Have You Played... Doom VFR?

As one of the few people who have enough room for a VR setup in their own home, it seems like madness that Bethesda supported the format as much as they did. While other efforts were ports of existing games, retrofitted to have HTC Vive support, Doom VFR was the only one of the three games to be specifically designed with VR in mind. It's also one that required your room to be of a certain size.

I had a lot of fun with it at the time. Yes, the action was as frantic as you'd expect from a modern Doom game, but it gets around the fast pace by letting you teleport quickly from place to place. It even uses this as a key method of butchering stunned enemies. You warp into them and emerge like an even more violent version of the Alien burrowing out of John Hurt's chest.

Despite the steep point of entry (my VR setup was crammed into a room slightly too small for the requirements) I was able to somehow convince my Vive that the play-space was bigger than it really was. I also had to take regular breaks, but this wasn't due to feeling ill (your experience may vary), more the kind of sensory overload that requires a break in which to calm down from the sheer frantic nature of the shooter.

It feels like Doom, which is the important thing, and while it isn't exactly the longest of games it was definitely worth seeing the potential of VR at the time. I'd like to think that games like Doom VFR, which are by no means perfect, were part of the process for other developers to unlock the secrets behind good VR.