Release: 13th May 2016
Pricing @ time of Review €14.99/£9.99(50% off Humble Bundle Store)
TL:DR -A fast paced, kick ass, action packed gorefest of a FPS made in the true spirit of the 90’s DOOM games, unfortunately at times to a fault . Fast, fluid and visceral, with great visuals and one of the best music/sound tracks I’ve ever experienced. All of this on top of a well optimised game with a solid control system and enough of a plot to tie all the action together makes for one hell of a game…. Heh! Costing less than a typical weekend take-away, I do recommend.
Played on Ildathe, 1440p @ Max settings
Official Site
And so we begin.
I can’t lie, what was meant to be a few hours of game play followed closely by writing this review turned into me finishing the game in (give or take) 10-15 hours or so over the course of a few weeks. I would say the majority of those hours came in the first weekend. I have had this game burning a hole in my steam library since July 2016 but only equipped with an outdated GTX 770 I held off knowing I wanted to experience this game is its full gory glory. After building Ildathe and finally getting to play it, I am very pleased to admit I was not disappointed.
Like other games form the Doom franchise, the game is based in a research facility on Mars with frequent trips to Hell for a nice change of scenery. Thankfully the game plays a lot closer to the fast paced DOOM games of the 90s, moving away from the slower survival horror approach of Doom 3. Forget ducking behind cover for a fire fight or trying to stealthy sneak around - you’re the DOOM SLAYER, dive in head first and don’t stop moving, don’t stop killing. Facing up against a familiar array of classic Doom demons, players must embrace constant movement to survive, get up close and personal with enemies for brutal, over-the-top cinematic glory kills and mix up your fighting style by choosing from an array of well designed super powerful weapons.
Just Do(om) it.
Do yourself a favour and play the first five minutes of the game even if you never buy it or play more, them first 5 minutes sum up the game perfectly for me. You can grab a copy of the demo here, and as far as I can tell it contains the whole first level, the start of which is one of the best intros/prologues I’ve ever played, from where you start off until you get hit with the “DOOM” splash logo is just perfect.
Rip and tear, until it is done.
The game starts off like it means to go on and perfectly sets the mood for the rest of the game; you wake up some time after everything has went to shit and you’re the only one who has any power to stop it. If that’s not enough plot for you then fear not, as it does indeed have a solid story behind all the action, and for those of you who want to really get into the back story and lore surrounding the game, then you are in luck as included as part of the game is the so called “Codex”; think of it as your in game encyclopedia of all things DOOM, every weapon, enemy and location you encounter pops up in here, although some are unlocked via data logs, small collectible items adding reference and context to the Doom universe through Codex entries. The best part of this is that it is not forced on you, so if you’re the type of person who wants to get immersed in the game, you can hunt down and read all the lost data logs, or alternatively if you’re the type who thinks "what you reading for", and would rather blast onward killing with no need to know what or why you're killing, then you can go on ahead.
The game looks and runs well, very well optimised and some of the visuals are stunning. I feel they absolutely nailed the interaction between the gun/shooting mechanics and movement/controls, the game just feels so right. The fact that getting stuck in is rewarded makes for some frantic and action packed fights, performing glory kills/chainsaw kills drops health packs and ammo, so right as you're on the brink of death rather than running and hiding sometimes the best option is to dive in even deeper. Along the way, rather than getting experience or leveling up in a RPG manner you gain weapon mods which add in a secondary function to your weapon of choice, you then can then use weapon upgrade points on to augment and improve this upgrade. You gain these points by finding secrets, completing challenges, and well just killing things. Next you can upgrade your suit by finding dead Elite guards and taking their praetor tokens - these can modify your suit to be better at dexterity, discovery, and equipment effectiveness. Other upgrades can be obtained by using Argent Cells to increase your health, armour, and ammo capabilities. Finally, as you play the game you come across demonic tablets that present you trials to pass, once completed you gain specialised passive skills, whereby you can have 3 slots equiped from the choice of 12 skills. I personally loved both the standard and super shotgun, nothing beats flying though the air and landing a direct hit with the Explosive Shot mod only to spin round and headshot an imp from close range as you land, but in bigger fights I loved me some Gauss Cannon and Chaingun action, with a honourable nod towards the Assault rifle with the fully upgraded Micro Missiles mod.
If all this so far makes it seem that this game is one of the best ever, well it did sort of feel that way for the first few hours. However, after the honeymoon period with the game wore off I began to play less. It is not that the game suddenly got worse, I just found myself more likely to accept an invite from a friend to play a different game where as at the beginning I was so immersed I wouldn’t have even noticed the invite. The game play never changed but it did get a bit repetitive and I felt I had to be in the right mood to play the game. Although there were plenty of times after this that I found myself laughing out loud or grinning from ear to ear when I pulled off some particularly stylish kills, or twelve!
