Okay I'm going to do my best to make this review short but still go into each aspect of the game. I went into this Doom playing not much of the original Doom games, but still enough to understand the gist of what made the game so influential, and what the Doom community loves about the game. They love how fast it is, the constant movement, the varied and iconic weapon types, and the lack of an attempt to write some cheesy bullshit video game story to attempt to suck you in. Doom was never about that, you drop in, kill **** like a ****ing man, and dip the **** out to the next arena. Blood, big shotguns, gore, and heavy metal. Doom2016 does all of this and more. C A M P A I G N Let me just say, while I've always appreciated a good story, I tend to lean towards a solid multiplayer. That just seems to be the nature of the modern game market, and the past decade has proven single player games to be increasingly difficult to market and sell as the PVP games continue to become more and more accessible. That being said, I don't care what kind of gamer you are. BUY THIS GAME. End of story. The gameplay, in and of itself is some of the best game design I have ever seen in a single player game in all my life. There's the old cliche id studio likes to throw around goes by "If you stop moving, you die" and you're tempted to half believe them but until you realize they're just a game studio and they're talking out of their ass. But no, really. In Doom 2016, if you stop moving. You will die. ENEMY AI The AI is nothing short of a marvel of engineering, and while they lack a lot of the charm and anthropomorphism that the AI in Halo might have, their combat responsiveness more than makes up for this. Remember playing [every game ever] where you stumble across a group of enemies so you run away and snipe them from a distance as they do nothing? Trying that in Doom leads to a hurricane of fireballs pelting you as every melee enemy in the game chases you down ruthlessly until you're dead. And as fast as you are, the enemies can keep up. In fact the game is made in such a way that the only viable way to survive, is to jump right in the heart of combat, hop around, and blow **** up. There's no cheesing encounters or cheeky back-smacks as you crouch around. You move or you die. The AI also seem exceptionally adaptable to any terrain and will use it. Standing at the bottom of an arena looking upwards at a Hellknight, he'll jump from terrace to terrace downwards as he approaches you, making very believable and challenging combat behavior. This remains true throughout the campaign and even the custom made snapmap levels, which speaks volumes about the AI intelligence and their adaptability. This isn't assassins creed where you can stand in the center of a flurry of enemies as they each play rock-paper-scissors on who attacks next. Throughout a campaign run, you will find yourself pinned to a wall by the Pinkie demon as Hellknights and Barons surround you and pummel you to death. But it's never unfair, you never die thinking "wow that was cheap" but instead respawn, change your strategy, emerge triumphant, and then progress to the next arena. In fact, early in the campaign, you'll be fighting slow moving zombie mobs which pose little thread. When the game introduces you to the Imp demon... http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/doom/images/a/ad/Imp_doom4.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20160514210541 ..you might have a little trouble with it. Imps roll around, throw fireballs at you, climb up walls, run and swing, dip dive and dodge and are in general more formidable enemies than zombies. They seem tough in the early stages of the game. As time goes you'll get accustomed to fighting multiple of these guys and then Doom will introduce you to the Hellknight. The music starts blaring the industrial medal tracks as this single Hellkngiht runs, jumps, and pounds the ground all around you, and never stops chasing you until you're dead. It's pretty terrifying, and the learning curve starts anew. This happens with every single enemy type in Doom until the end, it's a never ending learning process and it's extremely rewarding in the later stages of the campaign when you're bunny hoppin around an enclosed arena handling 5 HellKnights, 10 Imps, 2 Incubus, 2 Revenants, and a Baron of Hell..all at the same time. (Fair warning, the first time you cross the Baron of Hell, you'll run like a *****). This isn't because of some fancy leveling system where you can begin 1-shotting enemies and tanking blows. You do get some more health as the campaign goes on, and your weapons do gain new abilities, but they never get any stronger.. just different. The campaign does a phenomenal job between the level design, game design, and pacing of encounters in teaching you how to fight and survive. There's a fairly wide cast of demons you'll have to fight throughout the Doom campaign, each of which are remarkably unique and have their own movement patterns, attacks, health pools, and the game constantly mixes up the recipe of each arena to make encounters fresh. The way each enemy complements another is a blast to learn, and eventually overcome. If you own Doom and you're not playing the campaign on a difficulty that's actually challenging for you on your first play-through, you're robbing yourself of an incredible experience. Doom shines brightest when it's pushing you to learn and overcome each step of the campaign and forcing you to think, not just mindlessly run through mobs like a tank. Each level, gets progressively more difficult and chaotic than the last. There's not one mission in this game that isn't more challenging than the one that precedes it, all the way up until the final two missions which contain 3 boss battles back to back. LEVEL DESIGN I figured this section would be of interest to anyone at Forgehub. The campaign level design in Doom is among the best, if not the best I've seen in an FPS, sitting pretty right next to Halo CE, 2, and 3 in that regards. Each campaign mission is fairly long and when viewing the map of each level, very complex. 