Alexa helps you reserve a ride with car2go’s carsharing service

You can now order a car2go by commanding Alexa to find the nearest one and reserve it. The pay-by-time carsharing service is the latest automotive-related company to get a skill that integrates it with Amazon’s voice assistant, following BMW and Nissan.

The skill allows users to vocally ask about the nearest car2go vehicle, reserve it for up to 30 minutes or cancel it. While that limits your searches to whatever’s close by — instead of, say, cross-referencing for a slick Mercedes if you wanted something bigger than the company’s standard smart car — but hey, sometimes you don’t want to spend more effort snagging a car than barking at your smart speaker.

Source: Car2go (PDF)

Facebook Messenger’s Apple Music Chat Extension for Recommendations and Sharing Songs Now Rolling Out

Facebook’s Messenger service was today updated with a new Apple Music chat extension, allowing Messenger users to link to Apple Music content to share songs and directly within the Messenger app.

The extension can be accessed by tapping on the “+” icon next to the text bar to add Apple Music to a conversation. There’s also an option to interact directly with the Apple Music chat bot to ask for music recommendations.

Apple Music subscribers can listen to full tracks from Apple Music, while non-subscribers are able to share and listen to 30 second clips from any music track. There’s an option directly within Messenger to sign up for Apple Music.

This feature appears to still be rolling out to users. While Engadget has access, we’re not yet seeing full functionality.

Facebook first announced plans for both Spotify and Apple Music integration in Messenger in April of 2017. The Spotify chat extension has been available for months ahead of the launch of the Apple Music extension.

Tags: Facebook Messenger, Apple Music
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Carpool Karaoke Episode Starring Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington to Air Next Week

Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington, who passed away in July, filmed an episode of Apple Music’s Carpool Karaoke: The Series just before his death. It was unclear whether or not that episode would eventually air, but Linkin Park announced today on Facebook that the episode starring Bennington will indeed be shown.

In the Facebook post, the band says the episode will be streamed for free on the Linkin Park Facebook page “this time next week,” suggesting a debut on Thursday morning.

Apple did not advertise the Chester Bennington episode when it previewed next week’s Carpool Karaoke episodes on YouTube, so it is not clear if the episode will be available solely on Facebook or if it will also air on Apple Music.

The episode will be the only episode of Carpool Karaoke: The Series that can be watched outside of Apple Music, and by releasing it on Facebook, Apple ensures it will be available to all of Chester Bennington’s friends, family, and fans at no cost with no subscription required. Other episodes of Carpool Karaoke require an Apple Music subscription.

Chester Bennington’s episode also features Linkin Park band members Joe Hahn and Mike Shinoda, along with Ken Jeong, known for his role as Ben Chang on the NBC sitcom Community.

Tags: Apple Music, Carpool Karaoke
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Uber Removing Apple-Granted API That Could Have Let it Record a User’s iPhone Screen

When the Apple Watch was first released, Apple gave Uber what’s known as an “entitlement” to run a special API to improve performance of the Uber app on the wrist worn device.

That entitlement made headlines today when security researchers told Gizmodo that Uber could have used it to record a user’s iPhone screen even with the Uber app just running in the background.

In a statement, Uber said the entitlement was used for an old version of the Apple Watch app and was provided to Uber because the original Apple Watch couldn’t render maps.

“It was used for an old version of the Apple Watch app, specifically to run the heavy lifting of rendering maps on your phone & then send the rendering to the Watch app,” an Uber spokesperson told Gizmodo, saying that early Apple Watches couldn’t handle this process alone. “This dependency was removed with previous improvements to Apple’s OS & our app. Therefore, we’re removing this API from our iOS codebase.”

The entitlement is no longer necessary and Uber is planning to remove it from the iOS codebase, according to both the statement given to Gizmodo and a tweet from Uber head of security and privacy communications Melanie Ensign.

