Population One

Population One is a multiplayer battle royal VR game from Oculus Studios. It’s available for all VR headsets (I know I was surprised too).

For those new to battle royal games, you start out with no guns or ammo. You get dropped onto a large map and have to scrounge for weapons before you get killed by other people. At regular intervals, the map will shrink to help whittle down the number of players, until there is one left.

In Population One, you can use the grab function on VR motion controllers to climb up any wall. Once up high, you can jump off of ledges and put you hands out in a T pose to activate the wing suit. This will let you glide to another part of the map without dying from a fall.

Weapons require manual reloading with a twist, the clip sort of hangs in mid air for you push into the gun. Once you push that in, you do still have to manually chamber  a round. Aiming at hip level in Population One will give you cross hairs on screen to aim easier. They go away once you aim down sights. Each gun has to reload the way the real life counterparts do.

There is also a build gun that allows you to build platforms to walk across or walls to climb up. You can pretty much use it to build your own fort or mobile cover.

If you need to heal a teammate, you actually use defibrillator paddles that you have to physically rub together before using. Yes, people online will yell “Clear” before zapping their teammate back to life.

In Population One, there are pickups for shields, grenades, sodas and bananas. Bananas require you to physically peel in VR, but eating it does give you immediate health. Soda requires you to pull the tab before drinking and only provides health over time.

There have been other VR battle royal games, but the polish on this one and the backing of Facebook will likely make this the one to beat.