Doom [2016]

[Cyan]

I started playing yesterday (albeit very late) and finished the first 3 campaign levels. I loved it. I didn't wanna wait to install the obligatory 8GB day 1 patch, and that meant I was initially a little disappointed by the substantial screen tearing in certain spots. I also thought they axed the FOV slider at the last minute as it was nowhere to be found in the menus. I was still having a blast. Not to worry, though: patch 1.02 takes care of both of these issues. This is a mighty fine looking game, with terrific lighting, wonderful creature animations, gorgeous Mars Vistas, kick-ass particle effects, great looking material shaders, Ratchet&Clank level motion blur and exceptionally clean image quality. And thanks to the framerate you're moving through the demon horde like a knife through butter. I'm also in love with the presentation in general. This game is angry like it's 1993. Doom Marine doesn't push buttons. He crushes them with clenched fists. Then he rips out an imp's jaw while listening to death/industrial metal takes on your favorite tracks from the original Doom OST. The baddie is impossibly sinister of course. Like Skeletor on a really bad day, with Mortal Kombat announcer-esque voice to boot. Doom (4) never pretends to be a grown-up like it's slightly po-faced predecessor. Instead it revels in the thick layers of cheese it's coated in. Do yourself a favor and suicide in the molten iron in mission three. Gave me a good chuckle. Gameplay is where it's all at of course. The thing controls like a dream. Folks are moaning it feels like Quake or UT. I'd have to agree that that is what it does feel like, except I think that's just about the biggest compliment you can give to just about any shooter. It's not Doom1 anymore and it shouldn't be. It has modern stuff in it like weapon mods, secondary weapons fire and something resembling parcours. It also has rpg progression elements like weapon and armor upgrades. These are good things as far as I'm concerned. The game feels old-school without ever being archaic. Heck, even the unobtrusive story seems sort of interesting so far.

No idea whether the game will be able to sustain its momentum of course, but since these games only tend to improve with the expansion of your personal arsenal, I'm not really worried here.

I am really happy to read this because I didn't want one of the all time classics to be tainted and expected this new Doom game to be great like the original. The original Doom was all about its simplicity, story wise, great gameplay, the HORDES of demons, the very intelligent design of its levels, the coloured keys..etc etc.

It also had a very jovial and juvenile design, which reminds of your words "never pretends to be a grown-up", because Doom was about imagination rather than clinical execution.

My friends confirmed to me that the game has coloured keys.. YAY! And HORDES. A must. You could be so close to a coloured key, being able to see it, and then only getting it after going through a lot of vicissitudes.

Then..Those MAPS. Which are like when you bit a piece of hard nougat candy and you start to find its taste after 15 minutes of being gnawing it.

Something no one told me is if there are the typical Doom traps, where you take a key or step somewhere and then a door or several doors open with surprises to wreck havoc on you.

Gotta get this game in the upcoming months when I have the time and the money. Great!

 

[RenegadeRocks]

Are there no reviews out there? Why so?

 

[Laa-Yosh]

There were no advanced copies for anyone before friday, as far as I know. So reviewers have only had this weekend to play the game, just like everyone else.

 

[Cyan]

Typical Bethesda I think. They have doing that ever since the Oblivion days.

 

[Akumajou]

Looks like id software was not hurt at all by the departure of Carmack. This thing looks and performs great, from all the vids I've seen.

However id Tech 5 RAGE (despite it's huge flaws and horrible ending) was released way back when quad-core processors weren't really dominating in presence and the game really benefited from hexa-core CPUs which if a fairly modern hexa-core CPUs (I'm not talking hyper threading) and 8GB of ram along with a Graphics card with 2GB ram then the issues people complained about wouldn't be much there...

Which is interesting because NOW the minimum requirements of this "Id Tech 6" game are an Octa-core CPU and more as they are effectively benefiting from tech advances including the consoles having at least seven cores to use.

 

[Billy Idol]

The game has a very meaty campaign so far. I keep playing and playing and still not finished! Excellent!

I really love the backstory of Doom-guy.

Next at Wrestlemania: Doom-guy VS Masterchief in a 'Who stole my helmet' match.

 

[DieH@rd]

Videos from Noah are always great, surprisingly for this game he released his critique very shortly after the release:

 

[Billy Idol]

Finished the game and really liked it. One of the best shooter campaigns I played. I liked it more than Halo 5.

I like that the campaign has a lot of content.

I am neutral about the game concept and level design: proceed through a linear tunnel like level piece, enter an arena, fight in the arena, search the arena for all hidden goodies, proceed through the next linear tunnel....rinse and repeat about 12h long or so, with basically no variation, except three boss battles.

As the gameplay was imo so freaking good, the simple level design didn't borther me at all...I just locce having all weapons, running around like crazy, jumping, killing, shooting and bombing. Didn't get boring for one second!

Story was actually quite good to me. To be precise, the main story was absolute standard and the story telling was basic and raw. The real star of the show imo is the little pieces about Doom-guy! This was quite cool and pushed me forwards to learn more.

Graphics are imo ok-isch. Nothing special, but certainly not bad. 60fps was great and is needed in this game. Everything had a good quality, but nothing outstanding.

What I don't like so much, but only a minor critique: the variation in settings is quite low, with most of the looking quite similar. This might be exaggerated after playing UC4. But it is not a real problem.