According to security researcher Will Strafach, who first brought attention to the issue, Apple does not often give out entitlements. Strafach said he could find no other apps on the App Store that have the permissions that the Uber app has.

API was used to render Uber maps on iphone & send to Apple Watch before Watch apps could handle it. It’s not in use & being removed. Thx!

— Melanie Ensign (@iMeluny) October 5, 2017

Strafach says there is no evidence that Uber ever misused the entitlement, but it could have been utilized to monitor activity on an iPhone, recording passwords and other personal information. “Essentially it gives you full control over the framebuffer, which contains the colors of each pixel of your screen. So they can potentially draw or record the screen,” another security researcher, Luca Todesco, told Gizmodo.

Uber says the app is no longer connected to anything in the company’s current codebase, but users will likely be wary anyway as there have been other privacy concerns with the Uber app. There was a feature that allowed riders to be tracked for up to five minutes after a trip, and Apple CEO Tim Cook even went so far as to threaten to remove the app from the App Store after it was found to be secretly recording the UDID of iPhones to identify them even after the Uber app had been deleted.

Tag: Uber
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Microsoft Edge arrives on iOS and Android devices in preview

Why it matters to you

If you wish Windows 10 worked better with your phone, Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android might be the answer.

Microsoft is bringing Windows 10’s internet browser to more mobile devices. The Redmond, Washington-based company announced that Edge would launch on iOS and Android smartphones on Thursday, October 5.

Folks who have enrolled in the Windows Insider Program — Microsoft’s open testing platform for pre-release distributions of Windows — get first dibs. Starting October 5, they’re eligible to sign up for the Microsoft Edge Preview, which will automatically distribute new builds of Edge as they become available.

The Edge apps for iOS and Android are consistent with their desktop counterpart’s minimialist aesthetic, but they aren’t ports of Windows 10’s Edge. Microsoft says they’re built from the ground up to take advantage of the platforms’ unique features. The iOS version uses Apple’s Webkit rendering engine instead of Microsoft’s EdgeHTML, for example, while Edge on uses Google’s Chromium. And both versions let you change the default search engine and block pop-ups and cookies, toggle form saves, and clear browsing history.

Unsurprisingly, Edge for iOS and Android integrates tightly with Windows 10. The apps pulls your bookmarks, tabs, ebooks, favorites, and Reading View from the cloud, and Microsoft says future versions will sync passwords and browsing history across your signed-in devices.

“By far, the majority of our Windows 10 users have iOS and Android phones,” Joe Belfiore, vice president of Windows Experience, told ZDNet. “But there’s no good system to unify PCs with these phones. These two […] apps will knit all this together for all our customers.”

Edge will evolve throughout the testing period, Microsoft says. Support for iPads and Android tablets is in active development, as are Microsoft Cortana-powered recommendations and the desktop Edge’s pen highlighting features. Continue on PC — the Windows 10 service that lets you start browsing the web on a Windows 10 device and pick up where you left off on a phone or tablet — will launch on October 17, when the final Windows 10 Fall Creators update becomes available.

Edge for iOS and Android are available in the U.S. starting October 5, with additional languages and countries to come in the next few weeks. If you’re already a member of Microsoft’s Windows Insider Program and have the latest Windows 10 Insider build installed, you can sign up for access here.

Coinciding with the rollout of Edge for iOS and Android is the Microsoft Launcher, a rebranded version of Microsoft’s Arrow Launcher for Android. The home screen replacement app, a graduate of Microsoft’s internal Garage accelerator, features a real-time feed of important events, top news, recent activities, and favorite contacts; customization options like a background switcher, adjustable grid layout, and programmable gesture shortcuts; and Continue on PC features that highlights recently opened documents.

The Microsoft Launcher is available now for Android devices from the Google Play Store.

Microsoft Edge arrives on iOS and Android devices in preview

Why it matters to you

If you wish Windows 10 worked better with your phone, Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android might be the answer.

