Review
Played on: PlayStation 4
Released: 2016
Rebooting franchises is a tricky one and next on this list is Doom, the Godfather of all first person shooters. So, when you combine what made a franchise great, ignoring the many modern styles of shooters, yet using some of today's most popular gaming ideas, what do end up with? Something extremely great apparently, though there's a ton of technical work behind it, helping it refresh the new Doom with a beautiful graphical coat of paint and lightning fast gameplay.
Let's take a trip to hell and take a closer look.
Played on: PlayStation 4
Released: 2016
Released: 2016
Rebooting franchises is a tricky one and next on this list is Doom, the Godfather of all first person shooters. So, when you combine what made a franchise great, ignoring the many modern styles of shooters, yet using some of today's most popular gaming ideas, what do end up with? Something extremely great apparently, though there's a ton of technical work behind it, helping it refresh the new Doom with a beautiful graphical coat of paint and lightning fast gameplay.
Let's take a trip to hell and take a closer look.
The original Doom from 1993(!) is one of the absolute most famous videogames of all time, and perhaps the most hardware ported one at that. While it's PC platform origin sparked a huge success and gave way for console ports spanning over Nintendo SNES, Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn, even on ill-fated consoles like 3DO and Sega 32X. All these consoles are fairly known to somebody that's old enough to be familiar with the first Doom, the ports to printers and science calculators on the other hand, prove that Doom not only was immensely popular, but changed the world of gaming forever.
Slow and ugly downports aside though, the PC original proved that Doom not just pushed boundaries on the technical side, it redefined an entire genre with fast and smooth gameplay. The first person shooter may have been invented prior to Doom's release, even ID's own Wolfenstein 3D preceded it, but their Doom game change the gaming landscape for years. Even replaying it these days, shockingly reminds me of how incredible well it controls, how fast it plays and just how damn entertaining it is!
Slow and ugly downports aside though, the PC original proved that Doom not just pushed boundaries on the technical side, it redefined an entire genre with fast and smooth gameplay. The first person shooter may have been invented prior to Doom's release, even ID's own Wolfenstein 3D preceded it, but their Doom game change the gaming landscape for years. Even replaying it these days, shockingly reminds me of how incredible well it controls, how fast it plays and just how damn entertaining it is!
Doom (2016) has some large shoes to fill then, rebooting itself as a brand new game and not just a sequel. Although a good game in it's own form, Doom 3 proved to show that renewing Doom was going to be a hard task so many years after the first two titles. Lets face it, Doom 1 and 2 are very alike, and could almost go for the same game. So renewing itself as a franchise with Doom 3 was going to be hard and failed to do so. Losing the fast paced gameplay feel and leaning into a survival horror territory that perhaps the series didn't need to be.
This new Doom, however, hits all the right buttons to become as fast and frantic as the original. It takes the essentials of what made Doom such an instant classic in the first place, adds influences from modern gaming, without losing its heritage and ends up being a perfect mix between retro and new.
It sets itself on a mining station on Mars and a rift to hell has opened. Just like the old games, the short explanation is basically that the Mars station has turned into a very, very nasty place to be. You're revived from an ancient grave through a ritual, for reasons explained later in the story, and must simply stop the connecting rift to hell. Your character is only viewed from a first person view and is on a mission to shoot up enemy creatures and blow stuff up! Simple, yet refreshingly so.
I played the game with the original Doom first person view (gun centred instead of residing on the left), and perhaps it should have been like this default on release. It's amazing how fast this view accustoms to you, since it's rare in new shooters. Plus, I set the FOV (Field Of View), an extremely rare option on consoles, to a sweet spot at 90. Man, how much better view this gives than the narrow FOV on most console shooters. It runs incredibly fast and smooth at 60fps too!
It's simply amazing to shoot up enemies and run around at full speed, there's no walking here, just speedy running around blasting your ammo and strafing enemy fire. I haven't played something so quick in a long time and you don't even need to reload! With such a smooth framerate and detailed graphics, this game is one of the best looking games on console at the moment in my opinion.
Judging by the extremely loud fan noise from my PS4, the game must be hammering the hardware. At first, the pace can seem almost too fast, but the game quickly gets you into it's flow and in no time you'll be slaughtering enemies while running around like a mad man, trying to pick up ammo and health as you go.
Although the basic "shoot at everything that moves" rule applies to most of Doom, there's some new additions that lend themselves from modern games. There are instant-kills when you damage enemies to a certain point. I was initially sceptical to this feature, but it turns out to be a nice breathing room as the scripted animation you engage into, with a simply button press, slows the action down as you finish an enemy in a gruesome and violent fashion. Resulting in much needed health and ammo pickups midway during huge and crowded firefights.
There's also experience points to earn and upgrade points for your weapons to unlock through challenges. Plus, ability points for your actual character to find, spread around in secret locations on the maps. In other words, there's a nice portion of depth to the game and the upgrades carry over if you wish to replay the missions, which is always a welcome feature.
Speaking of the maps, they're huge and offer multiple routes through them. Often tempting the player to play more vertical too, jumping down and attacking from above. While it's nowhere near the complexity of the original Doom with it's maze like, but often confusing corridors, it's far more open and non-linear than most modern shooters. There are even coloured keys to find and unlock doors to progress, a very nostalgic touch indeed! For a nice variety and a far more abstract level design approach, the hell areas later in the game offer some very creative layouts and look distinctly different from the Mars environments.
I loved every minute of Doom, the action is non-stop, the exploration is perfectly balanced between throwing you into big firefights and offering secret routes with goodies hidden in them. There's a great range of enemies with various ways of killing and some insanely large boss battles. While the boss encounters felt like the low point for me with, I felt they were thrown in a little cheaply and were easily forgettable, they do offer some jaw dropping enemy sizes and fast skills to defeat.
For anybody that loves shooters and want something different than the modern war take these days, Doom really can't be recommended enough. One of 2016's highlights for sure!
Speaking of the maps, they're huge and offer multiple routes through them. Often tempting the player to play more vertical too, jumping down and attacking from above. While it's nowhere near the complexity of the original Doom with it's maze like, but often confusing corridors, it's far more open and non-linear than most modern shooters. There are even coloured keys to find and unlock doors to progress, a very nostalgic touch indeed! For a nice variety and a far more abstract level design approach, the hell areas later in the game offer some very creative layouts and look distinctly different from the Mars environments.
I loved every minute of Doom, the action is non-stop, the exploration is perfectly balanced between throwing you into big firefights and offering secret routes with goodies hidden in them. There's a great range of enemies with various ways of killing and some insanely large boss battles. While the boss encounters felt like the low point for me with, I felt they were thrown in a little cheaply and were easily forgettable, they do offer some jaw dropping enemy sizes and fast skills to defeat.
For anybody that loves shooters and want something different than the modern war take these days, Doom really can't be recommended enough. One of 2016's highlights for sure!
