Genre; First Person Shooter, Action, Horror/Sci Fi

Platform: PS4

Available on: PS4, PC, Xbox One

Release: May 13, 2016

We’ve been hearing about it for years, and finally, here it is. Doom 4!…ahem…Doom! Reimagined and brought forth into the light of day. Continuing the resurgence of old school shooters, picking up the torch recently lit by Wolfenstein: The New Order, and carrying it forward into this new dawn. Was it worth the wait? Yes. Yes, it was. I was honestly not that interested in this game, and even less so after playing the generic, boring beta; but those final gameplay videos that spread across the interwebs right before the game’s release piqued my curiosity enough to check it out, so I borrowed a copy from a friend and played the hell out of it. I could end the review right now just by saying it melted my fucking face off, but where’s the fun in that.

Let’s get into it.

Graphics/Presentation: 9/10

Doom is a slick and beautiful game. It’s your typical industrial sci fi horror settings, polished to crisp AAA high standards, with the game taking place either in and around the giant facility on Mars, or scattered across the surreal, volcanic landscapes of Hell. It doesn’t try to offer an extensive variety of locations, and it doesn’t need to. Doom is all about the blood soaked corridors of the facility and the horrors that befell its inhabitants, and it does a great job of creating some awesome alien sci fi vistas and wicked battle arenas for the action to unfold in.

Enemies look fantastic and animations are fluid and look great, from the way the demons move to the amazingly gruesome glory kills, and even more gruesome chainsaw kills. I’ve never seen a chainsaw kill look so damn good in a video game before, and I used it as much as I could just for the sheer thrill of the over-the-top animations.

The soundtrack of heavy, pounding metal riffs is awesome and perfectly compliments the frantic madness of the fire fights, really driving home that badass sense of unstoppable power and strength. Guns sound great, from the loud punch of the super shotgun, to the weird sci fi pulse of the gauss cannon and plasma gun, the sensory feedback gives them the impact necessary to feel satisfying. Voice acting is also fairly well done, though sparse and limited to only a couple actors. It serves its purpose without making you cringe and that was all it really needed to accomplish. Doom isn’t about character development or feels – it’s about shooting shit in the face.

Story: 7/10

There’s not much to say here. Story is not a major aspect of Doom. The Doom Slayer wakes up in a shitstorm catastrophe of apocalyptic proportions and starts ripping jaws off the first demons he gets his hands on. It’s not much different than any other Doom story that came before it. The portals to Hell are opened by stupid, careless, power hungry humans, and demons pour out and devour and decimate everything and everyone in their path. Doom guy steps up to shut them down and send them packing – in pieces. In a nutshell. Sound familiar? Ya, I think that was the same plot in Doom 3? And original Doom – give or take a few minor details. It works well, and never gets in the way of the relentless action, with only a few very short cutscenes that never really pull you away from game like most cutscenes typically do. It’s all seamless and flows together very well.

Gameplay: 9.5/10

The first thing I noticed when I booted up Doom was the speed. Holy fuck it’s fast. It was almost disorienting at first, but I quickly adjusted and came to the immediate realization that the speed was necessary to stay alive. As the loading screen will repeatedly tell you, keep moving to stay alive – stop and you die.

Enemies will come at you, in a variety of shapes and sizes, with a variety of strengths and weaknesses, with various tactics; and you’ll need to think fast on your feet and change up your own tactics to survive the onslaught, hordes of demons spawning around you, with the singular intent of killing you. The AI is fucking aggressive and will not wait around for you to come kill them. They will swarm, surround and hunt you down, so recklessly that they even end up attacking and killing each other. It’s an adrenaline rush I remember from the early days of gaming – a sweaty palmed feeling I don’t feel in many games any more. Maybe I’m just getting old, but I had to mix it up with some more relaxing games and shorter play sessions. A level a day keeps the demons at bay…

Levels are quite large, with multiple pathways to explore, hidden areas, and lots of collectibles to find, including weapon mods and suit upgrades, so it really pays off to explore each level thoroughly – though reading the map can be difficult and getting lost happened more than a few times. Checkpoints are not as forgiving as most modern games, and a few times I found myself having to re-trek through an area to get back to a tough battle where I just got my ass handed to me – which got a little annoying when it took five attempts to make it through a fight.

Each level has a number of combat challenges, rune trials – which can be really crazy, and extra experience is rewarded to those who find and kill every demon in the level. Also, as a neat bonus, in each of the 13 levels, hidden away in some ridiculously difficult to find place, is a lever, which opens a secret area that is a level from the original game.

