Meta Quest: The best VR music & rhythm games
UPDATE- Article revised
- new games added
Do you want to experience driving electronic beats under your VR headset or become a VR rock star? We show you the best VR music games for the Meta Quest.
Meta's mobile headsets Quest 3, Quest 2 and Quest Pro are ideal for motion-intensive games. With no annoying cables, there is one less thing to trip over in virtual reality.
The Quest game catalog includes numerous VR games that, in addition to testing your physical fitness, primarily challenge your sense of rhythm and fill the virtual world with music. We show you the best VR music and rhythm games for Meta Quest.
- Note: You can find the best titles for sweating in VR in our list of the best VR fitness games on Meta Quest.
Content
Beat Saber: The classic VR music game
- Price: $29.99
- Store: Beat Saber
Let's start with the VR hit par excellence: Beat Saber sparked a craze for rhythm games with VR headsets in 2018 that continues to this day and is still one of the most successful VR games ever. In 2021, Beat Saber brought Meta almost $100M — three years after release.
The game principle should be familiar to all VR headset owners by now. You use two virtual laser swords to slash different colored blocks that fly at you to the beat of mainly electronic music.
Since 2018, numerous updates have been released, which expand the main game with additional modes like the Beat Saber multiplayer. In addition, there are paid DLCs that bring new music from well-known artists like Billie Eilish, Fall Out Boy, Skrillex, Lady Gaga or Linkin Park into the game.
The latest release, Music Pack OST 7, features five new free songs for Beat Saber and a new environment. In addition, the laser physics has been expanded.
Synth Riders: Dancing in retrofuturistic VR worlds
- Price: $24.99
- Store: Synth Riders
Synth Riders follows a similar path as Beat Saber but focuses more on rhythmic dance movements. Instead of cutting blocks, you touch orbs that come towards you to match the sound. Synth Riders also offers multiplayer and gameplay variations like a 360-degree mode where rhythm balls fly around your ears from all directions.
Kluge Interactive sends you into different retrofuturistic settings. Sometimes you stand on the roof of a skyscraper surrounded by neon advertising, then you fly past gigantic robotic creatures.
Most of the now over fifty playable songs include synthwave, industrial, EDM, and many other electronic subgenres. You can also access music by Muse, Lindsey Stirling, or The Offspring via partly paid DLCs. The latest release was the 80s Mixtape Side A with hits by a-ha, INXS and more.
Pistol Whip: The VR music game with a twist
- Price: $29.99
- Store: Pistol Whip
Pistol Whip brings a completely new twist to the genre of VR music games. According to the developer studio Cloudhead Games, it was inspired by stylish action movies like John Wick or Equilibrium.
Like in a classic rail shooter, you are pulled through a tube-like level. You shoot at enemies and dodge their bullets. If you hit them in rhythm with the beat, you'll get extra points.
Pistol Whip is also regularly updated with new content, but it also has a special feature among VR music games: Story DLCs. With Pistol Whip 2089, Cloudhead Games delivered a first mini-campaign with five chapters in a cyberpunk world. Later, Smoke & Thunder followed with a western scenario and, most recently, the Voidslayer update, which brings your power metal fantasies to life.
Smash Drums: The VR music game for real drummers
- Price: $19.99
- Store: Smash Drums
Smash Drums is the first real rocker on our list of the best VR music games for the Meta Quest 2. You take over the virtual sticks and drum in real drumming style on the bass drums, toms, snares, and cymbals flying in time.
With a bit of practice, you'll actually get some drumming feeling. Real drummers will have to get used to it, though: You hit the bass drum with the stick instead of the foot pedal. In the total of nine virtual environments, you play your way from a prison cell to an office room to a rock show to the moon.
Smash Drums now offers more than fifty songs from different rock subgenres. Since the release of the latest music pack, you can drum along to popular 90s hits in Smash Drums. There is also a mixed reality mode in which the drum kit is in your living room.
Ragnarock: The slightly different drum game
- Price: $24.99
- Store: Ragnarock
Ragnarock also focuses on drumming, but less in the sense of a drum kit. In this VR rhythm game, you become Viking captains who take part in a boat race and smash runes with hammers to the beat of the music.
You will be accompanied by epic rock and metal sounds from well-known bands such as Alestorm, Gloryhammer, Saltatio Mortis and Wind Rose. You can also integrate your own songs into the game.
Unplugged: Air Guitar - A different kind of air guitar
- Price: $24.99
- Store: Unplugged: Air Guitar
Really legendary names from rock and metal have made it into the air guitar simulator Unplugged: Air Guitar. Weezer, Muse, Ozzy Osbourne, Rob Zombie, Slayer and Pantera are among the performers of the playable songs.
Instead of Guitar Hero or Rockband VR, which is not available on Meta Quest 2, Unplugged: Air Guitar does not require a plastic guitar. Vertigo Games fully relies on the hand tracking of Meta Quest 2.
You strap on a virtual guitar and fix it in the VR environment in front of you at a suitable height. The body hangs on an imaginary anchor, so to speak, while you can move the guitar's neck up and down with your left hand.
On four lines, which correspond to the four frets of the virtual guitar, the fingering instructions rush towards you. Depending on the color, you pick up one to four fingers at the right height and strum them with your right hand. You can improvise during quick solos and move your fingers quickly within a limited field.
The hand tracking works surprisingly well and the small campaign is wittily staged. Russ "Satchel" Parrish, guitarist of the glam metal band Steel Panther, leads you from the back room to the big VR stages of this world in a poster - and doesn't leave out any rock cliché.
Avicii VR: A music game in honor of the celebrated DJ
- Price: $29.99
- Store: Avicii Invector: Encore Edition
Avicii Invector is a VR port of the console and PC title of the same name, which was released for Meta Quest. The game contains 35 tracks by the late DJ Tim Bergling and lets you control a spaceship to the beat of the music, pressing buttons and steering through gates.
Unlike games like Beat Saber, Avicii Invector does not require any physical movement and is therefore more suitable for those music game fans who are not keen on moving around.
In Virtuoso, you learn to play VR instruments
- Price: $19.99
- Store: Virtuoso
Virtuoso allows you to play music on six imaginative VR instruments. The app is aimed at both professionals and beginners and offers features such as loops and vocal recordings. You can share your creations online and customize some of the instruments to suit your needs.
Meli: You shouldn’t miss this special mixed reality experience
- Price: free (demo)
- Store: Meli
Meli is currently only available as a free demo, but it already shows its enormous potential. The mixed reality game for Meta Quest 3 combines classical music with hand tracking.
You conduct a virtual orchestra by making movements in time with the music. The game offers a smooth transition between mixed reality and virtual reality by building a virtual environment based on your actions. Be sure to try it out!
Learn to play the piano in mixed reality with PianoVision
- Price:$9.99
- Store: PianoVision
Another excursion into mixed reality is offered by PianoVision, a training app for Meta Quest 3 that helps you learn to play the piano.
The app connects to a MIDI keyboard and displays virtual notes on the real keys. It offers various learning modes, including one with real-time correction, and allows you to import your own MIDI pieces.
Note: Links to online stores in articles can be so-called affiliate links. If you buy through this link, MIXED receives a commission from the provider. For you the price does not change.
