tag’s signature arm-based locomotion system, but players will inhabit robot bodies rather than gorillas. But that simple change of avatar is far from the disruptive part. The game is taking Gorilla Tag’s seamless social lobby navigation and ‘playground’ gameplay and turning it up to 11.

Orion Drift is promised to feature space stations upon which up to 200 players can roam simultaneously. The space stations consist of multiple large arena spaces where players can play a wide variety of different games, from something that looks not far from ‘Gorilla Tag’ itself to ‘Tackleball’, which looks a lot like soccer or Rocket Race, but of course using your hands for movement and controlling the ball.

We also get a glimpse of another part of the station which includes something that looks like a golf course and pickleball courts. And still another area hosting an event called ‘Scrap Run’ which looks like an obstacle race.

Although this would already be plenty of space for activities, the cylindrical space station has at least seven additional huge modules that are shown as being ‘under construction’—the implication is that these will all fill out to support more unique activities and game modes.

And it might even be players that build out the rest of the station. Another Axiom previously said about the game that “[…] players can run their own servers, control their own stations, host their own rule sets, moderate and customize the look and feel of activities, posters, game modes and more,” and also mentioned plans for a level editor which would allow players to build their own maps and activities.

And if that wasn’t enough, at the end of the trailer the camera pulls way back and reveals not just the one floating station, but nearly 20 floating through space together.

It’s an ambitious concept that’s clearly inspired by the seamless social structure of Gorilla Tag, where game lobbies are ‘places’ and changing game modes is as natural as walking between rooms.

In Orion Drift, however, the idea isn’t just to wander down the hall into a new room, but traverse a whole space station full of people—and maybe even jump from station to station to find new game modes and people.

For now Another Axiom is calling this first look a “development snapshot” comprised of “early gameplay footage.” There aren’t yet hard plans for a release, but the studio is taking sign-ups for a closed early access period on its official Discord.

Behemoth from Skydance and Alien: Rogue Incursion from Survios are two of the most anticipated VR games coming in 2024, and both are headed for release on Quest, PSVR 2, and PC VR. And now we know when we’ll first be able to get our hands on them.

Behemoth Release Date on Quest

Starting off with Behemoth, the highly anticipated VR title from Skydance Interactive is set to debut on November 14, 2024, on Quest. Although the game is also planned for release on PSVR 2 and PC VR, release dates for those platforms have not yet been confirmed and may come at a later date.

Skydance, the studio behind the critically acclaimed The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, has shown Behemoth to have a dark fantasy setting with intense combat mechanics.

Alien: Rogue Incursion Release Date

Next up is Alien: Rogue Incursion, which is now set to launch on December 19, 2024, simultaneously on PSVR 2, PC VR, and, among Quest headsets, exclusively on Quest 3.

The game is being developed by Survios, a longtime VR studio known for their work on Creed: Rise to Glory and The Walking Dead Onslaught, and a range of other early VR titles.

Alien: Rogue Incursion promises to immerse players in the terrifying world of the Alien franchise, and the recent pre-order and release date trailer shows us a clear look at the game’s shooting gameplay and Xenomorph enemies.

Bonus – Batman: Arkham Shadows Release Window

One more game on our list of the most anticipated VR games of 2024, Batman: Arkham Shadow, doesn’t have an exact release date yet. But this week we got a pretty specific release window: October 2024.

Batman: Arkham Shadow is a Quest 3 headset and platform exclusive, meaning it will only run on Quest 3 or later, and isn’t planned for release on other VR platforms.

First released eight years ago, SUPERHOT VR is not just a notable VR classic—it’s still a great game. Although it never got a sequel, it left enough of a mark for not just one but several spiritual successors. The upcoming Quest game Action Hero from Fast Travel Games revisits SUPERHOT’s innovative mechanic with a smart premise. But to meet or surpass its predecessor, Action Hero will need to take it to the next level.

If you’ve never played Superhot, it’s built around a core mechanic where time only moves forward when you are physically moving. So if you stay completely still, the game more-or-less freezes. That means if there’s a bullet heading for your face and you freeze in place, the bullet freezes too. That gives you time to observe the situation and make a calculated decision about what to do next. It’s basically ‘bullet time’ from The Matrix, but you’re in control of it.