Best thing: you increase skill throughout the game to a point where independent of the hordes the throw at you, you just dance around them and kill them with ease, although knowing that a mistake can be fatal

Overall, if you like a fast, brutal and frantic shooter, which is Heavy Metal...buy it

 

[messyman]

There's a good chance I will be picking this up today. Looking forward to it.

 

[Cyan]

I read that if you create a great map with the map editor on.., let's say, the PS4, everyone can download it, including PC gamers and X1 users. That would give limitless life to the editor and the game.

Classic Doom map editors where very fun to use and you could edit a campaign level or start from scratch and place monsters according to difficulty levels and so on.

If you wanted a monster in Ultra Violence difficulty level -4th difficulty level, which was my favourite, just below nightmare- you could place a tough monster there and in the 3rd difficulty level (equivalent to normal, the "hurt me plenty" thing) having say a Former Human or a Former Sergeat, or Imp instead of an Arch-Vile -one of my most feared monsters in the game), and that was quite cool.

Something I loved was placing thousands of exploding barrels and lots of pink demons.

 

[swaaye]

To be frank, I'm not sure I think it's better than Doom 3. It's basically the same stuff but super Turbo instead of slow and creepy.

Seems very well produced technically again of course. As long as you play on console or high end NV.

I would have liked to see the canned Doom 4 with the Hell on Earth theme.

 

[Cyan]

From what I've seen I am glad they canned the initial Doom 4 game, it was like another Killzone/CoD/Battlefield game, and didn't feel like Doom at all.

Talking of the map editor, it was my Nightmare and my bane in the original Doom games. Especially the doors gave me the creeps. Does anyone remember that?

Doors never worked for me, the textures were badly misplaced when it seemed that you had it all fine in the editor. The sound was there but the door never opened . I didn't know how to use the triggers to unleash hell on people stepping on a certain place or after getting a key. That was like the precursor of scripting.

But creating a trigger that opened several doors filled with monsters was impossible for me. Maybe I was using the wrong editor and because I didn't have access to the Internet I had what I could get from CDs that were bundled with computing magazines..

 

[DieH@rd]

 

[Malo]

It makes you rock hard because you're playing it on the PC. If you were on the console you'd only be moderately hard.

 

[Lefungus]

I really like the game. Basically played it all week-end. Graphics are slick, 60 fps feel great and gameplay is fun.
I love how they were trying to make levels non linear, and hide secrets all around. They need to do that more.
I miss weapon reloading though, it brings a small tactic layer and I just love the sounds and animations
Oh and I think I don't want to play another "remote scientific base is invaded by alien/demons/zombies" anymore.
I give this one a pass as it seems to be a reboot, but next time open a portal to the great old ones, bring back hell, put doom guy in the middle and call it Doom Wars

 

[swaaye]

Yeah I like the larger open areas with the taste of exploration, and the animations too.

There more I play the more I'm reminded of Shadow Warrior and Hard Reset....

 

[bunge]

Finished the game and really liked it. One of the best shooter campaigns I played. I liked it more than Halo 5.

I like that the campaign has a lot of content.

I am neutral about the game concept and level design: proceed through a linear tunnel like level piece, enter an arena, fight in the arena, search the arena for all hidden goodies, proceed through the next linear tunnel....rinse and repeat about 12h long or so, with basically no variation, except three boss battles.

As the gameplay was imo so freaking good, the simple level design didn't borther me at all...I just locce having all weapons, running around like crazy, jumping, killing, shooting and bombing. Didn't get boring for one second!

Story was actually quite good to me. To be precise, the main story was absolute standard and the story telling was basic and raw. The real star of the show imo is the little pieces about Doom-guy! This was quite cool and pushed me forwards to learn more.

Graphics are imo ok-isch. Nothing special, but certainly not bad. 60fps was great and is needed in this game. Everything had a good quality, but nothing outstanding.

What I don't like so much, but only a minor critique: the variation in settings is quite low, with most of the looking quite similar. This might be exaggerated after playing UC4. But it is not a real problem.

Best thing: you increase skill throughout the game to a point where independent of the hordes the throw at you, you just dance around them and kill them with ease, although knowing that a mistake can be fatal

Overall, if you like a fast, brutal and frantic shooter, which is Heavy Metal...buy it

God damnit. This is exactly what I was hoping they'd make and it sounds like they did. Unless I hear reviews that contradict this completely I'll be picking this up most likely tomorrow.

God damnit.

 

[Gitaroo]

I hope Doom 2 is the next reboot. Not Quake.

 

[DieH@rd]

Another take on "Hell on Earth" would be great!

 

[Akumajou]

I dunno...a "hell on Earth" setting would imply a lot more of a Crysis 2 and 3 like game...

Given all the content in the game it seems they are stuck with the same variation of textures and industrial environments.

To me the game is bordering more on Serious Sam/Painkiller type which ironically is older Doom type...what I mean is that although it's ok, the problem is that you have all these military personnel and weapons...if it's a Mars research complex they should have taken a page from Sci-fi and also had sections of Earth like environments in the sense of large forests inside large (arena domes) with domestic or wildlife...and rivers and greenhouse type stuff instead of just a hospital and factor warehouse.

Also some vehicles would have been nice since RAGE experimented with that (and probably that was the old design plan) instead it played it safe.

So far single player campaign is still good not great...the online...idk...hopefully there's a sequel already being made along with a RAGE 2 with a more serious attempt at a story.