Doom 2016 Review
When I heard of a new game named "Doom", I immediately decided to pick up the original Doom and play that to get a feel for how I felt Doom was supposed to be. Having only played Doom 3 up until that point, I was pleasantly surprised with the amazing first-person action that still holds up to this day, with a few hiccups here and there. Enemy placements being what they were made levels difficult in a good way and clearing the original Doom felt like an accomplishment rather than a chore. I couldn't say the same for it's sequel, which did feel like a chore most of its way through levels, despite attempting new level designs as well as new enemies. However, both games are highly recommendable as playable experiences, as is Doom 3, even if it and its side games are very much a different turn for the series.
I hadn't even bothered to look at the new Doom with its current price point and not having a job. It dropped in price on sales multiple times and at one point I finally bothered to play a demo of it to see what I was missing. I was not disappointed by the demo: fast paced action, frantic shooting that rewarded accuracy in motion, and a sense of the original badass that I felt I was playing with the original classics. So finally, a month ago, the game came down in price again and I spent some of my money to buy it. And then I got to experience the game as it was meant to be played, on a keyboard and mouse, all the way through the game.
Before I begin to gush on and on about my experiences, let me remind myself as well as those reading that this is a critical review. As much as I found enjoyment from the game, there are many things that I wish to touch upon in the order of gameplay, graphics, storytelling, and overall experience.
The gameplay is generally high speed frantic action that requires a player to nearly always be on the move, and moving smartly. Demons are fast, vicious, and waste no time flinging attacks or chasing down the player to finish them off in brutal ways. Health is limited, and armor drops away fast under the demonic assault, so movement and evasion become imperative. This mimics the original Doom as well, which favored fast paced movement, good use of ducking in cover and utilizing corners and walls advantageously, and cycling through different weapons to conserve much needed ammunition as well as using different tools for different jobs. In that way, this new Doom not only mimics the original but pulls it out from the depths of the archaic and gives it a makeover that is sure to please old school fans and new shooter fans alike.
Secrets make their return as well, often being little nooks and hideaways where mini-Doom Guys are stored, ammo stashes are hidden, or in some instances, a lever that leads to a small reliving of the classic days, complete with a graphical overhaul. These short little homages come complete with the ability to replay those old Doom levels, with the new Doom Guy standing out as a stark contrast to the highly dated graphics. This goes for the enemies as well, but this is a missed opportunity, as I feel that the enemies being their original selves would have added more to the charm. Instead, I feel that they take away from the charm of the original levels and the idea of having a new Doom Guy going through those levels, but perhaps I'm complaining too much.
Speaking of old level design, the new level design is certainly open ended, with many pickups to find, new power-ups to exploit, as well as numerous ways to continue moving so that there is little chance of being cornered, provided the player does not let himself get into a terrible position. The pacing has also become a system of highs and lows, with tense combats being waged in specific rooms, and then walks from combat to combat being greeted with a chance to explore, or perhaps find some demons that aren't in the specified "combat zones" as I will name them.
The guns make their glorious returns, and they are ever as amazing as one could hope for. The new pistol has infinite ammo instead of sharing ammunition with the gatling gun, so that's a plus. It's also about as useless for most things as the original pistol, so don't go relying on it. Making their returns are the trusty shotgun (and super shotgun), the plasma rifle, the gatling gun and the chainsaw. A new Heavy Assault Rifle makes its debut here as well as an awesome gauss rifle just for added "omg yes" factor. Finally, the BFG makes its return, and with it, it brings death and destruction to every demon who is unfortunate to be in its range. Grenades are there as well, but I rarely found myself using them. I never needed grenades in the original so I don't bother using them in the new Doom, no matter how useful they might be.
