Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City shares something in common with Half-Life: Alyx and Walkabout Mini Golf. You don’t need to play the “game” to enjoy your time in their places. You can go to virtual reality just to be there.I’m down in the sewers exploring the lair with Raphael, Michelangelo, Donatello, and…me. There's a mirror on the wall so I can see myself making turtle muscles, three fingers on each hand and some fat nails. April is over at a table looking at blueprints, and she makes eye contact with me as I walk by checking out all the rooms. I note the potted plants on my way, suggesting one of the turtles is a gardener growing chives and “oregano.”Master Splinter is over there meditating in his room. As I form a mental map of this space, it’s hard not to fall in love with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles all over again when it is clear they've worked together to make their rooms so cozy down in the sewer.There are mattresses stuffed in corners far enough away from their brothers for a bit of privacy, yet close enough to hang out. This is a family, after all, and their messy space underneath the feet of New York City is home. They've scrounged together everything from the refuse of the humans above, repurposed with love and placed in just the perfect spot for their enjoyment below. One of them is chilling and watching TV in his own little corner.I spoke with Ace St. Germain, creative director on Empire City, in a face-to-face interview in Manhattan. He described the spark of inspiration in games like Walkabout Mini Golf:“My best friend lives here in New York. I obviously live in Stockholm, Sweden, now, and we don't get to see each other. We had a whole lifetime pass us by with kids and stuff. But he picked up a headset, I did too, and we would do stuff like hanging out in Walkabout...instead of jumping on Zoom. And it was rad.”And then applying that idea to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:“How would I want to just hang with my other turtle buddy friends? How could we make that a thing? It'd be cool if we set up a situation where we just could log in and just, like, sit in the lair and talk. So when I made it, I gave him a build, jumped in, and we sat there, and we talked about our kids for an hour and a half. And it was like, yeah, this works.”There's a basketball hoop in the middle of the living room and an arcade cabinet over to the side. Just press one of its buttons to switch your shell.I found the computer room and sat at the desk, a mess of wires and screens with a modem buzzing somewhere around the open cabinet of a PC and its fans whirring inside. This is awesome, and I’d be happy just chilling down here with friends and watching any of the Turtles movies, if I could.Development is still very early in Empire City, so other than eating some pizza and tossing a few objects, I haven't really “played” the game here. And yet, with this first hands-on, the developers show they understand exactly where the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles need to start in VR.At home, with a nice place to hang out with your family.You can add Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City to your wishlist on the Meta Horizon Store for Quest and Steam for PC VR.