The best Meta Quest 3 games to play today

Beat Saber has become something of a virtual reality phenomenon over the past couple of years – and it's easy to see why.

It's a cross between an old school arcade dance machine and Guitar Hero. You have two sabers – which, very awesomely, buzz with electricity in your hands. You swing, swipe and jab to hit boxes as they fly towards you.

It may sound simple, but as the pace picks up, more boxes appear and bombs are added into the mix, it becomes a fun, fast-paced and high-energy game that's very, very addictive. What's more, it's particularly fun to play on the Quest – it's available on some other VR systems too – because it's untethered, which means you can saber away without worrying about wires, and the motion controllers are really accurate.

Superhot VR is a shooter and combat game. But it doesn't take much gameplay to realise it's actually much more than that. The game works in slow-motion and the faceless characters you're fighting, which look like big shards of red glass, only move when you do. This is easy-ish at first, but as the pace picks up and more opponents arrive you'll have to fight, shoot and dodge to stay alive.

The game involves a lot of thinking and strategy as well as fighting. When you inevitably get hit and die in the game, you'll be transported back to a few minutes earlier and you'll need to figure out what you should have done last time.

Although this game is available on other systems – and as a non-VR game too – it's particularly fun to play with the Quest 's wire-free capabilities. Ducking, diving and jumping is much more fun when you know you're not tethered to anything or close to breaking expensive equipment!

The Void is one of the best location-based VR experiences on the planet. But you have to travel to a venue to try it out. Now, some of the great minds behind Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire, which was available at The Void, from ILMxLAB have created a home-based VR experience for the Meta Quest – and it's all about Darth Vader.

This is beyond exciting for Star Wars fans who love the character, and it's particularly great for those who are interested in some of the mystical forces that make up the wider Star Wars universe – if you're a fan of Clone Wars and Rebels, you'll also love this.

The experience itself is a narrative-driven game that puts you face-to-face with Vader, trains you in using a lightsaber and allows you to explore some of the dark, fiery depths of Mustafar. The whole series is available on Quest now.

Love table tennis but too intimidated to wander into your local club? Eleven Table Tennis is the game for you. This truly remarkable simulation game is about as accurate as a virtual representation of a sport can get, as your controller becomes the bat and the superb physics system ensures the ball responds as you’d expect it to, no matter how soft or powerful your shots are.

We’d love to see a mixed reality update for the Quest 3, if only to see our partners looking begrudgingly impressed by our skills.

If you are a fan of John Wick, then this VR game is for you. Pistol Whip is a FPS shoot-em-up fever dream, where you have to dodge bullets, shoot the bad guys - all to a fantastic soundtrack. There are some 30 levels, each with their own unique look and feel and while this is a gun-based game, you need to treat it more like a rhythm game - one that will keep you playing for hours.

Yet another example of a golf-related video game more fun (and less expensive) than the real thing, Walkabout Mini Golf is simply an excellent VR recreation of mini golf that is very generously supported by its developer, with new content and courses being added fairly regularly.

Imagine Wii Sports golf, but with far more imaginative and exotic course designs, and ones you’re actually inside, and you have a pretty good idea of what to expect. The physics system is as good as you’d hope, and if you have friends to play with you might never need to see them in real life again.

Space Pirate Trainer is another game that sounds fairly run-of-the-mill: you're shooting things in space. But in reality, it's a really fun game that combines fantastic guns, just like the ones Star-Lord uses in Guardians of the Galaxy, with fast-paced shooting complete with Matrix-style slow-mo 'bullet time'.

There's plenty to choose from as well, from different kinds of games and loads of different kinds of things you can shoot from your guns, including laser beams, bombs and simple bullets.

It's perfect if you want a high-energy shoot-em-up but don't like some of the more traditional settings. You really are a space pirate in this game and it gets more and more fun with every play.

If you want a gentle yet cerebral VR game, then we highly recommend Cubism. This game is all about manipulating 3D objects to create various shapes. Levels rapidly get more and more complex, and it takes some real brain power to complete the later ones. All of the levels take place in a light grey environment with soothing sound effects. It may not be the easiest game, but it's incredibly relaxing. We also love that you can use the VR headset's hand tracking feature here, so ditch the controllers and get hands-on.