343 bragged about how many alternate routes and paths there were in the Halo 5 campaign to allow players to approach situations the way they wanted to...which ended up equating to and air-duct here or there to crawl through. And that was it. DOOM does what 343 wished they could do. Each fight in the Doom campaign is like dropping into a skating rink, shredding around, killing demons, and then you crawl out, and drop right back into the next one. Each "skating rink" has tons of platforms, cover, powerups, ammo laying around, sweet verticality, even multiple teleporters! No two arenas are the same, and the transitional areas between each arena is filled with awesome platforming, multiple routes everywhere, and great opportunities to approach the next arena. The way the entire campaign level will bob and weave back and forth to make the most effective use of space so that you constantly recognize where you are is excellent. You'll catch glimpses of far of doorways, or high catwalks early on each campaign mission, and always come back to loop around later on, looking down at how far you've climbed in that level. Each level is filled with tons of secrets to find, hidden preator tokens which upgrade your suit, easter eggs galore, alternate routes, arcade challenges, and glimpses of what's to come. Doom has got the incredible vistas of Halo (albeit a smudge more demonic) but it's riveting with endless hallways, intricate labyrinths, and unceasing platforming that Halo lacks. The campaign team did a marvelous job promoting exploration as you'll always be rewarded with more ammo, another gun, extra power for your suit, armor, or even the ability to unlock new special abilities, all from exploring off the beaten path. The game also features a bonus difficulty called "Ultra Nightmare" which is akin to Legendary in Halo (perhaps a little harder) but if you die the entire campaign starts over. Not just the level, the entire campaign. THE STORY Doom has never been about the story. It's about dropping into hell and shooting demons, that's it. And when Doom 3 took a 90 degree turn in 2004 as a story/horror game the collective Doom community sprawled back in horror. That being said, there's so much to love about this game's story telling. Simply put, it's not shoved in your face, if you don't want to hear it, then don't bother. There's no surplus of cutscenes (in fact I don't think there's any longer than 10 seconds or so), not quick time events to pull you out of the action, and only a single time are you forced to stop and hear a robot talk to you for a minute or two. If you do want to hear the story, there's tons of runes laying around the campaign that when activated will begin speaking and read off a paragraph or two of the prophesy of DoomGuy. There's tons of information on each demon that you'll unlock as you play through the campaign, and lots of index's and secrets that when found, will do the same. If you want the lore, it's there. If not, just go shoot things. However, the little bit of story telling that goes on is beautifully simple. It's the first time in over a decade I've played something that actually understands it's a video game and doesn't take itself too seriously. The writing is perfectly simple, the voice acting is superb ( <3 Samuel Hayden), and although the Doom Marine never says a single word throughout the campaign, his actions do enough to give you a window into this persona. Little sequences like this can't help but make you chuckle, or when you find the hidden DoomMarine plush toys hidden in each level, he'll pick them up and give them a fist bump. Or punch the little flying robots after they give you a weapon upgrade, it's all very well done. The tension will build the entire campaign until just before the last level Samuel Hayden sends you back into Hell. He says "They'll be expecting you, and they're going to put up a fight....but I think that's what you want." It's a line so simple that gave me the craziest goosebumps when I heard it, and serves its purpose to get your blood pumping. There's a nice little twist ending that I won't ruin, it's all very well done and sets up the scene perfectly for the next Doom guy if there ever will be one. Overall for what this game set out to be, there was no better way to tackle the story and writing. On a slightly unrelated note involving the campaign, there are so many secrets and easter eggs and different ways to upgrade your weapons and armor with different abilities, replayability will not be an issue. I'm on my second run through currently playing on Nightmare difficulty, and it's only gotten more fun for me. Since I got most of the secrets and upgrades on my first playthrough, this time around I can just focus on mobbing through the levels at breakneck pace and unceasing action, simply playing it to have fun and nothing else. It's an incredible campaign that will never get old. VISUALS This is the best looking console game I have ever seen, and to an extent, the best looking video game I have ever seen. Ever. So I could do my best to explain the technical side of the graphics but Digital Foundry has an awesome review on the game. TLDR: The game engine runs beautifully on just about any PC software and is remarkably optimized. Any gaming PC will have no issue running this game as ID Tech 6 is a piece of art. The lighting engine is phenomenal. The reflections are phenomenal. The textures are all ridiculously well done. But technicalities aside, just looking at the pure art of the game is unlike anything I've experienced since I did my first play through of Halo 2. Every hallway is riddled with detail, ID didn't get lazy with repeating assets as you'll find throughout the campaign. The outdoor Mars and Hell vistas are incredibly artistic from the big picture, down to the string of skulls hanging above a beating heart on top of a sacrificial pedestal. There's no end to the unique hell themed aesthetics in this game as they continue to surprise you with each level. The enemy models are each hand crafted with lots of love, and can be viewed in the game index under incredible scrutiny. As Digital Foundry mentioned, the animations in Doom are probably some of the greatest in video game history. The amount