Doom (2016)

My playthrough of the game was done on the Ultra violence difficulty. I had previously started a playthrough (that I did not complete) on the difficulty just below this one. The game is incredibly good up until it stops introducing new mechanics. I think the last thing introduced is the BFG in mission number 8/13. Maybe its just my ADHD, but I was bored with the game at a lot of points in the last 2 missions. Its especially difficult when single encounters start have a lot more waves of enemies and take forever. There were numerous times in the last 2 levels where I'm running around the massive arena trying to find and kill one more imp so the next wave can be triggered. The size of the arenas become larger and larger as the game progresses and starts to harm the design of the combat. It absolutely kills the flowstate of the game to stop combat entirely to track down what's left.

Ironically my complaints about this game are the opposite of those i had with Doom Eternal which I criticized for having too many specific mechanics to deal with each enemy. It is probably unfair to want a game that exists in an impossible sweet spot between the two modern doom games. But who knows though? Maybe a third game game in the series might do it.

My Fave FPS, 30: Doom (2016)

Before I begin, thanks to the 8 of you who liked my post. That's already more traction than I ever got on FB for this stuff. It's appreciated, sincerely. And I hope that this attracts some conversation.

Doom isn't my type of shooter but I enjoy this. I'm just not absolutely in love with it. I acknowledge its greatness. It's fast-paced, gory and exciting. Its gameplay loop works perfectly with its systems, constantly rewarding you for being aggressive. Originally, I didn't have it on my list but decided to put it back on.

I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I know the lore of Doom, or if it's the same Doomguy or whatever. I played Doom on SNES many moons ago and have played this one and Eternal, but I am by no means a Doom fan. But I've felt a kinship with Doomguy ever since I read the lore that he's basically so angry at the demons because they killed Daisy. I know some people don't believe that's the main reason he's waging this war. If you look at my profile picture, you will see that it's a rabbit. So I choose to believe that Doomguy's just mad over his rabbit dying because if I was a superpowered soldier and someone killed my rabbit, I'd do the same thing. This is honestly the main reason this was put back on the list.

One HELL of a good Doom game. The music is just plain fucking awesome, fits the feel of the game and essentially propels this game to one of the best (if not the best) in the series.

I played on PC (4k) on Ultra Violence, absolutely no issues. I had about a 30% completion of Steam achievements -- took 17.5 hours in total. Can't wait to rock out with Doom Eternal and whatever the hell comes after that!

I didn't play shooters growing up, let alone M-rated stuff. I'm also not much of a blood and guts kinda guy, and heavy metal's never really been my thing.

And yet this game was a fucking blast.

One of the most simply fun games you can play. Very mechanical and "game-y" in the best way possible. Heavy old-school emphasis on guns, arsenals, mobility, arena shooting, and hunting for secrets. And yet it's done well enough to get a modern player into its mindset seamlessly.

Light on the story, but enjoyable enough for what's there. Besides, the real story is how you're gonna rip and/or tear the dozens of demons that just appeared in front of you. And that story is told beautifully, over and over and over again.

A big recommend. If it can get someone like me into the FPS/head-banging/rip-and-tear flowstate, it'll sure as hell get you there.

This game does what it does well and doesn't try to do anything else. The environments and creatures look amazing (and it's a 7 year old game at this point), the glory kills are great, the weapons are great, the bosses are awesome, and it never skips a beat. It's like 10 hours of adrenaline.

But, beyond that, it's unimaginitive and gets repetitive pretty quickly. Here's the gameplay loop:

1. Go to the next area
2. Flip a "switch" (this may be a literal switch, but in some contexts means destroying something, tapping a computer screen, etc...)
3. The doors lock and you get a fuckton of enemies dropped on you
4. Kill them all
5. A door unlocks
6. Repeat from Step 1

The arenas you get locked in are pretty huge and look designed for multiplayer. They're multi-tiered and mostly wide-open, with jumping pads that can send you flying to another corner of the arena or portals that will instantly send you to another portal. As the game wears on, the number of enemies the that get dumped on you range from "a lot" to "holy shit they really just put me in a room with wave after wave of demons."

They also introduce enemies one-by-one throughout the game, each getting progressively bigger and crazier, but the hordes of enemies are literally just these same dozen-or-so enemies dropped on you in larger and larger quantities. To win, you simply run around the arena as fast as you can, picking up health and ammo, and taking shots at enemies until they're all dead. If you bring one close enough to death it'll flash a blueish color and you can do a special glory kill that gives you more loot (or you can use the chainsaw to do this on an enemy of any health).