Microsoft is bringing Windows 10’s internet browser to more mobile devices. The Redmond, Washington-based company announced that Edge would launch on iOS and Android smartphones on Thursday, October 5.

Folks who have enrolled in the Windows Insider Program — Microsoft’s open testing platform for pre-release distributions of Windows — get first dibs. Starting October 5, they’re eligible to sign up for the Microsoft Edge Preview, which will automatically distribute new builds of Edge as they become available.

The Edge apps for iOS and Android are consistent with their desktop counterpart’s minimialist aesthetic, but they aren’t ports of Windows 10’s Edge. Microsoft says they’re built from the ground up to take advantage of the platforms’ unique features. The iOS version uses Apple’s Webkit rendering engine instead of Microsoft’s EdgeHTML, for example, while Edge on uses Google’s Chromium. And both versions let you change the default search engine and block pop-ups and cookies, toggle form saves, and clear browsing history.

Unsurprisingly, Edge for iOS and Android integrates tightly with Windows 10. The apps pulls your bookmarks, tabs, ebooks, favorites, and Reading View from the cloud, and Microsoft says future versions will sync passwords and browsing history across your signed-in devices.

“By far, the majority of our Windows 10 users have iOS and Android phones,” Joe Belfiore, vice president of Windows Experience, told ZDNet. “But there’s no good system to unify PCs with these phones. These two […] apps will knit all this together for all our customers.”

Edge will evolve throughout the testing period, Microsoft says. Support for iPads and Android tablets is in active development, as are Microsoft Cortana-powered recommendations and the desktop Edge’s pen highlighting features. Continue on PC — the Windows 10 service that lets you start browsing the web on a Windows 10 device and pick up where you left off on a phone or tablet — will launch on October 17, when the final Windows 10 Fall Creators update becomes available.

Edge for iOS and Android are available in the U.S. starting October 5, with additional languages and countries to come in the next few weeks. If you’re already a member of Microsoft’s Windows Insider Program and have the latest Windows 10 Insider build installed, you can sign up for access here.

Coinciding with the rollout of Edge for iOS and Android is the Microsoft Launcher, a rebranded version of Microsoft’s Arrow Launcher for Android. The home screen replacement app, a graduate of Microsoft’s internal Garage accelerator, features a real-time feed of important events, top news, recent activities, and favorite contacts; customization options like a background switcher, adjustable grid layout, and programmable gesture shortcuts; and Continue on PC features that highlights recently opened documents.

The Microsoft Launcher is available now for Android devices from the Google Play Store.

Google Pixel Buds hands-on review

Research Center:
Google Pixel Buds

Google made a lot of predictable announcements at its October 4 hardware event, such as second-generation Pixel smartphones and new additions to its Google Home portfolio. One of the more unexpected (aside from life-logging Clips) was Google Pixel Buds: Tethered wireless earbuds that give you the power of the artificially intelligent Google Assistant.

An odd fit with a not-so-stylish design

Pixel Buds are wireless earphones in that they connect to your phone via Bluetooth rather than a 3.5mm headphone jack. They connect to each other by a wire, however, so they aren’t true wireless earbuds like Apple’s AirPods or Bragi’s The Headphone.

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

In our first impressions handling them, they look and feel unnecessarily large. The fit feels odd at first because it’s not sitting in your ear canal, and that means it’s not snug. Google told us it would feel like a better fit the longer we wear it, so we’ll have to wait and see if that’s true. There’s an adjustable loop (via the wire) at the top of the earbuds to help keep them in place.

We like the color options for the Pixel Buds: Clearly White, Just Black, and Kinda Blue. But we’re not yet sold on the design. The Pixel Buds’ bulbous size makes them feel as though they could fall off at a moment’s notice. We’ll have to use them for a lot longer for a final verdict.

