Category: DOOM

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DOOM (1993) Now Fully Playable In VR On Oculus Quest Via Sidequest

A powerful engine and launcher modifying the original DOOM from 1993 for dual hand controls and standalone room-scale VR is available now for Oculus Quest via sideloading.

The QuestZDOOM engine and launcher app from DrBeef and Baggyg modifies DOOM for VR, bringing the original as well as many of its mods and spin-offs including DOOM II, Heretic, and Hexen to the Oculus Quest wireless headset. There are some free downloads available through the software including FreeDoom, but if you own copies of the other classic games you can load those up as well.

You can grab the packages on Sidequest now — the launcher app is here and the engine is here — and we have a full guide to show you how to get the games on your Quest.

We tried the tools recently and found ourselves tearing through hell remarkably fast, with the engine bringing the game to VR with impressive fidelity. There’s something pretty amazing about playing a game that’s more than 25 years old in completely standalone VR and physically leaning or walking through environments that have by now become iconic.

I recently ran through the first few levels of the original game in VR and you can check out that footage here:

David Jagneaux played through some of the additional games available through the tools as well. The recording isn’t the best, though, and any audio or quality issues seen in the video aren’t seen in VR. Check out some of that footage:

Are you ready to revisit the original DOOM in VR? If you’re excited or get it up and running let us know in the comments what you think.

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Community Download: Which Retro Games Would You Replay In VR?

Community Download is a weekly discussion-focused articles series published (usually) every Monday in which we pose a single, core question to you all, our readers, in the spirit of fostering discussion and debate. For today’s Community Download, we want to know which old-school retro games would you most want to replay in VR?

Over the weekend we published an article with some video footage of an upcoming mod that enables you to play classic id Software games such as DOOM, DOOM II, Heretic, and Hexen natively on Oculus Quest. You can check it out here to see it in action.

This got me thinking: We’ve got modern adaptations of DOOM already with DOOM VFR, games like Pixel Ripped really prey on nostalgia, and with other titles such as Battlezone, Tetris Effect, and more directly enhancing or remaking older games for VR, what else could benefit from a similar treatment?

Out of all the retro PC games, console games, or any other kind of video or computer game you’ve played, which ones do you most think you’d enjoy replaying in VR? One genre that feels criminally under-represented to me is the first-person dungeon crawler. Crystal Rift was a good tease of what’s possible, The Mage’s Tale was a wonderful adventure, and Vanishing Realms shares many elements, but other than those three the genre is basically non-existent in VR. The Well also flew way under the radar back on Gear VR and Go. On that note, I’d love to try games from the Wizardry series in VR.

So what are your picks? Which retro games would you most like to replay in VR if given the chance? Let us know down in the comments below!

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Playing The Original DOOM In VR On Quest Is A Bloody Blast

With more creativity and technological power at our finger tips than ever before, the most excited I’ve been about VR in quite some time comes from playing a VR version of a game originally released in 1993. Go figure.

Nostalgia is a powerful, weird thing. I’ve never really considered DOOM to be one of my all-time favorite game franchises, but there was something magical about stepping foot inside the dark, bloody, and downright creepy demonic compounds of the original two DOOM games — complete with their archaic, blocky textures and visuals.

Using the upcoming QuestZDOOM mod from DrBeef I was able to not only simply and easily play FreeDOOM in VR thanks to GzDOOM, but also access my PC copies of DOOM, DOOM II, Heretic, and Hexen using the same launcher. It was like a 90s-era gold mine of bloody, gory, pixelated violence in VR.

What makes this mod so nifty is that once you install the apk files and open up the launcher on your Quest, everything is handled from inside the headset. Using the launcher UI (which you can see in the gameplay video above) you select which core games you want to launch, like DOOM, DOOM II, Hexen, etc., and then pick from an assortment of mods available to download. I really enjoyed using the voxel-style weapon mod because the default sprites are flat 2D models and feel really strange in VR. There’s also a realistic 3D model mod that makes your guns look like they were ripped from a modern game.

Other mods include a high-resolution texture pack that makes everything nice and sharp, remastered audio, and even tons of map packs. I never really got into modding DOOM very much, so all of this was like new content for me. Back to Saturn X was especially impressive and felt like I was playing a new sequel in the same iconic 90s style.

The menus are overflowing with options as well. You can remap all of the controls, setup teleportation movement, and adjust plenty else. There are also lots of cheats to pick from if you just want to have some high-octane fun.

There isn’t a solid release date for QuestZDOOM just yet, but we’ve been told it will be launching on SideQuest later this month for free. However, if you want to play the original DOOM, DOOM II, Hexen, or Heretic (like we did for most of this gameplay video) you’ll need your own legal, legitimate copies of the game with which to copy over some files to your Quest.

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New Doom VR Mod Releasing Soon For Oculus Quest

A new app is in development that will allow users to play Doom 64 in VR on the Oculus Quest, in a similar fashion to mods like Lambda1VR for Half-Life and Quake2Quest for Quake 2.

QuestZDoom will be the latest Oculus Quest mod that ports a classic game into VR with 6DoF. As you can see in the trailer embedded below, it looks pretty impressive and will be available to sideload entirely for free.

Are you ready for DOOM for Quest? QuestZDoom featuring Meatgrinder. from r/OculusQuest

You won’t even need to own a copy of the original game to play – the mod will use GzDoom, a source port of the original Doom game engine, and FreeDoom. However, if you do have a copy of the original Doom game, you will be able to copy the files into the engine and use those for a more complete experience.

