Game of the Year 2024 – Best Virtual Reality Game

thesixthaxis.com:

Seven years on from the first VR gaming headsets launching, it still feels like we’re finding our way with virtual reality. 2024 could change all of that, with Apple hoping to do Apple things for yet another nascent technology, but 2023 has relaid the foundations for gamers with PSVR 2 and Meta Quest 3 both launching and bringing big improvements.

Of course, there’s also been new games looking to take advantage of these new systems, and we’ve often delighted in popping a fancy hat on our heads to escape fully from the real world around us.

PowerWash Simulator VR shouldn’t be a good game. Arguably, it shouldn’t even be a game, as it is even closer to being a 1:1 recreation of a chore than the flat screen original. Meticulously cleaning stuff is a task most people would go out of their way to avoid, and even though it’s a thoroughly rewarding chore, there’s any number of other warmer, drier things you’d rather be doing.

PowerWash Simulator VR captures the rewarding part of the experience, and is considerably warmer and drier too. Somehow it makes the experience one of the greatest VR games of the year, as you hose down a series of thoroughly filthy items and bring them all up to a digital sheen. You’ve got a tool belt, with a myriad number of nozzles, and you can crouch, lean and peer at the dirty things you’ve been charged with for more hours than I care to mention. There’s no denying that this is an experience that’ll make you feel utterly guilty – you really could just be cleaning your car – but then, no one is going to pay you virtual money to do that are they?

– Dom L

A Japan-only Dreamcast game probably wasn’t high up on your list for a VR adaptation, and yet C-Smash VRS is pretty much a perfect fit. Blending together