As if this arsenal wasn't already impressive, Bethesda took the next step and added modifications, obtainable by finding a carrier bot with a weapon's pack on it that rewards the player with his choice of modification for what weapons he has access to. This is like the icing on top of a devil's food cake, with that delicious candied cherry on top to go with, adding to the almost perfect experience. Most every weapon except the super shotgun and pistol get two modifications to them. These modifications are further enhanced through weapon points which are obtained by completing interesting challenges or finding secrets. Once a weapon has obtained several tiers into its weapon progression for an upgrade, a new ability is presented that requires a challenge to be completed. These challenges are often rather difficult, or require very specific use of the upgrades, which I don't particularly like. I'm all for working to get that tasty new upgrade, but when challenges are too lengthy, it lends to a player just not wanting to complete those challenges, especially if the reward is already mediocre, which some of the weapon upgrades are, unfortunately. The plasma rifle's stun bomb has too short a range, I have never bothered touching the "turret mode" for the gatling gun, and the micro missiles for the assault rifle don't do enough damage to justify their existence.
The weapons still are amazing despite some shortcomings there, but they aren't the only ones that get upgrades. Doom Guy himself can find upgrades for his armor systems, giving him access to more ammunition (always a must), armor and health, as well as adding nifty perks to his movement and his navigation systems. This allows Doom Guy to find secrets easier, move around the map quicker and more fluidly, and ignore environmental hazards like exploring barrels. And here I was thinking that Doom Guy was already too much of a badass for his own good. However, where there are these great elements, there are also things I take issue with.
This method of "combat zones" is nothing terribly new to modern first-person shooters, but it is something that I feel that Doom could have done without. Part of what makes the original so interesting is that there are demons scattered about everywhere. Unless a player has played the game before, he might not know that there's a Baron of Hell right around the corner, waiting to smash the player into tiny, bloody pieces just for looking at him wrong. Here, it's almost always apparent when a fight is going to begin. This leads to very few surprises or truly intriguing moments when choosing to explore, despite the fast pace of the combat. If the game weren't contained to combat zones, I feel that it would benefit greatly. The combat zones should remain, as they offer something more of the true frantic nature of the gameplay, but there should have been far more demons and encounters scattered throughout, just like the original. It is important to spice things up, lest the player get bored because exploring is boring.
"New" to the Doom series is the idea of boss battles. Doom 3 has had boss battles, but nothing quite like these. These come equipped with a health bar as well as mechanics that specifically challenge what a player has been learning to do throughout the game. This health bar mechanic sticks out like a sore thumb on an otherwise neatly polished gameplay idea. Doom has never had a need for health bars, nor has it had a need for boss fights that take longer than 2 minutes and 50 rockets to the demonic forehead of a cyberdemon. Boss fights, while not truly "outdated", don't really fit well into most shooters, and in Doom's case, serve to slow the pace down, thanks to their length.
The final added mechanic that I feel never needed to be added was the "glory kill" mechanic. Once a demon has been shot enough without being killed outright, it will start flashing blue and gold to signify that it can be brutally murdered in a series of fascinating, and disturbing methods, such as Doom Guy force feeding the Mancubus its own heart or other grisly outcomes. When performed, this rewards the player with HP drops, and more HP drops from these if the player is low on HP. This is essentially an easy way to get out of dying while the player scrambles for a new position and searches the grounds for more health kits and armor. This is entirely unnecessary and, while flashy and cool at first, serves to slow the combat pacing down yet again, distracting from it momentarily with spectacle that doesn't need to be there. The game would be harder without that mechanic, this is certain, but would we care? We have Dark Souls and that seems to be doing well, I'm sure that hardcore Doom fans would love a game that didn't just reward blindly glory killing.
The level design is also still shallow compared to the original. Remember the tricky puzzles of the old Doom? Well, even if you don't, let me explain something; the old Doom had great level design, complete with mazes, tons of secrets that were hard to find, and cool, interesting puzzles. That doesn't exist in the new Doom. Every level has a "go from point A to point B and find secrets scattered about while you're at it". Even when the level opens up somewhat, it's merely to allow for secret finding. The waypoint always remains, guiding the player in the "proper direction". This is a significant downfall of modern games, the "hand-holding" as it were. Some prefer this, but it drags a game through the mud to have to hold its players hand. It insults the players intelligence to some degree and does not let a player work out the right way to go for themselves. Even if finding the "correct route" requires some looking, the right way is almost always obvious upon being found. The new Doom may have had a clear sense of direction in some levels, this is true, but the best maps were often the ones which required getting to know the map in order to complete them. There is a lot of missed opportunity here with the new Doom to hearken back to that era of game design, and all it would mean would be putting more focus in the level design.
