DOOM is a reboot of DOOM, one of the first really popular first person shooters from, oh, the early 1990s. The original DOOM blew people away with its pseudo-3D graphics and gameplay. The 2016 DOOM is hoping to blow audiences away with a game with amazing graphics and gameplay which harkens back to the 1990s.
It succeeds, albeit incompletely – as while the game is quite good at times, it also reminds us all of exactly why things changed, and it isn’t nearly as memorable as I would have expected.
DOOM has a very old school aesthetic in some ways. Gone is reloading – you can fire all of your weapons until you are out of ammunition. Gone is a limitation on weapons carried – you eventually tote around ten primary weapons, most of which have two weapon attachments which change their alternative fire, as well as three equipment items, two of which are grenades and one of which is a hologram used to draw enemy fire. There is no regenerating health – instead, ammunition is lying around the levels in boxes lying on the ground, there are health packs and armor packs lying around, and in a few areas there are temporary power-ups such as quad damage, invincibility, haste, and similar things which make you that much more powerful for a short period of time.
Coupled to this is always running around the level by default, the ability to pull yourself up to platforms, the ability to double jump (eventually), and a general run-and-gun style of gameplay as the demons try to close in from all angles due to the design of various areas, forcing you to keep moving if you don’t want an enemy to attack you from behind. Some of the later enemies have pretty high health as well, further encouraging you to run around as if you stay in place, they will get to you before you kill them.
The enemies in the game have okay if not amazing variety – there’s over a dozen kinds of enemies, from agile imps which throw ranged attacks at you and attack you sometimes, to enemies with shields, to a couple varieties of flying enemies (one a suicidal kamikaze, one a ranged attacker), a few big ground melee demons, a couple big ranged demons, and some big mixed-ranged demons. While these are okay in terms of variety, it isn’t great, and the game stops introducing new demons about halfway through. This is unfortunate, as beyond that point, the only “new demons” are a couple of remixes of older ones (which aren’t that new feeling), as well as three bosses which, while okay, are not exactly amazing.
Sadly, this leads the game to feel a bit stale after a while – once you’ve unlocked all the weapons and fought all the enemy types, there’s about half a dozen levels left in the game for you to fight through. Worse, the game gets quite a bit easier at that point, both because there’s nothing new to throw at you, as well as because you just continually get more and more overpowered as you unlock more powers for your weapon secondary fires and various static bonuses continue to accrue in the forms of adjustable powers from unlockable runes which you acquire in various levels, as well as the upgrades to your armor abilities and base health and armor. The BFG is almost comically overpowered, and the chainsaw, while limited in ammunition, ensures that you never run out of ammo of anything important. Indeed, in some of the later portions of the game you can unlock rune combinations which effectively give you infinite ammo and make it very easy to maintain tons of health and armor, making the game almost trivial in some places, while the BFG can be used to bail you out of any seriously difficult situation – including the bosses.
Additionally, running around and picking up ammo and health and armor, while it feels novel at first, is actually kind of tedious. Worse, it actually highlights one of the problems of many modern games with collectables – secrets seem like this really cool thing, but in practice they end up slowing down gameplay as you wander around hunting for them. This results in the game’s pacing, which is pretty solid if you just play through, being interrupted at times by wandering around looking for resources and secrets.
This really just kind of highlights why some of the old DOOM things aren’t done anymore – hunting down ammo, armor, and health packs just isn’t that fun, and secret hunting can interrupt the flow of the game’s otherwise pretty intense gameplay.
That being said, this game is pretty fun for a good chunk of its run. The story, while nothing special, works pretty well, the DOOM Marine’s attitude towards mission control is kind of amusing as he starts off by smashing a few screens which try to deliver exposition at the player, there are only a limited number of cutscenes to interrupt the flow of the game, and the actual run-around-and-shoot-demons-that-are-spawning-constantly gameplay works pretty well, forcing the player to keep moving to avoid getting flanked.
Alas, I think this game outstayed its welcome – I had to force myself to beat the last few levels, which just didn’t do anything terribly fresh or interesting. Worse, I feel like the game is not actually particularly memorable – I remember a couple of things from the game, such as the introduction, as well as the first boss in the game, but a lot of the game is something of a blur. While aesthetically pleasing, there weren’t very many moments from this game which were actually memorable, and in retrospect most of the game is a bloody blur of blood-stained halls and ripping demons apart with my armored hands.
Still, I can’t say that it was bad. It was just not amazing. If you’re looking for something that looks great, plays in a sort of updated retro manner without being too attached to the past, and think that chainsawing demons in half and ripping them apart with your bare hands is fun, this might be up your alley. If you’re looking for in-depth character motivations, or are annoyed by games sort of stalling out a bit about two-thirds of the way through in terms of enemy variety, this might not be as optimal a fit.
3.5