Missed out on all the week’s biggest VR news? Where have you been, Mars? Oh, actually I guess that’s quite possible. Well, either way, we’ve got you covered with our round up of the biggest stories in VR over the past five days.
The Final Verdict on Doom VFR
Bethesda’s second big VR game of the holiday season, Doom VFR, is finally upon us. After we all fell so hard for Skyrim VR, does this shooter spin-off measure up to expectations? Well it really depends on how and where you play it; the PSVR version has some deeply troubled control schemes, while the Vive version only offers smooth locomotion with a gamepad. The result is a game that’s a little more awkward than we’d hoped, but still has its moments.
But Does It Work On Rift?
Where were you during the great Doom VFR debacle of 2017? Yesterday, when the game launched on Steam, we immeadiately tested to see if the game would work on the Oculus Rift. Officially, it’s only been released on Vive, but SteamVR allows headsets not natively supported by developers to still access the content for the most part. Doom VFR appeared to be the rare exception, which many suspected may have been a deliberate move as a result of Bethesda parent company Zenimax’s ongoing legal dispute with Oculus. Fortunately, Valve updated the SteamVR Beta to fix the Rift support. Saved!
Forget Doom: Skyrim!
Okay but, seriously, all this Doom talk reminds us that it’s been about five minutes since we last played Skyrim VR and we need our fix. This week, our own David Jagneaux wrote about how the game gets a new lease on life inside VR, which is an impressive feat considering it’s now a six year old RPG that released while Palmer Luckey was still toying away with the Oculus Rift in his garage. Whoever thought Skyrim would age well?
The Problem With Spiders
Outside of Bethesda-land, we also recently wrote about scares in VR experiences, and the need to keep players feeling safe inside of the virtual worlds they explore unless they’re specifically told it’s a horror experience. It seemed to strike a chord with at least some of you who don’t like spiders jumping at their face (who knew?). Others just wanted to point out that I’m a coward and need to shut up. That I did know.
Big PSX Teases For PSVR
PlayStation’s annual fan event, PlayStation Experience, is right around the corner and it sounds like this year’s show could be a big one for PSVR. Sony released its list of panels for the event this week, and the first session is a talk on a new PSVR title from “two legends”. Our spidey-sense is official tingling.
