It has been a journey for Doom. After years of development, Bethesda decided to scrap it all and start over again because the game that id software showed them reportedly did not feel like Doom. Id’s reputation was also not the best at that point, with Rage being the last real title they had worked on, and releasing to a tepid reception. Fast forward to a mere few weeks ago, and the multiplayer beta for the new Doom entry revealed a game full of compromises between modern and classic shooter sensibilities that pleased no one. Bethesda went into damage control mode, informing people that the multiplayer was developed by a different team, and doing hour long streams showing off the game’s single player. And if you weren’t worried enough, it soon came to light that no reviewers were getting advanced copies of the game. This was the reddest in a long list of red flags stretching for years. The writing was on the wall: the only reason why a publisher does not ship review copies, is because they have no faith in their own game. Which is very strange, because Doom is an excellent game.
Doom is really a sequel for the continuity established in the first three games, in which Doom 3 is really a retelling of the original Doom in case things weren’t complicated enough. Doom 2 is also canon but there is no word as to whether the Marine’s pet bunny was avenged to his satisfaction. It doesn’t really matter. All you need to know is that you wake up, there are demons, and you have guns. Go nuts. The story in these games is secondary, and the Doom Guy himself seems to have little regard for it, since he ignores exposition and objectives at several points of the game. There is a surprisingly detailed story and well thought out setting in Doom, but it is fleshed out in the form of a codex that you fill out by killing and by PDA’s scattered through the level. It is a good compromise for those who want to get more out of the story, but in a way that does not interrupt game play for those who aren’t interested. Even the story cut-scenes are mercifully short, with none of them, including the intro and ending, being more than a few minutes long.
This is because Doom is really concerned with delivering the old school gameplay associated with the franchise, albeit with some changes to modernize it. There is no cover system or health recovery, but in general enemies will either charge you for up close melee or shoot slow moving, glowing projectiles at you. No attack is particularly hard to dodge and though enemy attacks hit hard, were you going 1-1 with most of the monsters in the game, you will probably make fast work of them, but those occasions will be rare. You are up against the hordes of hell, and so you will always be heavily outnumbered. Doom is not a fast game as much as it is a dynamic one, and movement is key as a you can get surrounded and overwhelmed very easily. Doom adds the capacity to jump and grab ledges to the Marine’s toolbox, making the game more vertical and giving you more options for fighting and moving.
Doom is designed to keep you on the attack. The game does not have regenerating health, so running away from a fight and cowering won’t really help you. Instead, enemies will often drop ammo and health upon death, and they are all but guaranteed to drop health on a glory kill. The bigger the demon you kill, and the lower your health, the more health you will get back from said demon. To complement this is the chain saw. The chain saw causes enemies to drop ammo, but it works on very limited reserves of fuel that are somewhat hard to come by. Enemies consume fuel based on how tough they are. Weak enemies consume one, tougher enemies two, and the big bad guys three, and they also drop more and more varied types of ammo. What this means for gameplay is that Doom is a game where no matter what situation you find yourself in, the answer is always to kill more enemies.
The game features not one but three upgrade systems. There are weapon upgrade points that you can use to upgrade your weapons and their mods. There are Praetor tokens used to upgrade your suit to be more resistant, or make it easier to find secrets. Argent cells improve the Doom Guy himself, increasing health, armor, and ammo capacity. There are also rune challenges to complete. These are timed skill challenges with different objectives. The rewards are powerful runes with many effects, from making it easier to pick items up to making your equipment stronger. Most of these upgrades encourage exploration, as do hidden collectibles, and the very scarce ammo for the BFG 9000, the strongest gun in the game. Doom has a very competent map as well as waypoints. Despite this, the levels are anything but linear. You can, if you choose, go from encounter to encounter, but there is plenty to be gained by exploring for secrets. There are even short cuts for those who are skilled enough, and brave enough, there are ways around the level that defy the traditional ways to traverse them. It all makes for a very compelling package that gives the player a lot of control of how much story and how much exploration they want in their single player campaign. There are good reasons to explore and pay attention to the story, but both elements can be comfortably ignored.
