Introduction:

Get ready to rumble in the depths of hell and Mars as Doom makes its attempt at a return to the throne of fps games. There was quite an emotional stir with all the bad reviews from the multiplayer beta. Rest assured though Doom has revived from that beating quite perfectly. But I never doubted this game so I have the Collector’s Edition I been a fan of Doom for many years and have played and enjoyed all of them. There’s nothing like a classic fps game that being said Doom 64 is my favorite Doom of all but this game really is a bad ass. I got to finish this game this weekend and it was on my honeymoon. Now don’t get me wrong because me and my girl always used to play games together now we don’t have time so a true get away allowed for us to play a game again.

Launching the game/menu:

When first greeted by the Doom menu you can choose between game modes. The choices are multiplayer to the left, snapmap to the right, and last but certainly not least campaign in the middle. Seems by default the game loads the campaign. When choosing Multiplayer or Snapmap the game has to restart in those modes by itself. Once again I would like to point out how the menu music is already one of my favorite game title songs. Each mode has there own menu and there easy to navigate. The campaigns menu is simple once you start playing and beat levels its even easy to go back to the ones you already beat before which is great in case you missed something. You even bring all weapons with you if you go to any levels.

Options settings:

Options and settings are great. Options to lower the resolutions are great. The options are pretty define helping those who may have a lower end pc. An example is the ability to change the aspect ratio to 4:3. The resolution percentage has a huge effect on how the game runs to help you as much as they can. Fov options are available up to 130 fov that’s more then enough. Outstanding job here there is more options then I need and more is okay. Even the options to turn off the glory kill indicator and boss health meters is special.

Gameplay/Story:

I find it quite hard to figure out where we should start in explaining this one. But how about just how things begin. Right away when the game starts you will be ripping and tearing so prepare for action. Prepare to slay demons fast paced with very good music and powerful pick ups like quad damage and haste. Prepare for haunting battles and brutal kills while being surrounded. Prepare for barely making it by but each demon you slay helps you stay alive for another moment. Even the glory kills don’t really slow the gameplay, they actually feel rather good. I really like the metal themes and almost every sound is good. This includes the ambient sounds which were done amazingly. As you go through the game there will be plenty of horrifying sounds. Mostly its just fast paced action and lots of exploration. If you don’t explore all over the levels your going to miss out on a lot including upgrades and many other pickups. There is an upgrade system for your armor suit, weapons, and runes. To upgrade your weapons you just have to use them! Fair enough. To upgrade your praetor suit you have to collect micro chips from fallen marines. Runes are something else in its entirity. In the levels there are runes portals. Going into one will give you a test (mini level inside the level) beating it will give you a rune power its up to you to equip, use, and upgrade them. There are some amazing secrets to be found including super secrets which are classic Doom levels. Doom feels fast, free, dark, and sometimes chaotic. But its a match for the arsenal you get in this game. Everything about the gameplay in the campaign has blown me away personally and I think Doom is a trendsetter. I would love to see other classic fps go more towards this route Shadow Warrior 2013 kind of started this but Doom improved on the concept and I think that is ‘A’ okay. I love classics and I can say this game makes me feel powerful, fast, and inhuman but the enemies are well capable of destroying you to. The story in this game is rather simple but it has what you would want. The story without to much spoilers is the Mars UAC facility center has created something crazy again involving a portal to hell that allows the demons to come through to our world. Its up to the Doom guy to slay and send that plan back to hell. There is a few characters that you will meet and the story is still kind of there but its gentle to classic players at the same time. Doom guy seems like he is just on a mission to kick ass and doesn’t need directions to do that. If you think things are crazy on normal or hard just try the higher difficulties and see just how hard it can be. This and having to backtrack and explore for things you missed in your first playthrough makes the game have a high replay value.

Weapons:

In total there are ten weapons and you can carry them all of them at all times once you find the weapon its yours. The weapons in this game I will say you learn to love them all when you start upgrading them its possible you get attached to certain combos using different weapons and different firing alternatives. The options are kind of endless and they can be used very effectively or you can just blast them away, chainsaw them, or brutally end there life spans with glory kills. You can upgrade the alternate fires and some of them are really awesome mostly every weapon has two alternate fires and both can be upgraded. You can switch between the alternate fires in game with a click of a key/button. The chaingun can form into a mobile turret and it makes it shoot much faster the definition of rip and tear. The RPG has an upgrade where if you lock on to an enemy you can fire 3 rockets at once. This games weapons will make you want to know what the upgrades do to. It even has the BFG weapon back again of course prepare to clear out rooms keeping the original weapons like that one is expected. Then there is the Gauss Cannon a weapon that fires blue steel and is quite powerful, its a weapon you most likely will come to really like. I am intrigued by its design and colorful blasts. Also, the chainsaw it is so fun using it that you wish that it didn’t run on gas. But it does and that’s a good sign of balance. But my favorite weapon of them all is the Super Shotgun boy oh boy they sure did make this gun how it should be, it is the perfect weapon to me. Everything about it from design to balance and it leaves enemies ripped to. They don’t make them like this anymore.

