You’ve got to love flatscreen to VR modders. They continue to keep PC VR alive and kicking by working tirelessly to produce epic VR conversions of some of gaming’s greats, and it’s all seemingly done in their own time for little to no financial reward. Aside from maybe the occasional Patreon subscription that is.
Case in point are talented modding due Necro and Kaaliba, who will soon be unleashing a brand new flatscreen to VR mod for the much-loved zombie survival game, 7 Days to Die (no Patreon yet but one is planned). I was given an early preview build of their mod to try out for this week’s VR Corner and you can watch me put it through its paces in the video player above (or on YouTube).
For those unfamiliar with 7 Days to Die, all you need to know is that this is a hardcore survival game with an undead twist. At almost 10 years old now, 7 Days to Die is regarded as a classic in its genre and it is well known for its increasingly brutal gameplay that only gets more intense the longer you stay alive.
7 Days to Die finally leaving early access, but console players will have to buy the 1.0 version againRead more on Eurogamer.net
The hardcore nature of the gameplay translates somewhat to the mod’s controls which, while fully functional, are extremely complicated and take quite a while to learn. This will create quite a barrier to entry for newcomers to the game, or newcomers to VR who don’t really know their way around the controllers yet but, speaking from experience, once you get to grips with their complexity you realise they’re implimented rather well.
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Due to its age, the visuals in 7 Days To Die aren’t really up to much by today’s standards. In VR though, they look fine and, apart from some regular pop in on distant trees and objects, the default settings didn’t seem to put too much strain on my beefy gaming PC at all (Intel i9, RTX 3080 Ti). As you’ll see in my video the mod ran at a consistently smooth framerate for the most part, occasionally chugging when in zombie heavy areas, but not enough to ruin the experience.
Despite the early frustrations I felt when getting to grips with the controls, this mod is a lot of fun. I got sick of survival games that have a heavy emphasis on gathering materials in order to craft things a long, long time ago, but VR brings a freshness to the experience and there’s definitely a moreishness to the gameplay when it feels like you’re living inside of it. So much so that I’m itching to go back in and see how long I can stay alive now that I’m confident that I know the basic mechanics needed for survival.
Necro and Kaaliba will be releasing their 7D2D VR mod free of charge and you can expect to see it pushed out to the public sometime in the next few weeks. To stay up to date with development of the mod and be notified when it releases, you can follow its progress over on the Flatscreen to VR Modding Discord.