Action Hero isn’t exactly trying to hide its inspiration… in fact I’d say the unique ‘time moves when you move’ mechanic from Superhot is the really the heart of the game and the main reason to play it. After playing Action Hero for myself I can confirm that dodging a bullet as it wizzes inches from your face—while its path through time is directly related to your movements—is still an incredibly unique and engaging VR experience.

But where SUPERHOT had an intentionally low-poly look and consisted of a setting that was little more than a vague backdrop for the game to exist, Action Hero is built around the idea that you’re an action movie stunt person doing all these crazy moves because you’re being filmed for a movie.

It’s a clever idea. Levels are packaged as ‘movies’ which consist of a series of scenes strung together under one umbrella. For instance, there’s a level that’s roughly in the vain of Indiana Jones, where you’re in an ancient temple-like environment shooting baddies. Each ‘scene’ within the ‘movie’ is a moment of gameplay where you’re tasked with dodging, shooting, etc.

When you complete a scene, you move forward to the next one, and so on, with a logical progression that follows a basic movie narrative (ie: hero enters temple, kills goons, stops bad guys from stealing the important thing, then escapes).

This structure not only increases the cohesion of the scenes, but also allows for a bunch of different settings, enemies, weapons, etc., by letting players jump from one ‘movie’ to another.

The basic ‘time moves when you move’ mechanic is executed well, and generally feels as awesome as it does in Superhot.

But to really deliver something that feels like a next-gen version of Superhot, Action Hero needs to seriously bump up the variety and polish—otherwise, why not just play Superhot instead?

The whole premise of Action Hero is that you’re a stunt person acting out spectacular action scenes in movies. But spectacle is lacking. The game doesn’t feel particularly polished visually or audibly.

Of course this is an unfinished build of the game and hopefully more polish comes later. But if the marketing tells us this game is supposed to be a “blockbuster VR FPS with explosive set pieces and cinematic design,” then those elements should really be in place before showing off the game. With Action Hero planned for launch by the end of this year… there’s only four months, at most, for that to fall into place.

It’s not just visual and audio polish either. SUPERHOT succeeded not just because it had a really cool fundamental mechanic, but also because the level design—the specific scenarios the player has to conquer—were very well crafted. They were challenging and varied throughout.

Action Hero has proven that it can nail the fundamental mechanic, but it’s going to need to tighten up its level design and bring more variety—in weapons, enemies, and scenarios—into the mix if it wants to have a genuine value proposition when put next to Superhot itself.

I, for one, would love to see Fast Travel Games pull this off. Conceptually, Action Hero is genius. It revives a truly unique mechanic and builds it atop a framework that allows for unlimited creativity in what kinds of scenarios the player could be put in—be that contemporary action, horror, sci-fi, western, and a million other possibilities. But when it comes right down to it, quantity isn’t quality. The studio needs to nail the depth of gameplay before it’s worth leveraging the breadth of gameplay.

In development by Meta first-party studio Camouflaj, Batman: Arkham Shadow is one of the most highly anticipated VR games of 2024, and one the first title from the company to be Quest 3 exclusive. A new trailer for the game gives us quite a bit: the first look at real gameplay, what we can expect from Quest 3 graphics, and a Fall release window.

Batman fans with a Quest 3 will be happy to see a newly revealed “October 2024” release date for Arkham Shadow, which means we’ll be able to play the game in less than two and a half months.

The trailer also gives us a first look at real gameplay, which certainly looks on-brand both mechanically and thematically compared to the other Batman Arkham games.

We can see Batman’s grappling launcher cleverly used as a vehicle for both distant interactions with enemies (pulling them closer for a smackdown) and locomotion. We also see lots of classic Arkham gameplay tropes like gliding, stealth, combat dodging, and ‘detective vision’.

The trailer’s fine print specifies “Captured in-engine. Actual gameplay may vary.” This likely means the footage was actually captured from a PC development build. However, given that we know this game is exclusive to Quest 3 and is very unlikely to launch on PC, it’s fair to assume the trailer represents the graphical bar the studio is aiming for when running on Quest 3.

Assuming that’s the case, the game is visually looking very impressive compared to the average Quest title, and will hopefully be a great showcase of what Quest 3 is capable of when pushed to its limits.

