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By Salty99
Reviving old franchises is tricky business – a successful reboot not only needs to capture the spirit of the original material, but needs to do so in a way that captures new audiences. Gamers are notoriously stubborn in their tastes and there is nary a community more difficult to please in the eyes of developers than the hardcore PC gaming community. The old die-hards who grew up on the likes of classic games which took the first steps into establishing the first-person-shooter have seen the genre change and evolve so drastically that it hardly resembles what it once was. The modern FPS landscape is a hot mess of games trying to be all manner of things, and with each passing year we see less and less of the magic that took fledgling id Software to the big leagues. The original Doom had it all; it was a technological masterpiece, it was edgy, it was fast, and it set a monumental precedent for all manner of gaming. Everything from John Romero’s exceptional level design, to Adrian Carmack and Tom Hall’s dark and brutal art direction, to John Carmack’s well oiled machine of an engine made Doom a force to be reckoned with.
A sentiment shared by many
When trying to reboot a title like Doom, a title with such an undying legacy, there are so many opportunities to misstep – to disregard the qualities that made classic shooters great in favor of pandering to the whims of younger audiences. As easy as it would have been, id Software did not. DOOM is a masterpiece of a game which in every way is a love letter to the PC gaming community longing for a modern title with all of the features that made the classic FPS franchises so great. DOOM is fast. DOOM is violent. DOOM is loud. DOOM don’t give a damn about character development; DOOM is here to kick your ass.
The Campaign
DOOM’s single player component is a non-stop ride to Hell and back, quite literally, which clocks in right around the 10 hour mark on the ‘Hurt Me Plenty’ difficulty with minimal side-tracking. There are 5 difficulty settings in total, the 2 highest of which are locked until completing the campaign. As a veteran of the PC FPS genre, I felt this difficulty level was just perfect for a first play-through – the enemies are challenging, the bosses are brutal, and your composure will be tested when you’re surrounded. The game doesn’t waste any time getting to the point; not ten seconds past the title screen there’s a pistol in your hand and blood on the walls. DOOM knows exactly what it’s all about and it doesn’t waste any time explaining it to you.
Acquiring the Praetor Suit
The player once again will reprise their role of Doom-guy, the notorious green-helmet gun-toting badass with a bone-to-pick. You awaken in the UAC Facility on Mars that has been overrun with demons and it’s your job to figure out what happened and clean-up shop. Classic id Software titles were notoriously light on story and instead focused on the gameplay. DOOM does indeed have a story with a handful of important characters, but it is very self-aware and the premise is in large part a parody; each level is contains voice recordings and reveals that piece together the cause of the incident and establish just enough of a story for the player to have some sort of motivation. Don’t expect any mindless exposition though; DOOM is all about the gameplay – as it should be.
DOOM is filled with absurdity, dark humor, and all manner of ludicrous over the top action
The Movement
At the center of DOOM is fast-paced visceral combat, high mobility, and forward momentum. Where most strafing shooters (a la Unreal, Serious Sam, Quake) would have you back pedaling away from enemies while you thin the herd, DOOM would have you do the opposite. The speed of the player and the power of the weapons propel you forward into the enemy, as if to carve a path right through the center of them. The center-piece to this style of gameplay is the “Glory-Kill” system, which allows for staggered or dazed enemies to be finished off with a gruesome fatality-esque melee attack. I’ve heard many fans express their skepticism towards this sort of mechanic, myself included, prior to the game’s release. Finishing moves and quick-time events in games have become a gimmick that often takes the user out of the game and slows things down. I’m glad to say that the glory-kill system is not a gimmick – it is a well thought out and thoroughly satisfying mechanic that not only assists the player in forward moving combat, but does it extremely well.
