Doom

Doom is exactly what a Doom game should be in 2016. It’s fast, gory, high-octane and chock full of Satan. If they weren’t past the point of self parody, it might be the type of thing that would cause a good-old-fashioned moral panic, and it’s better than I ever could have hoped for. Having grown up playing Doom, I wasn’t sure how to feel about the franchises’ revival. Especially after the multiplayer beta earlier this year. I’m glad I gave it a chance though, because it is without a doubt one of the best shooters I’ve played in a good long while.

Right out of the gate, Doom lets you know exactly what it is. Within seconds, you’re running around a room shooting enemies in the face. Within minutes you’ve acquired a shotgun and are now brutally ripping demons in half with your bare hands. Doom is first and foremost a shooter, and is unapologetic about the fact that story comes second. That doesn’t mean there’s no story, just that you should care about it as much as the protagonist, the aptly named ‘Doom Marine’ (or Doom Guy) does. Basically, scientists on Mars have been messing around with demonic forces and have summoned forth the legions of Hell in an effort to harvest ‘argent energy’ in order to…better mankind(?) and it’s up to Doom Guy to send the demons back to hell. While there ins’t much in the way of complexity in Doom’s story, it has one hell of a sense of humour. The game routinely presents you with the video game standard “character gives you exposition and direction from an intercom” to which Doom Guy responds by destroying the intercom or blatantly disregarding instruction. These reactions from Doom Guy were delightful the entire way through the campaign. Funny though it might be however, the story is not what will keep you interested in Doom.

What will hold your attention is the nonstop action that drives Doom. On paper, it might seem somewhat rudimentary - you enter a room and kill everything in it. But beyond this, there are unseen complexities that present themselves upon getting more comfortable with the game’s combat. While Doom might not seem it up front, it's very tactical. A room filled with a variety of enemies will have you quickly changing weapons, ensuring you’re using the ones that’ll kill most efficiently. A shotgun might work well on imps and zombies, but bigger enemies like the mancubus are more susceptible to a shot from the gauss cannon. On top of this, you’ll have to mix up strategies in order to stay alive. Stun an enemy with a weapon and they’ll flash blue. Get close enough and they’ll flash orange, indicating that you can perform a ‘glory kill’ on them. Glory kills are super fast (and gory) melee kills that result in an eruption of health…vital for survival in some of the later fights. If you run out of ammo, the best option is to switch to your chainsaw to cut something up having it spew forth a bounty of shotgun shells, assault rifle rounds and rockets. While the chainsaw is a one hit kill, it’s not itself unlimited and larger enemies require larger portions of fuel to take them down. This back and forth - using melee kills to replenish my health and using the chainsaw to acquire more ammo so that I could stun more enemies to do more glory kills to get more health was an enormously welcome change of pace. It encourages you to get out into the fray and fight to get your health back, and it moves at such a break-neck speed that you always feel like a badass. The combat never once got old and I looked forward to each new enemy encounter.

Doom is also damn near aesthetically perfect. It’s a terrific blend of the original demonic vision of Doom and the environments of Doom 3.The game does enough to carve out a distinct look for itself in its modernized take on the character designs of yore, but the demons are still recognizable and, as a Doom fan, evoked a sense of glee the first time I saw each one of them…and every time I ripped one of their heads off. The sound design is also fantastic, sticking to a heavy metal motif. Doom is a great reminder that the right music in a game can get you really charged up. When you get into the thick of a chaotic fight to the tune of some crunchy guitar chords and the occasional wobble-bass, it’s pulse pounding. The visuals and sound design work together masterfully to portray an overly-serious-to-the-point-of-silly battleground that’s a thrill to play through and runs at a solid sixty frames a second, even on consoles.

While the campaign would make the game a more than complete package as it is, it also contains a multiplayer portion, though I don’t have the same glowing praise for it as i do its single-player counterpart. In my experience, Doom’s competitive multiplayer has been a mess. I’ve had nothing but trouble trying to connect to games and when I manage to get in, they aren’t that much fun. The joy of Doom is the speed and precision with which you’re dispatching enemies, the way you’ll puzzle out the most efficient way to use your varied arsenal to take care of a room of demons. Playing a rather rote competitive multiplayer lacks the finesse provided by the game’s campaign. It’s not necessarily bad, but it’s not the reason to pick up Doom. Still there are some interesting elements to the multiplayer. Namely a power-up that allows you to take control of one of the larger demons like the revenant or mancubus, but nothing so engaging that it will take your attention away from the game’s outstanding campaign.

Doom does offer some longevity in the form of ‘Snapmap,’ its in-game map designer. Think of it like Little Big Planet just with more viscera. I haven’t messed around with the creation tools as I’m not one to glean joy from designing my own maps in games. Having seen it in action though, it seems relatively intuitive and easy to use. The user created maps I’ve played have been fine, ranging from recreations of original Doom maps to completely different ideas like simplistic quiz games. Snapmap just lacks the charm that the carefully designed levels of the campaign are dripping with. While Snapmap is a nice addition to the package, and certainly fun to say, I just don’t see myself heading back to it any time soon.

Instead, I’m going to head back to Doom’s marvellous campaign. Seriously, I’m completely hooked. It’s been a good long while since all I could think about was a single game, but no matter how I try and break from the cycle to play anything else, I just keep coming back to Doom. I’m about half way through my second play-through and I see no end in sight. Hell, I’m even listening to the game’s soundtrack as I write this. The frantic nature of the combat and the way the game encourages you to experiment with different weapons to solve what are effectively combat puzzles make for a uniquely satisfying shooter experience. In a landscape of shooter-fatigue it’s pleasantly surprising to me that the reboot of Doom, the granddaddy of all shooters, is as good as it is. Doom is a testament to the fact that old school shooters were revolutionary for a reason, and the feeling of running through a room at 90 mph blasting demons in the face with a rocket launcher is unrivalled. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going continue doing just that.