Consumer-level virtual reality has come a long way since the original Oculus team first crowdfunded the Rift in 2012. While Facebook buying out the startup tech company drew some ire at the time, it may well have been beneficial to the medium in the long run. Facebook’s sizable check book and resources prompted companies like Valve and Sony to create their own headsets internally. Despite the large advances made in the ten years since, VR still has some way to go before it becomes a more casually purchased device instead of an enthusiast’s machine.

For many years, Virtual Reality experiences have largely fallen under two categories: either live-action footage filmed using specialty cameras, or smaller, more social experiences in the video game front. Games like Cooking Simulator or VR Chat, while fun games in their own right, are a far cry from the major AAA experience most enthusiasts have been waiting for. Other games like Beat Saber and SUPERHOT have provided more fleshed out and polished experiences, but both very much remain in the realm of singularly focused small-scale games with one key hook (great though that hook may be!).

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To date, the only legitimate high budget AAA experience has been Valve’s Half-Life: Alyx in 2020. Given Valve’s own forays into the Virtual Reality hardware marketplace, producing their own first-party title was a bit of a given, but nobody could have expected the return of the Half-Life series after so many years. There were several attempts to create a followup to Half Life 2: Episode 2 over the years, ultimately ending after series writer Marc Laidlaw departed the company in 2016. A year later, Laidlaw released a document showing his version of what Episode 3 would have been, titled ‘Epistle 3.’ In the meantime, work began on Alyx even ended up consulting Laidlaw on Alyx’s story later in development.

It’s not hard to explain what makes Alyx such a perfect VR game. Its mechanics feel well fleshed out and fun to interact with, but also not overly complicated and bogged down in realism like so many other VR shooters have been. It retains that same replayability factor of older Half-Life titles, and does so while incorporating its story elements in smaller chunks the same way the series always has. Not to mention the pioneering in-game gravity gloves, which single- (or double-) handedly address one of the great bugbears of VR games by making it easy to grab physics-based objects from around the screen.

Valve set the bar about as high as possible for any potential contender to claim its title as best VR game. Several games have been announced for PlayStation‘s upcoming successor to their PlayStation VR headset released in 2016. Despite several patents and design documents detailing Valve’s own interest in a new iteration of the Valve Index headset, their future in the space is far less certain than Sony’s. It may ultimately fall on Sony’s first-party partners to create the next big VR game.

Horizon: Call of the Mountain

Horizon: Call of the Mountain is the VR title set in the Horizon universe, and may be the only major first-party title built exclusively with VR in mind, but whether it’s a lengthy fully-fledged game like Alyx or more of a tightly crafted and short VR ‘experience’ remains to be seen.

Both Resident Evil 8 and the upcoming Resident Evil 4 Remake both have VR modes announced for PSVR2. In the end, this signature game may just end up being an optional mode from an already great traditional game, but it still brings that ‘blockbuster’ quality that VR desperately needs right now.

But that about does it for upcoming AAA experiences with serious anticipation . The format will never have a shortage of smaller indie titles and fun short or social experiences, but only a transcendent big-budget experience can bring in the mass market Virtual Reality needs in order to take the next step.

Eddie Cianciarulo