Google Assistant and instant translation

The main draw for these earbuds is access to the Google Assistant . Tap and hold the right earbud to start talking to Assistant and it will respond to whatever you ask. You can ask it for the weather or directions (your phone will detect if you’re walking and give you walking directions), place a call, play a song, send a message — essentially almost anything you can ask the Google Assistant on the phone is fair game with the Pixel Buds.

It’s doesn’t sit in your ear canal, and that means it doesn’t feel snug.

This was hands down our favorite part of the headphones. There’s zero delay between when you press and hold on the right earbud and when you can start talking, and responses were speedy. It felt futuristic.

A single tap on the right earbud will play and pause tracks, and this is what had us worried a little bit. There was a clear one to two second delay between the tap and when the music actually paused. We found ourselves tapping again just to make sure it paused, only to hear the music pause and play again. It was a little frustrating, and we’re hoping that time delay gets shaved down before release.

You can swipe your finger left and right on the earbud to increase or decrease the volume, and it did the job instantly.

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

The other exciting feature with the Pixel Buds works in tandem with Assistant: Instant translation via Google Translate. Tap and hold the right earbud and say “help me speak Japanese,” or one of the 40 supported languages. On your Pixel 2 smartphone, you’ll see the Google Translate app open up but with a unique interface specifically when it detects the Pixel Buds are connected. Tap and hold the right earbud and say a phrase, and the smartphone will then speak the phrase in the language you request. You’ll need to be holding the phone in front of the person you’re chatting with so they hear the translation from the speaker.

The person you’re chatting with can then tap the icon on the smartphone screen and say a phrase in their language, and you’ll immediately hear the translated sentence in your ear. The on-stage demo was impressive, but it didn’t exactly translate the same way in our short experience (pun intended).

Assistant’s responses were speedy without delay.

Simple phrases and sentences worked really well, but anything more technical ended up with a few errors. Think about it — you’re still using Google Translate, which is an excellent and useful translation tool, but it’s no secret that it struggles with complicated translations. The Pixel Buds and Translate struggled with places and names as well.

It’s undoubtedly an exciting feature, but it’s not really new and no one has gotten it perfectly right yet. We don’t think the Pixel Buds will either, but Google’s attempt is a huge step closer. We’ll have to do more testing to see how it fares.

The Pixel Buds will play audio from any Android phone running Android 5.0 Lollipop or higher, and from iPhones running iOS 10 and higher. To make use of the Assistant, you’ll need an Android phone that’s running Android 6.0 Marshmallow and higher. If you want the instant translation feature, you’ll have to purchase a Pixel 2 or Pixel 2 XL smartphone, but it will likely expand to other devices in the future.

Sound quality and battery

We didn’t get much of a chance to really listen and inspect the audio capability of the Pixel Buds, but from what we heard we can tell you with certainty that they get loud. Incredibly loud. Sound was balanced, without sounding tinny or bass-heavy, though we’ll need to do more testing for a final verdict.

Google said the earbuds should last for 5 hours of listening time on a charge, which isn’t amazing for tethered wireless buds, but the portable charging case can charge you can get up to 24 hours of listening time in total. The case uses pogo pins to wirelessly charge and there’s a button you can press to see how much battery the earbuds have when they’re in the case.

Google Pixel Buds Compared To

B&O Play Beoplay E8

Bragi Dash Pro

Jabra Elite Sport

Advanced Sound Model 3

V-Moda Forza Metallo Wireless…

Here One

Optoma NuForce BE6i

Nuheara IQbuds

Erato Muse 5

Bragi The Headphone

Jaybird X3

Apple AirPods

Sol Republic Amps Air

NuForce BE Sport 3

Bragi Dash

We’re not fans of the case, though, for a few reasons. It’s wrapped with this nice, soft fabric, but it feels as though the fabric was placed over cardboard. The case feels cheap and flimsy. It was also not easy to quickly open it — you may need to make use of your fingernails because of how it closes. When you put the Pixel Buds in the case, you also have to wrap the short wire and place it a certain way. It needs to be faster than this — I should be able to plop my earbuds in and continue on with my day, as you can with Apple’s AirPods or other true wireless buds, without the need to pay attention to how the wire is folded.

