Virtual reality builds the whole world
In VR, the headset presents a complete visual environment. That makes it effective when atmosphere and place are part of the game: a neon arcade around a full-size pinball cabinet, a quiet study around a chessboard, or the lunar horizon surrounding a rover cockpit.
The tradeoff is reduced awareness of the physical room. Clear space, boundary awareness and a deliberate seated or standing setup matter more because ordinary surroundings are no longer continuously visible.
Mixed reality brings the game into your room
MR preserves a view of the real environment and anchors digital content within it. Pinball Arcade can place NEON NOVA at room scale or shrink it to a tabletop cabinet. Chess VR can place, rotate and resize a board on a real table. The room becomes part of the interface rather than something the game hides.
Mixed reality is especially useful when a game centres on one spatial object and the player benefits from seeing furniture, other people or the remaining play space.
Why some games remain fully immersive
Moon Buggy VR is centred on being inside an Apollo-inspired rover on the Moon. The surrounding horizon, low-gravity terrain and cockpit are the experience, so fully immersive VR supports the core idea more directly than placing a rover dashboard in an ordinary room would.
This is a useful rule of thumb: MR is powerful when the digital object joins the room; VR is powerful when the player needs to join the world.
Choose using comfort and task, not labels
Choose MR when room awareness, shared physical space or quick placement matters. Choose VR when environmental presence, visual focus or travel into another place matters. Then consider whether the game supports seated play, tracked hands, controllers and a placement scale that matches your body and room.
AllGames.ca marks Web, Quest app, VR and MR support separately because a native headset app is not automatically both VR and MR. The compatibility table links each supported format to the relevant game details and current release status.