’Tentacular’ Is the Only Game That Does VR Right

I love virtual reality. Whether I’m watching my 8-year-old paint on a rock wall in Horizon: Call of the Mountain or playing air hockey with a coworker 2,000 miles away, I have never lost the sense of wonder that comes every time I slip on a headset and instantly drop into another world. But this relatively new medium is still struggling with growing pains—mainly that there are few games that take full advantage of the form.

Most of the games I’ve tried seem intent on creating momentary experiences rather than full, rich games. This is understandable—I, too, gasp when I find myself kayaking in Antarctica instead of standing in my living room—but as my colleague Eric Ravenscraft has pointed out, this is still more of a demo than a full-fledged form of media consumption that people who aren’t reporters want to spend money on.

So far, I haven’t come across anything with the combination of action sequences and compelling storyline that keeps me hooked like Witcher 3, The Last of Us, or even (gulp) Call of Duty. Dodging bullets and snatching guns in Superhot is fun, but it gets repetitive without a cathartic denouement. After an hour in Beat Saber, we always end up just chatting in the lobby, which might as well be a Zoom.

But I think I’ve finally found a game that makes the headset worth it. Tentacular was released for the Meta Quest 2 and SteamVR headsets last year to rave reviews. I’m now about halfway through on the PlayStation VR 2. This tender game about a sea kraken has sucked (pun intended) me in.

The difference is immediate. When you start the game, you’re not suspended in blackness, nor are you a bodiless, anonymous ghost floating over a landscape. There are no disorienting unrealities around you—no weird floating hands, no hearing footsteps without feet.