Don't get me wrong, the game is thrilling for a few hours. But halfway through I was ready for this one to be done. I'm also finding that first person shooters just aren't my thing anymore; so if they're your thing, you will probably get more mileage out of this one than me.

28th of February 2023 - Journal Entry #3

Version/Type: PS4/Digital

Playing on: PS5

Hours Played: approx. 16h

This will be my final update for Doom (2016). I have completed the campaign & along with all collectibles and challenges - I am not far off from earning the Platinum. Recently I have been playing custom maps and missions created by other gamers as a part of my SnapMap playthrough - just trying to squeeze out the most from this iteration. Some of these maps are v. good, so I am enjoying that part very much.

Still to do:

• Complete first level 'UAC' on Nightmare difficulty
• Complete SnapMap tutorials
• Level up to LVL 5 in Multiplayer

Above are needed for the Platinum trophy. After that I will be able to put it down with clear conscience that I squeezed as much as I could from this game.

What an amazing, violent & fun trip to Hell and back... and to Hell again. Easily the best FPS that I played in recent times and one of the best I played... ever. That's how a reboot to a classic should be done. Amazing. Just amazing.

13th of February 2023 - Journal Entry #2

Version/Type: PS4/Digital

Playing on: PS5

Hours Played: approx. 9h

This post-weekend update is a good one. I've completed Foundry & Argent Facility/Tower levels (both very pleasing to the eye); I have been warped to Hell and back & conquered what is now a destroyed Argent Facility. I'm having a great run - had no issues finding the collectibles, power-ups & runes and have only missed a few mission challenges, which is okay - I can come back to those via mission select post-ending.

Time spent with Doom over the weekend just reaffirms my feelings towards it - it is a fantastic first person shooter with great visuals. One of the best I've played in fact. It's amazing in its simplicity - it doesn't try to be something else, it doesn't even pretend to be something else. Yes, id Software tried to tell the story here (which is very evident in optional codex entries - which I love) & some of it works, some of it doesn't, but apart from that it is still good, old Doom - with violence cranked up to 11 (on a 1-10 scale).

Pacing works well, new weapons & new enemies are introduced in perfect moments, therefore gameplay never feels stale and boring; surprisingly there is a lot of platforming outside of battles, jumping around, ledge-grabbing - not something I expected at all, but it seems to work so far.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Doom reinvigorated the genre back in 2016, however I am quite surprised that up to this day there aren't many titles that can successfully replicate the gameplay of series' 2016 iteration, apart from its sequel I guess.

Anyway - I have been chasing creepy Olivia all over Mars, I have been to Hell and back & it finally feels like she's within my grasp - I am on cross-facility train on the way to Advanced Research Complex - my one & only stop before next destination - Lazarus Labs, where Olivia's office is located... it is also a place where the initial invasion of demons has began. The heart of it.

There's no turning back now...

10th of February 2023 - Journal Entry #1

Version/Type: PS4/Digital

Playing on: PS5

Hours Played: 2.5h

Started playing it again after almost 6 years (dropped it back then, early into Hell levels - wasn't in the right mindset & a different game grabbed my attention), because of an article I read in Edge - Jan '21 issue about Doom Eternal and its Ancient Gods Part I & II DLCs. I am intending to go for full completion along with all collectibles & upgrades. Playing in the evenings, with headphones on, on my PS5 console.

I am 2.5hrs in and really enjoying the fast paced & brutal gameplay accompanied by a really good soundtrack - this game scratches an old itch that I didn't realise I had & does it perfectly. Feels like renaissance of my old shooter-filled PS1 gaming days.

I am already looking forward to the sequel after what I experienced with Doom (2016) so far & I'm almost sure I will jump on it straight away after this.

By all accounts, the forth mainline entry in the series was a troubled development. I was fully expecting a poor quality sequel. I couldn't figure out what they would do to make Doom vibrant again. I pictured a Call of Duty-esque meets Quake 4 abomination. You can imagine my surprise. Despite a couple restarts what emerged is one of my favourite modern first person shooters.

The 'glory kill' mechanic, whereby health bonuses and extra ammo are gained by getting up close and personal to the various demons and physically battering them into the next dimension of hell encourages aggressive play and is at the heart of this new form of the games. Before long you feel like a whirling dervish of murder not too dissimilar to what you might have felt as the good old doom guy back in the early nineties.

This speed and aggression has no room for one small aspect that is missing from any of my favourite Doom games - a bit of horror. Yes, the over the top and grotesque glory kills often gave me pause and made my stomach lurch the first few times, however I always felt safe. Never scared. I was death incarnate.

