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.
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