Our favourite city simulator VR game, Little Cities lets you design a city, deciding where everything goes, like roads, services and buildings. You can then watch your teeny tiny citizens buzz around. It's very well-designed, serving up an intuitive and fun experience that we think will appeal to all sorts of VR users. The city environments are lovely to look at and this game has a lot of warmth and charm.

This is a fantastic VR game, a remake that stays true to the feel of Resident Evil but puts you (literally) in the thick of the action. Playing as first-person as Leon, we were shocked by just how immersive this game is, thanks to the high-res graphics and stunning soundscape. While there are scares galore, there's a more action-focused Mercenaries extra-game mode which will put your survival skills to the ultimate test.

We've been looking for a Guitar Hero replacement for years now and while nothing replaces the feeling of holding an (albeit fake) guitar in your hand, we love the air guitar strumming that you can do in this game. Although you are just strumming in the air, it really does feel like you are something of a rock god/goddess.

One of the newest games on this list, PowerWash Simulator VR is the game the non-VR PowerWash Simulator always wanted to be. Rather than blasting all manner of muddied up surfaces using an analogue stick, your Quest controllers become your cleaning tools in what might just be the most satisfying VR experience to date. You can cycle between different nozzles just by reaching for your tool belt, while pinpoint tracking accuracy makes it a lot easier to reach those persistent little spots of dirt.

Put simply, PowerWash Simulator was already great, but the immersiveness of the VR version makes it the definitive version of the game.

Demeo is a hugely popular roguelike tabletop game perfect for virtual reality, and the new Demeo Battles is just as good, only now you’re fighting your friends rather than adventuring alongside them. Supporting up to four players (you can also choose to play alone), players control different heroes with their own unique abilities, with AI-controlled monsters lending you a hand in the fight. Like Demeo, battles are turn-based and dictated by cards and dice rolls, so no matter how much you master the different attacks and abilities, you never know when luck might just abandon you, and this keeps the game feeling wonderfully tense at all times.

Demeo Battles also fully embraces the Meta Quest 3’s mixed reality tech, allowing you to bring the board into your living room and keep an eye on the cat while you battle away. Just brilliant fun.

VR can’t give you Tony Stark’s brain, but it can let you have a play with his toys in one of the most adrenaline-fuelled experiences you can have on your Meta Quest (provided you have the stomach to handle it, of course). Whizzing through the sky as Iron Man feels amazing, and the compelling story mode pits you against all manner of aerial enemies, with occasional cameos from the likes of Nick Fury.

Tilting your wrist forward to unleash missiles never gets old, and the sense of verticality is like nothing else in VR. We just wish this one had a sequel.

Beat Saber is a great game for inadvertently keeping fit, but FitXR - Boxing, HIIT and Dance Workouts was created specially for fitness. Our favorite is the virtual boxing lesson, complete with different punches, moves and blocks. You can choose which environments you train in, the type of session you want and how hard it is.

There's a handy calorie counter in the corner, because this game really is built to replace your workouts – just make sure to have a fan pointed at yourself as you duck, block and uppercut away, it can get very warm inside a VR headset!

Tilt Brush is any creator's dream. You're given a blank space, and you can choose between a range of environments, including a plain colour or outer space, and once you're there you can paint, draw, build and create in 3D.

It's hard to explain just how much fun and freedom Tilt Brush brings you. You have your own virtual palette, which lets you choose from a huge range of things to 'paint' with, from a brush to electricity, a marker pen to fire. There are then an endless amount of colours to choose from to get you started.

What makes Tilt Brush so special is it's in 3D and the space you can create in is huge. So you could paint a 3D house, then you can zoom out and it'll be as tiny as a lego brick, or zoom in and it becomes as big as your actual house. The possibilities here are, quite literally, limitless and it's easy to see why plenty of people, from beginners to artists, have been using it to create a huge range of designs, 3D paintings and concepts.

As with most of the games on this list, Tilt Brush and the Met Quest really are a match made in heaven. The Quest's highly accurate motion sensors make painting in 3D space feel seamless and realistic. And the wireless set-up means you're not constrained by anything – real or virtual – when you're creating within Tilt Brush.

