‘Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades 2’ Review – VR’s Smartest, Most Hardcore Roguelike

Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades 2 is here, bringing a heaping dose of the shooting range fun and gun realism you’re used to from the original. Now you can also take on an extraction-based roguelike campaign that puts your shooting (and reloading) abilities to the ultimate test. Read on to find out why it may just be VR’s smartest, most hardcore roguelike to date.

Developer: RUST LTD
Publisher: RUST LTD, Creature
Available On: Quest, SteamVR
Reviewed On: Quest 3
Release Date: November 12th, 2026
Price: $40

Gameplay

Undoubtedly, this game is for the people who love the original Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades, which on the face of things isn’t really saying much since it’s a sequel to the game that’s been cooking in Steam Early Access for a decade. At its heart though, Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades 2 is a roguelike shooter built atop the scaffolding of a gun simulator. Newcomers to the series may find it a little daunting at first, but also surprisingly deep and rewarding too.

At first, you’re thrown into the game with minimal explanation, which can be frustrating, especially if you haven’t followed along with developer Anton Hand’s regular dev logs which do a much clearer job of describing the game’s various systems.

The expectation is that you’ll stumble your way through multiple deaths before figuring out how to reload each gun, how to clear levels, how the game’s in-universe currency works, and a host of other important things that I kind of wish were more apparent at the onset of the game. That is, unless you want to put a pause on the campaign, and hang back at base and do the measurably less fun job of reading WienRpedia text entries, or going through various guided ‘Certification’ tutorials. You don’t have to, it just helps.

That said, H3VR2 is everything it was promised to be. Procedurally generates levels are filled with unique traps and alarms, an increasingly difficult array of hot dog-flavored enemies (aka ‘Sosigs’), and a lot of really fun humor along with way.

As an extraction-style roguelike, each level allows you to extract loot, which you find throughout the map. You can fit in your gear transport pod before heading back to base, and going for your next run.

And you’ll find a ton of loot—more than you can shake a meatstick at. Like, a lot of seemingly useless stuff, like ammo that doesn’t work with your current loadout, or red dot sights for (again) stuff you don’t have. The choice here is to either keep it to the end of the run and hope all of it fits in your single allotted loot pod, or recycle it for its base parts: meat, mustard, or metal, and try to spawn something more useful in to use or take back as extracted loot. It’s a fun balancing act that really makes you think before hoovering up random stuff.

That seems to be the overarching theme with H3VR2: smart balancing that gives you just enough to keep going, but not enough to feel like you’re the ultimate badass right away. After all, how can you feel like a badass with a little Hi-Point peashooter? You need to earn your guns, spend your money on worthwhile upgrades, and also earn your understanding of the game in the process.

And personally, H3VR2 represents the high point so far this year in VR gaming.

Immersion

Honestly, at first I wasn’t really feeling H3VR2 solely based on the level of difficulty related to handling and reloading guns. It’s a faff—no two ways about it.

Guns are as realistic as they can get, requiring multiple (and unique) steps to reload, chamber, fire, and unload—a fairly tall order when gun-toting hot dog men are hunting you down and attempting to end your latest run. After playing for a few hours, that’s much less of a complaint now. I understand most pistols and long guns. Even if they’re all different, I’ve developed the muscle memory to get them working, which is in part thanks to taking time at the range, and pushing through a particularly unsuccessful string of first runs.

That said, I can’t pretend like the game’s high gun realism isn’t a barrier to entry. I can’t count the times I tried to cock a gun only to find out the model needed me to toggle the safety off first, or how many times I dropped a spent magazine in terror as I frantically tried to reload, only realizing later that it was actually my last, and I wouldn’t be able to restock it with bullets at one of the many reloading stations dotted throughout the game. In short, you’ll be expected to intuit a lot of interactions from the start, and git gud.

Still, after about an hour of attempts and you inevitably fail your way up a level or two, the game starts to give back. You’ll start to find more loot, more ancillary weapons that actually come in handy, and you’ll get better at developing your own tactics on how to best take down a patrolling Sosig, who might even have a little healer robot floating overhead to suck up even more of your ammo. It’s always difficult, but once you create those fundamental gun handling skills, the game starts to really take off.

Sosigs are delightfully frangible too, as melee weapons and bullets take noticeable bites out of them. And as you’d expect from a hot dog-flavored war simulator, it never gets too serious either, as Sosigs are full of one-liners.

As far as object interaction goes, you can grab most guns in a number of ways, which is nice since you’ll need both hands to load and rack any given weapon. Meanwhile, you can also force grab stuff from far away, or on the ground to keep you from having to crouch or move in odd ways just to grab a Soviet grenade or a single shotgun shell.

Level design is also a high point, as it entirely fits the backrooms-esque narrative purpose of the game. There is a good amount of non-interactable doors, lockers, and other set dressing which may have been better integrated into levels though. Still, levels feel intentional, from the reloading stations to the door opening buttons, which you can push with the tip of your gun, back, hand—whatever you have on you.

Comfort

All of your standard VR locomotion options are here, so it’s very comfortable for most anyone.

Seated mode, although depending on your inventory style, can sometimes make it a pain to grab something by your hip if you’re in a chair with arm rests.