The level design for the most part is solid; a mixture of platforming, secret hunting and fighting keeps the levels from getting too stale. The secret finding turns the game into to borderline platform/puzzle game and at times I was reminded of jump puzzles from different games. I actually wish this was built into the game and mixed into fights more as the movement and control system is so fluid I would of loved to see a mini-boss fight during the Argent Tower climb, or something similar. Speaking of boss fights there are several but I’ll not go into detail so as to not spoil them, but they do shake up the combat dynamic quite a bit and add a very welcome challenge, although I did feel at times that they were too easy and I regretted not playing a higher difficulty.
Award wining Music, the perfect way to settle the score.
Before moving on to the multiplayer I need to mention the sound/music design, as it is just awesome, hands down the best I’ve experienced in a long time. You know something is about to go down when the music kicks up a notch and it does a great job of pumping you up for the battles. Both the Musical score and sound effects are spot on. The hard hitting guitar riffs pair perfectly with the combat style and the sound effects from the weapons tie in great too. It is no wonder this game got nominated and won so many awards in regards to the sound design.
Multiplayer, .
Admittedly I never played much of the multiplayer, and that sums it up really; it isn’t inherently bad, it is just kind of forgetful. There is a bit of a mis-match with styles as the weapons and gameplay screams old school arena FPS, but they went with a CoD/Battlefield style load out meaning more experienced players not only have more knowhow and the advantage of knowing levels, but they also have access to better weapon choices and loadouts. Knowing this it still can be quite fun in small bursts, but it is unlikely to suck you in game after game. Also, with the game being 2 years old it is harder to get a game so you can be waiting a few minutes for a match, and there is a chance majority of people still playing it will be much higher level and more experienced. Although disappointing, this isn't really that big of a deal as I would consider the campaign the main course of the game and the MP just a side dish.
Roundup.
Check out Honest Game Trailers for pretty much the mirror of my feelings about the game. Overall I highly recommended this game, at the very least go give the demo a shot, if you enjoy the first level chances are you will enjoy the rest of the game. The fact that this game has celebrated its 2 year birthday this week takes nothing away from it, it could have been released this month the visuals are so good, if anything the frequent sales and reduced price adds even more to the stack of reasons you should try this game. Along side the purdy graphics, comes an awesome musical score and a fantastic mixture of gun/shooting mechanics and movement/controls. Multiplayer however is not at the top of the list when it comes to reasons to play, but a solid single player campaign with great visuals, better sound design, action packed gameplay and great feeling controls are. I very much expect a sequel over the next few years and I am very much looking forward to one.
- Great Visuals.
- Amazing music/sound design.
- Decent plot/back-story with optional lore.
- Interaction between the gun/shooting mechanics and movement/controls.
- Nice progression/upgrade system that wasn't too obstructive and tied in well with the fast paced old school gameplay.
- Multiplayer was a tad meh and left a lot to be desired but not a major problem as single player should always take the front seat in this game.
- AI wasn't the smartest and quite one dimensional.
- After a while the gameplay combat wore a bit thin/repetitive.
- As for ugly all the demons fit that bill but especially the Cacodemon and Mancubus/Cyber-Mancubus.
Glory kills are an essential part of combat and very much entwined with the fast paced action of the game, but personally I felt they got a bit tedious and worn out, even though they did have different animations depending on the angle of attack .
Combination of the Siphon Grenade and Rich Get Richer Rune makes some fights (including boss battles) far too easy. The Rune in question provides the following passive; firing your standard weapons will not cost Ammo when you have 100(75 When upgraded) or more Armour. So come end game you have 150 Armour which gives you plenty of leeway to get hit from an attack or two, meanwhile you just have unlimited ammo on your chaingun mowing down anything in your sites, if you drop lower than the cut off point throw out a siphon grenade or two if you hit a few enemies in the aoe your right back up to full, sure you could just not use that combo but it does seem a tad silly to have it in at all. I’m sure at higher difficulties this may not be an issue.
An official co-op option would have been nice, or even some sort of separate co-op mode. I know plenty of community members have made such co-op modes in the SnapMap editor but I would have loved to see some officially made ones, or even a full co-op campaign (a man can dream).
The multiplayer is the games biggest flaw, and most criticized aspect online too, I wish they had of just embraced the game for what it was and not bother with all the loadout crap. It is a pity as the negative press and bad reviews it received has put people off trying it out and there are some fun modes in it. With the smoothness of the game and how well the shooting/movement feels, I feel there was potential for a much better experience. Maybe if they had an "Old School Mode" where they kept the cosmetics and emotes and XP system, but did away with the load outs, have all the weapons, health/armor laying about the map and have the classic mores, Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Capture The Flag.
I was genuinely taken aback by the platforming aspect of the game and pleasantly surprised by it. I would have liked to see them embrace this even more and maybe design some boss encounters around it. That’s not to say there wasn’t a lot of it, but I would have liked more.
Bit off topic for a DOOM review but after recently finishing this game and the announcement of RAGE 2 and the subsequent gameplay trailer, I am very much getting hyped for DOOM esque combat/movement in an open world game; I realise it is not using the same engine but with id involved and considering how successful DOOM was I am cautiously optimistic.