Halo

Imagine equipping your helmet. Your HUD hums to life with a subtle blue hue as the sounds of alarms and mechanical whirring echo around you.

You step into your drop pod, trusty SMG in hand, and brace yourself to drop out of orbit and onto the front lines in the battle against the Covenant. The door shuts and a countdown appears on screen before you plummet to the surface. Impact. You take a deep breath and the pod door flies open.

Outside, chaos reigns, Plasma rounds pelt the ground around you, but the distant screech of Jackals focuses you. You break into a sprint, shields spluttering but holding against the onslaught of fire as the skies above light up with beams of purple and gold. Your objective: Take back the planet.

Sounds pretty cool right? Or at least it does to me as a long-time fan…

One of the defining video game series of the early 2000s, and widely regarded as one of the pioneers of competitive online gaming, the Halo series is second to none when it comes to crafting deep narratives, pitting you against daunting enemies and generally making you feel like a bit of a badass. Having taken some of Sci-Fi’s best tropes, and paired it with everyone’s deep-seated dream of becoming a genetically modified super-soldier (with a kick ass set of power armour to boot) and deploying to a variety of unique planets to defend humanity against an oppressive alien empire, Halo feels like a natural fit for the pioneering technology that is VR.

While we’ve been lucky enough to see some truly incredible mods for games like Contractor$, which allow you to briefly step into the boots of a Spartan II and do battle against the Elites, I can’t help but feel that Microsoft and 343 are doing us a disservice by not committing to a AAA VR game…

Super Mario Bros

How would this work? Who knows! But it sure would be fun!

Everyone’s favourite plumbing duo pounding their way across the Mushroom Kingdom in VR sounds like a millennial kid’s dream. With a fun colour scheme, a simple art style and a host of unique enemies, the only obstacle is Nintendo’s militant brand & legal departments figuring out just how to turn a 2D platformer into a 6DOF VR experience.

One potential avenue is following the example of the award winning Moss series, wherein the player experiences virtual world from a third-person perspective.

The other alternative being Windlands 2, a semi-linear take on a platformer in which you swing through the trees across a variety of colourful levels, meeting a host of fun characters and irritating but easily handled enemies along the way (sound familiar?).

Nintendo have toyed with the idea of breaking into the VR industry in the past, with some small incursions into the virtual realm, but have yet to commit to creating or endorsing a high-end product or experience for consumer use. Though Mario Kart VR is already taking arcades across the world by storm, there is very little beyond rumour to suggest that this will change anytime soon.

Wii Sports & Wii Sports Resort

The defining title of the Nintendo Wii’s illustrious reign over the world of entertainment, the Wii Sports franchise redefined interactivity in gaming.

With over 80 million copies sold worldwide, the gaming sensation took the industry by storm. Only to double down with the release of Wii Sports Resort, a larger, far more fleshed out version of the original, featuring a masterful combination of iconic sporting events and challenges. Not to mention the inclusion of an AI opponent based progression system, and the introduction of Matt, the Mii widely regarded as the greatest athlete of all time.

The iconic Wiimote & Nunchuck are almost identical to modern VR motion controllers, and the original games thrived in their simplicity and intuitiveness, so it certainly feels like an easy enough thing to replicate. We can only speculate as to why a similar concept hasn’t appeared on any major VR headset, given the natural fit. (I’m absolutely sure it has something to do with Nintendo’s ruthless brand and legal department).

I for one, would love to take revenge on Matt and his mi(i)nions for all of the heartbreak and frustration he caused my 9 year old self, but I’d settle for a copycat version.

StarWars Battlefront

While LucasFilm & Disney have ventured into the world of VR game development before, with exclusive titles like Vader Immortal, and VR versions of flatscreen titles like StarWars Squadrons, they haven’t quite been able to break into the mainstream.

With an IP that powerful under their belt, you’d hope that they’d at least flirt with the idea of bringing the most popular StarWars game of all time to VR headsets… right?

With a re-release coming to major consoles later this month, and servers still full of players despite the original release being nearly twenty years ago, it’s clear that there would be an audience for it. The original game was a pioneer in large scale multiplayer gameplay, and has clearly stood the test of time, offering a level of freedom and variety in play still that we still rarely see in modern gaming. Where else can you fly an X-Wing through a swarm of Tie Fighters before boarding an enemy ship and blowing up the engine room with a Rocket Launcher?

Similarly to Halo, some really cool mods have sprung up over the years on existing VR games like Contractor$ and Pavlov, fuelled by a dedicated community of VR fans who really want to blast some droids, but ultimately it just leaves you wishing for more. Even just the feeling of wielding a modded blaster or re-textured lightsaber gets the nostalgia juices flowing, so we can only hope that the corporate overlords at Disney decide to give it a go!

At the end of the day, deep down, everyone dreams of joining the ranks of the Clone Army (Stormtroopers aren’t cool anymore…) and flying through hyperspace to fight in a meaningless Galactic War across a range of exotic and hostile planets, and I’m sure it would be pretty darn cool to experience in fully immersive Virtual Reality.

The Last Of Us

When we think of VR, our minds immediately jump to zombie shooters. Arizona Sunshine, After the Fall, The Walking Dead, every single VR arcade worth its salt will have a dedicated Zombie shooter, and you can bet that it’ll be the most popular game on their roster (it definitely is on ours). While the Zombie genre is inescapably tied to VR, The Last Of Us (TLOU) has a unique opportunity to put a spin on the classic virtual reality Zombie experience.

Drawing inspiration from the popularity of Half Life: Alyx, and all of its masterfully designed mechanics, TLOU has the potential to transcend into a category of its own. Having already swept up all of the most prestigious awards the gaming industry has to offer, and achieved such success that they’ve been able to partner with HBO for a live-action series featuring the one and only Pedro Pascal, VR feels like a natural next step.

Even on a flat screen, the sheer terror of being hunted by a clicker is an inimitable feeling, and the panic as you scramble for bullets as a swarm rushes you pushes your adrenaline to dangerous levels. Paired with the heart-wrenching depth of the story and the grim beauty of the desolate ruins of the world around, we can only imagine the impact of a fully immersive VR experience.

Half Life: Alyx’s commercial and critical success should be regarded as a prime example of just how much TLOU has to gain from a VR port, and with Playstation Studios ramping up their PSVR activity, we may indeed be fortunate enough to see this come to life.

Or at least, we can dream…

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