The Impact Factor

One Hell Of A Good Time

Review

DOOM, id Software (PS4)

Abstract: DOOM (2016) is a perfect blend of old and new, bringing players back to the way we used to play first-person shooters while smartly adapting and incorporating 20+ years of design insight along the way. DOOM is fast and frantic, bloody and brutal, and has some of the tightest designed gameplay I’ve seen all year. Glory Kills change the way you play, reinforcing DOOM’s themes and solving a long-entrenched issue in first-person shooters. Great gunplay and rewarding exploration form a strong gameplay loop that keeps players engaged through DOOM’s admittedly weak story. A few poorly designed encounters and underwhelming bosses detract from the experience, but DOOM is very much worth playing. It’s one hell of a good time.

For video game enthusiasts my age, the original Doom was groundbreaking. It redefined how I understood video games. Whether it was staying up late to play or booting it up when the computer lab teacher stepped out of the room, Doom was on the forefront of my gaming brain from a very early age. Simply put, there had never been anything quite like it. Doom was dark, gritty and violent during a time most of my gaming time was spent in “edutainment” titles. Doom was fast, almost incomprehensibly so, at a time games were often sluggish. Doom felt deeply complex, with secrets cleverly hidden around every corner, weapons to find, and strategies you had to enact on the fly to defeat some of the game’s tougher demons. Doom was the future.

Over time the rest of the world caught up. Doom’s formula was tweaked and adapted in a variety of ways in a variety of games. Doom followed up with a spectacular sequel, but then it all sort of dropped off. Released in 2004, Doom 3 was an underwhelming, slow, resource-oriented survival horror game. And then there was nothing. That is, until DOOM (2016) released. Could a very different id Software return to the long dormant IP to do something exciting? Could it recapture the magic of the first two titles? For the most part, that answer is a resounding yes.

DOOM starts as the player is pulled from a coffin into a blood-soaked room. The Doom Marine makes short work of the handful of demons guarding his place of slumber. You know in an instant that this is not, and will not be, a survival horror game. You’re the Doom Marine, you’re a force to be reckoned with, and demons should be scared. A quick stroll over to some conveniently placed armor (called a Praetor Suit), and you’re off to learn who you are, where you are, and what needs to be done. You quickly discover that you’re on Mars in a facility that was designed to mine “argent energy” directly from Hell. Things went awry, as they always do, allowing Hell’s demons to kill, mutilate, or possess the majority of the facility’s personnel. The story beats throughout your journey are well-tread ground for first- and third-person shooter games. You need to get from A to B but the power is off, so go find and flip a switch. You need to gain access to some remote terminal. And so on. The game’s story takes you through the majority of the facility and into Hell itself. The narrative framework is weak—just enough to keep the player moving in the right direction and mostly aware of what he or she is doing. For most games, a story this poor would be a major negative. Not for DOOM though. DOOM is about killin’ demons.

I'm here to kill demons and chew bubble gu...
Wait wrong game.

Gameplay is king. As you might expect, the majority of your playtime is spent blowing away demons. The gunplay is so satisfyingly designed. DOOM eschews the conventions that so many modern first-person shooters adhere to. Your health doesn’t regenerate. The majority of your weapons cannot be aimed down the sights. Ammo, armor, health packs, and even weapons can be found strewn around the map. And DOOM is fast. Intensely fast. The Doom Marine zips around at breakneck speeds and demons move just as fast. Mobility is emphasized in all regards. In many ways, so much of what I described is a throwback to the first-person shooters of times past. DOOM (2016) plays more similarly to Doom than any shooter I’ve played in years. It’s refreshing. That’s not to say DOOM hasn’t learned from the 20+ years of development insight since Doom II released. It adapts systems that work within its old-is-new context. Your Praetor suit, for example, can be powered up by collecting points from downed marines around the map. Argent energy points can be used to level up your health, armor, and ammo totals. You can also find, equip, and level up runes that boost particular stats. DOOM smartly adapts the player progression systems of modern titles into its fast, frantic old-school gameplay experience.

Old-school never felt so new. And so fun.

Your speed is complemented by DOOM’s array of fantastic weapons. Killing demons is an absolute joy. No two guns are alike, though each is viable and allows for different approaches to butchering the agents of evil. Weapons look and sound powerful. My go-to setup was the infamous Super Shotgun and the slow but devastating Gauss Cannon. Like your suit, guns too can be leveled up and customized, each having two separate modifications that add alternate firing methods. DOOM rewards you for trying new things and gives players the tools to play however they like. As you explore you’ll find a handful of demons along your way—small packs that can be quickly dispatched. Other encounters are more entrenched, in which you come upon a set location with waves of demons that will spawn in to attack. This dynamic creates a compelling gameplay loop of explore, kill, entrench, kill, repeat. And the loop is always, always fun. From a raw gameplay perspective, DOOM easily ranks among the top of games released this year.

