Doom (2016)

DOOM is the best modern take on the retro FPS genre. Bunny hopping around levels carrying an entire armoury on my back and shooting a lot of demons never gets boring. Other great features stolen from games of yore are maze like levels with lots of secrets and a intense heavy metal soundtrack. All of this put into a game that looks great and runs superbly makes for one of the best FPS in modern years.

Story

There’s some demons, plenty of guns and a lot of blood.

Gameplay

At the start DOOM feels a little generic, your standard modern single-player FPS where you break out of a situation armed only with a pistol. Luckily the game diverts from other modern FPS systems and goes back to the roots of what makes an FPS so great. You’ll be bunny hopping around levels faster than the speed of light shooting rockets, point blank shotgun slugs, miniguns and other incredibly satisfying weapons. Weapon variety is a key feature of DOOM, and your ammunition supply is small so get used to swapping your weapons a lot. Luckily outside of the base pistol all the weapons are great to use, my go to was the shotgun (with a grenade launcher function) and the obvious rocket launcher. The only thing I’m not entirely convinced on is the executions, which are a crucial part of the gameplay as they restore health, armour and ammunition. There is quite a lot of variety in the canned animations and they’re very quick but I often found myself just shooting them instead. Overall however the gunplay and weapon variety is incredible.

Speed and maneuverability are back, which is amazing. Get used to tapping that spacebar if you want to win, as keeping on your toes and bouncing around the maze like levels and arenas will keep the demons from blowing you up, crushing you or ripping you to pieces. There’s plenty of jump pads especially later on in the game and there is also a haste powerup if you didn’t think it was fast enough already. I cannot express how great it was to be playing a triple-A FPS where movement and jumping is so important.

Map design is generally pretty good here, sure there are levels (especially at the start) that are quite linear but from about the midway point the level design seems to improve greatly with lots of secrets, backtracking, security keys and all the other things we as an industry seemingly left behind. Secrets are important for character upgrades, which there was a surprising amount of. “Red ball things” increase your health, armour or ammo capacity. “Upgrade chips” increase functionality of your character such as ability to detect secrets, powering up your power ups or improving your secondary equipment (grenades etc.) and finally weapon upgrades for alternate fire modes or general upgrades. For the most part these upgrades don’t get in the way much and unlocking new functionality for weapons is actually pretty great, I think it’s a good thing to keep from modern game design.

Presentation

The game looks and sounds incredible, however more importantly it runs great. I was running the game at 1440p on pretty much max graphics and kept a solid >150fps. The fps is crucial here in how fast the game feels and the input latency, the option of really high FOV is also amazing. The graphics are incredible with very detailed textures, models and animations. An equally important aspect of the presentation is the music which is a suite of brilliant heavy metal guitar riffs that works so so well in the feeling of action and speed in the game, there’s probably no better soundtrack to kill demons to. Finally the sound effects are also very good here, particularly the explosions which combined with the great visuals were a lot of fun.

Doom 2016 plays like a series of wave survival games, with predictable and repetitive AI spawns in every room (with larger demons tacked on as you progress towards the end). The final boss fight is also disappointing, made worse by the lack of any kind of balance when it comes to weaponry. The atmosphere is forgettable, and a bit cartoonish at times; especially the second boss fight. I honestly preferred the series' foray into horror with Doom 3 (sacrilegious; I know, and I don't give a fuck) to this reboot's generic art style and casual gunplay.

However, it is still a solid shooter, and the gore kill mechanic is immensely satisfying. In spite of the lack of balance, every weapon (except the pistol) is fun to use, and the secrets and level challenges keep things interesting. On a slightly unrelated note, I am pretty happy with how well my GTX 960M performed. Time to start Rise of the Tomb Raider.

Actual Score: 3.5/5

Excellent game for those who never played the original DOOM trilogy. The graphics are drop dead gorgeous, the gameplay is exciting, fun, and just the right level of challenging, and the replay value is insane. After beating the game, there are unlockables you can get to unlock original DOOM levels, toy characters to collect, and new modes and difficulties to try out. I picked this up and played it nonstop for a week until I did everything. The only issue I had is that many trophies did NOT unlock for me such as the one for collecting all of the monster tags/cards throughout a level and reaching level 5 in multiplayer. I also could not get nightmare difficulty to unlock after beating the entire game. This is with the latest patch for the PS4 as of Oct. 2016.

If you want trophies, prepare to be cheated. If you want an awesome FPS to play with excellent gameplay and replay value, look no further.

Maybe it is time to consider playing some new Doom. From Kotaku's review:

While Doom comes with multiplayer, the campaign is where it shines, in a pleasing inversion of the usual dynamic of modern shooters. It wastes no time. Within seconds, there is a gun in your hand and a lab of possessed scientists bearing down upon you...

Doom feels like a ‘90s shooter. There’s no hiding behind cover, no scripted sequences, no friendly NPCs to follow into firefights. In their place are lots of first-person jumping sequences, for good or ill. The level design, too, is a departure from the bulk of big modern shooters. Rather than a linear route through corridors and tightly controlled open air rooms, you’re often let loose in an open, multi-layered space webbed with walkways, platforms, and corridors, stuffed with secrets. Often, if I saw an area beneath me I could just jump over a walkway barrier, land on it, and start exploring.