Finally, and this is perhaps going to come off as nitpicking, but I don't care for how chainsaw and BFG ammunition were handled. Both are instant kills for demons, generally, but both have their own separate and hard to obtain ammunition pools. The chainsaw runs on gasoline, and it uses more to insta-kill bigger demons. Kills with the chainsaw grant boatloads of ammunition, so much so that Doom Guy can't possibly carry it all. Rewarding the player with ammunition for an instant kill is a sort of a "cop out" in terms of keeping the game difficult but "fair", and the instant kill mechanic doesn't quite satisfy. The chainsaw was great at making quick work of lesser demons and should have been kept as such. The BFG being insta-gib is an awesome mechanic that is kind of fitting, but I think that it's overblown. The BFG always did amazing damage, this was certain, but it also required a specific kind of aiming to maximize, and also shared the same ammunition pool as the plasma rifle. It used a lot of ammunition, but it should be noted that it always could be replenished and saved for a good times. In this case, however, it has 3 shots at maximum and each shot is an instant kill on demons that the arc tethers to, or it certainly feels like that. I like the tethering, I don't like the cheese that the BFG offers to otherwise brutal encounters, effectively slicing away from the difficulty curve if a player is resourceful in finding ammunition. Oh, and the BFG stuns bosses and makes them vulnerable, which is a crucial mechanic to the boss fights...but the boss fights shouldn't have been that way in the first place.
All in all, the gameplay is still solid. It is not quite matching to hopes and expectations for the perfect shooter, but it is noteworthy as a shooter and should be respected as such. Solid changes to the core mechanics and removal of other unnecessary features and spectacle could make for a shooter that would remain legendary forever. However, now the question is, how is this all presented? The gameplay is all well and good and the level designs are well done, but we're not just walking around simple blocks, are we?
The graphics for this game are as superb as they are lacking of the original charm of Doom. I get it, Mars is a red planet. I get it, we have lots of things to identify Hell with. But part of the "cool" factor of Doom was that not all of Hell looked like ancient rock and skulls everywhere...well, okay, some of it did, but not quite to this ridiculous extent. All of the Mars base areas, while they look nice, also look the same. Mars looks like Mars, the base looks like an average sci-fi base. Doom was guilty of this in some levels, and Doom 3 was especially bad about this, so why is the new Doom also so guilty of this? While it makes for a cool spectacle, what with the blood everywhere and what not, it also leaves so much more to be desired.
There's also the music. The original Doom and Doom II both had amazing soundtracks, with my preference being Doom's over its sequel. The music set the tone for the level, it let the player jam out to some great rock/metal music, and didn't leave the player hanging, waiting for that next music beat to drop. Here, that talent has gone to waste in some regards. The music does turn up during fights, into rather generic and forgettable symphonic pieces. There are a few tunes that are slightly recognizable as remixed variants of the original games themes, but overall, the music has suffered a big blow. I often found myself wishing I could turn an option on in-game to play the classic music over my demon murdering exploits. I may go and set up a good music playlist just to do that when I'm playing this game again...
Not all of the spectacle has been wasted, though. Enemies are highly recognizable and look freakishly gorgeous in the new graphical gig they've been given. Weapon effects are juicy and spectacular, the death animations are incredibly brutal and bloody, and when done well, the designs of certain rooms are just amazing, lending to their memorability. Doom Guy himself is looking better than ever, and all of his weapons have gotten a sleek new makeover. However, none of this is enough to satisfy the desire to have something that looks...just better. The graphics are there and the definition is great, but in overall terms, the presentation just is not present for this game.
Finally, the storytelling...how does that hold up? In true modern game fashion, a game can't just tell a story by showing, or at least have some form of minimalist narrative. There are codex entries that are optional to find and read, as well as pieces of lore that a player can choose to stay and listen to or not. However, there is also a driving narrative, with voice acting characters that spell out what is going on, as well as spelling out what the player should be worried about. While Doom Guy does get some fun reactions to these moments, he doesn't react enough of the time to make a difference.