If you’re looking for some fun on Quest this Summer, there’s a lot happening. In this roundup we’ve got a look at new Quest game launches, upcoming titles, and big updates.

XR News Bits

An incredible amount of exciting XR news comes our way every day. Very often we see news come across our desk that’s worth highlighting, but we don’t always have the bandwidth for a full article on every one of them. XR News Bits is our occasional roundup of stories we think are worth a shout-out, even if we can’t take you in-depth.

Launch: Gravity League – A Sparc-inspired 1v1 VR Sport

Originally released in 2017, Sparc was a VR cult classic, but unfortunately didn’t live long enough to make it to the Quest era where it would have shone.

Luckily Gravity League is here with similarly inspired gameplay that plays like a cross between 3D Pong and some futuristic sport.

Gravity League is now available on Quest and is free-to-play, and the studio has plans to bring it to PC VR in the future.

In a world where gravity is no longer a limitation, the Gravity League has become the ultimate test of skill and endurance for athletes from all corners of the galaxy.

The rules are simple: 2 players, 1 ball, zero gravity – the first player to 11 goals wins.

• Compete online with opponents from across the galaxy
• Play with your friends and compete in custom private matches
• Explore all our wacky party modes
• Make your way to the top in the epic Solo Campaign mode
• Customize your gear with gloves in all shapes and sizes
• Mix and match gloves to find the best playstyle for you
• Unlock unique new athletes, balls, gloves, and stadiums
• Team up with your friends for a 2v2 action

So strap on your Gravity Gloves and get ready to take on the competition!

Launch: Zero Caliber 2 – Campaign Shooter Action with 4-player Co-op and 10-player Multiplayer

Looking to sink your teeth into a new VR shooter? Zero Caliber 2 is the next big shooter from XREAL Games. We love to see that its purported eight hours worth of campaign can be played with up to four players total in co-op. A perfect way to ‘git gud’ with your squad before diving into competitive multiplayer.

Zero Caliber 2 is now available on Quest for $30 and also planned for launch on PC VR at a later date.

News: Township Tale Developer Shares Updates on New Game, ‘Project 2’

We first reported on the unnamed ‘Project 2’, the next title from Alta Studio, back in April. Alta Studio is the developer of Township Tale, a very unique social VR game that’s available on Quest and PC VR.

The studio has been sharing occasional developer updates showing a transparent look at the creation of ‘Project 2’, a multiplayer dungeon crawler extraction game.

The latest updates, #11 and #12, show progress on enemy behaviors, sounds, and visuals. They also look at the current gameplay loop which involves players finding markers on the map which steadily point them toward a boss. Once the boss is slain it will drop a key which players can take to a certain location to open a portal and extract with their loot.

The updates also show the game will feature a branching skill tree which allows players to specialize into different classes with different skills. All players start as a ‘recruit’ but will become more diverse over time as they choose a direction in the skill tree.

Discount: Dungeons of Eternity is 50% Off on Quest

While we’re on the topic of dungeon crawlers, co-op dungeon crawler Dungeons of Eternity is celebrating the approach of its one-year release anniversary with a massive 50% discount on Quest until August 25th.

Dungeons of Eternity launched last October and has had a great reception from users, holding down a 4.7 out of 5 score across 3,100 reviews—making it one of Quest’s best-rated games. The game has seen several updates since launch, adding new weapons, environments, and more. It supports co-op play for up to three players.

Upcoming Update: Underdogs ‘Sandboxxer’ Update

VR mech brawler Underdogs is getting a big update on August 29th. The ‘Sandboxxer’ update will add sandbox tools so players can set up their own challenging battles. There will also be leaderboards to fight over, challenges to conquer, and a practice gym to experiment and train.

Underdogs launched in early 2024 and employs a unique locomotion and combat system that puts players in direct control of a mech with fun smash-and-crash gameplay. The game is exceptionally well rated by players on both available platforms, Quest and Steam.

Fresh off of its announcement of joining the A16Z SPEEDRUN accelerator program, Flat2VR Studios has announced four existing flatscreen games that are getting official ports for all major VR headsets.

Flat2VR Studios exists to adapt existing flatscreen games for VR. Today the studio announced the first four titles that are in the works, all planned for release on Quest, PSVR 2, and PC VR. Check out all the trailers below.