Red Matter 2 is a gorgeous-looking sci-fi adventure, just like the original. The aesthetic is best-described as dystopian cold war era and you're playing as Sasha, an operative who has waken up on a lunar base and must discover the secrets of the mysterious Red Matter. The focus on the game is on solving a series of mind-bending puzzles that you'll find in your environment, as well as some combat. Which means it's fairly slow-paced, even though your surroundings make for great tension. You do get to fly with your jetpack, but if you suffer from even a small amount of VR-based motion sickness, we don't recommend it.

This game is one of many that has been updated for the Meta Quest 3, making an already impressive showcase for the system look even better, with upgraded textures and resolution, plus dynamic shadows that make for more realistic environments.

Bonelab is a spooky VR game in which you play someone exploring an underground research facility. There's combat, puzzles and more, all set within a dark and mysterious environment with some jump scares. We don't recommend Bonelab for everyone, we've heard reports of VR motion sickness here.

Given it’s from the people who brought us our (and yours, by the looks of it) favourite Apple Arcade game, What the Golf?, it’s no surprise the team’s first VR game is just as hilariously brilliant. What the Bat? is sort of a baseball game, except your hands are the bats, and you’re doing pretty much everything except actually playing baseball.

The game servers up over 100 wacky minigames, which have you using your trusty(ish) bat hands to do everything from painting and ironing, to brushing your teeth and herding sheep. And naturally you get to do a whole lot of smashing things too. If someone has never tried VR before, hand them this game and you’ll have an instant convert. Just make sure there aren’t any glass vases or expensive televisions nearby first.

If you're in the mood for a zombie shoot-em-up, then Arizona Sunshine is the VR game for you. You've got more than 25 different guns and weapons to use against the living dead and a tense old time trying to battle them. Explore big, sprawling environments, like mines and towns. You can play solo but there is a multiplayer mode if you want to team up for the apocalypse.

Tentacular is a strange sort of physics-based puzzle game in which you inhabit the body of a large squid-like monster. You must perform tasks around the island of La Kalma. The problem? You've got these huge, wobbly tentacles, which makes for funny and inventive gameplay. You'll need to learn which bits of your big, jelly-like tentacles are best for picking up objects and carrying out jobs. This is a sweet and fun game, with an interesting story that feels like a refreshing break from some of the shoot-em-ups and horror games we've been immersed in recently.

This is truly one of the best VR games we have ever played. Not only does it fit well into the sprawling Walking Dead universe, the game isn't about confronting zombies but surviving them. Graphics wise, it's stunning and the zombies, while cartoon-like, are utterly scary when you interact with them.. and don't get us started on the rats. If they add in multiplayer, this game would be exceptional. Without it, though, and it's still fantastic.

And now for something completely different. A lot of the games on this list, and the games that work well with the Meta Quest, are about movement, high energy and working up a sweat. But that doesn't mean it isn't a great VR headset for different genres and Journey of the Gods puts you front and centre of your own fantastical adventure – fans of Legend of Zelda will love it.

Get ready to battle dangerous beats armed with a shield and crossbow, solve puzzles and even change in size to become a God of the fantasy land you're exploring. If you're looking for a game with lots of detail and realism, this isn't it. But if you want stylised creatures and environments and escapism, then you'll love it.

Virtual reality games are fantastic when they're high-energy and really immerse you in a new world, but simpler games we're already familiar with get a huge boost from VR and Angry Birds is a prime example of that.

It's the same concept as Angry Birds on your phone: catapult birds at pigs and buildings. But within VR it's more immersive because you can literally operate that catapult and move around buildings. It becomes much more of a strategy game this way rather than a time-waster. It's also a nice break from the energetic games in our list.

Moss is an adventure game for the Met Quest, which combines mystical energies, woodland adventures and puzzles to bring you hours of fun world exploration. But just because it takes place in a magic wood and you're accompanied by a mouse, it doesn't mean there isn't a lot of opportunity for combat – there are a lot of puzzles to solve, but there are plenty of enemies to beat too.

You can now buy the game bundled with its even more charming sequel, which sees returning hero, Quill, traverse even more impressive dioramas, with her new climbing ability allowing for more verticality in levels. Taken as a pair, these games are some of the most memorable VR experiences you can have.