DOOM

Any shortlist of legendary videogame franchises would inevitably contain DOOM. In its twenty-third year, twelve years since DOOM 3, and released to the masses a week ago, DOOM is upon us again thanks to the potent combination of id and Bethesda. Running on the beautiful and powerful id Tech 6 engine and containing three distinct playable components, DOOM is a fully loaded package that strikes an elusive balance of frenetic old school action with modern day design elements.

While rumors of the reboot began some eight years ago, I tuned out most of the noise as I was cautiously optimistic about what id and Bethesda might do here. DOOM 3 was great, but not quite DOOM in the grand scheme, as it took more of a horror approach than traditional shooter. With multiplayer gaming being so insanely popular it seemed any DOOM reboot would have to put it front and center, likely jeopardizing a single player mode which was most important to me. Last year’s E3 trailer seemed promising that single player would not only be accounted for, but actually the core focus. A multiplayer beta in the last couple of months came to pass, and then finally, the game itself. At over 52GB total install, it was evident DOOM was either going to look great or have a ton of content, but it’s actually comprised of both.

DOOM boots into Single Player/Campaign mode by default, to go into Multiplayer you select that from the menu and the game reloads. Same for the third component, Snapmap. While I’ve spent the majority of my time with DOOM so far in single player, the time I have spent with multiplayer and Snapmap make it evident that these two components were not skimped on, and neither has compromised what is a super fun campaign lasting a dozen to fifteen hours, depending on your penchant for searching for secets and so forth. The story is actually pretty cool too, and more than just a formality. You are the DOOM Space Marine, nameless, voice-less, and faceless, yet distinguishable. There are allusions made to the past as far as your character having nearly destroyed Hell itself before being locked away in a special sarcophagus. You wake up in a UAC (Union Aerospace Corporation) lab on Mars to discover that the facility is in severe danger due to portals to Hell have been opened, allowing demons in, seemingly on purpose. With the help of UAC’s leader Samuel Hayden and supercomputer Vega, you’re given the direction and intel you need to find the source of the corruption and put a stop to it and Hell’s invasion, but don’t worry, they aren’t very chatty and most of the game you feel very much, appropriately, alone. It sounds like very standard-fare stuff, sure, but I thought id did a fine job adding plot twists and story elements to at least keep the player tuned in as they travel around Mars and Hell and back again. Additionally, within the pause menu is a codex that gets filled up as you encounter new enemies, weapons, power-ups, environments and those kinds of  things, which you can look and read about at anytime. This is a nice touch that shows some concerted effort went into explaining the mythos of DOOM, and that took me a bit by (pleasant) surprise.

Captivating story and characters are not what DOOM’s about obviously, but a nod of credit is definitely deserved here. What most folks interested in DOOM are seeking is an exhilarating first person shooting experience with frenetic action that pits you against Hell’s finest. DOOM is designed with some old school gameplay elements and also includes many modern designs to strike a really satisfying balance. There are no ‘iron sights’ or ‘aiming’ in DOOM, and there is also no reload button. Doors are locked with yellow, blue, and red keycards, which put a smirk on my face the first time I encountered one. You aim with a miniscule reticule and most guns either auto-reload like the shotguns or you just have a good sized ammo clip for the others, so you actually don’t miss reloading much, if at all. I rather liked not having to aim down the sights either, doing so would have been second nature as every modern shooter for the last decade plus does it, but it would have gone against the tempo of the encounters with the demons.

Many demonic encounters are set pieces in as far as they spawn in (and not all at once mind you which adds to the excitement), and the formerly ambient industrial music turns into scathing industrial metal, and yeah, it rocks. Not quite Quake II or Quake 1: The Reckoning awesome, but darn close. Anyway, there’s typically ample room to move around in with demons spawning in and joining the fight from all sides, and often above and below you too. Which reminds me, one note I made very early on in my play that held up throughout the game was that the level design makes great and often fantastic use of the vertical space. Sure, there is some rigid, grid-based design with ninety degree turns and typical corridor layouts, especially in the UAC facility which looks like you probably envision a Mars base would. But, within these walls and outside of it, and in Hell, id makes great use of verticality to add to the look and feel of the environment as well as make for interesting combat angles and places for secrets. You won’t have to go around pressing space bar or interact to find secrets in this DOOM, but you will have to have a keen eye and use the Space Marines new ability to actually grapple onto many ledges and pull himself up. This very welcomed ability is a turnabout from typical FPS design which sees ledges and platforms and other such temptations unreachable due to the lack of the character being able to reach out, grab, and pull himself up. Not so in DOOM, if you see a ledge, your generous leaping ability with a running start may very well be enough to get you there and the character will actually pull himself up. This was a gameplay feature I was not expecting but really liked.