One noted disappointment in the campaign was a lack of boss battles. It didn’t ruin the experience, I just expected more – and that final boss…not terrible…we’ve just seen the exact same thing in a hundred games already. I know why they did it. Still…

The progression system in Doom works by earning experience points through combat and used for upgrades on Doom Guy’s weapons. The suit has three main sections to upgrade and requires chips found on dead soldiers to gain points to be used. Each weapon has two mods that can be applied, that work as either an alternate fire, such as the shotgun launching a grenade, or an extra feature, such as the rocket launcher having a lock on target, or the assault rifle having a scope. There’s upgrades to unlock on each mod and a final combat challenge to complete to fully upgrade each weapon.

The crazy weapons are a big part of what makes Doom awesome and they really don’t disappoint here. To set it apart even further from its peers, there is no iron sight aim for most weapons and no reloading – just run and gun in its purest form. The weapon wheel is easy to access mid combat, using a slow motion effect, allowing for smooth weapon changes on the fly, and is essentially necessary to successfully dominate in battle. The variety of guns allows for diversity in gameplay styles, which was interesting to note, when my girlfriend and I passed the controller back and forth, how our different play styles determined what weapons we used. Each weapon has its strengths and weaknesses, and varied effectiveness on each demon. Each weapon also shares ammo with one other weapon type in the same class, so choose carefully.

The pistol is pretty close to useless on anything other than imps, and really only serves as a starting gun that gets you to the shotgun, or an emergency alternative if you stumble into the unfortunate situation of running out of ammo, since its ammo is unlimited; The shotgun is great for taking out the imps and possessed fast and setting up glory kills; the super shotgun has very limited range, is slow and looks like an antique compared to the larger, more futuristic weapons, but holy fuck it packs a punch close up and takes out even larger foes with only a few shots; the heavy assault rifle is great for range and headshots with scope attachment, and for crowd control with the six shot rocket mod; the chaingun chews through ammo, and everything you point it at – works great against an overwhelming swarm and powerful demons; the plasma gun shoots fast relentless streams, and works well enough against imps and mid range enemies, but isn’t all that damaging; the gauss cannon, on the other hand, is incredibly powerful, blasting apart almost everything in its path, though each shot uses a huge amount of ammo and is easy to miss a target with a miscalculated aim; the rocket launcher just blows the shit out of everything, exactly as you’d expect it to, including yourself if you’re not careful, and the lock on mod is super handy.

There’s also frag grenades and two special weapons, both of which are fucking unstoppable monsters and tremendously satisfying to use. I’m of course talking about the chainsaw and the motherfucking BFG9000. You get the chainsaw fairly early in the game, and it essentially one shot kills pretty much everything with a handful of extremely gory animations. You only get room for three ammo slots, and most of the larger enemies use all the slots to perform a kill, so it’s use is limited enough to keep you from trying to spam your way through tough fights. The BFG9000 makes its appearance later in the game and works in a similar fashion as the chainsaw, in regards to ammo slots – only, with this fucking beast, one shot completely obliterates everything in front of you in a spectacular explosion of flying body parts and clouds of red mist. It’s just – goddamn. Yea. Worth the wait.

Multiplayer: 6/10

I put almost no time into the multiplayer, so I don’t feel like I can fairly form a solid opinion on its quality, but the biggest take away I noticed was that the fun, frantic feel of action from the campaign was somehow lost in the transition to playing against real humans, and the experience was reduced to a very generic deathmatch shooter that lost my interest almost immediately. That being said, I’m not a big fan of competitive multiplayer in the first place, so for those of you who are, my opinion may not hold much weight.

There’s the typical modes you’d expect from any modern multiplayer shooter with a good handful of maps, and if you really dig the Doom universe and competitive deathmatch gameplay, it’s far from the worst offerings out there.

SnapMaps: 9/10

This is a great feature that really expands replayability to infinity and beyond. After I’ve collected everything, beat every challenge, and earned that coveted platinum trophy, there’s the endless SnapMaps available any time I want to boot the game up for a quick play session, offering something new every time.

As well as offering more single player missions to play, and challenges to overcome, there’s also co op missions you can play with friends, and even more PvP custom maps, with their own sets of rules and enemy types. Maps can be made by anyone and uploaded for everyone to play. They’re rated by votes, which makes filtering out the best ones quick and easy. User generated content can be a mixed bag, but it’s a great feature to have and really rounds off the whole package to deliver an excellent product with lots of meat on its bones.

In Summary:

Doom is an amazing action game and one of the best shooters I’ve played in years. It’s an adrenaline fueled thrill ride, reminding me of the sweaty palmed gaming sessions of my youth and is just a tremendous amount of fun to play. John Thursday stamp of approval. Go to Hell, everyone.

Pros: Fast paced action, the chainsaw, glory kills, guns!, challenging gameplay, slick graphics, SnapMap endless replayability, great enemy variety, lengthy campaign

Cons: dull multiplayer, some badly placed checkpoints, final boss battle too generic, only 3 major boss battles in entire game, the map

666/10