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It's Excellent

Written by {ASP}DarkDante

I don't often write reviews, but reviews of Doom from the likes of IGN have annoyed me, and there aren't many places to express my own thoughts.This game is excellent! Taken in the context of single-player anyway.I've heard people describe it as a love-letter to the original Doom, and that's... pretty accurate.That leads me to question what it is that makes Doom so loved? For being the main initiator of the FPS genre, so much so that for many years, every FPS was called a 'Doom-clone', it sure seems to have got a lot of things right, straight off the bat.The most obvious part of this is the fast pace. There's no rest for the wicked and you're compelled to keep moving if you don't want to die repeatedly. It's addictive, eating up the world in front of you like some sort of gun-toting pac-man. Most importantly, unlike Doom 3, you don't feel powerless, slinking from shadow to shadow in fear of what comes next. You feel kick ass! Running at the equivalent of 40mph helps this empowering feeling.The guns don't require tedious life-like reloading. They splurge till you're out of ammo. Out of ammo? Chainsaw can sort that out. Enemies killed with the chainsaw always provide dropped ammunition, which is useful. Also, murdering enemies with glory kills, bare-handed brutal murder, provides you with health. This reminded me of Duke Nukem 3D where you could nonsensically regain health by drinking water from burst toilets, and that isn't a bad comparison. I don't feel Doom should take itself too seriously, and it never used to -- Doom 2 had one of the developers, Romero, as a target you had to hit in order to kill the final boss, for example. Happily, this game seems very self-aware, with many an easter egg in the game. For example, chuck yourself in the molten metal for a Terminator 2 reference. It seems that the dev tea, has their finger on the pulse of the modern world and I think real players will appreciate it, even if critics don't.The eerie atmosphere hits the mark. Again, unlike Doom 3 (which was good in its own way), which somewhat descended into a jump-scare horror game set in space, this game is a lot brighter, but still not exactly rainbows and bunnies.The maps have a sense of discovery and are somewhat non-linear. The secret areas and fast routes give the game a sense of replayability. I remember taking pride in Doom and Quake in knowing the secret areas and being able to show them to people who also played quite a bit, but hadn't yet discovered. It's changed days of course though, with the spread of the internet, so this doesn't quite have as much appeal given the ease with which you can find all the secrets. As such, the secrets are sort of visible on the map, so that you don't waste your time strolling around large maps for something that doesn't exist, but also still challenging despite knowing their vague location.The demons from the original return, fleshed out to their 2016 versions. However, they have moved on along with the world. Imps are no longer just sit there hurling fireballs, but make use of their new-found verticality and freedom by manically climbing walls like Spiderman with rabies.There's actually really quite a lot to cover for what you'd think would be a simple game -- there is a lot of customization available which can be made to better fit your playstyle. Weapon mods, armouring, etc. is new and probably an improvement. You can tell id Software have put thought into almost everything in the game.Graphically, the game is great. I can't quite max the game out so I can't see just how good it can look, but I know it looks great.Plot wise the game is actually better than expected, but I consider that a bonus, as I had zero expectations in that respect.My only potential disappointment is the multiplayer. It's not even bad, exactly. It hasn't started with too many maps, and it doesn't 'feel' like Doom, probably because of the loadouts (I may be a stick in the mud). I don't know whether it's fair for this to drag down the score? How can more content make a game worse? In any case, I think the snapmap feature, for creating your own custom maps, looks incredibly promising, and I think that combined with the potential for modding makes the future of Doom's multiplayer very exciting.To wrap up, I've had a weekend to play and complete Doom, and I found it engrossing, It was great fun and a faithful translation of some classic shooter gameplay injected into the current day. I've seen people describe Doom as the Fury Road of shooters and it's an apt comparison. If you were in love with the likes of Doom, Quake and Duke 3d, you'll like this game. I highly recommend it!