Adding to that is the ingenious “Glory Kill” system. So many first-person shooters lack momentum. They often devolve into boring shooting galleries. And why is that the case (bad encounter design aside)? Health. In a game like Call of Duty, a lot of your time is spent hiding behind cover as your health slowly regenerates. You take damage because you want to be aggressive, but you can’t sustain your aggression because you’ll die. DOOM fixes this problem in the most Doom-like way possible. As stated earlier, your health does not regenerate. But DOOM doesn’t want you running away from battle to look for health packs. No way. Enter the Glory Kill. When a demon takes enough damage they’ll start to flash blue/orange. If you melee (R3 on PS4) a flashing demon you get a Glory Kill. Glory Kills are brutally animated finishing attacks, like crushing the demon’s head between your hands or ripping off the demon’s arm and smacking him with it. Any demon finished off by a Glory Kill will drop health and ammo. That means that, when your health is low, DOOM encourages you to not only stay in the fight but to get right up in a demon’s face. It maintains the fast and frantic pace of DOOM’s gunplay, adds to the already effective power fantasy, and solves one of my biggest issues with first-person shooter campaigns. Win win win.

Glory Kills are a smart, gory solution to one of first-person shooter's
biggest problems.

Playing through DOOM’s campaign is a linear experience, but one that is ripe with exploration. The game is separated into 13 distinct levels. Each level is a sprawling map, open to the player to be explored in any way they see fit. You can run directly to the marked objectives or run the opposite way in search of hidden secrets. Speaking of secrets, there are plenty. A thorough scouring of the map will have the player come across extra Praetor points, new weapon mods, argent energy reserves, miniature “Doom Guy” dolls, and even classic Doom maps. Levels are absolutely packed with secrets and collectibles, and I felt compelled to discover each and every one. Finding them isn’t always so easy, though, as one quick glance at the in-game map will show you. DOOM’s levels are mazelike, weaving and intersecting in ways that demand a good sense of geography to fully grasp.

Hey little buddy. DOOM pushes you to collect 'em all.
PS: Try dying in lava. You won't regret it.

While I mostly enjoyed the large map size, it did pose a few gameplay problems. Getting around these large maps, especially when on the hunt for collectibles, can take quite a while and involve a lot of backtracking. This wouldn’t be a huge issue if not for how valuable some of these collectibles are. Without thoroughly searching the map, the player cannot fully upgrade their weapons, suit, or character by the game’s end. On the “Hurt Me Plenty” difficulty I never had too tough a time killing my foes, but I also maxed out my character whenever I could. For less experienced players or on harder difficulties, the reliance on finding secret items to fully power up your Doom Marine could pose a problem. Further, poor map design in a few of the entrenched encounters I described earlier was a bummer. Verticality is a key feature for these encounters, but I found several instances in which there was simply too much. Several common demons are fond of running away from the player, and when a map is too large and too vertical, it can be hard to chase them down. The result is a frustrating game of cat and mouse that drags these encounters down. And speaking of underwhelming encounters, DOOM features a small handful of bosses and none of which are particularly exciting or memorable. The final boss, for example, was laughably easy and felt like a strange note to end on for an otherwise extraordinary experience.

I cannot properly review DOOM without mentioning how absolutely stunning its visuals are. DOOM is a gorgeous game. Id Software blew me away with how crisp and detailed everything is, from guns to demons to environments. Despite lacking in geographic diversity, I loved looking at the different Mars facilities, the planet, and the handful of Hell zones I was taken to. The visuals are complemented by a gritty metal soundtrack that perfectly kicks in during heated battles. When I find myself stopping to admire the scenery and take screenshots, I know a game nails its presentation.

She's a looker alright.

At the year’s start, I had little to no interest in playing DOOM. How could it encapsulate that perfect “Doom” experience in modern setting? I am so happy to be proven wrong. Id Software made a fantastic hybrid of old and new that touts some of 2016’s best raw gameplay. My experience hasn’t really stuck with me, and I’m not too sure why, but it does not change the fact that I had one hell of a good time playing through DOOM.

DOOM

4/5