There will be some PlayStation players who are too young to have ever played DOOM 3. Originally released 17 years ago on PC, the game was later ported to PS4 in 2019 to celebrate the franchise’s 25th birthday. Now the game is getting a whole new version and way to play. DOOM 3: VR Edition is due to be released on PlayStation VR at the end of this month.
DOOM 3 rebooted the DOOM franchise into the action-horror first-person shooter we know today. It’s 2145 and players take the role of a space marine dropped onto Mars to take care of the results of a scientific experiment gone wrong. The UAC was investigating the effects of teleportation, biological research, and advanced weapons design, but one of their teleportation experiments accidentally opened up a gateway to Hell. Now it’s up to the marine to stop the invading demons from attacking Mars and reaching Earth. The VR Edition will also include the two game expansions, Resurrection of Evil and The Lost Mission, adding up to 15 hours of gameplay altogether.
Now the game has been enhanced for VR, players will be able to lean around corners, angle shots using motion controllers like the Aim controller, perform 180-degree quick-turns, and use a wrist-mounted display to track health, armor and ammo. The game has also received new textures, shaders, and sound effects to bring it into the modern age.
DOOM 3 isn’t the first game to come to VR. DOOM: VFR was a dedicated VR game released in 2017 that we had high praise for. The DOOM franchise will soon be reaching its 30th anniversary and it has been extremely successful so far. As spotted by @bogorad222 on Twitter, together with the Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises the three IPs are worth over $7 billion. The last game in the franchise, DOOM Eternal, generated more than $450 million in revenue over the first nine months of its release. Bethesda will be hoping DOOM 3: VR Edition will continue that success when it’s released for PlayStation 4 on March 29. The title will be backwards compatible on PlayStation 5 too.
[Source: PlayStation Blog, Twitter (1, 2)]