There are multiple times where Doom Guy should have just broken a window, killed a jackass, or done something other than what he does. He is a badass, but sometimes I wonder if he's literally not DOING SOMETHING just because the plot says he can't. When the driving antagonist, Olivia Pierce, is overloading the Argent Tower, the production of Hell energy into a meaningful power source...Doom Guy stands there. There's clearly just a window between him and her. All he has to do is punch through the window and grab her...or at least try. He does not attempt any of this. Similarly, there is another moment where a large android, Samuel Hayden, forcefully puts a new "tether" system into place so he can drag Doom Guy back from Hell, as he puts it. I dunno, maybe Doom Guy wants to remain in Hell to wreak havoc and murder people, and doesn't like having someone else able to pinpoint his location and drag him back somewhere? Instead, Doom Guy doesn't retaliate against him. It's easily predictable that Hayden is going to abuse that tether at some point, and Doom Guy does nothing to stop him when has the chance.
In other regards, the plot is just shallow. It's a means to let Doom Guy have an excuse to murder. Doom Guy does not NEED an excuse to murder demons, DEMONS are a good enough excuse to BE KILLED.I thought that, after the demo was done and Doom Guy just broke the communications with Hadyen, that there was not going to BE storytelling. Instead, we are greeted with it as early as level one, and Doom Guy does nothing to stop this interaction like he seemed to want to do before. There's no reason for him NOT to. These idiots caused this, now it's time for Doom Guy to kick ass and not bother with anyone "helping" him. There are times that the game implies that Doom Guy doesn't need help, yet he seems to be working with people who can't be trusted anyways., The Great Gatzby, this is not...
All in all, this game is still worth a play. However, I feel that it needs touch-ups in vital areas, and to rely on simplicity and original design in terms of how everything is portrayed. Make Mars something cool, make Hell something amazing, and don't give us terrible stories. Just let Doom Guy be Doom Guy and keep the storytelling in the background.
I give this game a 8/10. It's a great game that I recommend to anyone to play. However, there are too many things holding it back for it to be outstanding. The spectacle if over the top, the storytelling is just unnecessary, and there's not a whole lot of "Doom" in Doom when it comes to the level designs and overall presentation. Maybe one day that'll change, and the new Doom will give us everything we could have ever wanted with a Doom remake. Until then, I will leave off with this score. Do buy this game, but I would recommend at least a $20 discount in the form of sales or other means if available.
I hadn't even bothered to look at the new Doom with its current price point and not having a job. It dropped in price on sales multiple times and at one point I finally bothered to play a demo of it to see what I was missing. I was not disappointed by the demo: fast paced action, frantic shooting that rewarded accuracy in motion, and a sense of the original badass that I felt I was playing with the original classics. So finally, a month ago, the game came down in price again and I spent some of my money to buy it. And then I got to experience the game as it was meant to be played, on a keyboard and mouse, all the way through the game.
Before I begin to gush on and on about my experiences, let me remind myself as well as those reading that this is a critical review. As much as I found enjoyment from the game, there are many things that I wish to touch upon in the order of gameplay, graphics, storytelling, and overall experience.
The gameplay is generally high speed frantic action that requires a player to nearly always be on the move, and moving smartly. Demons are fast, vicious, and waste no time flinging attacks or chasing down the player to finish them off in brutal ways. Health is limited, and armor drops away fast under the demonic assault, so movement and evasion become imperative. This mimics the original Doom as well, which favored fast paced movement, good use of ducking in cover and utilizing corners and walls advantageously, and cycling through different weapons to conserve much needed ammunition as well as using different tools for different jobs. In that way, this new Doom not only mimics the original but pulls it out from the depths of the archaic and gives it a makeover that is sure to please old school fans and new shooter fans alike.
Secrets make their return as well, often being little nooks and hideaways where mini-Doom Guys are stored, ammo stashes are hidden, or in some instances, a lever that leads to a small reliving of the classic days, complete with a graphical overhaul. These short little homages come complete with the ability to replay those old Doom levels, with the new Doom Guy standing out as a stark contrast to the highly dated graphics. This goes for the enemies as well, but this is a missed opportunity, as I feel that the enemies being their original selves would have added more to the charm. Instead, I feel that they take away from the charm of the original levels and the idea of having a new Doom Guy going through those levels, but perhaps I'm complaining too much.