Typical gameflow within the campaign sees intense firefights separated by periods of exploration and story development. Players with a sharp eye and extra time will want to scour for interesting secrets and there are also Challenges, all combat-centric, within the campaign mode that you can shoot for (pun intended) to gain more Weapon Upgrade points. As one of the many modernizations of DOOM, this version has an impressively deep and interesting upgrade and collectible system. Each level contains some number of secrets that typically supply you with ammo, health, or armor and the like, or you might find a little Space Marine doll. Additionally, there are fallen UAC elite guards that have upgrade chips that you can use to unlock upgrades for your suit that make you move faster, reduce the cooldown on your accessory weapon, and so forth. Rarer still are argent upgrades that allow you to increase your total health, armor, or ammo carrying capacity. And then the weapon upgrades are for improving your kickass arsenal. You have to find a field drone first to unlock the actual weapon mod itself, but from there you can upgrade it a few times. The mods are interesting and really useful, ranging from a short-range grenade launcher for the combat shotgun to a stun grenade mod for the Plasma Rifle to a triple-shotgun blast. The mods are easily switched between by pressing Up on the d-pad, have their own upgradeable cooldown timers, and really add another tangible edge to the combat.

I found DOOM’s campaign to be really enjoyable and it merges old school simplicity and frenzy with much more modern elements like upgrades, the Glory Kills, and the ability to climb up certain ledges. Glory Kills by the way are the ‘fatalities’ that you can exact on a stunned demon. Doing so not only looks cool as there are a few variations per demon depending on how you activate the Glory Kill (from above, the sides, so on), but also doing so also causes them to drop little bits of health you can snap up. You’re invincible while doing a Glory Kill so you also get about one second to gather yourself before diving back into the fray. Similarly, using the Chainsaw (which requires “ammo” in the way of fuel) on a demon has them drop loads of ammunition. The chainsaw is mapped to Square while the BFG is mapped to Triangle for quick access to these legendary weapons. Oh, and Berserk fists are still a thing via power-up, as is the Quake-inspired Quad Damage power-up.

As a long fan of DOOM, I would have been content with just the campaign, but you also get two additional components — multiplayer and Snapmap. Multiplayer is not something I typically spend much time on, and I have not done a great deal of it in DOOM yet either. It seems pretty well rounded, though — you have different loadouts that you can customize as well as Hack Modules (aka Perks) that you can get. There are tons of Challenges and Rewards and stats for everything that you do if you’re into tracking all of that sort of stuff as well. Player customization allows you to alter the pattern on your suit and change up colors in different ways on your suit and your weapons, but the general appearance is still pretty much the same understandably. Modes includes Team Deathmatch, Soul Harvest, Domination, Warpath, Freeze Tag, and Clan Arena, and in my experience it didn’t take long to fire up a dozen-plus player game when going to the generic Find A Match lobby.

Less interesting than Campaign but more likely to get used by me is Snapmap. Snapmap is the name of the Doom level editor and this handy tool makes creating your own maps fairly easy. The Snapmap Academy includes step-by-step instructions split into over twenty different topics that are easy to follow along. Better still is that you can stop creating and actually ‘play’ your map within about twenty seconds of choosing to do so from the pause menu, depending on how large your map is and how many assets there are to load. Snapmap is pretty intuitive yet complex enough that making something cool takes effort but you feel a sense of triumph upon doing it. I used to create single and multiplayer maps for Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, and Shadow Warrior in the late 90s with the BUILD engine and honestly have not done any map-editing since. Snapmap feels very user-friendly and focused, although I think I’ll spend more time doing this on the PC version when I buy that later this year than on the PS4 one that I have now.

With that, let’s get to the summary…