#oneaday Day 77: I’m not sure I’m enjoying New Doom

A little while back, I felt the need to start something new and not RPG-shaped, so I thought I’d finally get around to giving the Doom reboot from 2016 a go. After several nights of playing it and being roughly halfway through the single-player game, I’m not 100% sure if I’m enjoying it or not.

This is not a slight against anyone who does think it’s good — I know how annoying it is when you love something and someone turns up to shit all over it. But I wanted to pop my thoughts that I’ve had about the game on paper so I can make better sense of them, and perhaps get a better idea of whether or not I actually like it.

The fact I’m asking this question at all can be looked at in one of two ways. Firstly, if you have to ask if you’re enjoying something, you’re probably not. Alternatively, secondly, if you’re not sure you’re enjoying something but you hesitate to say that you dislike it, you probably are enjoying at least something about it. So my opinion is somewhere between those two extremes, I guess.

First, let’s ponder the things I do like. I do like the way the weapons behave and the overall “feel” of the game. There’s a really nice fluid sense of movement to how you move around, defeat enemies, clamber up onto platforms and perform Glory Kills. The way enemies are highly reactive to how you shoot them and blast into bloody chunks feels entirely appropriate for a modern take on Doom, but also reminds me of older games such as Sega’s The House of the Dead. This is a good thing.

It’s nice to play a first-person shooter that moves at speed, has levels that aren’t linear corridors, and which doesn’t kill the pacing of its combat with constant reloading. Doom 2016 has all its weapons act like its classic counterparts, where direct analogues exist — that means no reloading ever, with the exception of the shotguns, but there it’s just part of the overall firing animation anyway, so no harm done. The chaingun is particularly great; the original Doom’s chaingun always felt rather weedy (at least partly because it just played the pistol sound effect in rapid succession) but Doom 2016’s is an absolute beast — as it should be.

Now, onto things that I am less crazy about. Chief among these is the game’s overall pacing. Whereas progressing through a classic Doom level feels like it always keeps you on your toes, in Doom 2016 it feels like you’re moving from “encounter” to “encounter”. It has that thing where you’ll be clambering through the environment and come to a wide open area, and immediately your brain will think “I’m about to get swarmed by enemies”. It’s inevitably right. It’s predictable, and it doesn’t quite feel right. It makes the levels feel like you’re jumping from “exploration mode” to “battle mode”, whereas classic Doom felt like it integrated the two aspects much more elegantly.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. The Shadow Warrior reboot from a few years back was also designed like this, and I think it worked rather well there. It just doesn’t feel quite right for Doom.

The one thing I don’t like at all is how it clearly thinks it’s being some sort of witty anti-corporate satire, but it’s so absurdly over-the-top about it I just find myself being pulled out of the experience. Any time you hear the UAC pep talks over the computer systems on the Mars base, the things being said are increasingly ridiculous, and it crosses the line between plausible satire and just being stupid for the sake of it. I don’t come to a Doom game for the plot in the first place, so this aspect of things feels incredibly ham-fisted and I do not like it at all.

The parts I can’t quite make my mind up about are all the bits where it’s not being a fast-action first-person shooter. The levels are all huge and quite interesting to explore, particularly with all the hidden collectibles around the place, but it also feels like it brings the “explore, battle, explore” cycle into even sharper focus than it already is — at the end of a level, you’ll typically find the exit door sitting there ready and waiting for you, and the rest of the level open for you to explore almost completely unopposed in most cases. Sometimes a few enemies are tucked away off the critical path, but more often than not the secrets are concealed behind traversal puzzles rather than combat encounters. This doesn’t feel very Doom.

I do, however, like the fact that every stage has a reasonably obvious terminal where you can download the full map data for the level and thereby see which areas you have already explored and which you haven’t. Collectibles are also marked on the map, so there’s no farting around pressing the “Use” button (why on Earth is it R3, by the way?) against every wall in the hope something might open up somewhere.

