Quick Look: Doom

This looks a lot better than I expected

Time to Brad: 2:15

Good show sir.

@trilogy: Play the game before saying that. They work amazingly well into the fabric and feel of the game and it only gets better as a mechanic as you progress.

They're kinda seamless when you play it for yourself, the fact that they're fast is pretty key.

Also they're not mandatory at all. The health you get from them you also get if you just gib the enemies, and ammo becomes a non issue with proper use of the chainsaw and just plain old multiple weapons as you get them and ammo upgrades. So you can turn off that indicator and never bother with them if you so wish.

(the talk GB crew is having in the QL about ammo scarcity is very early on when you don't have a lot of weapon variety yet to swap into or ammo storage upgrades)

@brad@jeff You can go back to previous levels and pickup any upgrades or secrets you missed via the menu (and also backtrack through most airlocks within a set level). There are a ton of potential upgrade points for weapons and armor in finding them.

John Hellway

I rolled my eyes so hard at the trailer and the multiplayer beta didn't interest me at all but this looks really fun? I understand what people are saying about the melee kills, but I played through Bioshock 1 almost entirely with lightning and the wrench and this doesn't seem much different since the animations play so fast. Gonna have to see if the ps4 port is well done.

You CAN go back through airlocks. I went from the room where you get the Argent thing to the previous airlock. Maybe not through discreet levels though.

Is that the quickest Time to Brad ever? It's got to be up there.

Mediocre Shooter, I guess ID Software is back in the game. The shooting looks off to, feels disconnected.

I cancelled my pre-order last week out of fear of it being real bad. But reading people's impressions and watching this, I said fuck it and ordered it again. Will play this next week for sure.

It seems crazy to me that one of the main guys at Giant Bomb that records videos and talks about games on their flagship podcast every week doesn't have the up to date PC for playing games. I feel like they should all get a monthly expense account from CBSi for purchasing new games and upgrading their PC. I realize they probably have this in the office, but so much of the content seems to be what they've been playing in their personal time too.

here's some corrections/elaborations for the quick look:

• you can unlock every weapon mod and upgrade provided you find all the secrets to get the points
• you can effectively disable melee takedowns by turning off the enemy highlight in the options
• enemies drop health pretty frequently even without using takedowns--i'm playing on utlraviolence and rarely use them
• you can also turn off several options besides the highlight including the crosshair, the compass and the waypoints if you want to be a purist
• at least up to where i'm at in the game (about 4 levels in), you can backtrack through entire levels to get secrets you missed. the airlocks can be reactivated to go back.

really pleasantly surprised with this game, speaking as a classic doom fan who was super worried about it! it's just a lot of dumb fun and a great balance between oldschool and modern shooter.

@jeff Are you using Win10? Another twitch streamer (https://www.twitch.tv/excessiveprofanity/v/65988405) was also having the scrolling second monitor issue. Turned out it was a compat issue with a Win10 setting.

Yes, all the SNAPMAP stuff is cross-platform. All the DOOM ID is is just a username to identify you, as far as I can see.

Also, you can play any level from the campaign menu after beating the game, and you get to keep your upgrades, so it's a sort of New Game+ mode.

Tell that to Jeff who echoed my concern and who has played the game.

If you have a Vive (or Rift), this game is BADASS in VR using VorpX. A must buy. Get it. Use it. Love it.

Looks great, but I don't think I can bring myself to pay $60 for an FPS campaign (no interest in the MP).

JOHN HELLWAY

He's only like 2 hours into it. I said it gets better as you progress, which it does.

The melee kills could make this game really tedious. Happy to hear positive reactions so far though, hopefully I'm wrong!

This game seems alright.

Is it just me or does the multiplayer look reasonably fun? At least for a few hours? I'm not really getting why people are so down on it. I never got to play Doom MP back in the day so I don't know what it was like. But this looks sort of like Unreal Tournament and I loved that.

