You come to, chained to a stone sarcophagus, it’s dark and from the shadows something howls at you. You strain against the braces that keep your arms firmly in cuff and chain, 3 possessed are in the small room that you awoke in. One moves closer to you, growling, wanting to end it all before you’ve even started! Straining against the chains, your arms bulge. The possessed moves closer and then, like lighting it’s on top of you, very little resemblance to the human it once was, no eyes and half its face caved in. One final heave and you’re free, your massive hand clamps around its face, with no time for the possessed to react as you slam its head into the side of the stone coffin and breaking it open like an egg thrown against the wall. You free your other hand, jump down and in front of you is a pistol. It’s time to go to work…
And that’s how this gruesome game starts, not like others in its class, with mundane and scripted FMV’s or tutorials that we’ve all seen in almost every other FPS title in the last 5 years. Nope, in the first 25 seconds the game lays down how the developers intended you to play it, up close and personal, literally grabbing your foe by their faces and giving them a Space Marine kiss! Every aspect of DOOM is brutal from the shooting mechanics to the seemingly endless demonic horde gagging to taste your blood. The brutality is super satisfying, from using your favourite weapon to smear your enemy across the walls, ceilings and floors to the Glory Kills that grant you little health pickups from the missing body part of the enemy you just ripped into. This game has a mature rating and Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) isn’t kidding with that rating, there isn’t any harsh profanity or sexual content but what there is plenty of is dismemberment, with Doomguy using his hands to rip off a demons jaw and force feeding it to him/her!
So do I like it?? Well yes I do and no I don’t. Confused?? Don’t be, it’s quite simple. The single player campaign is just awesome, with super fast movement, twitch reflex shooting mechanics and unforgiving damage values. From start to finish Doom turns up all its gameplay aspects to 11, nothing in this game is boring or tedious. One thing I really enjoyed was hunting for secrets and playing the rune challenges. In the original Doom there were numerous secrets in every level, mostly providing weapons, ammo and armour as rewards. In Doom (2016) secrets aren’t these things all the time, I won’t spoil anything for you but take my word for it secret hunting is loads of fun. A big reason for the fun is the environment layout and terrain scaling that you’ll have to do to reach all the little nooks and crannies where some secrets are located. Doom’s biggest strength is its weapon handling and how you balance ammo consumption. I played Doom on the hardest difficulty available when playing the game for the first time and after the majority of the scripted fights I was left with very little ammo and using my least favourite gun simply because it had ammo and my favourite weapons didn’t. Playing on hard you’d better be able to aim whilst moving furiously around the area of engagement because if you stop or try to take a strategic position you’ll just be overwhelmed by demons hungry for your limbs! The numerous weapons all serve a different purpose and all weapons have mods that you can attach once you find the attachments via upgrade robots throughout the levels, again you’ll have to search to find these little floating goodies of goodness…
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So what don’t I like?? The multiplayer, that’s what. I have played about 5 hours of multiplayer and I can’t get on with it. Doom’s multiplayer doesn’t know what it wants to be and tries to combine the older, arena style gameplay with the newer classed based systems of Halo and CoD. This leads to everybody running around with the Super Shotty or the Rocket Launcher rather than everybody starting with base weapons and using their level knowledge and skill to reach the best weapons. The only real reward for playing the multiplayer is cosmetic unlocks to make your Marine unique. The multiplayer may be great for some but for me it just wasn’t what I wanted Doom to be.
SnapMap looks good, all be it a bit limited but hopefully Bethesda and id will cave in and release an SDK so guys can mod the crap out of this game in the future. Time and time again we see the longevity of a game increase dramatically if mods are supported or even encouraged, so let’s keep our fingers crossed shall we. SnapMap is a good platform for beginner users to release level designs, coop modes and multiplayer modes, with intuitive controls and a set of tutorials available right at the very beginning.
Finally, I love the single player campaign and the asking price of £40 or your regional equivalent is well worth your time. My advice is buy this game for the single player gameplay, not for any multiplayer aspect, you will NOT regret it!!! Hopefully id will release more information on what the DLC packs will contain and let’s hope that there are some upcoming added single player content.
Here are some Slideshows of the Glory Kills and Chainsaw finishers!!! Enjoy :)…
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Written by Robert “theOzman” Oswald
DooM 2016 – Time to Rip and Tear You come to, chained to a stone sarcophagus, it’s dark and from the shadows something howls at you.
