In Doom’s first moments you break free from metal restraints with your bare hands before smashing a demon’s head in against the edge of a stone table. As primary mission statements go, few games are so startlingly direct, but Doom revels in the simplicity of its ultra violence. This latest game from revered studio id Software takes much from the timeless 1993 original - its frantic bloodshed being the most immediately noticeable - but the Doom of 2016 also goes the distance to achieve surprise greatness of its own.
Its exemplary gunplay is distilled into a gloriously short feedback loop that gets exponentially more satisfying. New Doom feels much faster than its iconic forebear, and after a brief introduction it continues to dial up the action without giving pause. By midway through its lengthy campaign, those first few fights feel like child’s play. By the game’s final quarter, you’ll be frequently amazed by the devastating onslaught that Doom delivers so consistently. It’s a wonderful progression of madness that never stops for breath.
Its exemplary gunplay is distilled into a gloriously short feedback loop that gets exponentially more satisfying. New Doom feels much faster than its iconic forebear, and after a brief introduction it continues to dial up the action without giving pause. By midway through its lengthy campaign, those first few fights feel like child’s play. By the game’s final quarter, you’ll be frequently amazed by the devastating onslaught that Doom delivers so consistently. It’s a wonderful progression of madness that never stops for breath.
The premise is simple: you shoot demons. The new trick is to shoot demons until they stagger before moving in for a Glory Kill - a contextual finisher that sees the faceless Doom Marine breaking, tearing, smashing, ripping, sawing and eviscerating his foes to death. Killing in this way results in a colourful shower of health and ammo packs - vital in a game without regenerating health and where your primary interaction with its world is shooting until there’s nothing left to shoot.
It’s a flawless slice of game design - easy enough to master, fast enough to be unintrusive, graphic enough to feel empowering, and intrinsic enough to survival for you to keep coming back for more and more and more. Id’s designers know this, and make a marked point of giving you very little else to concentrate on, or care about, as you progress.
The inimitable Doom Marine doesn’t care either - his indifference communicated through a series of mute physical expressions. As UAC facility boss Samuel Hayden explains the importance of some research, Doom Marine smashes it to pieces before Hayden can even finish. When he’s shown vital information on a holo-screen, he pushes it aside to get on with the killing. The intention is clear: Doom’s small cast of supporting characters are merely talking signposts to propel you from one location to the next.
It’s a flawless slice of game design - easy enough to master, fast enough to be unintrusive, graphic enough to feel empowering, and intrinsic enough to survival for you to keep coming back for more and more and more. Id’s designers know this, and make a marked point of giving you very little else to concentrate on, or care about, as you progress.
The inimitable Doom Marine doesn’t care either - his indifference communicated through a series of mute physical expressions. As UAC facility boss Samuel Hayden explains the importance of some research, Doom Marine smashes it to pieces before Hayden can even finish. When he’s shown vital information on a holo-screen, he pushes it aside to get on with the killing. The intention is clear: Doom’s small cast of supporting characters are merely talking signposts to propel you from one location to the next.
But what locations they are. Hopping between a ravaged research base on Mars and the burning depths of Hell, Doom’s locations could be called derivative. Its sci-fi base is all pristine metal and crisp lighting, while the underworld is fire and brimstone. This isn’t new to games by any stretch, but Doom goes a long way to selling its hellscapes far better than any game before it.
Part of this comes from some great art direction, but mostly from some astounding technical flourishes. Doom is incredibly detailed, especially on high-end PCs, and whether you’re fighting through a flaming foundry, an AI core cooled to absolute zero, or the corpse infested wastes of Hell itself, it’s distractingly pretty. Infrequent shifts from the game’s near constant reddish tinge feel memorable, but you’re always ready to get back to its blood soaked corridors. Consider as well that it runs at a faultless 60fps, and id should be commended for the performance it delivers on all platforms.
