Roboquest VR review – PSVR2 gets an excellent new shooter

The end of 2025 has brought with it a surprising number of high quality VR games and Roboquest might be the best one yet.

It’s ironic that a number of the best VR games weren’t actually designed for virtual reality, but converted from traditional flat screen games. In the current generation, that syndrome’s most apparent on PlayStation VR2, where the manifold horrors of Resident Evil Village vie for your attention with Gran Turismo 7, which many regard as worth the price of the headset on its own. Add in the limitless sci-fi exploration of No Man’s Sky and all three of the system’s best reviewed titles started their lives on a TV screen.

It’s pretty obvious why. With VR remaining a niche interest, and headset sales continuing to disappoint, the economics of producing triple-A games for such a small installed userbase just isn’t there. If you’re Sony trying to leverage your game library to shift a few more PlayStation VR2 units, porting games to VR is a great way to make the most of existing assets.

You can often tell when a VR game started as a normal title. That’s partly down to cosmetics, like presenting cinematics on a virtual screen suspended in front of you, but that’s just the downside. The upside is that those games usually have more polished mechanics, better thought through level and game design, and much more content than their made-for-VR counterparts.

Roboquest VR is one of those games, starting life as a well-regarded roguelite first person shooter on Steam, and later consoles. In it, you play a robot tasked with shooting your way through tightly designed levels, laying waste to rooms full of fellow droids as you go. Starting with a simple single shot pistol, you quickly unlock far more esoteric weaponry.

That starts with automatic and sniper rifles, a grenade launcher, and dual-wielded Uzis, but rapidly heads off into the realms of insanity, with the meteor cannon; the razor launcher that fires spinning serrated discs; the sulfator that blends shotgun with minigun; and the bee cannon, which fires swarms of angry stinging insects at enemies. Some are a lot more useful than others, but they all get an uplift with affixes.

Those upgrade your guns in a range of imaginative ways, from the usual magazine and power buffs, to adding elemental damage and ricochets, turning each blast into a cataclysmic rebounding nightmare for enemies. To compensate they get considerably more bullet-spongey as you work your way through its levels, making it essential to keep grabbing and upgrading new weapons, encouraging experimentation with the mad scientist style arsenal.

Roboquest’s traversal really lends itself to VR, with most levels including dizzying heights that are initially mostly inaccessible, only coming into their own with later equipment unlocks. You’ll also find rails to grind, and sci-fi trampolines that catapult you into the air or across chasms. It’s one of a new breed of VR game that isn’t afraid of rapid motion, although there are numerous comfort measures available if it makes you queasy.

To go with the fast pace and preposterous guns, there’s an impressive variety of enemies. They fly, roll, approach you and explode, drop smoke bombs, shoot paralysis rounds, carry destructible shields, or attempt to blind you with a hovering flash gun. There’s a giant spiked metal slug that fires death rays but also hacks your robotics to force you to wander out into the open. Tjos keeps things feeling fresh across multiple runs, and every procedurally generated area you discover comes with its own set of digital fauna to mow down.

You’ll also find bosses at the end of each chapter. They’re typically huge and bombastic, towering over you in small arenas, the explosions they generate often several times your virtual size. The game’s pounding techno soundtrack initially seems slightly incongruous, although you do get used to it, but in boss fights its feels perfectly in keeping with the amped up levels of crazy.

Between runs your basecamp lets you spend the golden wrenches you collect from downed enemies, to upgrade your robot with extra health and higher chances of getting more powerful guns. You’ll also unlock new character classes, like the commando with its built-in single shot rocket launcher and shotgun, the ranger who can turn invisible and hurl a javelin, and the engineer that spawns smaller robotic helpers. It adds to the range of builds you can employ as you acquire complementary abilities and weapons in each run.

Despite the fun, there are a few issues with the VR implementation, most notably that when you enter a new section, you can extend your gun’s barrel into the room while you stay safely behind the entryway forcefield, picking off entire rooms of enemies in almost complete safety. You’re still vulnerable to area of effect weapons, but since few foes carry those in the earlier levels, it’s a useful, if unintentional, way of cheesing your way past otherwise tricky areas.

The game also suffers from the VR standard of slightly wonky throwing mechanics. Trying to hurl its laser kunai, grenades, axes, and the ranger’s javelin takes practise. Even then we never got comfortable with it, preferring to ignore thrown weapons in favour of those with triggers. It’s interesting comparing it with Marvel’s Deadpool VR, which gets its throwing action perfectly right, even if the rest of the game isn’t as involving or fully developed.

What you get with Roboquest VR is a fully-fledged roguelite shooter, which lasts many dozens of hours once it gets its hooks into you. The trajectory of unlocks and exploration, with plenty of secrets to work on while you get there, proves highly entertaining. Its VR conversion may have the odd rough edge, but its gameplay and structure are first rate. Along with VRacer Hoverbike, Reach, and Deadpool, it’s been an exciting end to 2025 for content starved VR fans.

Formats: PlayStation VR2 (reviewed), PC VR, and Meta Quest
Price: £19.99
Publisher: Impact Reality
Developer: Flat2VR and RyseUp Studios
Release Date: 20th November 2025
Age Rating: 3

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