New Doom is best described as a re-incarnation of it's namesake and ancestor, rather than a revival. It's a game born in this age, with all the hallmarks, given a shot in the arm with the DNA of the original Doom. It's a joyous meld of past and present in all the right places.
A lot has already been said about New Doom's fantastic opening sequence. Almost immediately after being thrust into the eyes of Doom(the name of the protagonist, duh), he'll smash a demon's skull against the demon table he's strapped to. From there until the brilliant rhythmic shotgun pump that signals the start of the game proper is a perfect mix of subtle story setups, and shooting seven shades of fuck out of demons with a shotgun. And damn is it satisfying. Every weapon in New Doom looks, sounds and feels amazing. Animations are as loud as the sounds accompanying them, really giving a sense of weight and power to the weapons without compromising on speed and fluidity.
This is still clearly a game of the modern era however, with many modern complexities added to the traditional Doom formula. Verticality is more encouraged than ever, with you now able to mantle up ledges, and weapons have 2 alt-fire modes now, upgradable through points gained via various tasks and challenges in each level, as well as weapon-specific challenges for final, more substantial upgrades. Your core abilities can be upgraded with tokens found in levels, and completing bonus areas unlocks you runes to equip for yet more bonuses. You can also find little cute little Marine figures accompanied with a cute jingle of the original theme, and each level has portion of a classic Doom map hidden away behind a switch-locked door that, if found, unlocks the whole classic level playable in the new engine. These bonuses are a nice modern way of retaining the original game's love of secrets by making the rewards more substantial than just armour, health and ammo.
Of course the most obvious change to the formula comes in the form of executions, which of course pleases me greatly. They fulfil a near-identical role here as they do in Space Marine, my shootybangbang yardstick, a way of keeping your health topped up in the midst of battle without breaking the flow. Doom however does this much better than Space Marine, as Doom's executions are much, much faster. A quick snap of the neck as opposed to the slow 3 stage beatdowns you'd get in Space Marine. There's basically no downtime, as with everything at Doom's core. Entering a "Glory Kill" won't take away control for more than a second, nor will climbing a ledge, pumping a shotgun after firing, all done to minimise the time you spend not being able to do anything. And all those things, as well as stuff that actually does take a bit of time, like alt-fire switching, can be reduced further via upgrades, so the pace continues to get faster and faster as you progress.
You aren't as fast as you might expect from a game called Doom, but the feeling of being a man on ice-skates isn't lost either. Movement is smooth, no intrusive head-bob, and environments are designed to have you crouching only when necessary, so you can move at full pelt in most places. Thing is, you might not want to when the fighting dies down, and not just to look for secrets. The levels are packed with details, full of character and beautifully mangled scenes of destruction and gore, and glorious setpeices to boot. For a game that really only needed to be good at one thing, it managed to excel in pretty much all areas, not least of which the plot, which surprised me with how engaging and enjoyable it was.
Doom's story is pulled off way better than it has any right to be, taking a simple premise, "There are Demons on Mars Now", and making it a character driven story focusing on 4 people, V.E.G.A, Optimus Prime, Evil Lady and Doom. Darin De Paul puts in a spectacular performance for Samuel Hayden, brilliantly portraying an incredibly memorable and interesting character. Olivia Pearce manages to be both sinister and pitiable all at once thanks to varied appearances in person and through holo-logs and videos. V.E.G.A largely plays subordinate to Hayden, but his brief period of passive venting and small shows of character towards the end give him a well deserved moment in the spotlight. And then there's Doom himself, who despite being a silent protagonist, manages to have as much character as everyone else in the game, and even more than a lot of talking characters in other games.
He's laser-focused on his self-appointed job from the start, aggressively shunning the help of Hayden from the beginning and showing a clear lack of interest in the affairs of anyone else beyond his personal feud with Hell. But he shows moments of depth too, in the simplest ways that so many completely narrative-driven games forget. He has his baseline, his agenda, his "morals"(if you can call them that), and he goes against them sometimes. Simple. And yet games still have characters who remain steadfast and unchanging for the entire game as if that itself is interesting, with nothing to compensate that absence of change with, because they think it's smart. Doom shows more character when operating a computer than some main characters get in entire games. And that's to say nothing of the various reveals of the game focusing on Hayden's PERSONALITY rather than just some trick he has up his sleeve. You know everything that COULD happen, it's presented clean and simply to you, the question is weather the characters WILL do these things, WHEN, and WHY. Which is infinitely more interesting than most games make a bad guy activating a trap card feel.
So yeah, Doom is good. Quality shootybangbang material and a damn good way to spend 40 odd quid at full price. Probably moreso if you're the type to play the multiplayer, which I am not. I've got Overwatch for that right now.
