And actually I haven't touched Borderlands since (although I will go back to it soon). There is a very good reason for this.
Doom 3 VR is Frickin' Amazing!
Doom 3 VR is not difficult to set up, much easier than using VorpX, and it is a fully immersive VR experience throughout the entire game. You are truly transported to running around inside the Doom 3 game, you feel the walls around you (not literally), you are nervously shining the torch into every dark corner, tip-toeing and peeking around corners trying to get the jump on the bad guys for a change.It really is a true VR experience and, unlike so many other made-for-VR things on the market, it is not just a demo, you can play it from start to finish, and also it is not short, it is the full Doom 3 experience and as a guess I probably put about 50 hours into completing it.
The Installation
The game is on Steam, which is very handy for us HTC Vive owners. You may well own it already in some previous Steam Summer or Winter sale. Actually I assumed myself that I already owned it, but I didn't. Regular price is only £14.99, which might ordinarily be seen as not great for such an old game. However, compared to other made-for-VR titles, for the amount of time you'll get out of it £14.99 is a bargain.
Step 1 of the installation is to buy Doom 3 BFG Edition on Steam (it has to be the BFG Edition specifically) and install it.
Step 2 is to download the VR mod for either the Oculus Rift or the HTC Vive headset and install it. I can provide the link for the Oculus Rift mod here but obviously all my experience is using the HTC Vive edition. Installation of the mod is very easy, it installs like any other application.
- Doom 3 BFG VR: Fully Possessed (HTC Vive)
- Doom 3 BFG VR (Oculus Touch)
Step 3, to run the game, make sure Steam is running (SteamVR doesn't have to be, it will auto-start) and then run the Doom 3 VR shortcut that you get on your desktop. When the mod first runs it will give you the option of Doom 1, Doom 2 or Doom 3. Doom 1 and 2 are not actually VR, they are the games set to run in virtual desktop, which is a nice touch because you get Doom 1 and 2 with Doom 3 BFG Edition, but we don't care about that because we want to run Doom 3 in full VR, so select Doom 3 accordingly.
That's it, you are now in Doom 3 world in VR. You can use the Vive controllers to do everything you need to do, from any settings you wish to change from playing the game.
Actually, I think there is a step 4 here. I am not a great fan of how the default controls are mapped out and I did modify them extensively. I had:
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| I danced in front of the mirror. Does that make me tragic? |
- Normal run movement (not blink) set to my left touchpad, because I don't suffer from motion sickness
- Sprint set to left touchpad press (it's very natural when you are panicking in the game to press the touchpad harder)
- The torch set to the left controller squeeze buttons.
- The PDA set to left controller top button.
- Reload on the right controller squeeze.
- Next/previous weapon set on the right touch pad up and down
- System menu set on the top button.
- I removed any mapping to blink movement.
There are many other settings you can change as well, like how much of your body
is rendered. You can render the entire body, which is not 100% ideal because you do see the top of your chest sometimes, but it is a distraction you can get over. You can set to render forearms and weapons only, or just weapons. I set the whole body to render because it looks better against all the light sources and shadows in the game, as well as the few mirrors you come across.
After setting the full body to render, I must admit, the first time I saw a bathroom mirror, I actually started dancing with my character in front of the mirror. 😁
The Overall Experience
There's definitely a new intensity to playing Doom 3 from within the world rather than just seeing it on a screen. I'm a seasoned First Person Shooter player and also I've played Doom 3 before, so I'm well used to baddies jumping out of nowhere and having to have the right gun ready for the right situation. But playing Doom 3 in VR feels just so much more real. I was slowly walking around rooms making sure my back was against a safe wall so no-one got the jump on me, I was constantly using my flashlight to make sure I knew what was in that dark corner, and I was often moving up to a corner using the touchpad and then physically walking to the edge of it and peering round using room-scale. | |
| Imagine this thing actually coming for you |
Doom 3 VR is what a proper triple-A full length VR game experience should be, not bad for a game that first came out 13 years ago (3rd August 2004).
On the flip side, the shortcomings of the original Doom 3 game do come out after a while. At the time it was originally released, a lot of original Doom and Doom 2 fans were not so enthusiastic about Doom 3. This is because in the first and second games, there was a lot of fast-paced action where you could get chucked in a room with 10 or more baddies at a time that you had to dodge and gun down. Also, the action was much more straightforward, you didn't have to check every corner and be so constantly on alert for the next trap to be sprung. In Doom 3, the wall behind you dropping down for an imp to jump out gets a bit boring after the 10th time it happens. Most of the action happens in confined spaces unlike the first 2 games and finally, you will rarely get 3 or more baddies coming at you unless they are the cannon fodder types like the spider-like things.
Once I started getting towards the end, my only mission was indeed to get to the end to say I'd done it, it turned into a bit of a chore.
But do not let that put you off trying this game because it is a revelation if this is your first proper-length VR gaming experience. Even if you play it until you get bored, it will take a while for that to happen I think.
Other Observations
Playing this game made me realise I have absolutely no issues with motion sickness. I chose to use traditional movement controls the whole time and did not have any sickness.There is a blink teleport system in the game if you suffer from motion sickness, but I have no idea how that can work in an action game with imps chucking fireballs at you from 2 angles. Good luck with that if you try it, let me know how it goes.
Bizarrely, the main problem I found with this game was with balance. For the first 30 minutes I found myself tilting over slightly due to the characters fast movement unbalancing me. I got used to that fairly quickly, but it took longer for the same thing to stop happening to me when I was crouching. The way you duck in this game to go through vents is to physically duck. I'd lean down on one knee, move forwards into some duct and nearly fall over. Very odd. However, I have had the odd balance problem in real life so maybe this is just a manifestation of that.
Finally, there are a few bugs in the game. Right up towards the final few levels of the game, the only time I died was when I was jumping out of vents in the floor and the game decided that not quite jumping out of the vent 100% meant getting squished on the corner of it, that happened probably 2 or 3 times. Also towards the end of the game, I had a few game crashes as well. Most of the time these bugs were not much more than a minor blip because the game does autosave often. However, there is one room near the end, where you have floor tiles dropping from underneath you to dump you into a chasm, and baddies coming out of nowhere, and the game liked crashing in this room. It took me about 8 attempts to clear that one room, very frustrating, but it was the only time I ever got frustrated.
So, Just to Repeat...
Doom 3 VR is awesome, despite the issues. If you have a VR headset, you owe it to yourself to play it even if just for a short while!I can't wait for Fallout 4 VR!
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