DOOM (2016)

Rip and Tear

These are the immortal words that start your journey into Doom, and wise words they are. It’s been some time since gamers relished in something that’s both tactical and straight up goofy fun. The last thing we gamers had to enjoy on this scale of bloodbath brutality was Serious Sam 3 and, to tell you the truth, it wasn’t that good to begin with. Does this reboot of Doom give players not only hope for a better FPS future, but also the excitement we longed for in gaming?

Doom is a frantic and explosive FPS that blends sci-fi with supernatural horror. We’re taken to Mars, where the UAC is conducting experiments to harvest resources from Hell itself in order to create a new energy source that could save mankind. Well, guess what? Those Demons in Hell haven’t taken too kindly to the human race taking what’s not theirs and literally all Hell breaks loose on Mars. Our only hope comes from within a stone coffin brought back from Hell itself. The Doom Guy has returned. His nature is as bloodthirsty as Dracula with an army of leeches and Doom perfectly projects this within its solid and flawless gameplay. There are three core aspects of Doom’s campaign which are running, gunning and exploring. Three key design elements that form a perfectly enjoyable game, where players will engage in exploring large levels filled with secrets galore, confront gatherings of demonic foes and perform some of the most grotesque actions ever thought in fast, fluent movement.

Doom’s action is superb with its highly engaging combat. This is achieved by the highly fluent movement of the Doom Guy, allowing players to traverse different terrains freely, making tactical manoeuvres easy to perform in the battlefield. Guns pack a punch with each one having a great effect on certain enemies/situations and with a long list of upgrades and perks, they get bigger and only better as the enemies grow in size. Doom never loses its momentum as the combat is constantly raising the stakes higher and higher as you progress. Doom mixes the variation of action from large, open spaces for epic firefights, segments of intense close quarters combat and explosive set pieces featuring everyone’s favourite: the BFG. With a great sense of level design, combat is continually enjoyable and engaging without feeling tired or tedious even after ten hours of play.

Doom also incorporates some rather intelligent elements to its combat with a chainsaw melee weapon. The chainsaw can kill in one hit and with a kill from a chainsaw comes a replenishment of resources. But fuel is very scarce, yet with bigger kills by the chainsaw comes bigger replenishments. It’s about whether you kill off the smaller enemies in a tight spot or save that chainsaw kill for a Barron and get nearly a full stack of ammo and health. So the combat is engrossing, taking players into frantic, fast paced action scenarios, mixing traversal and close quarters combat, while making sure the action remains fresh with elements such as power ups to increase the tension and the brutal impact of the fight you’re experiencing. Exploration is also another key element to Doom’s gripping nature, where finding secrets is rewarding and satisfying in many ways. You can progress your character in finding hidden tokens or just to locate and collect these cute Doom Guy cos-babies which unlock extra content.

You can even find segments of the original games and unlock full levels to play with your new guns and redesigned enemies. You can see the difference between the original Doom and this reboot, as the visuals are eye melting and the soundtrack by Mick Gordon will bleed your ears with delight. His thrash/industrial/dark techno mixes are beautifully composed and go well with Doom’s in-your-face nature.

My only faults are with the in-game map which is painfully slow to navigate through. The bosses don’t excel compared to much of the campaign but are okay. Yet, it’s the execution of certain story elements which annoyed me the most. There is a deep and rich lore and history with a potentially good story, yet most of the context and character development is hidden behind data logs and documents you need to find. They’re a good read but, to be honest, you won’t bother reading them until after you’ve finished the game. These could have been implemented into the actual game for a more effective plot.

But what makes up for these issues is how Doom is highly customisable for different types of players. The purists will be happy to hear you can alter the game with no glory kills or no boss health meters for example, making it something more like the original games. But, for me, the glory kills are an entertaining feature which never breaks the flow of the game.

Thankfully, Multiplayer is much stronger compared to the beta, with a few well needed tweaks and alterations, including weapons favoured by fans, such as the combat shotgun and chaingun, while also bringing in better rewards for progression, such as armour unlocks and Demons to play as. The multiplayer is an experience you can easily integrate into but remains to have the energetic and fluent combat as the campaign. Some game modes aren’t as fun as I expected and a majority of maps are a little dull while lacking dynamic or interesting features. Sadly, Freeze Tag becomes a bore with small team numbers and really requires little skill in order to win. Yet the experience is still rather enjoyable and easy to integrate into, making a nice change from something other than COD.

Snapmap, by far, is the best feature outside of the campaign as players can now create their own Doom experience. You can create multiplayer maps, survival battlegrounds or even missions similar to those in the actual game. Snapmap is easy to learn, even if you don’t use the tutorials, and within no time you can be creating your own Doom experience. The only issue I have is that there aren’t many themes to experiment with. There’s a lot of depth with an immense amount of tile sets to use and a great deal to alter, from lighting to NPC behaviours. It’s just that there’s only an industrial theme to Snapmap in general and without anything like tile sets inspired by the Hell interior, your maps might start to feel a little samey.

Let’s hope ID release some more themes for Snapmap but nonetheless, it’s a fantastic creation tool for the more creative gamer.

What can I say about Doom? It’s brilliant and well needed for the genre. We’ve been overloaded with CODs and Battlefields that we’ve forgotten what a purely fun FPS is. Doom does not burden us with Quick Time Events or complex mechanics. It’s all about the player, with guns and badass demons to fight. Trust me, this is the most fun you’ll have with a game any time soon.

+ Brutal and engaging campaign
+ Snapmap is a great creation tool
+ Awesome visuals and Soundtrack
+ Just so much fun

- Some story elements aren’t executed well enough
- Multiplayer still lacks any interesting game modes

An Xbox One copy of DOOM was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this Review.