The release will feature 5 sets of VR weapons and a launcher that will allow you to mix and match different Doom mods with ease. There’s support for smooth locomotion and teleport movement options, plus you’ll be able to switch between a couple of different walking speeds for the former.

The person behind the mod is DrBeef, who has previously completed a number of well-known Quest ports and VR projects. He was behind the Lambda1VR mod for Oculus Quest, as well as QuakeQuest and many others.

On Reddit, a comment from someone working with DrBeef indicated that the team was polishing everything up and that a release could be expected within the next couple weeks.

Will you be checking out Doom on the Oculus Quest? Let us know in the comments below.

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A-Tech Cybernetic Review: Out Of Early Access A Little Too Late (PSVR, PC VR)

A-Tech Cybernetic opens with a glaringly obvious tribute. In the game’s menu a blue-suited business man walks past a window and stops for a quick, quiet glance before calmly moving on. Only this company man carries none of the menace in his dead eyes that his predecessor did, and he’s grown a shaggy, defeated beard. G-Man, it seems, has seen better days. And so has A-Tech Cybernetic.

XREAL Games deserves a ton of credit for its effort and intention here. Well over two and a half years on from Early Access release, A-Tech arrives at the finish line as one of the best-supported, most regularly updated story-driven VR games on the market. It’s just a shame the studio couldn’t get there sooner.

This earnest attempt at Doom in VR really shows its age in 2020, especially arriving just a few days after a certain big release. In 2018, I said what I played of A-Tech was “pretty darn good“. And it’s still true that this is an impressive title from a small studio; A-Tech offers several hours of big bangs and mutant mow-downs. But it’s also true that the game is mechanically pedestrian, still stuck in the standards of VR development in 2017 rather than rising to the new bar we enjoy today.

A-Tech makes no apologies for its various imitations; its premise is pure Doom with elements of Resident Evil and Dead Space to flesh out the gameplay. Set on a remote Mars-like planet in a facility overrun with mutants, you find yourself essentially hijacking one scientist’s body to fight your way through corridors and caves as you squabble with the mind of your unwilling captive. It may sound like a premise rich for interesting psychological VR exploration, but it’s mostly just played for cheesy jokes and exposition in a game that doesn’t really need either.

PSVR vs PC VR

A-Tech Cybernetic arrives on PSVR with all the content found in the PC VR version, but it’s a significantly blurrier experience with technical blemishes. While the game’s environments benefit from simple textures, enemies appear meshed together, removing some of the threat they should impose. I also suspect there’s been a reduction in numbers; one of the better moments in the PC version has you surviving for three minutes in a room filled with enemies. On PSVR, I sat in a corner of the room and only had three or four bad guys approach me.

More damning, though, is that the game simply doesn’t feel built for a 180-degree tracking setup, with enemies spawning in from behind and killing you before you can properly react. Plus in some environments I noticed even the geometry suddenly shifting into view. The game is still playable on console, but it’s definitely inferior to the PC edition.

In fairness, the core of A-Tech provides pulpy fun. It’s your standard VR horde massacre which, hey, is still enjoyable to this day. But it’s also just so inescapably simple; enemies are programmed to just run at you and then wave their arms in pantomime to take you down, whereas foes with rifles stand in clear sight with little concern for things so trivial as taking cover.

The game is essentially identical in design to Vertigo Games’ Arizona Sunshine, something we once awarded our game of the year, but now itself seems like a reanimated corpse just shuffling on in the face of The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners and others.

Later chapters introduced over the course of Early Access do their best to mix things up a little and its more intense fights do still carry a certain amount of unnerving dread. A-Tech is at its best when the waves of brain-dead goons are being piled on so thick and fast you don’t have time to think about how simple the game really is. Plus there’s a limited amount of strategy involved, like shooting off enemy legs to slow them down. It’s not as deep as system as, say, Dead Space, but it does allow you to insert a welcome punch of pace into proceedings.

But even as a primitive shooter, A-Tech suffers from some strange bugs. At one point I opened a door to find two enemies running into a wall, and in another a swarm of enemies attacking me simply disappeared. One enemy type, a hulking great monster, seemed completely incapable of actually hitting me, while after one death I was teleported back to the start of the level and had to walk all the way back back to my checkpoint. It would be easier to overlook A-Tech’s simplicity if these hiccups weren’t here.

Comfort

A-Tech Cybernetic comes kitted out with the necessary options to keep you comfortable and/or immersed in VR. There’s both smooth locomotion and teleport-based movement, plus snap turning for PSVR users. Essentially, comfort shouldn’t be too much of an issue here.

A-Tech Cybernetic Review Final Impressions

A-Tech Cybernetic is a steadfast example of the trials and triumphs of Early Access development. If you bought this game back in 2017 and kept up to date with its new chapters over the ensuing years, you probably had a great time with it, at least in parts. But, arriving as one complete package in 2020, the game can’t hide its age, offering fun, flawed shooting built on overly simple foundations with too many bugs to overlook.

In 2018 I said A-Tech Cybernetic: “is a sci-fi zombie shooter that, simply put, feels great to play and has an actual campaign. That’s not something you can say all that often in VR.” Well, you can say that pretty often now, and that’s one wave of enemies A-Tech Cybernetic can’t fend off.

A-Tech Cybernetic Review

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