Fighting the Mancubus
Performing a glory-kill as opposed to finishing off an enemy with bullets will cause the dead enemy to drop a small amount of health and ammo. In later parts of the game when the enemy count is much higher, this mechanic is essential to preserving the forward moving combat against tougher opponents. This is the only game I can think of that doesn’t force you to take cover or scour the environment for med-packs; if you are low on health then keep on fighting! Not only is this a brilliant and fun mechanic, is also helps in creating the mystique of DOOM guy; he is sustained only by the blood of his enemies. If I had to nit-pick, the forward moving combat doesn’t perfectly translate to every level like it does in the earlier zones. Later levels where the enemies are much tougher will have you running and jumping A LOT; though this isn’t a bad thing. When a Baron of Hell is running at you from one side and a pack of Pinky-Demons from the other, there is no shame in evading them in favor of better positioning. This is made a thousand times easier by the addition of the jump-boots into the game. While you cannot use these boots like a jet-back in games like Titanfall, your ability to double-jump greatly increases your mobility and allows you to jump over enemies or reach high ledges.
Getting the drop on a pack of Imps
Perhaps my favorite gameplay mechanic is that the ranged enemies’ projectiles are just slow enough that you can dodge them like in classic Doom; this is where the skill of the player is earned. Sidestepping the fireballs of a few imps may be easy, but doing so while also evading the acid blasts of the Mancubus or the missiles from a Wraith makes things a lot trickier. Enemies need to be prioritized and the layout of the level is often the deciding factor in which determining which enemies to attack first.
The Enemies
Any good shooter has enemies that are fun to fight and pose a threat to the player. Intelligent AI and challenging enemies are no stranger to the Doom franchise and the enemies in this game are no exception. All the old favorites are back and badder than ever. Imps and possessed UAC workers are numerous and never in short supply, Cacodemons, Mancubus, and Hell Knights are a tough fight and always pose an immediate threat. Barons, Revenants, and Spectres show up just in time to ruin your day, and the cyber demon is truly terrifying. Each enemy type behaves in a certain way; they are predictable enough that you can look for patterns as you strategize how you will win each fight. In this context, the predictability is a positive and doesn’t negate the “intelligent” aspect of the enemies. They will flank you, they will swarm you, and they will shoot at you. Handling each enemy type appropriately makes each win feel earned.
Codex entry for the Imp. These little buggers can be a pain in great numbers
Weapons, Armor, and Upgrades
The cornerstone of any shooting game is always the weapons, and DOOM is no exception. Every weapon feels powerful and serves a strategic role in ripping demons to bits. The game’s first weapon is a pistol which, while seemingly underpowered, can be powered up for precise blasts which can take an Imp’s head clean off. This is the only weapon with unlimited ammo, so using it is often more of a strategic choice rather than one made on preference. The combat shotgun is the go-to weapon throughout the game; it does great close-range damage and can be upgrading with a few different perks to keep it effective, even against tougher enemies. The Super Shotgun in all its double-barreled goodness will likely become to the go-to for many players, though its limited ammo capacity may deter some players from choosing it first. The heavy assault rifle and the plasma rifle, while similar in function, have a number of different alternate attacks which distinctly differentiate them in their tactical roles. The rocket launcher and the Gauss cannon are the heavy hitting weapons that allow you to tackle tougher enemies. The BFG9000 is the iconic gun that needs no introduction – a single blast from this bad boy can vaporize even the toughest of enemies. This gun is often saved for a last resort to thin out enemy packs when thing aren’t going your way. Last but not least, the chainsaw – Gas cans are somewhat hard to come by but the true worth of the chainsaw is in its tactical significance. Using the chainsaw to kill an enemy causes it to drop a boat-load of ammo and is an instant kill for an enemy of any type.
The Plasma Rifle can lay down some serious fire power
Every weapon has 2 alternate fire abilities, each one of which has a handful of perks that can be upgraded throughout the game by finding attachments or spending weapon upgrade points earned throughout the game. These upgrades greatly add to the versatility of the different weapons. The heavy assault rifle can be upgraded with a scope for players who like to try for the headshot at a range or alternatively, upgraded with missiles instead; each attachment can be quickly swapped out for the other with a single button-press.