Parts I’m leaning towards disliking are the presence of an upgrade system and “Challenges”. There are times when Doom 2016 almost feels like it wishes it was Diablo or something of its ilk, whisking you away to a completely separate environment to complete a self-contained challenge and rewarding you with some sort of “loot” if you are successful. Some of these challenges are incredibly irritating to complete, such as one where you have 1 point of health and have to defeat 8 increasingly tough enemies using just the basic Shotgun weapon. They’re optional, yes, but once you’re in one if you’re anything like me you’ll likely feel like you have to complete it before you continue on your way.

The mods for the weapons have some quite interesting effects, but I think I’d rather just have an alt-fire mode for each weapon and not have to faff around with upgrading it. Because upgrading it involves acquiring “upgrade points”, which you get through killing enemies in a stage and finding secrets. I guess if one is being charitable, one can look on it as a modernisation of the “Kills / Items / Secrets” breakdown you get at the end of a classic Doom stage, only here it actually has a tangible benefit on your game. But still, unlocking abilities doesn’t feel very Doom.

Same for upgrading your health, armour and ammo maximums. The former two almost feel worthless given how quickly monsters batter down your entire health bar (and how quickly you can restore the whole thing with a Glory Kill or two) and the latter just makes the early game frustrating as you’re constantly running out of ammo in a game where that shouldn’t be an issue.

I understand there is an “Arcade Mode” available in the game and I’m now wondering if I should have just played that from the outset, because it’s all the extra bells and whistles that have been added atop an attempt to modernise the classic Doom formula that feel like they’re annoying me to varying degrees.

On the whole, I don’t hate the game. The bits that annoy me aren’t putting me off enough to not want to play it through to completion. But the game as a whole is reminding me what a beautifully polished, finely honed game the original Doom is — and how, without a doubt, I would probably still rather play that than this, particularly now its recent 576th rerelease, this time running on Night Dive’s excellent Kex Engine, has a bunch of new levels (again) in it.

I’m going to see Doom 2016 through to completion. But I don’t think I’m inclined in any way to want to “100%” it or spend any additional time with it beyond that required to beat the single-player campaign. And I guess that’s fine. I only paid about a fiver for it, after all, so I can’t really complain all that much.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

2279: Matchmaking: A Great Way to Waste Time

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I downloaded the Doom beta on PS4 earlier out of curiosity. I hadn’t heard particularly positive things about it — though admittedly, this was mostly from disgruntled PC players who were whining about the lack of mod support and how it was “obviously built for consoles” — but as someone who actually used to really like Doom, I was interested to take a look.

I booted up Doom, fiddled around in the options a bit, took note of the entertaining options to weather, dirty up and scuff your armour in character customisation — not to mention painting it lurid shades of pink and purple — and then jumped into the multiplayer playlist.

Then, I waited.

And waited some more.

And then a bit more.

Well, okay, this perhaps makes it sound a bit longer than it actually was: it was probably less than five minutes in total, all told. But that was five minutes utterly wasted in which I wasn’t doing anything apart from staring at the screen and perhaps rotating my character model a bit.

My mind was cast back to a comment someone I follow on Twitter made a while back, whose sentiment was along the lines of “rather than wasting your time with endless, pointless matchmaking games, throw yourself into enjoying games with stories; games with clear beginnings, middles and ends”. At the time, I thought it a slightly extreme viewpoint, since I have enjoyed multiplayer matchmaking games in the past, but on reflection, he was absolutely right: for me, right now, matchmaking multiplayer games are a total waste of time and energy for what I find to be a subpar, unsatisfying experience compared to something that is either a bit more structured or something that has immediacy.

Doom isn’t the only game where I’ve encountered the tedium of waiting for matchmaking queues. Playing a damage-dealing class on Final Fantasy XIV often leads to long queues for dungeons — although at least in that game, you can do other stuff in the open world while queueing, though there are a few limitations on your activities to prevent your queue popping and you being unavailable. Grand Theft Auto Online is particularly unpleasant to try and find a matchmaking session in, since it’s riddled with people who pop into a lobby, then quit out again after five seconds if it’s not already full. And I’m sure there are plenty of other examples, too.

