Duke Nukem’s biggest rival, Serious Sam, has embraced VR with open, overly-muscular arms, but where is Duke’s own VR game? With a little help from a fan and Sam himself, it’s getting there.
Serious Duke 3D is a partial remake of Duke Nukem 3D with full VR support. Created by Syndroid, it’s essentially a mod of Serious Sam 3 using Croteam’s Serious Sam Fusion platform (which you’ll need to own in order to play). That means there’s full support for motion controllers and, as a video recently shared by Syndroid shows, even a pretty good approximation of Duke’s full avatar in VR. Sounds and other assets have been taken from the original game to provide an authentic experience.
This being a Serious Sam mod, you can also play the levels in co-op, although Syndroid does advise to keep it to a maximum of four players considering the game was initially designed as a single-player experience.
Right now the mod has the game’s first three levels ready to play and the developer aims to add two more, rounding out the L.A. Meltdown episode. Syndroid doesn’t yet know if a remake of the first level of the game’s second episode is on the cards, too. It’s about as close to Duke in VR as we’re ever likely to get after the disastrous release of 2011’s Duke Nukem Forever.
This isn’t the first shooter from this era of gaming that’s getting the VR treatment. We recently reported that another modder has just released a VR version of Wolfenstein 3D, and you can play Doom and Heretic in headsets, too. What’s old is new again, I guess.