Availability and price

The Pixel Buds will set you back a whopping $159, and we think that’s absolutely bonkers. It’s a ridiculously high price for earbuds that aren’t fully wireless. We’re not sure the instant translation is worth the high price, though we are pretty happy with how Assistant handled itself.

The Pixel Buds are available for pre-order now — but it looks like they’re already out of stock.

Polaroid (yes, that Polaroid) now has four new camera drones

Why it matters to you

The new Polaroid-branded drones don’t have any unusual features — except maybe the $50-$300 price point.

Polaroid’s iconic rainbow stripes have arrived on an entirely new type of camera — drones. The 80-year-old film camera company now has branded four new budget Polaroid camera drones in a range of sizes and features.

The new line starts with the Polaroid PL2900, a quadcopter sporting Polaroid’s iconic rainbow stripes. The drone doesn’t launch with any crazy new features, except perhaps the $299 price point. The PL2900 carries a 720P HD camera with Wi-Fi for streaming the footage directly to an Android or Apple smartphone. Video is stabilized with a six-axis gyroscope system.

The PL2900 can fly for 10 minutes at speeds of up to 16 mph. The drone cannot keep up that speed for the entire flight, however — Polaroid lists a travel distance of only about 1,000 feet on a single charge. The listing also says batteries are not included. The drone sports a “headless mode” which allows for features like auto return, altitude hold, one button landing, and emergency landings if the signal is lost.

The first drone is joined by a second at the same price point, the Polaroid PL1000, with a shorter seven-minute flight time but speeds up to 20 mph and a different design, sporting prop guards and a red exterior.

The third in the series is a smaller version of the first, sporting the same black and rainbow design on a smaller, circular body. The Polaroid PL3000 has the same 10-minute flight time with two speed settings, maxing out at 20 mph, and keeps the 720P resolution camera. The headless mode and six-axis gyroscope is also included. The PL3000’s smaller body drops the price by $50, listing for $250.

The final announcement is the tiny, $50 Polaroid PL 1300. The small size means the little blue quadcopter only carries a 480p resolution video camera — and only for up to six minutes. Headless mode is still included and the remote has three speed settings, with a max of 20 mph.

The new Polaroid drones don’t appear to list any features that major drone manufacturers aren’t already offering, but they sit at a lower price point and qualify as budget drones (Amazon, in fact, lists the new drones inside of the Toys and Games instead of Electronics). The drones also come with a 60-day warranty and free plastic parts for a year, which means breaking a propeller will only cost shipping and handling.

Without any details on Polaroid’s official website, the new drones appear to be the product of one of Polaroid’s many license agreements that kept the company alive after it declared bankruptcy, which means the drones are branded by, but not developed by Polaroid.

The new drones start shipping October 7 from Amazon and will also be available from Target and Brookstone.

Forget delivering to your home, this drone places packages right in your hands

Why it matters to you

A drone delivery systems which delivers packages to individual people, not addresses, could be useful for emergency deliveries.

Drone deliveries are in the weird position of seeming both totally futuristic and also old news. While most of us haven’t yet been the recipient of a drone delivery (although they are happening), it’s also been a whole four years since Amazon first showed off concept footage of its Prime Air drone service. A U.K.-based product design and development firm, Cambridge Consultants, is here to put a new spin on the idea, however, and it’s pretty darn cool.

Nicknamed DelivAir, the concept is to use drones not just to deliver packages to your address, but right into your hands, regardless of where you are in the world. To do that, it uses GPS to track your phone location, since this is a much more accurate way of determining where you’re likely to be at any given moment than simply heading to the address you’re registered at. Once it’s in range, it uses image recognition technology to identify the correct recipient. The person expecting a delivery then confirms their identity by way of a flashed coded pattern sent by the phone LED flash, after which the drone drops your package down via a winch.

