I’m not going to write a full review just yet so I thought, why not drop a brief post about initial impressions with the new game. Full review will most likely follow when I finish it…
It’s funny how I find people on forums who complain how new Doom is nothing like the original Doom from the 90’s, where in reality, it’s in fact the closest thing. Doom 3 was a bit of an odd one. It had really dark and gritty graphics with scary atmosphere and individual monsters attacking you. I can’t remember a time you were really surrounded by monsters like you quite often was in original Doom. It was always scary moments and 1-3 monsters in Doom 3.
But in new Doom, it feels like someone took the original and remade it into “HD” with new graphics adding it actual 3rd dimension and also new aspect to the gameplay by adding upgrades and the way how ammo and health is delivered to you. Original allowed you to gun down monsters from distance. In fact that was a preferred way of dealing damage. From far away because health was precious. Here, you have to balance out ranged and close combat in order to inflict damage, but also gather dropped health. And trust me, if you play on Nightmare like I do, you’ll gonna be doing that a lot. 2 blows from Imp and you’ll be dead. Armor feels like it’s not even there. It’s very unforgiving, but for some really weird reason, I absolutely love it regardless. It’s how it should be. Hellishly unforgiving.
Weapon, suit and additional upgrades give new dimension to gameplay. It allows you to adjust your gameplay more with different weapons mods. I know some will whine about it how it doesn’t belong into Doom game, but reality is, upgrades aren’t like those in System Shock or Dead Space. They are far less complex and more straight forward. They remind me more of Alien Rage – Unlimited than Dead Space. And they even did the same trick as devs of Alien Rage, they give you ability to upgrade the basic pistol, making it more relevant through entire game, opposed to other games where you stop using basic pistol the moment you pick up something stronger.
The game just feels really good as a whole. Even spawning of monsters, in Doom 3 they almost always spawned behind your back to scare you, here, most are already roaming the maps, just few spawn in, usually when you destroy their pods. I like this more than lazy spawn ins for everything.
We’ve seen many franchise reboots in the recent years and Doom is by far the closest thing to how franchise reboots should be done. I really can’t think of a single serious issue or complaint about this game. Looks great, sounds great, levels are interesting, combat is really engaging and demands you to move a lot while also forces you to explore maps to gather upgrades and hidden stuff so you can mow down monsters easier, nicely rounding up the whole experience.
I have yet to try multiplayer and the map editor, which is supposedly an easier version where you snap elements together like Lego, but I have yet to try it and see what kind of maps you can create. I hope you can make single player maps and not just multiplayer maps. I want to create outrageously hellish mini campaign, but can’t be bothered with ridiculously complicated map editors that usually come with the games. 😀
All in all, it’s a really good game and I think this will be one of better if not best games this year. Highly recommended!
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