I also don't mind it taking a few rockets to kill a guy. It seems like Brad was getting the rocket launcher really easily (or was he spawning with it?) so if it only took one rocket to kill someone then this would be super unbalanced. If you want one-rocket-one-kill, you would need to make the launcher and rockets way more scarce.

@tennmuerti: What you're telling me is going against everything they're saying in the QL, but they are early, as you said. I hope you're right, because other than the melee stuff, the single player seems like a good time. It's just scary how often Brad is melee'ing enemies.

the game gets absolutely insane when you get to hell

this game has been great fun in the 2 or so hours i've played. PS4 version looks and runs well too.

Time to brad. 2:12, and about 3 seconds of actual gameplay before he is dead.

Footnote: Oh god how good is it to watch someone play an FPS with mouse rather than gamepad control. Especially a speed game!

@beaudacious: trust me it gets way more frantic later on

Man I need this game so bad after Dark souls.

There's a natural transition on the encounter design where glory kills just aren't as viable or necessary, but still remain a tactical choice. You also become heavily stocked with ammo and weapons early on, and with the amount of enemies it throws at you, it's far better to just blast everything to gibs.

Lots of praise for this, and it is fun, but it's also incredibly repetitive, and all the upgrade and collectables are really distracting from the flow of the game. Also, having to rely on the map to find those things and navigate in general creates a somewhat frustrating pacing and menu-diving that a more streamlined experience could have done away with. It's both bloated and too simplistic. The core gameplay is very fun, though, and the level design is pretty good.

Also, load times are absolute garbage on console, which is very annoying when you're dying a lot on harder difficulties, or dying from the game's various jumping puzzles and pitfalls.

My wallet was kinda hoping this game would be real disappointing..

JOHN HELL WAY lmao jeff

@trilogy: Jeff has the same reservations and tbh so do I. I hate meleeing in a FPS game fullstop, so making it a key part of the gameplay is a huge turn off for me, I don't care how fast the animations are.

The multiplayer looks fun enough, but yeah I can see how it isn't what you would want out of a doom game. I could see people enjoying it though. It doesn't seem badly done or anything the multiplayer, looks neat, but yeah prob not quite the "doom" you want in the multiplayer. Also even if they are not microtransaction based, burn cards are LAAAME. The main game and snapmap looks cool though.

ultraviolence really makes you desperate for that next melee kill for ammo and health(at least in the early going) maybe for some it feels superfluous or unnecessary on hurt me plenty or lower? And i dunno what it is but I really love the multiplayer ,never played old school quake that much though :(

Swipe left for demonic invasion.

I could have sworn it was Lance Henriksen voicing that Samuel Hayden character :O

Great work from Darin DePaul.

Ultraviolence difficulty is legit, and I like that.

If this game is still as positive in a week as it is now it is a purchase for sure.

THIS GAME IS REALLY GOOD

I can't recall: Is "rip and tear" a phrase exclusive to the Doom comic, or is it part of the Doom manual/in-game story text proper? I wouldn't be surprised if it's the former, because I'm only up to Level 3 of this game and there have been a bunch of doofy asides and easter eggs. See also:

Perfectly put. I respect Doom 3 from a technical vantage, but the gameplay was mostly a sluggish, predictable chore for me; the combat encounters in this Doom are tight and spry.

That was my gut reaction as well! But then my logical brain said "we would have heard about that wayyy before now" and I ran to the Googlerizer to get informed.

This game is getting a free ride via nostalgia.

I absolutely can't wait for the Doom discussion on next weeks Bombcast! I really hope a couple of the guys have finished the game by then, I'd love to hear their opinions on all the hilarious lore and worldbuilding stuff the game gets into in the back half. Also, to anyone put off by the melee kills, at a point you get so ridiculously killy that the glory kill mechanic becomes much less necessary than as seen here in the beginning of the game. After all, enemies often drop health and ammo on death, glory kills just guarantee the drops, and if you're reaping through 10-15 enemies in a minute with chainguns and rocket launchers you'll be pretty well off healthwise even without the glory kill bonuses.