WRATH: Aeon of Ruin VR

The original WRATH: Aeon of Ruin (2024) is a “hardcore FPS inspired by the icons of the ’90s, powered by the legendary Quake 1 Tech. Taking place in a realm left to rot, take up arms, unearth long-forgotten secrets and hunt down the Guardians of the Old World.” The game is rated “Mostly Positive” (77% favorable reviews) by Steam users.

The VR port will put players in direct control of their weapons. We’ll be interested to see if the studio builds out a manual reload system or sticks to simple button-based reloading animations. No release date has been announced yet.

Roboquest VR

The original Roboquest (2023) is a “is a fast FPS Roguelite in a scorched futureworld. You’re a rebooted Guardian, ready to kick some metal ass! Fight with your buddy or by yourself and annihilate hordes of deadly bots in ever-changing environments.” The game is rated “Overwhelmingly Positive” (95% favorable reviews) Steam by Steam users.

The original game includes full-featured co-op support for up to two players and we’re hoping that will carry into the Roboquest VR port from Flat2VR Studios. Maybe even with cross-play? Fingers crossed. Roboquest VR does not yet have a release date.

Flatout VR

The original Flatout (2004) is said to “deliver a thrilling combination of high-octane racing, smash-em-up demolition derby action, and death defying stunts propelling the driver through the windshield!” The game is rated “Very Positive” (92% favorable reviews) by Steam users.

The Flatout VR port will put players directly in the driver’s seat as they crash and smash their way around raceways. With the sudden stops of crashing, and the possibility of “propelling the driver through the windshield”, comfort design for the VR port will surely be a high priority. Flatout VR doesn’t have a release date yet.

Trombone Champ: Unflattened 

And last but not least, Trombone Champ, the meme-game of 2022 where even the very best players sound like amateurs. This is a rhythm game where messing up can be just as fun as hitting the perfect notes. The original game is rated “Overwhelmingly Positive” (98% favorable reviews) by Steam users.

The port, titled Trombone Champ: Unflattened, puts the trombone directly into players hands. With motion controls, VR offers a more authentic way to play the instrument by moving your hand the same way you’d move the slide on a real trombone. There’s no release date for Trombone Champ: Unflattened yet.

Veteran VR studio nDreams has made several shooters with innovative mechanics over the years. That experience seems to have guided the studio’s publishing interest as well; the newly announced VENDETTA FOREVER, developed by MeatSpace Interactive and published by nDreams, uses a unique movement mechanic to create fast-paced VR gameplay. We jumped into the Quest demo that’s available to all starting today.

Update (August 15th, 2024, 3:46PM ET): Vendetta Forever is being published nDreams and developed by MeatSpace Interactive, a one-man studio run by Zander Dejah.

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that VENDETTA FOREVER was being developed by nDreams itself.

Vendetta Forever is an arcade shooter through and through. Though it has the ‘auto-aim’ vibes and bullet trails of Pistol Whip and the slow motion bullet dodging of SUPERHOT VR (and shares aesthetics of both), Vendetta Forever is far from being a clone. It brings something new and interesting to the table: a movement mechanic where you can teleport to any gun you can see, whether sitting on the ground or still falling from a dispatched enemy’s hands.

And this isn’t just an occasional thing, the game is built around your ability to rapidly move from one gun to the next, not just to get around, but to avoid all the bullets that were headed right for your face. And because there are almost always bullets headed for your face, rapidly the game sets a frenetic pace of jumping from gun to gun.

Even on the base ‘Normal’ setting, you’ll almost certainly find yourself dying a few times when you start a new level. But the fun part is knowing what to expect the next time around… after a few tries you’ll be moving with the speed of a superhero and shooting like a sharpshooter that can see the future.

Though this pace can definitely make you feel like a badass superhero, it never really lets up. If you aren’t moving, you’re dead. That means not only jumping from gun-to-gun, but also physically moving your body to dodge incoming bullets, similar to Pistol Whip.

There was at least one part in my hands-on with the game where things slowed down for a minute—I was shooting a big machine gun out of a helicopter—which was a nice change of pace, but it only lasted briefly. I hope the game will include more moments like this to break up the pace. I also wouldn’t mind an outright ‘freeze’ ability to freeze the action and give myself a few seconds to think about what my next move should be. Perhaps this would be an ability with a long cooldown to give players that breather moment when they need it, but not reduce the challenge too greatly.

