Doom VFR review: A rip-and-tear delight… but only on the right VR setup

The first time I ever tested a modern VR headset, I played Doom.

My 2013 PAX West demo came courtesy of Oculus executive Brendan Iribe, who put a duct-taped, unfinished VR headset over my eyes before booting a modified version of Doom 3. Almost instantly, I praised the immersion. I oohed and ahhed at my ability to rapidly turn my head to line up demon-killing buckshot. I appreciated the lighting and perspective tricks used to convey how much chaos was going on all around me. There really was nothing like it at the time.

Oculus continued demonstrating this build of Doom 3 at other events to drum up excitement for its eventual headset, a fact not lost on the folks who happened to own the Doom license. The ensuing legal battle between Bethesda and Oculus has been legendary, but no lawsuit could wipe away that intrinsic link created between Doom and VR by this formative demo.

That's a lot of baggage for a long-awaited video game to hang onto, but finally, the world has its first official, full-blown Doom VR game. (You can probably guess what the "F" stands for in its official name, Doom VFR.) And yet, it lands not with a heavy-metal rip-and-tear, but with a perfectly reasonable shotgun blast. Doom VFR is totally fine at best if you get to play it on PC with a full HTC Vive VR kit. On that platform, the game's satisfying Doom 2016 elements collide with underwhelming VR optimizations and a wimpy runtime of a few hours.

Sadly, the game has also been shoehorned onto PlayStation VR, and the results there are almost impossible to recommend.

Original Source: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/12/doom-vfr-review-a-rip-and-tear-delight-but-only-on-the-right-vr-setup/