Level design:

When I think of the level design it reminds me more of a classic layout. The exploration is tremendous and the amount of places you can reach is pretty amazing not to mention rewarding. They have backtracking and all the stuff that is fun to me in a classic fps almost. There is different types of levels of course like the UAC levels. Those seem to have have multiple types of sci-fi interiors as you reach different levels of the base. Then there is the Mars levels which are probably the most explorative. There very open and have many ledges, cliffs, and secrets. But nothing compares to the hell levels. Not even close, this type of art in the hell levels is beyond amazing. This could be a movie scene in hell and just combine it with fast paced action of Doom! I have never seen such a well designed hell. It makes you want to pay a visit to hell slay all the demons look at some of the scenery and do it again rather quickly. Sometimes I didn’t want to proceed in the levels because they looked to artistic to just move on for me. I got to play some of the game with my wife watching and even she was surprised by some of the things we saw. She felt like she was watching a horror movie but she was just watching me play Doom! Its safe to say the art, layout, and placement of the levels is more then spot on. The hell levels are super iconic and I have never seen anything quite like it. I don’t think I could even explain how much I liked the hell levels. Its not only hell though in all locations the Doom or horror wasn’t cut short from it some of the sci-fi levels were very fabulous to. It was kind of cool to return back to mars after the demons have already been there. Everything is a bit different when you return lots of dark horror themes. But once you see these hell levels its hard to look at anything and measure it to that. I suppose by switching atmospheres it keeps the other fresh but I feel I could play an entire game based in the hell levels like this. They sure did capture there own style with these and its perfect. They should make an expansion story game and base it all in hell! I bet it would be great. Here in these levels even screenshots become art.

Complaints:

This is going to be a hard one and that’s not a bad thing. But here we go I am going to try my best to get somewhat of a complaint list. I didn’t really like the possessed enemies I know they are grunts and there kind of cool but there isn’t really much so special about there design compared to all the other demons in the game making them quite a generic grunt enemy. Also, there could of been more random encounters with demons. I mean there kind of there but maybe just a few more of them in random spots that you run into during your travels and exploring. Last but not least I wish switching between game modes (Campaign/Multiplayer/Snapmap) didn’t make the game restart and reload in that mode. Now I know there are solutions for that but it should just be simple but I suppose each mode has to load its own stuff up and there is quite a bit of differences in each. (Multiplayer and Snapmap have there own complaints in there coordinated sections)

Bonus features: (Snapmap and Multiplayer)

Multiplayer: I’m not going to go over the Multiplayer to much as I already reviewed it. However I will mention some of the differences between the beta version and the final release. If you want to check out my initial review for the multiplayer check here Doom Mp beta review (GoldenEdge)  In the final release there are 6 game modes and then two additional modes that will cycle through game modes by itself. One of the new game modes I enjoyed was the “Soul Collector” mode. Where you have to collect souls from the players who die. You don’t have to be the one to kill them to get the soul you can still take the dropped souls if you can get to them before anyone, whoever has the most collected wins. The plasma rifle was given more power its a great weapon now. More weapons were added in and the chaingun is now one of my favorites in mp that weapon is awesome combined with a super shotgun. The chainsaw is probably my favorite pick up though. I still don’t like the team colored gloves and weird taunts that the game has though.

(I’m going to let my previous mp review and my video do most the talking here for MP.)

Snapmap: Snapmap is a cool tool to build levels, play with your friends, and also its own game mode. I think the best thing about it is that it has co op just having that makes it worthy to try. That’s not all it has though it has co op, deathmatch, team deathmatch, single player, or even survival. Its up to the creator to make it how they want to. You have a custom Doom marine that you can customize and play as. The character you create will be the one you see in game. I like that a lot because it removes the team colored gloves and gives us what we choose our marines to wear. The editor itself seems to be quite powerful and simple. Its easy to place demons, weapons, models, and pick ups. But it takes some knowledge to set up your gameplay. They have personal guides and tutorials in game for you to actually do while you learn if you need it. Its a real hands on learning strategy and seemed pretty cool. I loved the 2d mode and 3d mode views as it reminds me of classic editors and causes me to feel comfort. But what I don’t like is that I think they limited themselves and the tool itself by doing some things. I like to think of myself as a level designer and this isn’t the editor for me to spend countless hours in. I like to build my own rooms and not use preset rooms and preset details. Its probably okay for a generic interest. I like to start with nothing and make it into something. Here we start with something and can’t change it very much after that. The second thing that I didn’t really like was how they don’t have the hell environments for us to use in our levels. If it had the hell environments regardless of what I said before I would be bound to have a few more Snapmaps for sure. Taking out the best options and making it so you can’t really build with freedom hurts the chances of me using it much further. Maybe there should be an advanced tab. Overall though Snapmap is a grand bonus to this game and at least the community has someway of creating additional stuff for the game. Not to mention the developers said that they would be releasing more Snapmap environments for free soon. Hopefully that goes through and hopefully its the hell environments!

(My Snapmap level playing on single player)

Overall:

Slay demons and rip & tear until it is done. This game is really good it even surprises me this is a game that’s hard to put down. If you like fast pace movement, action, slaying demons, exploration, classic fps games, brutality, artistic scenery, darkness, horror, heavy metal, and kicking ass as the Doom guy then this is the game. I think this is a great new movement towards making classic games come back in a way we kind of remember them but keeping it fresh and new. Doom 2016 takes it above and beyond for a classic fps game to come out right in my opinion and the replay value is high.