Review
Played on: PlayStation 4
Released: 2016
Rebooting a franchise is a tricky one and next on this list is Doom, the Godfather of all first person shooters. When you combine what made an old title great, ignoring the modern trends of shooters, yet utilise some of today's most popular gaming ideas, what do end up with? Something extremely great apparently, refreshing 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 a franchise is a tricky one and next on this list is Doom, the Godfather of all first person shooters. When you combine what made an old title great, ignoring the modern trends of shooters, yet utilise some of today's most popular gaming ideas, what do end up with? Something extremely great apparently, refreshing 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 games of all time and perhaps the most hardware ported one at that. It's PC platform origin as freeware, then retail, sparked a massive success. Giving way for console ports spanning famous consoles like the SNES, PlayStation and Saturn, even on ill-fated consoles like 3DO and 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 Doo changeg the landscape for years. Even replaying it these days gives a reminder 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 Doo changeg the landscape for years. Even replaying it these days gives a reminder 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 release in it's own form, Doom 3 proved that renewing Doom was going to be a hard task so many years after the first two titles. Let's face it, Doom 1 and 2 are very similar, so renewing itself as a franchise with Doom 3 was going to be an almost impossible task. Losing the fast paced gameplay feel and leaning into survival horror territory, perhaps a place 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 begins on a mining station on Mars and a rift to hell has opened. Just like the first Doom, the short story here is that the Mars station has turned into a 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've 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 field of view, a rare option on consoles, to a sweet spot at 90. Man, how much better view this gives compared to the narrow FOV on most console shooters. It runs incredibly responsive 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 titles on console at the moment.
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 activate, with a simply button press, slows the action down as you finish an enemy in various gruesome and violent ways. 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 each level. In other words, there's a nice portion of depth and the upgrades carry over if you wish to replay the missions, which is always a welcome feature.
Speaking of the levels, 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 confusing corridors, it's 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!
Speaking of the levels, 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 confusing corridors, it's 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 designs, the hell levels 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.
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're thrown in a little cheaply and were easily forgettable, they do offer some jaw dropping enemy sizes and require 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!
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!