Horror, jump scares and monster closets were perhaps leaned into a little too hard with Doom 3 - not a terrible experiment. But, the first game struck a really great balance. E1M1, those first few zombies, that first dark hallway.. my younger self was scared and wasn't so sure I was going to make it through the journey alive

This is a small criticism for an astounding accomplishment. The whole experience is polished to a sheen. I'm writing this after a second playthrough where I went back to find all collectibles, secret levels and upgrades. Those are great expansions on the formula. In not straying too far from the vision's word cloud of 'aggression', 'speed', 'rip and tear', they are there for those who want them but can be sped by and largely not engaged

So, shameful admission, I’ve never played the original Doom, or any Doom for that matter. The closest I got was I played Chex Quest once while visiting my grandparents. While I never played Doom, I can still appreciate the impact it had on FPS games and video games at large. Though the last few years, Id Software has been dormant. They gave us Rage, an admittedly fun, if unremarkable post-apocalyptic game, but not much else I can remember. Doom 2016 was Id’s return to the video gaming scene with their flagship property. I’ve recently been trying Doom-style FPS games as a nice shakeup to my usual genres.

Right out the gate, this game is balls to the walls action. You wake up in the middle of shit going down on this energy mine/science facility on Mars and start dropping zombies. Then you find a comms panel where you get a call from some scientist. Where most games would give you that hit of action to hook you in before doing the necessary exposition to set up a story, Doom says screw it. You immediately ignore the scientist and get back to shooting. Eventually, you do have to slow down for story beats on occasion, but the overarching plot doesn’t require much thought. It’s a Doom game, you’re not here for the story and they know that. Scientists went crazy, demons are on the loose, you gotta stop them; it’s simple and it works. Me being the lore hound I am, I did collect and read a lot of the optional data disks that tell you about the history of the location you’re in, the guns you’re shooting, or the monsters you’re killing.

The scientist who helps you, Dr. Hayden, is the leader of the Mars operation and an interesting enough character. He’s got a very tenuous partnership with the Doomguy. Both clearly want to stop the demon invasion, but both also clearly have different ideas on how to do that. Hayden wants to stop the demons without sacrificing the energy source they harvest from Hell as it’s the only thing keeping Earth powered. He does betray Doomguy at the end to help tease the sequel, but not in a way that made him feel like a villain. The evil scientist who opened up the portal to Hell is only there to give Doomguy someone to chase after and give the plot a sense of urgency in the first half of the game.

The world design does a good job updating the classic Doom look. Doom’s Hell looks exactly like how someone in the 90s would imagine Hell to look. Craggy deserts filled with rivers of lava, fountains of blood, and horned skeletons. It’s almost campy. The Martian facility has a variety of designs, the first couple areas are industrial and dark, but the later stages have that clean, smooth, futuristic aesthetic like a Mirror’s Edge world. It makes for a nice contrast to all the piles of gore laying around. The levels are designed to be linear with lots of off shoot paths and a heavier emphasis on platforming than I’d expected. These can let you enter the next area from a different vantage point to get the drop on the demons or lead to secret areas that may include unlockables that upgrade your suit or just net you neat extras. I really didn’t start exploring and scouring each level till about the 4th or 5th, once I got into the rhythm the game was setting and used to the level design. Surprisingly, I never came across any destructible walls, which I thought hidden wall doors was a Doom staple. Most of the exploring for secrets just involved some platforming.

All the demons look cool. Again, they have a kinda campy look, being lots of horned demons and goblin like creatures. None of them ever looked like gross, body horror amalgamations. How this game mixes science and magic in world was great. The scientist were still practicing science, but their methods and writings were tinged with a spiritualism bent. It’s hard to explain, but it wasn’t just like a secret Hell cult masquerading as a science company, they were trying to use science to explain the occult. And being a reboot, the game could’ve taken a really tongue in cheek tone with all this background lore, but they play it pretty straight. The PA messages you see around the Mars station do include some unsettling language that make you do a mental double take, but not to a “How did anyone not realize they were crazy evil” level. In terms of soundtrack, when I think of Doom, I think heavy metal. And there is some driving tunes that kick on during the bigger demon fights, but the game overall is relatively quiet, and there’s techno music that plays sometimes. It’s good, but it’s not what I expect from Doom. I ended up using a playlist of instrumental metal on Spotify to fill out the game’s quiet moments. It’s Doom, I want nonstop metal.

