#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.

#oneaday Day 507: Bang

I often labour under the mistaken assumption that I don’t like shooters. I know, I know, to assume is to make an “ass” out of “u” and “me”, and to incorrectly assume things about yourself is doubly stupid because after all, you should know yourself pretty well by now.

But anyway. What I mean to say is that I’ve fallen a bit out of love with recent shooters. Sure, they’re pretty, and spectacular, and they make a bucketload of money. But they’re boring. With a lot of modern shooters, you have two choices: incredibly linear, tightly-scripted single player campaign, or endless hours of multiplayer against people you will never, ever beat because all they do is play Call of Duty all day.

In the Ubisoft sale a while back, I picked up the two Far Cry titles for an obscenely low price, along with Crysis. I tried Far Cry 2 briefly and am looking forward to delving into that later, but the original Far Cry in particular is reminding me that the genre can indeed be fun if handled correctly.

The difference is in feeling like you have a choice of how to handle things. In my (admittedly limited) experience with the Call of Duty series, it’s very scripted — go here, do this, proceed to this mission objective, use this weapon right now because we say so, BAM — car chase, things exploding, save this guy, oh you can’t because it’s scripted that he should die, etc. etc. But Far Cry is a bit different. Besides featuring hilariously atrocious voice acting and the most sarcastic protagonist I’ve ever had the pleasure of looking out from behind the eyes of, Far Cry’s objectives are less tightly scripted, being of the “There’s a thing you have to do about a mile away” variety, and then leaving it up to you how you approach it.

Do you steal a vehicle, powerslide through the middle of a bunch of enemies then pick off the rest with a mounted rocket launcher? Do you swim out to sea, jump atop a rock and pick them off from a distance? Do you lie in the bushes, observing their patrol patterns and assassinate each of them quietly one at a time? The answer is “yes”, because you can handle situations in pretty much any way you please. The “all guns blazing” approach rarely works, but that’s good — it forces you to think of solutions that are a bit more creative.

Even the indoor missions, while necessarily slightly more linear, have multiple paths and alternative routes to try. Do you open the door, throw in a grenade then clean up afterwards? Or do you crawl through the air vent in an attempt not to be seen? It’s top-quality stuff, and the simple fact that when you die you don’t have to go back and handle the same bit in the same way makes the whole experience infinitely more appealing than a more linear — albeit probably more spectacular — recent title.

So, good job, Far Cry. I am enjoying you. And I am looking forward to your sequel, despite it apparently having literally nothing to do with you.

#oneaday Day 61: Killing One’s Dick Off

Bulletstorm should be the last game that appeals to me. I’ve criticised games such as Killzone for having generic-sounding “ShootMan: Kill”-type names, and my frustration with the market’s oversaturation of first-person shooters is well-documented.

So why do I find myself wanting to play it?

Well, there’s quite a few reasons, actually, and despite Bulletstorm‘s generic-sounding title and the fact it is indeed a first-person shooter, there’s enough in it to get me interested. Most importantly, though, it’s a game which doesn’t take itself too seriously in the slightest. It knows only too well how ridiculous it is, and it’s happy to provide said ridiculousness in spades.

There’s a couple of specific things that get me, though. First up is score attack. Score attack is something that I seem to have developed something of a liking for in the last couple of years thanks mostly to Geometry Wars 2 and Pac-Man Championship Edition DX or whatever the bloody thing is called. Score attack is a simple, asynchronous way for people to play “together” and compete. It allows people on opposite sides of the world the chance to enjoy some friendly competition without those pesky timezones getting in the way. It encourages people to talk about the game. And it encourages people to replay the game rather than just ditching it after they’ve beaten the campaign.

The second thing about Bulletstorm is ironically one of the things that I thought would put me off it, and that is its immaturity. It has a sense of humour and throws obscenities around with gay abandon and from everything I’ve heard from reputable sources of information (well, friends) is all the better for it. A line about “killing your dick off” is supposedly a particular highlight, but the fact the demo for the game ended by referring to the player as “dick-tits” pretty much convinced me that this was a game built on the same values as late 90s shooters in which cheeky, immature fun was at the forefront, not trying to be over-the-top epic.

Fun is good. A lot of shooters, in my experience anyway, seem to be forgetting that part. When you repeat the same bit over and over again due to cheap deaths and hear the same annoying bit of inevitably-shouted dialogue over and over again, it kills all sense of immersion in the story which the developers are clearly trying so hard to achieve. Sure, I haven’t played the full version of Bulletstorm yet, but since the plot is rather secondary to the gameplay and the scoring, it strikes me as something that will be rather less frustrating than the reason I put Gears of War down and have never touched that series since.

All of the above isn’t to say that I am going to get Bulletstorm. I haven’t decided yet. But they’ve done something right along the way, as it’s the first shooter in a very long time that I’ve been genuinely very interested in playing.

#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.