Doom

Everyone who has played a first-person shooter of any kind has the original Doom to thank for many of the elements that still exist in modern games. This new version manages to introduce several new mechanics that reinvents the flow of combat in modern twitch shooters. Almost all modern shooters have regenerating health, which is a mechanic that disrupts the flow of the game because the player must remove themselves from the action to heal. In Doom, if enemies take enough damage they are susceptible to "Glory Kills". These ultraviolet finishing moves make enemies drop more health than usual and keeps the player in the action. Regaining health by being aggressive is what made Bloodborne one of my favorite games of all time and this type of mechanic will always make the gameplay flow far better than regenerating health or even old school health kits. On a similar note, the chainsaw adds an extra element while maintaining the fast-paced nature of the game. Any enemy killed with the chainsaw will drop obscene amounts of ammo for almost every weapon. Again, by replacing the usual searching around for ammo with a far more active method of replenishment, the flow of the game is consistent and keeps the player engaged the whole time. These are the only major positives I found, but one minor thing that I hope other games take from Doom is the clever use of the right thumb stick as the "use" button (Quick note: This is obviously using of a controller. I have no idea how this is on a keyboard). Because of this, the player never has to move their thumb to open a door. It is a small thing, but eliminating those few moments of moving to a different button can enhance immersion in a rather large way. As much as I want to praise Doom for the few things it does well, there are many things that the game doesn't do so well.

Seemingly in spite of its good ideas, Doom is aggressively repetitive. Beginning almost immediately the glory kill animations repeat themselves. Over the course of the game, there are only a handful of animations for each demon and a few of them even share animations. If you are playing on a high difficulty, be prepared to see a whole lot of this. There are other animations based on where you are aiming but almost no moments where you would be naturally aiming anywhere but directly at the front side of an enemy's upper body. On top of the repetition of the animations, the overall design is extremely repetitive. If we want to be reductive, almost all "AAA" action games can be boiled down to; walk here, shoot enemies, walk over there, shoot more enemies, do an unnecessary puzzle possibly while shooting enemies, etc..., but outside of a handful of platforming sequences, during which you still shoot enemies, this describes the entirety of Doom. Starting within the first 90 minutes, there are diminishing returns on the combat and each subsequent encounter becomes less and less enjoyable. At about 10 hours in, I outright hated Doom. And then I realized the game wasn’t even close to being over. As I progressed through the remainder of the game, I realized another major problem with the combat. Instead of placing unique combinations of enemies in strategic locations, each combat encounter merely throws out exponentially more waves of enemies. It feels like the game fully ran out of steam about 6 hours in but just kept going. And going. And going…

There are a handful of great ideas in Doom. Ones that I would like to see other games of all genres adopt. The active methods of regaining health and ammo would massively benefit any combat focused game. But the vast majority of Doom’s single player experience is obscenely repetitive. Thrown in the forgettable multiplayer and SnapMap modes, overall this game feels like it should have been developed as something different. To be honest, this game might have benefited from being a 5 hour, $20, single player only game. It still would have been repetitive, but it wouldn't have been as big of a deal. For a game that is almost fully focused on delivering a memorable gameplay experience, Doom fails in this regard. As I’ve said ad nauseam the combat is repetitive, but unlike other games, there is little else to see here. There is a story and it does some clever things, but nothing to make up for the major problems this game has. Going entirely in a gameplay focused direction is can be done extremely well if both the design and "kinaesthetics" back up that focus (the Souls games and especially Bloodborne are good examples of this). Not only does Doom's repetitive nature undercut this focus, it just is not fun to play. And for a game like this, that may be the most damning criticism I can offer. Thanks for reading.

Likes: Glory kills and the Chainsaw allow for fantastic game flow, cleverly designed control scheme

Dislikes: Glory kill animations begin repeating almost immediately, game is insanely repetitive in every other way, Combat just isn’t fun

If this review sounded like me making the same point over and over again, it was totally a conscious meta-criticism of the game and not lack of writing ability on my part.