Doom (2016)

Beat on Ultra Violence. I found most of the secrets and most of the ones I missed were in levels with points of no return. I did not care about challenges. My favorite weapon was the assault rifle with scope; I found it very satisfying to pull off head shots while on the move, but there was not enough ammo to use it too much. I never tried micro missiles. The gauss cannon was even better at sniping; I used precision mod and never tried siege mode. I almost never used it in direct combat though, preferring to use it to snipe before entering the next arena. The chaingun was another weapon I rarely used because I wanted to conserve ammo for the assault rifle. But I broke the late game with the infinite ammo rune using the gatling mod to shoot constantly. Plasma rifle with stun was my go to weapon for the most dangerous enemies; sometimes finish them off with plasma, sometimes throw a frag and move on, and other times switch to shotgun or rockets. Never tried the heat blast. I use remote detonator for rockets but never really needed to detonate them; the lock on burst was useful early on for tough enemies. I used the shotgun quite a bit with explosive shot; great for imps and shield guys but not great for tougher enemies. Never tried burst shot. I used the super shotgun shockingly sparingly but by the time I beat the campaign and started in snapmap I had gotten proficient at switching to it for a point blank shot before creating distance and switching to another weapon. I left most of the key bindings intact, setting "5" for the super shotgun, "Z" for rockets, "X" for chain gun and "C" for gauss.

I put suit upgrades into environmental protection and then power ups. I especially liked the ability that caused power ups to fully heal, and thus avoided them unless I needed healing (which often meant I never used them at all). My preferred rune set up was infinite ammo when armor is high, glory kills drop armor and enemies stay stunned longer. I used that to pretty much break much of the late game. I often micromanaged my runes for the most benefit, taking out armor drops when full on armor and infinite ammo when my armor was not high enough to use it. Death save, air mobility and equipment power were my secondary runes. For the argent upgrades I maxed health first, then armor and then ammo. I found the game to be quite challenging, with some fights taking multiple tries, but I rarely used the chain saw did not use the BFG as much as I could have. In other words, the challenge level was good but I did not find that I needed to use every resource; in particular there were only a couple of times that I actually used the chainsaw because I was out of ammo. I saved the BFG for summoners, mini bosses (like multiple barons at once) and bosses. I had no trouble killing the cyberdemon and spider mastermind but the new hell guardian things kicked my ass. It almost felt more like a World of Warcraft raid boss with all the gimmicky attacks to avoid, and I hated the stupid shield. I failed several times until I figured out to wait for the shield to drop, BFG the fucker and then unload with the chain gun. The tag team after only took 2 tries and I was able to keep my armor high enough for infinite ammo for the almost the entire thing. After beating the campaign I went back to unlock the classic maps and play those. That was some of the most difficult Doom I have ever played; the old maps are really not designed for the new Pinkies! They are the most dangerous thing and best target for chainsaw. Then I went into snapmap and expect to be playing that off and on for a very long time. At some point I will do a new campaign on Nightmare but I am not going to touch Ultra Nightmare.

Loved the game overall and feel it combines the best of old school Doom and Doom 3 to make something entirely different. I enjoyed the many tactical options and the ballet of the battle they encourage; weapons that use the same ammo, the mods, the drops from glory skills and the way the chainsaw and BFG are more like limited power ups. I most disliked the checkpoint saves; quite a few times I died from platforming while trying to find secrets and had to repeat several minutes of backtracking and looting. I could also do without the insta death for failure at platforming and was not fussy about the new lore, with the Doom Slayer being some kind of angel or ancient human or something?

Excellent movement, feedback, and enemy design. Partially due to the use of waypoint markers and partially due to the less abstract level design, it's much harder to get lost here than it is to get lost in the classic Doom games. This sped the pace up quite a bit, so that key card hunting was no longer a chore. I was even invested in the story up to a point. The contrast between the main character's utter disregard for anything besides demon killing juxtaposed against Samuel Hayden's attempts to grapple with legitimately complex issues was both deliberate and a consistent source of comedy.

If I had one criticism, it's that I think the later levels lacked variety. The earlier levels have varied combat arenas that consistently integrate new enemies, play with their shape, and change up how much space is available to you, but by the final level it boils down to every single enemy in the game being spawned somewhere in a wide open, multi-level arena. I suspect this is deliberate in order to invoke a sense of being utterly unstoppable (since it's much easier for you to outmaneuver enemies and dodge projectiles when you have all the space in the world to keep moving), but I wish they'd kept trying new things instead.

I can understand why the glory kill mechanic might have been controversial before the game was released, but it isn't intrusive and gives the combat a uniquely aggressive feel. There's no first-person shooter I can think of off the top of my head that so totally encourages the player to approach enemies so frequently. Rip and tear indeed.

Doom is a great first person shooter with a unique feel and I highly recommend it.

Doom 2016 - First Impressions

I really didn't want to return to this, there are several reasons why and they're all ones that are still present as I replay. I should say that I never did finish it, I got like two hours in I think? Up until the level you get the plasma gun, the Foundry. That's the level I just finished before writing this.

Everything's too slow, you move too slow, enemies are too slow to chase you, strafing wins the game. A little bit of an oversimplification, but there's more. The modifications are all overtuned, weapons do so much damage you practically don't need to care about ammo that much unless you're really really bad, and I've only had to use the chainsaw once. The powerups make things even worse, so overpowered that all the enemies around you might as well keel over. And this is before you get upgrades that make the powerups even more disgusting, like one that gives you full health regen on pickup. Who the fuck thought that was a good idea?

I do enjoy the aesthetic of it, a little. It's a weird mix, a cartoonish idea of gritty sci-fi, that mocks Doom 3 as much as it kinda blends it in. The story is whatever, I like that Doomguy throws away the first monitor that looks like a story. What I don't like is that after this, Doomguy gives you no out to skip any of the unskippable cutscenes. A bit of dissonance in our internal character who acts like he doesn't give a shit about the plot rails huh?

I'm still enjoying myself, there were a couple encounters that threw a curveball or two, although minimal. The gameplay loop has kinda clicked for me despite how monotonous it can feel at times, and I'm going to finish this game within a week so I can take a crack at Eternal. But man, it's crazy that I'm actually preferring some design in Black Mesa of all things and I wasn't big on that game either!