Yes you all knew it was coming.
Today we review the best new game from id Software DOOM 2016. Its been hyped up but is the game any good for those that haven’t bought it yet?
As always I’ll go through the characters, story and gameplay to give you the best review possible and ensure your time and money aren’t wasted.
STORY
The story of DOOM is…eh. Well there technically is a story but its not really what your there for. You can get through the entire game completely ignoring the story and you’ll still have a good time. Id Software appeared to just put the story there because they figured its normal for AAA games to have one these days and some reviewers would whine if it wasn’t there.
For the most part thought this is a manly action game about killing demons so listening to the story at all is made completely optional. Even the character you play as isn’t that interested in the story. That’s demonstrated right at the beginning where he gets a comm.link and immediately smashes it when someone starts talking to him preferring instead to get out there and kill some demons because this is a damn DOOM game!!
If you must hear the story though here’s a brief summary: there’s an energy crisis on earth so an energy corporation on Mars decides to pull unlimited energy from (of all places) hell itself. Predictably something goes wrong, demons get released onto Mars everyone gets murdered and you wake up to go and kill them all. There is a lot more to the story which you can read through text entries in the pause menu. Sure go ahead and read them for ages like you’re playing Mass Effect instead of DOOM while the game will patiently wait for you to GET BACK TO THE MOTHER F*#KING ACTION ALREADY! THERE’S DEMONS TO KILL!
Besides that there aren’t a lot of characters to talk about, the one you play as is silent and only knows how to murder demons and your support character isn’t interesting, and the main villain behind the demon invasion is clique and boring. But none of that matters if you wanted interesting characters you’d play Mass Effect not DOOM. It’s the demon killing you’re here for and Id Software has certainly delivered there!
Gameplay
While the game has been given a modern day AAA feel the DNA of the original DOOM is still there. wide open level design, full run all the time no reload, a vast variety of weapons and all the demons have been given a revamped design as well.
Alongside all that there are collectables to find and classic DOOM maps to find inside the game levels. The new game mechanic however is the Glory Kill System. The way it works is when a demon is low on health they will start flashing and you can get in close and perform a finishing move on them that will net you more health and ammo than if you just killed them normally so you’ll find yourself doing it quite a lot.
Yet thankfully I never found this tedious. In fact ripping demons apart one by one while running around avoiding shots from a massive gang of them coming at you from all directions and then taking the big one out by ripping its jaw open to get more health and ammo to keep taking on the others is an exhilarating experience the more you get into the game.
Conclusion
DOOM 2016 is blatant nostalgia pandering by AAA games and that’s not a bad thing. I never thought I would type that sentence while sober before but it really is. It knows what the hardcore DOOM fan wants and it adds the modern day games feel to it to get new gamers to the franchise. And like Dark Souls it is punishing but still fair. If you die in this game it’s your own damn fault, the enemy AI didn’t change or do something unexpected you made a mistake.