So, I think I’ve had enough. I’ve felt a slight temptation to check out things like Doom and even the more recent Call of Duty games in the recent past, but on reflection, I feel they’ll only frustrate me: time spent “waiting for players…” is time not spent enjoying a story in a single-player game, or trying to beat a high score in an arcade game, or chasing trophies in a game I’ve reached the post-game for.

This isn’t to say I’m not going to play multiplayer at all, mind you: TrackMania Turbo has an excellent multiplayer where you can just jump in and out of player-made rooms at will, with no waiting around for there to be “enough” people to play. And I have a lot of fun playing Grand Theft Auto Online with my local friends. Those represent two different ways of having a fun online experience without getting matchmaking systems involved.

Strangers who are beyond that great wall of matchmaking, then? Fuck ’em; I’ve got better things to do than wait for them to show up to my party.

#oneaday, Day 244: Halo? More Like…

I have a peculiar and complex relationship with the first-person shooter genre of gaming. On the one hand, I have very fond memories of growing up playing Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. In fact, as I may have shared before, such was my obsession with Wolfenstein 3D and the early days of the mod scene, that 10 of my levels are part of the official Apogee “Super Upgrades” expansion pack, a feat which netted me $200 and means that I can technically call myself a professional game developer.

On the other hand, I have vivid memories of playing Halo, Gears of War and Modern Warfare 2 and getting inordinately frustrated with sequences that are so difficult they require you to play, die, play, die, play, die, play, die, sometimes for hours at a time until you figure out the way to beat that particular sequence.

Such is the experience I’m having with Halo: Reach at the moment. There’s no denying it’s a great game, and the sheer amount of stuff that Bungie have crammed into the game is incredible. The fact that any mode can be played in multiplayer, and the fact that Forge World actually allows the construction of some truly hilarious structures, is enough to make me adore the game and praise its name for all eternity.

What was almost enough to make me fling it out of the window, though, was the Campaign mode. I had played through the mission called “The Long Night of Solace” and was reaching the end of it. Those who have played that mission will know it’s the awesome one that includes space combat. As a matter of fact, the space combat was so good I happily proclaimed on Twitter that I’d play a whole game based on that engine. And I stand by that. It was stunning. Not only that, it allowed a full 360 degrees of movement, which is practically unheard of in console-based space sims. So hats off to Bungie for that.

Unfortunately, all of the hard work that mission did to convince me that yes, Halo is not all that bad really, was promptly undone by the very last sequence of that mission. Here, you get jumped by about six Elite Specialist enemies, all of whom are armed with weapons that are quite capable of one-shot killing you. Not only that, but they spread out around the room so there is no place where you can find cover. Not only that, your companion who, it should be added, has an absolutely fucking massive gun and is invincible, is utterly useless at killing them, so of course it’s up to Muggins, sorry, Noble Six, to save the day.

I must have repeated that sequence a good thirty or forty times. By the end of it I was literally screaming obscenities at the television. I was very glad that no-one else was in the house.

“Well, then,” you may say. “Don’t play the Campaign mode. Play the stuff you do like.” But… Achievements…

In seriousness, I do kind of want to play the Campaign mode through to its conclusion because of my good friend Mr George Kokoris‘ regular assertions that Halo‘s lore is, in fact, far more in-depth and interesting that “OMG SPACE MARINEZ AND ALIENZ LOL”. And to be fair, thus far I’ve mostly enjoyed the Campaign. I just find it a pity that there are short sequences such as the one I’ve described above that (temporarily at least) spoil the experience. It causes a curious ping-ponging effect where I bounce back and forth between loving and hating the game. Sometimes I get stuck on the “hate” part, and it’s for that reason I never beat the original Gears of War and have no interest in the remainder of the series. There was one sequence that involved a sniper who repeatedly one-shotted me in that game that eventually caused me to turn it off, put it in its box, trade it in and never speak of it ever again except to slag it off.

Hopefully it won’t come to a fit of nerd rage with Reach. At least there’s plenty of other stuff to enjoy if the Campaign does get too much.