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Meta, the company behind Facebook and also the Quest VR headsets, has developed something of an annual release cadence. Each holiday it focuses on one tentpole release, hoping it can carry the platform for one more season. Last year, it was Batman: Arkham Shadow, a moody tale that combined investigation with pick-your-spots contemplative combat. This year? Well there’s a superhero again, but the tone couldn’t be more different.
Marvel’s Deadpool VR, from the development studio that at one point made Comic Jumper, leans much more into the comic book of it all, with cel shading and big words to emphasize hits. This does make sense, as Deadpool is a much lighter character. And hey, the Quest is a light sort of headset? Its portability is its strong point, but a game on the platform benefits from obscuring the tech’s shortcomings, and the cel shading here works for that much as Arkham Shadow’s, well, shadows.
In all seriousness, the team at Twisted Pixel is a good match for Deadpool in tone and aesthetic, bringing the team full circle to its XBLA days. It’s certainly an arcade-like experience, with combat rooms tied loosely together with plot-advancing corridors. The IP matches the concept: Deadpool has guns and swords and regenerative powers. It’s almost the exact thing you’d create if you were making a hero from scratch for VR. So this does, on a certain level, work.
The “merc with a mouth” is all about his quips, and playing the role of his mouth is well-known actor Neil Patrick Harris. He’s not Ryan Reynolds, but considering the likely budget concerns, it’s a solid replacement in terms of both tone and name recognition. He delivers the lines about as well as you can hope; there’s the occasional obvious moment of reading an isolated line out of context, but ultimately the inauthentic vibe works well enough with the character that it’s less noticeable.
The writing could be a notch better, though. Quips repeat very quickly, both in and out of battle, and even some of the different ones feel like slightly different takes of the same thought. As you’d expect, the jokes are immature middle-schooler fare combined with fourth-wall mentions that don’t serve to do much else. It’s Deadpool. To be fair, he’s not given a lot to work with mechanically. VR games have sort of settled into a few basic interactions, and in that sense this game is far from innovative. Maybe Wade would have interesting observations if environments were more interactable instead of the one or two mission-critical buttons or what have you.
It’s a slow start for Deadpool VR, but once it gains its bearings and introduces its premise and gameplay loop, it feels better. You won’t be invested in the narrative, but if you like shooting and slashing in VR, this game gives you a helping of those that you can enjoy from time to time and unlock more cosmetics. We do sort of wish levels were a bit more segmented or checkpoints were clearer, though. While it’s possible that you can finish a level on one headset charge, our plays were always just a bit longer than that, meaning we had to sit it down and come back later to complete.
The combat, though, that’s the focus. Twisted Pixel knows that the easiest ways to take out enemies are repetitive and boring, and it does its best to fix that not with clever enemies, but with a score system that gives you more unlockables for using weapon variety. This works… fine? We still stuck with the simple approach in more hectic situations, since the game really doesn’t like it when you are moving with the analog stick and trying to swing a blade at the same time. In our experience, we had to stop in place to make slashes land. It also has some scripting troubles. Maybe you want to get the jump on an enemy around the corner? Or attack a bad guy while he’s doing a monologue within two feet of you? Well the game isn’t ready for you to do that yet, so that won’t do any damage.
The latter only comes up occasionally through one of Deadpool VR’s recurring gags. Since he can be beheaded and not die, you better believe you’ll be watching exposition from the floor a few times. It’s not the only thing they use, but it’s in the rotation. By the way, if you’re put off by that idea, the game does have a “family friendly” mode, but we’re pretty sure it won’t change that. This game without blood and gore and cursing is probably just a black screen, and the things that mode does remove probably wouldn’t make it appeal to anyone who isn’t already into what Deadpool’s all about.
While it’s a fun enough combat game, the thing we most look to VR to bring is immersion. And since Deadpool VR never takes itself seriously and focuses on the fights over making interesting spaces to explore, it lets us down in that regard.
A note for those interested: Deadpool VR is a totally doable seated experience. The main issue is reaching for your guns, a problem that remains even after the use of the feature to move them. We found it fine as long as our seat didn’t have arms and we could reach fully downward, but that’s not how we’d describe the comfy couch we’d prefer. Still, the point stands: there’s nothing in the game that absolutely needs (or really takes advantage of) a big roomscale setup.
Marvel’s Deadpool VR, developed by Twisted Pixel and published by Oculus Studios, launches November 18, 2025 exclusively on Meta Quest 3 and 3S. For more on the Quest platform, check out our archive.
