Bars, computers, and giant spikes sticking in the ground often block your path. The combat arenas are mostly levels from the 2016 reboot, like the reactor room or Titan’s Realm, and many of these levels don’t feel like they’re made for your teleporting function. The weapon wheel is also problematic since it likes to spin past the weapon you intend to select, often disrupting the rhythm of combat.
The delay means instant death during certain encounters. For example, sometimes you won’t jump to a spot you’ve marked due to the finicky controls, so you have to go through the same process again and hope you actually teleport this time. Even once you understand the controls, technical niggles still disrupt the experience. The control scheme is straightforward but takes getting used to, especially when it comes to secondary weapon functions. Your left controller functions as your movement control, letting you slow down time to hop from place to place, while the right controller handles both your weapon wheel and combat functions.
Doom VFR tries to circumvent VR’s locomotion issue by giving you a teleporter function, but at the end of the day, this mini-campaign feels like a hobbled stroll through an amusement park instead of the frenzied, fantastic fight-or-die dance that makes Doom so special.Ī series of combat arenas spread over four hours, VFR puts you in the shoes of a mostly-dead scientist who talks way too much as he tries to shut down a portal to hell with a combat suit he’s piloting from beyond the grave. This creates an interesting problem since virtual reality isn’t made for fast speed due to its ability to make people nauseated.
If you take either of those things out of the equation, what you have isn’t id Software’s infamous shooter but something lesser. When I think of Doom, two things come to mind: its colorful, over-the-top violence and its ridiculous speed.