While this game is set around Hell and demons and gore, I wouldn’t call it a horror game, not even an action-horror game like a Dead Space. Never once was I spooked or unnerved, except one time I turned around to be face to face with a cacodemon, that caught me off guard. As the title of the main theme says, “The only thing they fear is you”. Those demons may be bad dudes, but you are the baddest dude around. Doomguy is a power fantasy character, plain and simple. He’s here to kill demons, any of the overarching consequences be damned. He doesn’t care about your reasoning, morality, technology, or your property, if it’s in his way, he removes it. Sometimes it’s fun to just play as a badass whose still a hero, but doesn’t concern himself with being the most considerate one. If it wasn’t for the fact the game had to be a game and offer some challenge, I would totally expect Doomguy to punch through any door locked with a key card.

And I know a little Doom lore, originally I thought he was just one of the marines stationed on Mars, but this game recasts him as something much more ancient, and possible unhuman. He’s a dude they found in Hell who seems to wake up every few hundred years to remind the demons of their place. This is one of the few instances where I didn’t mind the silent protagonist. When someone does speak to Doomguy the dialogue is written that it doesn’t seem weird Doomguy isn’t responding, and he’s characterized in a way that you can feel he’s just patiently waiting for the speaker to get done monologuing so he can get back to talking with his shotgun.

And he does a lot of talking with his shotgun. The main reason people come to Doom, myself included, was the gameplay. They did a good job recreating that frantic style of 90s FPS games. As someone who plays FPS games that are a little slower paced or tactical, I had a learning curve to get over. I spent the first level trying to figure out what was the reload button, there isn’t one. You shoot till you're totally out of ammo. Trying to stand still, bobbing in & out of cover will just get you killed quickly. The old school gameplay designs are implemented greatly here. There’s only three rules: 1. don’t stop moving, 2. don’t stop shooting, 3. don’t forget rule one. A loading screen humorously states, “If an enemy has a head, that’s it’s weak spot.” Doomguy is always at a constant run, which I wasn’t used to, but is necessary to fight the Hell hordes. You unlock extra movement options later on like a double jump and being able to mantle ledges quicker. Running around an arena is fun and easy.

You get a bevy of weapons to select from. I found the plasma rifle a good weapon for taking out lower level goons, saving my chaingun and super shotgun for the bigger baddies. I do find it humorous that Doomguy is carrying around all these super advanced, sci-fi weapons, but one of the best guns around is still an old, double-barrel sawed off shotgun. You don’t get any sniper rifle style weapons because you don’t have time to stand still. You also have a chainsaw, grenades, and the BFG, which honestly, I forgot I had those most the time. They are hotkeyed to different buttons, not the weapon wheel, which makes sense, but without them being there, I just used my guns. The guns are all so fun to use.

While combat encounters are hectic affairs, a basic level of tactics is still required. Each demon type has their own fighting style and aggressiveness level. Some stand back and plink at you, others are up in your grill. In early game encounters, my tactic was shoot whoever was the closest demon harassing me, and that will get you far. Later though, ammo became less plentiful and the demons got tougher. You have to use your chainsaw to cut up demons, that makes them drop more ammo for you, and of course the glory kills. Those are brutally fun to watch and reward you with extra health. The last two levels were where I really started to feel the difficulty and died repeatedly. The mix of the “Pinkies” that charge right at you, the flying skulls that home in on you, and the big cyber-mancubus poisoning the floor got me several times. The game really liked those cyber-mancubuses at the end, spawning two or three at a time. I can’t say with any certainty, but it felt like certain demons had a weakness to certain guns. A chaingun could tear apart a cacodemon quick, but not a Reaver. The boss fights were all decent. The cyber demon and the final boss were relatively easy, but the Hell Guards were a little trickier, mostly because it involved timing and strategy beyond “hold down fire button”. Luckily the game didn’t wimp out and spawn a bunch of regular demons to bother you while you fight the boss.

All in all, Doom 2016 was a lot of fun. Running around blasting demons into chunks with a shotgun without any large, thought provoking story was a nice mental refresher after a long school semester. The platforming and shooting were solid. The only issue I had was towards the end, the sound would completely drop out and I’d have to reload a checkpoint to fix it. The world was a fun, updated throwback to the 90s, and when the music did show up, it was banging.

I'm blown away by the insane level of polish. However, I'm disappointed because of the "old school" game design. It was probably my bad to expect an experience like "Half-Life". What I had instead was "kill all the enemies to advance". Did you kill them all? Good, now kill those too. Also those. And now the bigger ones. So on and so forth.

Mars levels were good but I think especially Hell levels were underwhelming. Overall, I don't recommend it if you expect a story-rich experience. I will keep listening to the amazing soundtrack.

