Here at The Elite Institute, we are keen on highlighting a variety of great games to our audience. Whether it be indies, AAA titles, or anything in between, we want to show off as much as possible in order to help guide your purchasing decisions.

That’s why we’re not entirely restricting ourselves to the Nintendo Switch. Thanks to Nintendo Labo VR Kit (check out our review), we’ve fallen in love with virtual reality and as a result have invested in a PlayStation 4 along with PSVR. There are some truly great experiences on the system, and we’d love to share our thoughts with you.

VIRTUAL FLIPPIN’ REALITY
Anyone that read our review for Doom Eternal should be aware of my love for the modern DOOM entries. They took the lore and the fast paced action and revitalised it into something that felt refreshing and new. Naturally, with my PSVR headset, I just had to check out DOOM VFR, which adapted that new formula into VR.

In order to to so, they put you in the shoes (or lack thereof) of a cybernetic survivor who makes up for his lack of legs by acquiring an experimental suit that allows him to zip around. But don’t worry, even though narratively speaking the default controls focus on teleportation, the game does allow for full smooth movement. You just have to find it hidden away in the options menu – something I annoyingly found out after beating the game!

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As is apparent from the offset, DOOM VFR heavily borrows assets from its 2016 counterpart to make up its world. Your arsenal is largely the same (except for the secondary grenade function, which eventually turns into the BFG), as are the enemies and environments; but, despite that, it’s actually a whole unique campaign with progression focused around a central hub rather than simply going from one level to the next.

The Advanced Research Complex that functions as your base operations is rather straightforward in design, comprised of a cylindrical corridor with rooms spread around; however, there’s still a reasonable amount to be doing here in-between missions as you work to put out fires, test the giant BFG cannons, mess around with cleaning robots, and so on. It’s busy-work, mainly, but it also makes for a nice break in the action before you teleport to your next main mission.

The main levels (of which there are seven) feel slightly more familiar to those who played the rebooted DOOM; not only do they share the same bloody corridors and hellscape visuals, but also they both spend a lot of time blasting away the demonic presence. There’s less of a focus on fighting off waves in DOOM VFR (although these certainly still exist to a lesser degree), with combat more being about shooting enemies that get in your way, but it’s a good trade-off to make it feel better in VR.

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As for the controls, the game can be played in a variety of ways. There’s the standard Dualshock controller, of course, in addition to functionality for both dual Move Controllers and the Aim Controller. It’s nice to see support for a multitude of ways, but in reality only the Aim Controller is a viable option. The Move Controllers are mostly fine, but their lack of analogue functionality means that you’ll be forced to teleport everywhere; and the Dualshock suffers from losing all sense of immersion, especially as aiming is linked to your headset, making it feel like the arms are coming out of your head.

In contrast, the Aim Controller is almost perfect. Not only is the movement tracking excellent to but the immersion gained from holding a gun helps to make it feel like you’re really in the action. The excellent placement of the analogue sticks too ensures that movement is fluid while still having full combat control. The only downside is that even though you have free movement of the gun, the secondary grenade is still sticking out of your head and feels like a phantom appendage. In the heat of the action, you do forget about it; but it’s hard to ignore a lot of the time.

Even though the campaign itself may only last a few hours to get through, depending on your skill and difficulty settings, there’s still a fair bit to encourage you to jumping back in. Much like DOOM 2016, there are challenges to complete for each stage as well as both upgrades and Doomguy dolls to find. Whilst upgrades will give you a little bit more of an edge, it’s actually the dolls you will probably want to seek out the most as they unlock classic DOOM levels for you to play from the main menu. It’s a nice touch, even if the teleportation movement does break them a little bit.

VERDICT
DOOM VFR is a neat little VR experience that takes the modern DOOM universe and allows you to experience it for yourself. The control options may not necessarily be perfect, but the action is top notch and is a must play for DOOM fans – even if it’s just to play the classic DOOM levels in VR!