The armored suit which the player wears is called the Praetor, and it can be upgraded throughout the game, similar to the way in which weapons are upgraded. All throughout the game world, you’ll come across dead Elite Guard, soldiers who wear the praetor suit. The data chip can be pulled from the suits of the dead and used to upgrade your own with things like increased map radar or reduced fire damage. Additionally, power cores can be obtained throughout the UAC facility levels which enable you to increase your maximum health, armor, or ammo capacity. Furthermore, each level has a series of “Rune Challenges” which are small asynchronous missions you can do to earn special runes to equip on your suit like increased glory-kill speed or greater mobility.
The first time upgrading the Praetor suit
The Level Design
It’s astonishing to think that these levels were designed by someone other than John Romero, as his Doom and Quake level designs are heralded among the greatest. DOOM levels are excellent, and they pair themselves perfectly with the forward-moving combat. There is a level of verticality to this game that far exceeds anything the franchise has seen before. Combat areas will often-times have several floors and areas which can be jumped to. I was amazed to discover no matter how outnumbered I was, that I was almost never cornered or backed against a wall that I couldn’t escape from. There is always somewhere to go or a ledge to jump to; the most important thing to do is to never stop moving.
The underbelly of the UAC facility - the aesthetic really suits the game's tone
Every level has something unique about the way in which it is designed so that you never feel that you are in the same place for too long, but the levels are also similar enough that you can always count on familiar features when navigating them. Much like in classic doom, there are levels on Mars and there are also levels in Hell. The Hell levels have similar layout though the aesthetic is radically different than those on Mars. Between fighting rabid hordes of demons in the larger open areas, you’ll be scurrying about looking for colored key-cards to open new areas or finding objectives to open the next zone. There is a very detailed map which is exceptionally well made and easy to read, even though it goes largely unused, at least for me anyway. The level design is so top-notch that I rarely ever felt lost. The geography and the way each area is laid out naturally guides you from one place to the next.
Each level has its own unique look, it helps keep things from getting stale
On top of the fantastic layout of the levels, there are also a ton of hidden secret areas, collectibles, and playable classic Doom levels scattered throughout the game. If you have played Wolfenstein: The New Order or The Old Blood, you’ll find that id has had some fun with DOOM levels in the same way that they did with Wolfenstein.
The Multiplayer
While I’m sure the multiplayer component of this game is not where classic FPS veterans’ first concern will be, it’s still a major component of the game and will be a large time sink to many. The multiplayer portion of this game consists of a number of different game types that you would come to expect from any popular FPS. Team Deathmatch, Domination, and Point-Control variants are all present with a unique Doom spin. Players vie for control of the various maps while certain players can temporarily assume control of the game’s different demons which might allow their team to get a firepower advantage over their enemy. Holding a capture point is vastly more difficult when there is an enemy Baron ripping your teammates’ legs off.
Playing a Team Deathmatch in DOOM Multiplayer
Weapons are not all on the map as pickups as they are in many classic shooters like Quake or Unreal – each player picks a 2-weapon loadout which they spawn in with, and there are only a select few weapons on the map for pickup, like a chainsaw or a lightning rifle. This is somewhat disappointing, as equal access to all weapons is such a huge part of classic FPS multiplayer games but the weapons are balanced well enough that games still feel fair and fun. There’s loads of unlocks, perks, and customizations that I’m sure will please the Call of Duty and Halo fans but are largely uninteresting to those who just want to jump in and frag some people.
There are tons of visual customizations for your character in the Multiplayer component of the game
Surprisingly enough, the multiplayer aspect of the game plays a lot more like Halo and a lot less like classic Doom. The movement speed is noticeably slower in multiplayer than in the campaign and the powerups are often in short supply and in harder to reach locations that make players work for them. None of this makes DOOM's multiplayer mode bad, it is actually quite fun. There's just nothing there to make it exceptional - it feels just like every other modern shooter.
Conclusion
While the multiplayer component adds a lot of content and contributes to the lasting appeal of the game, the campaign will likely be the major selling-point for a majority of gamers. There is just so much that the developers got right with this game that is really is a must-play game for old school and new school shooter fans alike. The combat is savage, the soundtrack is brutal, and there’s enough replayability to keep gamers busy with this title for years to come.
Final Score: 9.5/10
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