But
the new Doom is louder and faster than the old model. Its battles ask
more of you, and its heavy-metal soundtrack causes your body to quiver
from turbulent surges of adrenaline. From the outset two things are made
immediately clear: you were born to kill demons, and you'll do anything
it takes. You will wrench countless jaws from their joints and
eviscerate the swollen flesh of your enemies between bouts of furious
gunfire. These powerful moments carry what, at its core, is a simple
game. The cadence of Doom's campaign is unwavering to the point of
predictability as you make multiple round-trips between Mars and the
depths of hell. Each location bears its own distinct but static
identity, and your return trips inspire more deja vu than surprise as
you tread familiar ground on either side of the dimensional portal
you're charged with dismantling.
You
rarely take an unexpected turn, but any bothersome feelings this gives
you are washed away the moment you enter battle. Doom equips you with a
range of weapons that start simple and grow ever more elaborate. Not all
are created equal, and there are some you will ignore for their lack of
stopping power, but many are formidable, and a near constant stream of
upgrades allows you to tweak your favorites in order to give them
greater functionality and strength--more cause for attachment to, and
wonder in, the power at your fingertips.
This power
extends to Glory Kills, Doom's contextual dismemberment techniques that
can be triggered when you cause an enemy to stagger. They are the
embodiment of gore fetishization, offering multiple ways to tear enemies
into pieces, dependant on your angle of approach. Glory Kills are also
strategically valuable. Enemies occasionally drop health items and ammo
when felled by a gun, but you're guaranteed an injection of health when
you flay your opponents using your bare hands--and occasionally with a
body part of their own. This incentivizes you to rush in even when on
the brink, offering hope at the end of a potentially deadly tunnel.
Similarly, you also collect a chainsaw that can rip demons in half as a
one-hit kill, which causes ammo to spout from their corpses. Your
chainsaw requires precious fuel and should be used sparingly, and
figuring out the best time to use it becomes a tense mind game of its
own.
The
rhythm of combat--which almost always begins as a plainly presented
lockdown in a room--grows increasingly hard and fast over the course of
Doom's thirteen missions. Larger and more dangerous demons appear over
time, and in greater numbers. As you weave and leap around maze-like
arenas to improve your vantage and search for much-needed supplies, you
function like a magnet, drawing enemies toward you. As you do, the
once-disparate groups in an arena become concentrated. The effect of
this is that you can put your explosive munitions to good use and
inflict heaps of damage to multiple enemies at once. But there is a
downside: you can quickly back yourself into a corner as you retreat.
Despite this danger, herding enemies is par for the course in Doom as
it's often the most viable tactic. This plays into the cyclical
murderous bliss of Doom: round and round we go.
The
tension of facing increasingly durable enemies gives this system
longevity despite its repetitiveness. Bipedal imps give way to towering,
bloated monstrosities, powerful stampeding beasts, and disembodied
flaming skulls. To keep up with the horde, you must use resources earned
for your past feats to modify and upgrade your weapons with new
capabilities. This steadily feeds into your brash and violent persona in
order to maintain the high of combat in the face of your growing
tolerance for all things brutal. Where a shotgun blast to the face was
once satisfying and effective enough, you ultimately desire the thrill
and power of unleashing a mortar-like cluster bomb from your
double-barrelled best friend. When he's spent, you'll be thankful you
upgraded your heavy assault rifle with micro-missiles that pierce the
air with a subtle whistle before lodging under the skin of a demon and
exploding, one after another.
Where a shotgun blast to the face was once satisfying and effective enough, you ultimately desire the thrill and power of unleashing a mortar-like cluster bomb from your double-barrelled best friend.
Upgrades
can be earned by sweeping maps of demons, or discovered by exploring
every inch of Doom's environments. Both techniques demand diligence.
Secrets and hidden areas aren't new to Doom, but the variety of rewards
you can reap are greater than ever. Every bit of hardware, including
weapons, armor, and their underlying software, can be augmented in
multiple ways. Nevertheless, you come across your fair share of upgrades
even if you stay on the beaten path, and you'll probably want to as the
thrill of combat gets under your skin. The process of awkwardly
platforming your way across Doom's maps grows increasingly tiresome as
your pulse drops to a murmur, and your patience for anything other than
combat wears thin. The advent of Rune Challenges mixes this up a bit,
offering self-contained tasks that momentarily take you out of missions
and into tiny arenas where you need to defeat enemies under strict
conditions. As enjoyable as these can be, they don't hold a candle to
mission combat and eventually become an afterthought as you seek your
next battle.
When Doom funnels you from one location to
the next, it introduces brief moments that tell your story, and the
story of the energy-obsessed Union Aerospace Corporation. It's the UAC's
ill-conceived decision to tap into Hell's energy resources that created
the portal between dimensions in the first place, and though you are an
agent of the UAC in a way, yours is a reluctant enlistment. The tale of
your involvement carries a certain gravitas in the way it speaks of
legends and dark messiahs, but it ultimately amounts to little more than
window dressing to justify your actions.
When
your journey comes to a close, you will have spent close to a dozen
hours in the thick of it, the last of which are punctuated with riveting
boss fights and seemingly impossible odds. With a flush arsenal and
enhanced physical abilities, you may opt to return to previous missions
and find items you may have missed, or lay waste at higher difficulty
levels, but multiplayer awaits those who seek something new. Apart from a
few multiplayer-exclusive weapons and the ability to play as demons
during portions of a match, there's actually very little new about
Doom's multiplayer. Its modes are few, delivering the expected
assortment of match types, including team deathmatch and domination
challenges, and a couple fun diversions like freeze tag. By and large,
you won't find much in multiplayer that hasn't been done before, but
what's there is enjoyable in small doses thanks to the fast pace of
combat and the explosive nature of Doom's weaponry.
Doom is straightforward and simple, but it serves its purpose: to thrust you into increasingly dire scenarios fueled by rage and the spirit of heavy metal.
More impressive than multiplayer is
Snap Map, a mode that allows you to create and share both multi- and
single-player maps online. Tutorials walk you through the steps involved
in creating a map, which is intuitive to begin with. Beyond
ease-of-use, Snap Map will live or die through the creativeness of the
community, which has already made a strong showing, delivering a range
of maps that range from brutal to absurdly entertaining. More than
multiplayer, Snap Map is the cherry on top of the new Doom.
But
without a doubt, the loud and chaotic campaign is Doom's strongest
component. It's straightforward and simple, but it serves its purpose:
to thrust you into increasingly dire scenarios fueled by rage and the
spirit of heavy metal. Many shooters chase the thrill Doom delivers, but
few are as potent in their execution. It captures the essence of what
made the classic Doom games touchstones of their day, and translates it
to suit modern palates with impressively rendered hellscapes and a
steady influx of tantalizing upgrades. Doom is the product of a
tradition as old as shooters, and while it's not the model to follow in
every case, modern shooters could learn a thing or two from Doom's honed
and unadulterated identity.
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