Yeah this was surprising for me too.

There are things to like in Doom 2016 for sure, there's the powerful attitude fuck you and rip and tear that doomslayer shows in certain cutscenes. There's the music which is excellently well made and makes the fights pleasant at times, especially when it heightens after every glory kill. A lot of the mechanics on paper are well designed, with enemies using tracking moves that should punish strafing, and it does give freedom for player expression in certain avenues with gauss boosting and cool speedrun tech. There's also a few encounters with some genuinely well designed enemy waves, and arcade mode allows for more emphasized fun times to be had.

That being said, none of it was good to me overall. I could not garner much fun from the mechanics at all for longer than a minute. That has widely to do with how doom 2016 keeps shooting itself in the foot, from the start of the game all the way to where I stopped. You are so overtuned for fights, with weapon mods and powerups that break the game in twine, and even on those best encounters i mentioned there are invulnerability and quad damage powerups or even berserk there. All of that shit makes the game pathetically easy, and it isn't helped when you up the difficulty to Nightmare. In fact that generates more problems, because the game's audio and visual design for enemies is not well designed, with several enemies getting hits from behind or behind cover. Summoner shots can come from nowhere as well as imp fireballs that you can't see. I primarily played on ultraviolence, which is definitely easier than nightmare but it meant potshots wouldn't necessarily kill you.

But, even on nightmare, the game's balancing is trash. You'll never run out of ammo, so you can get off to just using one gun to breeze through shit, and strafing isn't perfectly punished with tracking shots anyway. Your capacity to just turn your brain off is high enough to where it almost becomes super boring. The best way to sum up everything in a nutshell is that the most often times I died was shooting a rocket launcher or a grenade shot in an enemy right in front of me close range because I was largely able to just coast on bullshit.

This may sound super scathing, and it is. I understand the ways Doom 2016 can be enjoyable, I have witnessed the times where it gets oh so close to being good. It just doesn't, and this back and forth tease where there are entire hours of content where not a single minute i spent I could describe as good left me frustrated rather than just a feeling of "it's alright." I still think though, after introspection, that in execution it's an alright game, that I do think is better than a lot of fps on the block. I'm sure that with a shitton of limits on what you can do going against the grain of the game design that you can craft a doom 2016 experience that is fun. But to me, it's still not a good game though, it gets SO close, but it's not. So I'm done playing it, but I can recommend trying it as a decent timesink. You're far more likely to enjoy it than me, and I think it's better than average at the very least. (6.5/10)

Let me start this review off by saying this -- When I first picked up this game, I was a little under-whelmed. I played through the first 2 or 3 levels and nearly put it down -- I just couldn't get interested in the gameplay. While things moved at a pretty fast pace, I found enemies to be sort of ho-hum. I didn't really feel challenged, and the weapons weren't really anything special or different from other first-person shooters.

I am so glad that I kept playing.

Those first few levels merely set-up the story line and the pace of the game, letting you familiarize yourself a little bit with the controls and giving you a feel for the game. After those first few levels, not only does the story start picking up the pace and introduce new, more challenging enemies, but the action of the game goes from fast, to "Holy **** don't ever stop moving". Standing still in this game for more than 2 seconds equals death. And you may be able to find shelter for a few moments, but the AI does a great job of keeping you on the move by seeking you out. Duck behind cover? Cool, but don't stay there too long, or the AI moves into a position where it can hit you.

You will come across situations in the game where Demons just keep re-spawning, wave after wave (again, they don't stand still, they come and find you), and things move so quickly, I would almost have to say you have to chain together your kills. There isn't a combo meter or anything like, but it feels like you there should be one -- you will find yourself switching weapons on the fly almost constantly in the later stages of the game. Not just because you run out of ammo, but because some weapons just work better than others. By the end of the game, I was thankful for those first few levels where I was able to get used to the pace and the controls.

Completing objectives in the game and finding secrets/collectibles will give you tokens, with which you can unlock upgradable "Secondary-Firing modes" for your weapons (each weapon has two, except for the Pistol,) and each weapon's fully-upgraded secondary firing mode has its own unique challenges that unlock additional upgrades to make your weapons even stronger. Your armor also features upgrades that can be accessed by finding other secrets throughout the game.

While I didn't spend any time on the multiplayer, I can give the single player campaign a solid 5/5.

The awesome graphics combined with some metal music during the action (I also give credit for the creepy ambient noises and music when exploring the maps -- playing this alone in the dark at night was a trip), plus blistering speed of game play make this one a must play for FPS fans.