Speaking of old level design, the new level design is certainly open ended, with many pickups to find, new power-ups to exploit, as well as numerous ways to continue moving so that there is little chance of being cornered, provided the player does not let himself get into a terrible position. The pacing has also become a system of highs and lows, with tense combats being waged in specific rooms, and then walks from combat to combat being greeted with a chance to explore, or perhaps find some demons that aren't in the specified "combat zones" as I will name them.
The guns make their glorious returns, and they are ever as amazing as one could hope for. The new pistol has infinite ammo instead of sharing ammunition with the gatling gun, so that's a plus. It's also about as useless for most things as the original pistol, so don't go relying on it. Making their returns are the trusty shotgun (and super shotgun), the plasma rifle, the gatling gun and the chainsaw. A new Heavy Assault Rifle makes its debut here as well as an awesome gauss rifle just for added "omg yes" factor. Finally, the BFG makes its return, and with it, it brings death and destruction to every demon who is unfortunate to be in its range. Grenades are there as well, but I rarely found myself using them. I never needed grenades in the original so I don't bother using them in the new Doom, no matter how useful they might be.
As if this arsenal wasn't already impressive, Bethesda took the next step and added modifications, obtainable by finding a carrier bot with a weapon's pack on it that rewards the player with his choice of modification for what weapons he has access to. This is like the icing on top of a devil's food cake, with that delicious candied cherry on top to go with, adding to the almost perfect experience. Most every weapon except the super shotgun and pistol get two modifications to them. These modifications are further enhanced through weapon points which are obtained by completing interesting challenges or finding secrets. Once a weapon has obtained several tiers into its weapon progression for an upgrade, a new ability is presented that requires a challenge to be completed. These challenges are often rather difficult, or require very specific use of the upgrades, which I don't particularly like. I'm all for working to get that tasty new upgrade, but when challenges are too lengthy, it lends to a player just not wanting to complete those challenges, especially if the reward is already mediocre, which some of the weapon upgrades are, unfortunately. The plasma rifle's stun bomb has too short a range, I have never bothered touching the "turret mode" for the gatling gun, and the micro missiles for the assault rifle don't do enough damage to justify their existence.
The weapons still are amazing despite some shortcomings there, but they aren't the only ones that get upgrades. Doom Guy himself can find upgrades for his armor systems, giving him access to more ammunition (always a must), armor and health, as well as adding nifty perks to his movement and his navigation systems. This allows Doom Guy to find secrets easier, move around the map quicker and more fluidly, and ignore environmental hazards like exploring barrels. And here I was thinking that Doom Guy was already too much of a badass for his own good. However, where there are these great elements, there are also things I take issue with.
This method of "combat zones" is nothing terribly new to modern first-person shooters, but it is something that I feel that Doom could have done without. Part of what makes the original so interesting is that there are demons scattered about everywhere. Unless a player has played the game before, he might not know that there's a Baron of Hell right around the corner, waiting to smash the player into tiny, bloody pieces just for looking at him wrong. Here, it's almost always apparent when a fight is going to begin. This leads to very few surprises or truly intriguing moments when choosing to explore, despite the fast pace of the combat. If the game weren't contained to combat zones, I feel that it would benefit greatly. The combat zones should remain, as they offer something more of the true frantic nature of the gameplay, but there should have been far more demons and encounters scattered throughout, just like the original. It is important to spice things up, lest the player get bored because exploring is boring.
"New" to the Doom series is the idea of boss battles. Doom 3 has had boss battles, but nothing quite like these. These come equipped with a health bar as well as mechanics that specifically challenge what a player has been learning to do throughout the game. This health bar mechanic sticks out like a sore thumb on an otherwise neatly polished gameplay idea. Doom has never had a need for health bars, nor has it had a need for boss fights that take longer than 2 minutes and 50 rockets to the demonic forehead of a cyberdemon. Boss fights, while not truly "outdated", don't really fit well into most shooters, and in Doom's case, serve to slow the pace down, thanks to their length.