“The initial point of this project was to figure out a way to do drone deliveries while keeping the drone safely away from people,” engineer Sunil Gujral told Digital Trends. “Getting a powerful winch in a small package was one of the biggest challenges we faced, and required us to develop a bespoke winding mechanism.”

The concept may sound a little silly, but the idea of ultra-precise drone deliveries actually makes a whole lot of sense. One possible scenario in which this could be useful involves confidential deliveries. A more likely one might involve emergency deliveries — such as delivering an EpiPen or a defibrillator to a person in need — when they are away from home. “Particularly in cases where people’s lives are at risk after a natural disaster, drones such as this could come in very quickly and deliver individual packages of either food or medicine,” Gujral continued.

So when will such drone deliveries start taking place? Not for a while, sadly.

“Right now, this is a fully functional prototype,” Gujral said. “Everything you see in our demo video is possible and implemented. If you have a phone with the app and you’re in a locale where drone delivery is legally permitted, our drone can automatically fly to where your phone is and deliver a package. The caveat, of course, is that the number of places where you can fly a drone is still limited. That’s why we’re still describing this as a concept at this stage.”

From horror fests to shoot-’em-ups, here are the 20 best Oculus Rift games

The Oculus Rift had a tough go of it out of the gate. Delayed shipments and a sparse library of games made its first six months on the market rocky, to say the least. Then, in late 2016, the delayed Oculus Touch controllers arrived, upping the impressiveness of most games by giving players full motion control with each hand. Now, well into its second year of life, the Oculus Rift continues to impress with a steady stream of solid experiences. From first-person shooters to frightful psychological horror games to quirky puzzlers to co-op games, the platform has something for everyone. We’ve combed through its library to compile the best Oculus Rift games available on the VR headset today.

Lone Echo

Numerous VR experiences have attempted to capture the feeling of floating in space, but the Oculus exclusive title Lone Echo is the only one to do it in a way that feels accurate. In reality, most of your actions involve simple maintenance fixes to a space station, but through the excellent Oculus Touch controllers, all of your movements have an immersion to them that few VR games have been able to replicate thus far. With a strong sci-fi story and a wonderfully realized space setting, Lone Echo‘s several hours of play are the best way to visit space from your living room.

Wilson’s Heart

One of the more ambitious Oculus Rift games to date, Wilson’s Heart serves up psychological horror through the immersive experience of VR. Set in the 1940s, the game follows hospital patient Robert Wilson, who wakes up only to realize that his heart has been replaced by a perplexing device. You play as Wilson, but you’re not the only one with disturbing woes. As you make your way down spooky, tight corridors, you’ll meet an eccentric cast of characters, all of whom want to find out how and why they have been poked and prodded by the dastardly hospital staff. Full of jump scares and eerie realizations, Wilson’s Heart makes great use of the Touch controllers to get you into the thick of its mind-altering horrors.

Superhot VR

Conceived as an alternate expression of experimental first-person shooter Superhot, Superhot VR adapts the stop-motion mechanic to your arms as you wield Oculus Touch controllers. When you move your hands around, the bullets rain in from enemies, but if you stop to consider your next move, you’ll receive a welcome bullet remission. The goal remains the same — to advance to the exit in each room — but in VR, the intensity is amplified. Dismembering foes in VR will get your blood pumping. You must move your hands methodically to succeed, but Superhot VR‘s ingenious design makes it a constant delight.

Job Simulator: The 2050 Archives

A testament to how VR excels at turning menial tasks into engaging, even sometimes transformative experiences, Owlchemy Labs’ Job Simulator: The 2050 Archives pretty much plays as advertised. Yet, the mundane becomes fascinating in VR. Who would have thought? The year is 2050, and humans have automated every job. To spice up your unburdened human life, you can now use a VR headset to simulate what “honest work” was all about. You can ring up chips and drinks as a convenience store clerk, fix cars as a mechanic, man the griddle as a short-order cook, or process paperwork as a run-of-the-mill 9-to-5 office worker. Of course, this is what robots thought work was like, so it may be different and much funnier than you remember.

