Let’s face it: There are a lot of new VR games out there. We know it. We love it. But it can be hard to know if you should play any given game for your next VR workout. But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. We picked out four recent games that a lot of people are talking about and really measured their promises—and those promises are huge considering they all claim to be VR experiences that were sparked with real sports. Consider this the report card for these VR sports games. You can thank us later.
Deep End VR
Deep End VR is a mostly parkour game that places you within a sort of puzzle parkour maze-like experience. The goal is obvious: Get to the end of the level. As you’d expect, the game gets harder as you move through each level, but don’t expect any enemies, bosses, or big objectives other than just getting through the game itself. Is it a game you’re likely to play after you’ve bested all it can to offer a couple times? Probably not. Is it a game that makes you move—continuously—throughout the gameplay? Absolutely!
How Does It Rank For Fitness?
Get ready to be more than a little surprised by this game’s fitness. This game lets you do things that you simply aren’t doing in other experiences. One pleasant surprise was the ability to get on your knees and make your way through a crawlspace. If you don’t feel the burn in your quads and core when you’re doing that, you’re either doing it wrong, or you’re some kind of superhero (in which case, why play a game when you can already fly, pinhead?). All kidding aside, the act of a kneeling or crouching shuffle isn’t that common in VR these days and it’s sorely missing. With this game, the only things that’ll be sore is your legs—bank on that. Another great surprise is that it features locomotion where you can climb, crawl, and run in the game. However, since there are no tasking commands like you might find in Mirror’s Edge, the game doesn’t really push you past your own intensity levels so, you’re the catalyst for making this a workout.
Fitness Report Card: B+
Trickshot
Trickshot is an archery game that allows you to solve puzzles in order to beat the game. While we love the idea of channeling your inner Hawkeye, the game is rather bare bones and simple it it’s current iteration. How can we say that? Well, think of this game as a maze you navigate with arrows instead of with your hands or simply with walking.
How Does It Rank For Fitness?
After hearing how the game isn’t the most innovative above, you probably came to the conclusion that this game couldn’t possibly be all that fit to be part of your next VR workout. Sound logic, but you’re wrong. First off, the game is locomotion based, which means that you are going to be moving the entire time your character is moving, which is most of the gameplay. Second, the game does require you to fire an arrow much like the other archery games that we currently have in VR. You try grabbing over your shoulder, pulling back and firing an arrow—even in VR—a couple dozen times and tell me if your traps and lats aren’t firing at least a little! Third, and likely most surmising, you’re going to be jumping and lunging to get through the experience. The only major drawback to your fitness here is that this game lacks a time limit or leader board of sorts to play against and force you to push yourself to do your best.
Fitness Report Card: B-
Robot City Stadium?
The entire purpose of Robot City Stadium is to either hit a ball or the other player with a gear that you are given at the beginning of the match. You have magnets for hands, which is how you-re able to throw it and then attract it back to you. Most of the gameplay, you’re just trying to hit your opponent. The one cool part about this game is that the gears, leave a luminescent path behind them and this makes it look like Tron. When you hit another disc, little hexagons break off that you can collect. We got tired of this game pretty quick. It’ unlikely you’ll want to revisit it often for a workout, but you may want to play against someone in a futuristic Tron-like world, just don’t expect much of a workout.
How Does It Rank For Fitness?
Unfortunately, there’s not much more to this game than lobbing gears at another player. Because of this, there’s not much to say about the fitness of this game. If there was some weight to the disk, the fitness element would be drastically different, but since it’s a virtual disk without any weight or resistance, you’re really just making throwing-like motions and the way this game is set up, you don’t really get into throwing anything because the harder you think you’ve swung, it doesn’t really translate in the game. The gear (and in the other experience, a ball) moves slow throughout the game and you end up moving in that same speed eventually.
Fitness Report Card: D-
GoalKeeper VR
If you’ve poked around Gear VR and think you know GoalKeeper VR, stop. You don’t. This is not that game. While it is different, it does have the same simplistic approach towards gameplay, which is actually one of the best parts of the game. The entire point of the game is that you are blocking targets that just randomly fly at you. It’s randomized and progressive with intensity and definitely a good cardio blast. Sound a lot like Soundboxing or Audioshield? We thought so, too. And that’s reason enough to try it out for fitness.
How Does It Rank For Fitness?
This game isn’t for people looking for cool graphics. This game isn’t for people looking for storylines. This game is for people looking to beat their best score and challenge themselves in an intensifying experience as they go along. When you play this the balls that you have to block as a Goalkeeper (that is the point of the game after all) are generated and flying at you but there’s only a small window of reaction time. There’s no A.I. that’s kicking it at you, it just appears and flies at the goal with barely any notice. You can imagine trying to see how long you can last against such an opponent, which is why this is the only part of the game where the game truly shines. This game will definitely make you sweat. If you want more of a workout out of it than just sweating and moving, it really comes down to how much you move as a goalie. Like in the real-world example of being a goalkeeper: You can work angles, cover more of the net or just flop around in a split-second reaction, forcing you to leap, lunge and jump in every direction. Bottomline: If you play this game with intensity and plan on making your whole body work, you will. If you just want to rack up a score with the least amount of effort, you can do that, too, but why would you want to just do that?
Fitness Report Card: C
