Best Multiplayer VR Games in 2024

Channeling in equal parts Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Insurgency while eschewing the bombastic run’n’gun of Call of Duty, ultra-realistic military sim Onward grants VR players a competitive shooter to call their own.

Onward is a highly strategic game that requires cooperation and carefully considered tactics with realistic weapon mechanics and unforgiving hardcore combat. You won’t need to empty an entire magazine to down an enemy. Instead, a deftly aimed shot will do. Every bullet and manoeuvre counts—no gun-ho running into the heat of battle here lest you are longing for a swift death.

Use your controllers to raise and lower a weapon as you would in real life and judge the judiciousness of each step for a realistic experience that, when coupled with the immersion of VR, makes you feel like you’re there. Each movement has an impact on noise levels, movement speed, and accuracy.

Onward features three multiplayer modes for up to ten players. These are objective-based affairs ranging from a dicey escort mission to tense location control firefights. Players can choose from two factions; a highly-equipped military faction decked out with the latest in modern weaponry and a scrappy insurgent force toting AK47s and RPG launchers.

As the premier VR military shooter, Onward boasts a reasonably large player, so you can jump into the action easily enough. Additionally, headset support extends to Valve Index, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift/Quest, and WMD with full crossplay whether you’re jumping in via the Oculus Store or Steam. Compared to the full PC VR version, the Oculus version suffers from a noticeable graphical downgrade. Developer Downpour Interactive has promised a fix in the future, but it’s a point to consider if you plan on playing Onward untethered to a PC using the Oculus Quest 2, for example.

Four words suffice to describe Population: One: virtual reality battle royale. Unabashedly inspired by the gaming phenomenon Fortnite, it’s a VR take on the popular genre and one that’s an awful lot of fun.

The format is familiar: a shrinking safe zone, a mad scramble to loot weapons, and the last team standing wins. But Population: One jazzes up the recipe with a hefty dollop of verticality. Every structure and building is scalable, and each player is equipped with a jetpack of sorts that makes easy work of darting across vast distances in no time at all. It makes for a fast-paced experience that also incorporates some of the building mechanics found in Fortnite, though limited to just walls, which can be erected as cover or to dupe enemies.

Much like Fortnite, Population: One is a one map deal. It is not necessarily a bad thing, notably for those eager to explore and memorize every nook and cranny of each region to spring surprise ambushes on their opponents and get the upper hand through map knowledge. But, due to the high movement speed at the core of Population: One and the reasonably limited scale of the map, the lack of variety may hamper your experience, especially if you prize variety.

Another point to consider is the 18 player cap per match. While this does cater better to the vastly reduced VR player base and means you’ll find matches quicker, each bout is a relatively snappy affair as a consequence. Compatibility with Valve Index, the Oculus headsets, HTC Vive, and WMD headsets, and full cross-play between all versions of the game guarantee you won’t be queuing for long to find a match, though.

Switching gears away from shooters, we have Echo VR. This curious VR game from developer Ready At Dawn and published by Oculus Studios takes the basic two-goals point-scoring formula of Rocket League and supercharges it with a zero-gravity arena.

Instead of a ball, players must guide a disc to the opposition’s goal, using obstacles and objects to propel themselves forward, resulting in some unique gameplay that’s bolstered by a good dose of skill. Pass the disc to teammates, dodge fast-moving opponents, blind other players to disorient them, and orchestrate daring manoeuvres to get off that perfect shot; there’s a deep mastery to the game elevating its replayability chops. Equally, Echo VR is easy to pick up and enjoy for more casual players looking for a good time in VR.

Echo VR’s hyper-futuristic setting lends itself well to VR. The experience of darting in zero gravity between obstacles at a rapid pace is one of the most thrilling the platform has to offer. There’s genuinely nothing out there quite like it.

A competitive multiplayer scene fuels a vibrant and decently-sized community of players. A battle pass season-based structure dangles plenty of rewards and content to keep players interested, too. On top of offering a novel experience, Echo VR is entirely free. The only catch is that the game is only compatible with Oculus headsets and available via the Oculus Store. There are currently no plans for a SteamVR port nor any cross-play in the pipeline, so sadly, not one for Index or Vive owners.

A simple premise executed to perfection, Eleven Table Tennis brings the surprisingly thrilling and deceptively deep gameplay of everyone’s favorite holiday sport to VR.

While there aren’t as many, say football fans, as ping pong fans clamoring for a VR game to fill their leisure time, Eleven Table Tennis is a game anyone with a VR headset should try out, if only for how much fun it is.

Part of the appeal is just how well it captures the feel and experience of playing table tennis with ultra-realistic ball physics, responsive racket mechanics, and a skill ceiling that should suit even the most demanding purists out there. The AI, too, is a force to be reckoned with and delivers a surprising challenge.

With a headset on, you genuinely get the sense of standing at the end of a ping pong table, rendered in full scale in a variety of locales. As for the controls, they couldn’t be simpler; swing and bat as you would with a real racket in hand. Just watch out for real-world obstacles and walls. As for multiplayer, there’s a fully-fledged rating system in Eleven Table Tennis to match you with equally skilled opponents, you can even play over a local network, and there’s full cross-play for both SteamVR and Oculus players. The only real gripe we have with Eleven Table Tennis is that mileage will vary significantly depending on whether you are a casual player or a die-hard table tennis player. Casuals may succumb to the monotony of repetition rather rapidly.