of ways enemies move and claw and turn and shoot and stagger and die is remarkable. This animation when you kill a revenant by shooting it's jetpack is my favorite. AUDIO So this can be broken into two sections. The soundtrack is phenomenal. Mick Gordan was the brain behind it, he's done several other amazing game soundtracks the most notable being Killer Instinct. But with Doom 2016 he knocked it out of the park. The entire soundtrack follows the metal theme that was so iconic of the original DOOM games (most songs even play of the E1M1 guitar riff) but with an electronic twist, sounding like industrial electronic metal. The end results is the perfect music to get your blood pumping and make you want to jump into combat. On the other hand, the audio mixing and the audio engine itself is probably my only knock on the campaign. Sometimes the soundtrack continues blaring even when you killed everyone in the room, and will continue to do so until you progress to the next area which gives off a really artificial vibe of tension. Also the way the game handles sound effects at different distance is very strange. Enemies could be fairly from you but their gun shots will sound very close which throws you off guard, or vice versa when someone is next to you but the audio drops off so fast as you walk away it's like they disappeared. The spatial audio gradient ideally would be marginally softer and not so harsh. Ultimately this is an extremely minor knock on the game's whole package but it did stick out to me. The guns themselves are all packed with unique and punching sound effects that makes you want to use them.
M U L T I P L A Y E R The Multiplayer was outsourced to Certain Affinity (the geniuses behind Halo 4) and it certainly shows. Not just in the loadouts and single use burn cards akin to Titanfall, but in the copious auto aim and watered down movement which feels absolutely nothing like the campaign. Which is a shame because of ID stuck to their roots here and had some balls this game would be unparalleled, there's no other console game that could have rivaled what Doom COULD HAVE been with a competitive arena multiplayer, which unfortunately is watered down and shallow. Which isn't to say it's not fun, I always have a blast when I jump in despite the sluggish movement, low jumping, janky clambering, bullshit demon pickups, random hack modules/burn cards, and random loadouts. It's the same casual experience you'd get from a game like Halo 4, if you don't expect anything from it, you'll have a great time. The customization is probably the best I've ever seen in a console game however. There's tons of colors and textures to unlock (matte, reflective, glossy, etc.) on top of their being a good amount of unique armor sets that are practically handed to you after every single MP match, removing the redundant grind that Halo 5 forces on you. You'll more or less get 2 -4 pieces of armor after every match, and you'll continue to unlock colors and even patterns and camos to put on them. Each section of every gun (as well as your armor) can apply color, texture, patterns, rust levels, or scratch levels to them. Which ensures that each and every DoomMarine looks completely unique. The Multiplayer features Team Deathmatch, Warpath (moving King of the Hill), Clan Arena (single life elimination), Freeze Tag, among several other playlists. Overall, a well built but casual experience. S N A P M A P Snapmap is Doom's own level editor. Snap map let's you publish a map, give it a hash tag to let people search and pull up whatever they're looking for (ex #doubles #core #rocketroom #demonarena stuff like that). There's a global most played section, another section for up and coming maps, and then when your map is played everyone in the lobby can uo/downvote it. If your maps keep getting upvotes they'll climb the leaderboards and people will keep playing and rating it. There's also a matchmaking system where you can either select Search for X, or host lobby and it'll throw people in with you. So it's like a server browser and matchmaking in one. Then you can search between FFA, Doubles CTF, or 4 player coop and play a map in the experience you're looking for. The leader can put on whatever map they want. All maps can even be given a thumbnail with custom text and stuff just like a YouTube thumbnail so you know exactly what map you're going to play and make it recognizable. Each map has the gametype built in so there's no need to match gametype and map. So if the creator wants their map played with 2x running speed, higher damage output, and weapons on map to make it feel like quake they can do so. It'll just happen on its own when you start the game. This is literally all in game under the snap map section, freaking baller stuff. There's even tutorials on how to use snap map built in right there. The snap map editor itself is extremely powerful AND easy to use in terms of scripting and whatnot, what sucks is tree actual map creation is limited to prefab rooms. So geometrically you can't get as creative as you'd like, but the EXPERIENCES you can make are incredible. Ultimately however, unless id updates snapmap to give users more control over map creation than prefabricated rooms I can't imagine this will take off in the way forge has. If you're a Halo player who was looking to get into Doom map creation, I would not recommend this. One wonders what Halo would be like if 343 gave forge this attention, could you imagine if we had our own matchmaking for forge maps? F I N A L S C O R E While I can't say the Doom single player is better than Halo's campaign is objectively comparable ways, I can say I enjoyed it much, much, much more. Which probably has more to do with my love of arena shooters and arena movement than it does Halo's quality as a title on its own. I'm in love with this game's art, the music, the level design, the voice acting, the movement (campaign), and the combat. The Multiplayer and snapmap are fun additions to jump into every now and then but the campaign is truly the spectacle of this game. I believe this is a game everyone should get their hands on at some point, now or in the future. I give Doom, an 8/10.