Fred's VR List — Games for the HTC Vive you'll want to buy

If you're reading this, you're part of the 1% who haven't been living under a rock and either altready have an HTC Vive, or are debating getting one.

Let's settle the debate first: if you are at all considering whether you should get one, then you need to order one right now. If you can't decide which VR system to get, the answer is still the same: you need to get the best VR system out there right, and that's the Vive.

Now that that's out of the way, you'll probably want to start shopping for apps. Some of them are really good, others are equally bad. Moreover, it's not always clear at the outset which is which.

Since I've convinced several friends to order their own Vive, and have had several weeks to figure out which VR apps I like the most, I've been getting a lot of requests for recommendations.

So, I thought I'd start by sharing my list (Fred's VR List — Games for the HTC Vive you'll want to buy) with you.

Once you've exhausted that list, you'll want to do you own shopping, which means deciding which of the 200+ HTC Vive games on Steam are worth checking out. Here are a few tricks for navigating this growing list of apps:

1. First, get your feet wet: download a few free apps to get an idea of what you like and what you don't.
2. Although video trailers rarely do VR apps justice, try going back to watch the trailers for games you do like, so you get a better sense of what to look for.
3. Sort the list of HTC Vive games on Steam by user rating and start at the top.
4. For your first pass, skip anything that supports both Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. You bought the Vive to have a full room experience. In general, apps that support Oculus Rift don't support full room VR.
5. Search YouTube for other users who have recorded their game play. While the production quality of those videos is often lacking, they're pretty good at giving you a sense of the game play, which really helps with the purchasing decision.
6. Take a little risk. There are some gems out there, but you won't know untill you try.
7. If you really don't like an app you've paid for, it's okay to give up on it. Steam will generally let you return games you've played for less than two hours and purchased within the last two weeks, although you should start the return process as soon as you're sure.

If there's games not on my list that should be, let me know.