Levels in the game are largely deterministic. The same enemy will round the same corner at the same moment. As mentioned, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing because it turns you into a future-seeing gun-god. But levels also have some alternative paths which you can take depending upon which gun you decide to teleport to.

Ultimately this didn’t change very much about the level, but it might add a little replayability for those aiming for high scores on the leaderboards. Hunting for new and potentially faster paths through a level could be an interesting aspect of the game.

The levels that I played in Vendetta Forever are, so far, quite short. If you know the path they might take you 30-60 seconds to complete. But those first few times dying while exploring the level expands that time a bit. But if you aren’t interested in optimizing your score or completion time, you’ll be blasting through levels pretty quickly, so it remains to be seen if the developer can create enough to feel like there’s really some meat to the experience for those not interested in improving their leaderboard rank.

And a final note that didn’t really fit anywhere else… I’m fine with the game’s stylized look, but was very surprised at the significant amount of aliasing. Given the low-poly aesthetic, this really feels like a game that should be running at maximum resolution and native 90Hz or 120Hz on a Quest 3. It’s possible the build I played has yet to be optimized for Quest 3, or perhaps a significant optimization pass will land before the game launches.

I’m sold on the underlying mechanics of Vendetta Forever. Moving by teleporting from one gun to the next, combined with some generous auto-aim to make you feel like you’ve got action-movie aim, definitely works.

The success of Vendetta Forever is likely to hinge on the quality of the levels if there’s enough (and enough variety) among them to keep the game interesting. I’m hopeful the developer can pull it off!

The demo for Vendetta Forever on Quest is available today, and the game will launch on Quest 2, Quest Pro, Quest 3, and PSVR 2 this October.

During the VR Games Showcase today, developers Spoonfed Interactive and Combat Waffle Studios and publisher Beyond Frames Entertainment showed off more of the upcoming VR multiplayer survival game GRIM.

In Grim, you must immerse yourself in its red wasteland, where survival is not just a choice but a grueling battle against nature and other desperate players, the studios say.

“You must gather resources, craft, and build your base, all to stay alive.”

Coming to Quest 2/3/Pro and PC VR “soon”, we also got a first look in the game’s official reveal trailer, making it feel more than a bit like Rust on Mars.

The studios say Grim is expected to launch a public alpha on both the Horizon Store for Quest and Steam VR later this year.

IO Interactive and UK-based studio XR Games announced back in June that a new version of stealth-action game Hitman 3 was coming to Meta Quest 3. Now the studios have shown off a deeper look at gameplay.

Revealed during the VR Games Showcase today, Hitman 3 VR: Reloaded promises to be “[r]ebuilt from the ground up for VR,” coming exclusively to Quest 3 this summer.

Previously, Hitman 3 launched with VR support on the original PSVR in 2021, and later came to PC VR headsets with the Windows release a few months later—making Hitman 3 available on the Quest platform for the first time.

Notably, the Quest 3 version is said to include a completely overhauled user interface and “enhanced movement mechanics” beyond PSVR and PC VR versions.

While we’re still waiting on a definite release date beyond its summer 2024 launch window, you can wishlist the game on the Horizon Store for Quest 3 here.

VR veteran developer nDreams today unveiled at the VR Games Showcase a new shooter called Vendetta Forever, which seems to be taking a few cues from SUPERHOT.

Vendetta Forever is said to fuse rapid-fire tactical gunplay with acrobatic style in an unapologetic love letter to classic action cinema.

Coming to Quest 2/3/Pro and PSVR 2, nDreams says the game takes “everything you love about top-tier VR action, remove the fluff and cut to the good bit for 100% gunplay purity.”

Here’s how the studio describes it:

Powered by the all-new LO-KILL-MOTION mechanic. Shoot to kill. Kill to move.  Dispatch foes and seize their weapon in mid-air to propel yourself forward. Strategically plot your next move with each takedown in a frantic fight to the bitter end.

Vendetta Forever is slated to release on Quest and PSVR 2 in October 2024. The studio says a demo will also be available on Quest.

Store pages for Quest and PSVR 2 are already live so you can wishlist today.