The Unspoken

This is the closest you can get to being a wizard at home. Oculus exclusive The Unspoken from heralded developer Insomniac Games does an exceedingly impressive job of making you feel like you’re doing a lot of wizarding work without demanding much of you. The Unspoken is an urban fantasy filled with customizable wizards and spell casters, and you just happen to be one of them. The wide array of spells deployed via Oculus Touch controllers almost feel as if they are truly being guided from your fingertips. There’s some exploration here and a dreary game world, but the meat of the experience comes from the duels that help you advance through the ranks of a wizard fight club. Unlike the fight club you’re thinking of, it’s okay to talk about this one. We recommend you play it, too.

Star Trek: Bridge Crew

Quite possibly the best multiplayer VR experience to date, Star Trek: Bridge Crew lets users play out their childhood fantasies of joining the likes of James T. Kirk, Montgomery Scott, Hikaru Sulu, and Pavel Chekov as a member of a Starfleet crew. Players work in teams of four, with each person in one of four roles — pilot, engineer, tactician, or captain. Each job — best acted out with an Oculus Touch controller, but playable with an Xbox One controller — asks players to tinker with a computer panel. Bridge Crew excels as a cooperative game due to the need to work together to find success. It really does feel like you’re living inside an episode of Star Trek.

Simply put, if you have a group to play with, Bridge Crew should be at the top of your wish list.

Robo Recall

Originally designed as a pack-in game for the Oculus Touch controllers, Robo Recall is a frantic shoot-em-up designed to make it easy for you to look cool while blowing robots to bits. You play as Agent 34 of the robot manufacturing company RoboReady. Your job at the company is to remove defective units from the production line, but a virus has turned the robots against their creators, and now you must take them out. While Robo Recall boils down to a series of timed shooting galleries, it’s much more interesting than your average on rails FPS. You can pick up enemies and fling them into other robots with a swipe of your hand, and you can even catch bullets in the air and whirl them back to turn the infected robots into nothing more than a pile of parts. Robo Recall shows off the brilliance of the Oculus Touch controllers. Best of all, it’s free-to-play.

Arizona Sunshine

One of the only full-fledged first person shooters available in VR, Arizona Sunshine drops you into the smoldering heat of an American Southwest that is currently littered with zombies. Using the Oculus Touch, you can aim, shoot, and reload dozens of weapons. More open than other shooters in VR, Arizona Sunshine has a campaign mode that lets players explore the deserts and caves in search of an escape. After the campaign is finished, there are both single- and multiplayer horde modes, which force you to fight off hordes of the undead. Arizona Sunshine is a fast-paced gore-fest filled with bloodied, hungry zombies. It’s slick and demonstrates how the Oculus Rift can deliver complete packages with multiple game modes.

Chronos

For people used to playing traditional video games and looking to ease into the world of VR, Chronos is a great option. An easy comparison is Dark Souls. It’s a game full of pitched sword duels in which you have to carefully land blows and defend against the attacks of your foes to stay alive. Chronos eschews the usual VR approach of the first-person viewpoint — in which you see the game through the eyes of the character you’re playing as — in favor of the third-person view, where you watch and control the action from a separate perspective, much like a camera recording an event.

Edge of Nowhere

Insomniac Games took a stab at doing horror in virtual reality in a way that’s different from nearly every other game of that genre on the platform. Rather than go the usual route, using a first-person perspective that has you playing as if you’re in the shoes (and seeing through the eyes) of the protagonist, it puts the camera behind the main character, just like in Chronos. The result is a more psychological, stealthy take on horror. Edge of Nowhere is another of those VR games that feels like it could easily exist as a more traditional game, but it does some experimentation with the platform to find new ways to scare players.