As soon as you pick up a shotgun, sidelining the game’s pistol within the first two minutes, Doom starts proper. From there, it continues to introduce new weapons at pitch perfect pace so that you’re always playing with something new and exciting; an assault rifle, a rocket launcher, a super shotgun, a chaingun, the iconic and unashamedly named Big Fucking Gun, and even more in between. Then there’s the chainsaw - rather than serve as a standard melee weapon it operates as a one-hit kill device that relies on a finite fuel source. The bigger the demon you want to kill, the more fuel it uses, so the chainsaw’s gruesome flesh-ripping is saved only for the direst of straits.
Part of this comes from some great art direction, but mostly from some astounding technical flourishes. Doom is incredibly detailed, especially on high-end PCs, and whether you’re fighting through a flaming foundry, an AI core cooled to absolute zero, or the corpse infested wastes of Hell itself, it’s distractingly pretty. Infrequent shifts from the game’s near constant reddish tinge feel memorable, but you’re always ready to get back to its blood soaked corridors. Consider as well that it runs at a faultless 60fps, and id should be commended for the performance it delivers on all platforms.
As soon as you pick up a shotgun, sidelining the game’s pistol within the first two minutes, Doom starts proper. From there, it continues to introduce new weapons at pitch perfect pace so that you’re always playing with something new and exciting; an assault rifle, a rocket launcher, a super shotgun, a chaingun, the iconic and unashamedly named Big Fucking Gun, and even more in between. Then there’s the chainsaw - rather than serve as a standard melee weapon it operates as a one-hit kill device that relies on a finite fuel source. The bigger the demon you want to kill, the more fuel it uses, so the chainsaw’s gruesome flesh-ripping is saved only for the direst of straits.
The game relishes in the discovery of each weapon, slowing the action to a crawl for a few seconds as Doom Marine looks it up and down with a sadistic sense of appreciation. As your arsenal expands, switching between guns with your radial menu quickly becomes second nature. You learn to move around that menu as effortlessly as the Marine moves around the world; every design consideration is beyond precise, providing perfect balance to the ensuing chaos.
That chaos is without doubt the game’s crowning achievement. Doom’s demons are varied and grotesque - dangerous on their own, but positively lethal in groups. The only way to win is to move faster, shoot quicker and be better. Pumping a Hell Knight full of shotgun shells, raining plasma orbs down on a group of Possessed, or unleashing a devastating Gauss Cannon blast on a staggered Revenant, Doom creates a ballet of bloody murder that requires constant thought and unending movement to keep up. The level design encourages - almost forces - mobility at all times, and while the entire game could essentially be summed up as a series of multi layered arenas connected by thin, linear corridors, Doom never suffers from this. Despite an unashamed focus on self-aware stupidity and uber gore, Doom is remarkably smart and dynamic throughout.
The small handful of modern design compromises that Doom makes are well implemented. The most noticeable - upgrades for your weapons - are by far the biggest shakeup to the Doom formula. The assault rifle gets a scope and a missile barrage, the shotgun gets a burst mode and a grenade launcher, the rocket launcher gets a homing upgrade and a remote detonator, and so on. Each upgrade can itself be upgraded by using the skill points earned from killing enemies. The result is a set of unique guns that are as deep as they are diverse.
There are also dozens of secrets to find, optional challenges to complete to earn passive skill runes, and a considerable amount of codexes that give a surprisingly in-depth look at Doom’s backstory. None of it’s mandatory - which will appease purists who balk at Doom having anything resembling lore - but the finer details are appreciated in a game that needs to remain relevant beyond hardcore nostalgia.
That chaos is without doubt the game’s crowning achievement. Doom’s demons are varied and grotesque - dangerous on their own, but positively lethal in groups. The only way to win is to move faster, shoot quicker and be better. Pumping a Hell Knight full of shotgun shells, raining plasma orbs down on a group of Possessed, or unleashing a devastating Gauss Cannon blast on a staggered Revenant, Doom creates a ballet of bloody murder that requires constant thought and unending movement to keep up. The level design encourages - almost forces - mobility at all times, and while the entire game could essentially be summed up as a series of multi layered arenas connected by thin, linear corridors, Doom never suffers from this. Despite an unashamed focus on self-aware stupidity and uber gore, Doom is remarkably smart and dynamic throughout.