Next week, likely Hyper Light Drifter for Thursday. But you may even get a nice meaty bonus round of Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE on Monday. Just to keep it fresh in my mind.
A lot has already been said about New Doom's fantastic opening sequence. Almost immediately after being thrust into the eyes of Doom(the name of the protagonist, duh), he'll smash a demon's skull against the demon table he's strapped to. From there until the brilliant rhythmic shotgun pump that signals the start of the game proper is a perfect mix of subtle story setups, and shooting seven shades of fuck out of demons with a shotgun. And damn is it satisfying. Every weapon in New Doom looks, sounds and feels amazing. Animations are as loud as the sounds accompanying them, really giving a sense of weight and power to the weapons without compromising on speed and fluidity.
This is still clearly a game of the modern era however, with many modern complexities added to the traditional Doom formula. Verticality is more encouraged than ever, with you now able to mantle up ledges, and weapons have 2 alt-fire modes now, upgradable through points gained via various tasks and challenges in each level, as well as weapon-specific challenges for final, more substantial upgrades. Your core abilities can be upgraded with tokens found in levels, and completing bonus areas unlocks you runes to equip for yet more bonuses. You can also find little cute little Marine figures accompanied with a cute jingle of the original theme, and each level has portion of a classic Doom map hidden away behind a switch-locked door that, if found, unlocks the whole classic level playable in the new engine. These bonuses are a nice modern way of retaining the original game's love of secrets by making the rewards more substantial than just armour, health and ammo.
Of course the most obvious change to the formula comes in the form of executions, which of course pleases me greatly. They fulfil a near-identical role here as they do in Space Marine, my shootybangbang yardstick, a way of keeping your health topped up in the midst of battle without breaking the flow. Doom however does this much better than Space Marine, as Doom's executions are much, much faster. A quick snap of the neck as opposed to the slow 3 stage beatdowns you'd get in Space Marine. There's basically no downtime, as with everything at Doom's core. Entering a "Glory Kill" won't take away control for more than a second, nor will climbing a ledge, pumping a shotgun after firing, all done to minimise the time you spend not being able to do anything. And all those things, as well as stuff that actually does take a bit of time, like alt-fire switching, can be reduced further via upgrades, so the pace continues to get faster and faster as you progress.
You aren't as fast as you might expect from a game called Doom, but the feeling of being a man on ice-skates isn't lost either. Movement is smooth, no intrusive head-bob, and environments are designed to have you crouching only when necessary, so you can move at full pelt in most places. Thing is, you might not want to when the fighting dies down, and not just to look for secrets. The levels are packed with details, full of character and beautifully mangled scenes of destruction and gore, and glorious setpeices to boot. For a game that really only needed to be good at one thing, it managed to excel in pretty much all areas, not least of which the plot, which surprised me with how engaging and enjoyable it was.
Doom's story is pulled off way better than it has any right to be, taking a simple premise, "There are Demons on Mars Now", and making it a character driven story focusing on 4 people, V.E.G.A, Optimus Prime, Evil Lady and Doom. Darin De Paul puts in a spectacular performance for Samuel Hayden, brilliantly portraying an incredibly memorable and interesting character. Olivia Pearce manages to be both sinister and pitiable all at once thanks to varied appearances in person and through holo-logs and videos. V.E.G.A largely plays subordinate to Hayden, but his brief period of passive venting and small shows of character towards the end give him a well deserved moment in the spotlight. And then there's Doom himself, who despite being a silent protagonist, manages to have as much character as everyone else in the game, and even more than a lot of talking characters in other games.
He's laser-focused on his self-appointed job from the start, aggressively shunning the help of Hayden from the beginning and showing a clear lack of interest in the affairs of anyone else beyond his personal feud with Hell. But he shows moments of depth too, in the simplest ways that so many completely narrative-driven games forget. He has his baseline, his agenda, his "morals"(if you can call them that), and he goes against them sometimes. Simple. And yet games still have characters who remain steadfast and unchanging for the entire game as if that itself is interesting, with nothing to compensate that absence of change with, because they think it's smart. Doom shows more character when operating a computer than some main characters get in entire games. And that's to say nothing of the various reveals of the game focusing on Hayden's PERSONALITY rather than just some trick he has up his sleeve. You know everything that COULD happen, it's presented clean and simply to you, the question is weather the characters WILL do these things, WHEN, and WHY. Which is infinitely more interesting than most games make a bad guy activating a trap card feel.
So yeah, Doom is good. Quality shootybangbang material and a damn good way to spend 40 odd quid at full price. Probably moreso if you're the type to play the multiplayer, which I am not. I've got Overwatch for that right now.
Next week, likely Hyper Light Drifter for Thursday. But you may even get a nice meaty bonus round of Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE on Monday. Just to keep it fresh in my mind.
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