The VR Critic is Dr Luke Buckmaster, a professional critic of VR (virtual reality) and MR (mixed reality) experiences. Read more about this site and its author.
LATEST REVIEWS
Countless artists, across every medium, have attempted to externalise the mind’s eye, transforming thoughts and feelings into sensory experiences. That process takes on particular nuances and complications when the “eye” in question…
It feels rather frustrating to be somewhere interesting, at a moment in time that’s interesting, yet still sense that you’re not where you should be—that you’re missing out on the real action.…
The titular location in Hotel Infinity is extremely warped and surreal: a labyrinth of spaces connected in impossible ways, folding together time and space, designed to make you think: wow, that’s trippy.…
If in doubt, kick off with a hell-for-leather chase scene! This is how the Deadpool VR game begins—the player in a car hurtling through picturesque scenery with bad guys, bullets, and explosions…
Orson Welles once discussed how constraints can spark rather than stifle creativity: “the enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” That line came back to me while I was moving through…
The fantastical world of the action-adventure game Reach feels less like a lived-in universe that existed before we arrived—and will continue after we leave—than a place carefully engineered for our existence. Its…
Reconstructing murder scenes using dollhouse-like miniatures feels, to me, a rather paradoxical recreation—merging childhood playtime with the most adult of realities. This very niche and strange hobby is central to Crafting Crimes,…
After playing Star Wars: Beyond Victory, I’m convinced that a mixed reality racing game will one day come along and knock our socks off—but this one isn’t it. There are some lovely…
I never finished Silent Slayer: Vault of the Vampire, which was released on Quest headsets in June last year. Nor do I want to. The thing that turns me off revisiting and…
It took me a while to put some words together about Hubris, a first-person shooter originally released on PCVR in December 2022, then on Quest headsets six months later in a graphically…
This astral-projecting 15 minute experience sends us hurtling into the wild outer-space worlds of Italian artist Carlo Rambaldi, a three-time Oscar winner best known for his animatronics and creature designs. His most…
Asteroid is a short, space-set, high-end 180 video bookended by AI-powered interactive moments, notable partly because of the device it premieres on—Samsung’s unreleased new headset, which I tested during this year’s Venice…
In story-driven virtual reality experiences, environmental and narrative details should be inseparable—wrapped together like a double helix. Premiering at this year’s Venice Immersive, where it won the event’s top gong, director Singing…
Over the years I’ve spent thousands of hours in VR, gobbling down countless mind-bending productions from all corners of the virtual universe. When I think about the worlds I’ve visited, the things…