The final added mechanic that I feel never needed to be added was the "glory kill" mechanic. Once a demon has been shot enough without being killed outright, it will start flashing blue and gold to signify that it can be brutally murdered in a series of fascinating, and disturbing methods, such as Doom Guy force feeding the Mancubus its own heart or other grisly outcomes. When performed, this rewards the player with HP drops, and more HP drops from these if the player is low on HP. This is essentially an easy way to get out of dying while the player scrambles for a new position and searches the grounds for more health kits and armor. This is entirely unnecessary and, while flashy and cool at first, serves to slow the combat pacing down yet again, distracting from it momentarily with spectacle that doesn't need to be there. The game would be harder without that mechanic, this is certain, but would we care? We have Dark Souls and that seems to be doing well, I'm sure that hardcore Doom fans would love a game that didn't just reward blindly glory killing.
The level design is also still shallow compared to the original. Remember the tricky puzzles of the old Doom? Well, even if you don't, let me explain something; the old Doom had great level design, complete with mazes, tons of secrets that were hard to find, and cool, interesting puzzles. That doesn't exist in the new Doom. Every level has a "go from point A to point B and find secrets scattered about while you're at it". Even when the level opens up somewhat, it's merely to allow for secret finding. The waypoint always remains, guiding the player in the "proper direction". This is a significant downfall of modern games, the "hand-holding" as it were. Some prefer this, but it drags a game through the mud to have to hold its players hand. It insults the players intelligence to some degree and does not let a player work out the right way to go for themselves. Even if finding the "correct route" requires some looking, the right way is almost always obvious upon being found. The new Doom may have had a clear sense of direction in some levels, this is true, but the best maps were often the ones which required getting to know the map in order to complete them. There is a lot of missed opportunity here with the new Doom to hearken back to that era of game design, and all it would mean would be putting more focus in the level design.
Finally, and this is perhaps going to come off as nitpicking, but I don't care for how chainsaw and BFG ammunition were handled. Both are instant kills for demons, generally, but both have their own separate and hard to obtain ammunition pools. The chainsaw runs on gasoline, and it uses more to insta-kill bigger demons. Kills with the chainsaw grant boatloads of ammunition, so much so that Doom Guy can't possibly carry it all. Rewarding the player with ammunition for an instant kill is a sort of a "cop out" in terms of keeping the game difficult but "fair", and the instant kill mechanic doesn't quite satisfy. The chainsaw was great at making quick work of lesser demons and should have been kept as such. The BFG being insta-gib is an awesome mechanic that is kind of fitting, but I think that it's overblown. The BFG always did amazing damage, this was certain, but it also required a specific kind of aiming to maximize, and also shared the same ammunition pool as the plasma rifle. It used a lot of ammunition, but it should be noted that it always could be replenished and saved for a good times. In this case, however, it has 3 shots at maximum and each shot is an instant kill on demons that the arc tethers to, or it certainly feels like that. I like the tethering, I don't like the cheese that the BFG offers to otherwise brutal encounters, effectively slicing away from the difficulty curve if a player is resourceful in finding ammunition. Oh, and the BFG stuns bosses and makes them vulnerable, which is a crucial mechanic to the boss fights...but the boss fights shouldn't have been that way in the first place.
All in all, the gameplay is still solid. It is not quite matching to hopes and expectations for the perfect shooter, but it is noteworthy as a shooter and should be respected as such. Solid changes to the core mechanics and removal of other unnecessary features and spectacle could make for a shooter that would remain legendary forever. However, now the question is, how is this all presented? The gameplay is all well and good and the level designs are well done, but we're not just walking around simple blocks, are we?
The graphics for this game are as superb as they are lacking of the original charm of Doom. I get it, Mars is a red planet. I get it, we have lots of things to identify Hell with. But part of the "cool" factor of Doom was that not all of Hell looked like ancient rock and skulls everywhere...well, okay, some of it did, but not quite to this ridiculous extent. All of the Mars base areas, while they look nice, also look the same. Mars looks like Mars, the base looks like an average sci-fi base. Doom was guilty of this in some levels, and Doom 3 was especially bad about this, so why is the new Doom also so guilty of this? While it makes for a cool spectacle, what with the blood everywhere and what not, it also leaves so much more to be desired.