There are still some annoyances in the single player campaign. During the last levels you go from arena to arena, often with little exploration or anything other than fighting in between the fights. I would be lying if I said I didn’t have fun with the intense fire fights, but I can see this becoming grindy and annoying to many players. My second complaint is regarding the boss battles. There are three bosses in the entire game, and in general they are great. The enemies are big, and they require skill and observation skills to best. The problem is that these boss fights are all concentrated in the last three hours of the game. It likely would have helped the pacing of the game to spread these out a little bit. Mind you, these are very small complaints in what is one of the best single player experiences of the year.
The multiplayer mode has grown on me in the past week, so now I find it the be adequate rather than just flat out bad. The multiplayer, outsourced to a different studio, probably had the same mandate to provide a retro feel with the addition of some modern features. The problem is that unlike the single player campaign, the mixture of these two elements just resulted in something that will be too modern for purists and too retro for fans of modern shooters. Doom features several game modes, but the problems are with the gameplay itself. There are some arena shooter elements, such as health and ammo pick ups being scattered through the level, but aside from the occasional Gauss rifle spawn or the more frequent demon runes (which turn you into a demon), all the weapons must be unlocked as are most cosmetics, and even the abilities to build custom loadouts. This largely eliminates the need to pick weapons up in the level.
It is evident that this mode was made by a different company by just how the guns feel. While in the single player you will find a use for every weapon in your arsenal, some weapons in multiplayer are objectively better than others, meaning that you will only use a handful of guns to face off against people that will also be using a handful of guns. This is a shame since the multiplayer has a greater variety of weapons that the campaign, but for practical purposes you will probably only use about four of them. Likewise, the other feature of multiplayer are the demon runes, which briefly let you turn into one of hell’s fearful demons and brutalize other players. It can be great fun, but only really for the player who picked up the rune. The opposing team essentially has no other option but to just throw themselves at it until they finally die. Team mates have no other option than to cling close to them as they rack up kills. Getting these runes seems completely random. They aren’t a reward or a catch up system. All you have to do is be there when the spawn, and so it can turn a hard won battle into an infuriating loss just by virtue of standing in the wrong place.
To round out the Doom package, the game includes the snap map feature. This rather robust tool will let you create your own Doom maps, and also allow you to play others that the community creates. The tool itself is fairly powerful, allowing you to plan everything from logic streams, to what the HUD says, although you cannot change the shape of rooms. Rather you are asked to choose from a long list of rooms. Snap map does come with a series of very well put together tutorials that make using very simple. Unfortunately, the things you unlock in the multiplayer do not carry over to the Snap Map mode, which means that you have to unlock all the cosmetics twice. The matchmaking in the Snap Map is also sub-par, as I have not been able to find other players. Still, I would have loved the game without this feature, and this only adds to Doom’s longevity and replayability. As it is the case with these things, time will tell how much content the community generates for it, but the tool set itself is powerful enough and easy enough to use that I can see this having some adoption.
The metal inspired soundtrack from the classic entries is back, and in typical Doom fashion it flirts with plagiarism of some metal’s most famous bands. Doom looks great visually as well, but more importantly, its performance is nothing short of outstanding. This review was written in the PS4 version of the game, and this version run at 1080p and 60 fps pretty much constantly. No matter how many enemies were in play at once, and how crazy things got, I cannot remember one instance of frame drops or slow downs. I imagine that if you have a PC with the hardware and a monitor that can handle it, you can probably get this baby running far, far beyond 60 fps. I think I might go on Snap Map and dump as many things as I can on a small room to see what it takes to make this game drop a frame.
Doom has been this year’s great surprise for me. A game that was released during the drought of the summer months, saddled with a troubled legacy and a publisher that clearly did not have confidence in the product. But Doom is just fantastic. It is probably my favorite FPS since Metro 2033, and a breath of fresh air in a time where first person shooters feel like they want to be Call of Duty, or an unholy amalgamation of Team Fortress and League of Legends. It is great to see a first person shooter that is not afraid to make fun of itself, while still delivering uncompromising, brutal gameplay. It is not a perfect, but its flaws are small enough that I feel that they should not dissuade anyone who is looking for an update take of the shooters of the 90’s from picking it up. You’ll have a blast.
