This is just a collection of minigames designed to be a nice introduction to VR, but it does its job well and gives a good tour of different aspects of the technology. “Postcards” and the solar system and human body scan models show how it can be used to experience the world in new ways, “Robot Repair” and “Secret Shop” are little narrative pieces that show it as portals into new worlds, and the slingshot and longbow minigames show off some physics-based gameplay.

“Xortex 26XX” is what really stands out to me in this collection, though. A little 3D shmup that both convinced me the real difference between a VR and traditional, flat game and also broadened my idea of what a VR game meant. It’s, interestingly, not first person as one might assume would be the default for VR games. The headset is simply the viewpoint into the world but does not act as a head for any character. Instead a small spaceship is tied to the position of the controller and the player must manœuvre through a three-dimensional bullet hell. This is both hectic and natural. Within the VR perspective I found that I had an in­tuitive under­stand­ing of where everything lay in space beyond what I would in any other kind of computer game. I could look around without paying close attention to the position of the ship (I know where my hand is, after all) and cleanly judge how to move around bullet patterns that I could map out the trajectories of by instinct in a way that I have never been able to with other shoot ’em ups. I very much want to play a more fully-featured version of this game.

Getting back into VR most of my time, as with when I had this setup before, has been spent sweating in Beat Sabre. This is probably the most exercise I’ve gotten in a while. Getting into the rhythm of a song with your body in a very literal way is incredibly satisfying, and it helps that standing on an unmoving stage helps with a lot of the disorientation and motion sickness that many VR games can cause.

I don’t really know what most of the built-in songs are or what the campaign mode even does, I just use it to play custom maps that people have made. My main rotation is a lot of Toby Fox tracks, some Sonic the Hedgehog music, and a smattering of old favourite songs and silly bullshit. I do tend to go back to the Deltarune and Undertale tracks over and over, though—the energetic but fairly straight­for­ward melodies are prefect for this kind of workout. A lot of people have done really fun things with how they map out tracks as well. Two of my favourites are the “Death By Glamour” track I have downloaded making one rapidly do disjointed at the start, like Metaton, and “I'll Make a Man Out of You” having one act out training activities like swimming at certain parts of the song.

I have dug my old HTC Vive out of storage and managed to get the tracking (mostly) consistently working this time. Much like when I was more actively playing VR stuff years ago I have mostly been playing Beat Sabre, but I never got around to playing this little tech demo before so I figured that I might as well. It’s a cute little intro to hand tracking and nothing more. It’s even more slight than Aperture Desk Job, but it suffices for what it is and now I have finally completed the Aperture Hand Job duology.