The small handful of modern design compromises that Doom makes are well implemented. The most noticeable - upgrades for your weapons - are by far the biggest shakeup to the Doom formula. The assault rifle gets a scope and a missile barrage, the shotgun gets a burst mode and a grenade launcher, the rocket launcher gets a homing upgrade and a remote detonator, and so on. Each upgrade can itself be upgraded by using the skill points earned from killing enemies. The result is a set of unique guns that are as deep as they are diverse.
There are also dozens of secrets to find, optional challenges to complete to earn passive skill runes, and a considerable amount of codexes that give a surprisingly in-depth look at Doom’s backstory. None of it’s mandatory - which will appease purists who balk at Doom having anything resembling lore - but the finer details are appreciated in a game that needs to remain relevant beyond hardcore nostalgia.
Doom’s bombastic cavalcade of a campaign is its centrepiece, but its accompanying multiplayer provides a wanton aside that never quite reaches the dizzying heights of its offline counterpart. It’s just as frenetic, fast-paced and explosive, borrowing the verticality of id’s other shooter, Quake. Ironically, its biggest problem - that it doesn’t boast the longevity that it needs to survive against its contemporaries - is also what makes it so refreshing in the short term.
SnapMap is another story entirely. This intuitive but devilishly complex level editor encourages the combined imagination of Doom’s community to run wild. In it, players can manipulate countless game systems, tinker with its AI, set up their own scripted events, and tonnes more. There are already faithful recreations of the original Doom available to play, and the amount of levels available only increases by the hour. It’s a feature no one expected, but which really works well, and positively knocks all other similar editors out of the park.
A mention also needs to be given to Doom’s soundtrack. Composed by Mick Gordon - responsible also for Wolfenstein: The New Order’s excellent score - Doom’s chugging heavy metal juxtaposes down-tuned 9-string guitars with modern electronica in what is the best metal album of the last few years. Whether it’s the booming pulses of BFG Division or the lightning fast riffs of Rip & Tear, Doom’s soundtrack seamlessly combines familiar Doom motifs with fresh new musical ideas. Without it, the game wouldn’t nearly be as special. Or as deafeningly loud.
There were no doubts that Doom would play fast, look stunning, or be gory; the surprise is that Doom is as relevant, smart and self-aware as it is; merging old ideas with new ones; injecting its near-flawless shooter mechanics into a campaign that’s impeccably refined, hilariously dumb and fiendishly moreish. In an overcrowded genre that’s hellbent on one-upping itself in a slew of increasingly tepid iterations, Doom’s multi-faceted personality is praiseworthy. After almost 25-years, the series finally escapes its precursor’s shadow, once and for all.
SnapMap is another story entirely. This intuitive but devilishly complex level editor encourages the combined imagination of Doom’s community to run wild. In it, players can manipulate countless game systems, tinker with its AI, set up their own scripted events, and tonnes more. There are already faithful recreations of the original Doom available to play, and the amount of levels available only increases by the hour. It’s a feature no one expected, but which really works well, and positively knocks all other similar editors out of the park.
A mention also needs to be given to Doom’s soundtrack. Composed by Mick Gordon - responsible also for Wolfenstein: The New Order’s excellent score - Doom’s chugging heavy metal juxtaposes down-tuned 9-string guitars with modern electronica in what is the best metal album of the last few years. Whether it’s the booming pulses of BFG Division or the lightning fast riffs of Rip & Tear, Doom’s soundtrack seamlessly combines familiar Doom motifs with fresh new musical ideas. Without it, the game wouldn’t nearly be as special. Or as deafeningly loud.
There were no doubts that Doom would play fast, look stunning, or be gory; the surprise is that Doom is as relevant, smart and self-aware as it is; merging old ideas with new ones; injecting its near-flawless shooter mechanics into a campaign that’s impeccably refined, hilariously dumb and fiendishly moreish. In an overcrowded genre that’s hellbent on one-upping itself in a slew of increasingly tepid iterations, Doom’s multi-faceted personality is praiseworthy. After almost 25-years, the series finally escapes its precursor’s shadow, once and for all.
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