There's also the music. The original Doom and Doom II both had amazing soundtracks, with my preference being Doom's over its sequel. The music set the tone for the level, it let the player jam out to some great rock/metal music, and didn't leave the player hanging, waiting for that next music beat to drop. Here, that talent has gone to waste in some regards. The music does turn up during fights, into rather generic and forgettable symphonic pieces. There are a few tunes that are slightly recognizable as remixed variants of the original games themes, but overall, the music has suffered a big blow. I often found myself wishing I could turn an option on in-game to play the classic music over my demon murdering exploits. I may go and set up a good music playlist just to do that when I'm playing this game again...
Not all of the spectacle has been wasted, though. Enemies are highly recognizable and look freakishly gorgeous in the new graphical gig they've been given. Weapon effects are juicy and spectacular, the death animations are incredibly brutal and bloody, and when done well, the designs of certain rooms are just amazing, lending to their memorability. Doom Guy himself is looking better than ever, and all of his weapons have gotten a sleek new makeover. However, none of this is enough to satisfy the desire to have something that looks...just better. The graphics are there and the definition is great, but in overall terms, the presentation just is not present for this game.
Finally, the storytelling...how does that hold up? In true modern game fashion, a game can't just tell a story by showing, or at least have some form of minimalist narrative. There are codex entries that are optional to find and read, as well as pieces of lore that a player can choose to stay and listen to or not. However, there is also a driving narrative, with voice acting characters that spell out what is going on, as well as spelling out what the player should be worried about. While Doom Guy does get some fun reactions to these moments, he doesn't react enough of the time to make a difference.
There are multiple times where Doom Guy should have just broken a window, killed a jackass, or done something other than what he does. He is a badass, but sometimes I wonder if he's literally not DOING SOMETHING just because the plot says he can't. When the driving antagonist, Olivia Pierce, is overloading the Argent Tower, the production of Hell energy into a meaningful power source...Doom Guy stands there. There's clearly just a window between him and her. All he has to do is punch through the window and grab her...or at least try. He does not attempt any of this. Similarly, there is another moment where a large android, Samuel Hayden, forcefully puts a new "tether" system into place so he can drag Doom Guy back from Hell, as he puts it. I dunno, maybe Doom Guy wants to remain in Hell to wreak havoc and murder people, and doesn't like having someone else able to pinpoint his location and drag him back somewhere? Instead, Doom Guy doesn't retaliate against him. It's easily predictable that Hayden is going to abuse that tether at some point, and Doom Guy does nothing to stop him when has the chance.
In other regards, the plot is just shallow. It's a means to let Doom Guy have an excuse to murder. Doom Guy does not NEED an excuse to murder demons, DEMONS are a good enough excuse to BE KILLED.I thought that, after the demo was done and Doom Guy just broke the communications with Hadyen, that there was not going to BE storytelling. Instead, we are greeted with it as early as level one, and Doom Guy does nothing to stop this interaction like he seemed to want to do before. There's no reason for him NOT to. These idiots caused this, now it's time for Doom Guy to kick ass and not bother with anyone "helping" him. There are times that the game implies that Doom Guy doesn't need help, yet he seems to be working with people who can't be trusted anyways., The Great Gatzby, this is not...
All in all, this game is still worth a play. However, I feel that it needs touch-ups in vital areas, and to rely on simplicity and original design in terms of how everything is portrayed. Make Mars something cool, make Hell something amazing, and don't give us terrible stories. Just let Doom Guy be Doom Guy and keep the storytelling in the background.
I give this game a 8/10. It's a great game that I recommend to anyone to play. However, there are too many things holding it back for it to be outstanding. The spectacle if over the top, the storytelling is just unnecessary, and there's not a whole lot of "Doom" in Doom when it comes to the level designs and overall presentation. Maybe one day that'll change, and the new Doom will give us everything we could have ever wanted with a Doom remake. Until then, I will leave off with this score. Do buy this game, but I would recommend at least a $20 discount in the form of sales or other means if available.
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