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DOOM Review Thread - The Fury Road of Shooters

BiggNife

Member
Shadow Warrior reboot did not sell/review that great and got a sequel so I'll be damned if Doom doesn't get one.

P.S.: I loved SW, but I love Doom even more.

Well I don't really think that's a fair comparison

SW's budget was probably like a tenth of Doom's for one. Especially considering ID was apparently like halfway through the original CoD-esque Doom 4 before scrapping it and starting from scratch.

Doom will definitely sell more than SW but we have no idea what Doom's budget was or how much Bethesda is expecting it to sell to consider it a success.

I think it'll do fine, honestly. Word of mouth has been very strong and Steamspy is saying it's already sold a few hundred thousand copies.
 

ironcreed

Banned
ED972ft.jpg


billyiso.gif
 

I'm not visiting IGN: did they really say these things?!??!

Are you guys 12?

36 going on 11 and 9/10ths.

Yeah lets post that 4chan level image from two totally different critics again

Real intelligent thinking on your part, boyz

Haha that image again. It's even funnier because the reviewer even made his own version on a previous page which is much better and more accurate, since you know, he didn't write both reviews for IGN.

It would seem I am behind the times and did not get 'it'.
 

Zemm

Member
Haha that image again. It's even funnier because the reviewer even made his own version on a previous page which is much better and more accurate, since you know, he didn't write both reviews for IGN.
 

BiggNife

Member
Yeah, the Doom vs Ghosts comparison is really dumb. Different reviewers who rate games differently.

Joab already explained why he gave Doom the score he did earlier in thread. Even though I don't agree with his views on the game, I can understand why he settled on the score that he did.

And regardless it's become clear at this point that his score is an outlier so whatever.
 

Papacheeks

Banned
I finished uncharted 4 and Neiteio is pretty on point.

Then uncharted was never for you then.

The game has lots of jumping yes, they have platformer DNA as a studio. It also has a hell of a lot of exploration that you can do on foot or in the jeep. It also has some decent shooting, grapple mechanics, along with options for stealth.

But the bread and butter has always been the character stories, banter while playing, and the unrivaled quality of animation.

Watching nathan jump and land differently each time is a thing of beauty.

Game is about the whole not just one mechanic.
 

-tetsuo-

Unlimited Capacity
Then uncharted was never for you then.

The game has lots of jumping yes, they have platformer DNA as a studio. It also has a hell of a lot of exploration that you can do on foot or in the jeep. It also has some decent shooting, grapple mechanics, along with options for stealth.

But the bread and butter has always been the character stories, banter while playing, and the unrivaled quality of animation.

Watching nathan jump and land differently each time is a thing of beauty.

Game is about the whole not just one mechanic.

You can still like the game and understand that his description was accurate.
 
I rented it from RedBox yesterday and I'll have to share my thoughts with the disclaimer that I'm very picky in regards to the Doom franchise and that I'm aware that I'll be in the vast minority with my opinion here.

To clarify, I played a few hours total to the 4th level on Ultra-Violence with all glory kill highlights, indicators etc. turned off besides the basic HUD.

Some positive thoughts first:

-Technically speaking, the graphics are really easy on the eyes and the fact that it holds 60 FPS at that level of chaos is quite amazing.
-Glory Kills as a mechanic aren't nearly as awful or disruptive as they appear in videos and trailers in their proper context of this type of gameplay.
-Mars skyboxes look very nice.
-The basic Machine Gun is really satisfying in sound and hit feedback and definitely a nice step up from the shittiest-of-all-time Doom 3 machine gun.
-Lighting is quite nice and atmospheric at points.
-Level design is a step in the right direction away from FPS games of the last decade.
-Self-awareness in this particular game's context works well.
-Ambient sound design is really cool.

Ultimately however, I was quite anxious to stop playing after I had felt that I 'put enough time in' to make the judgment call that the game indeed wasn't for me. Some thoughts on that:

-I find this overall direction only marginally, at best, better than Doom 3's. The focus on faster run & gun gameplay is welcomed, but overall, this still isn't the Doom I've been waiting for by a long shot. I feel like Doom 3 and DOOM both went one extreme of the
original Doom experience and neglected the other side of the coin respectively.

-Art direction is one of my biggest gripes and it just fails for me on every front. I was hoping for a continuation of the route Doom had taken with PSX Doom and Doom 64. A ramped-up insane, grotesque HR Giger-ish atmosphere and look taken into current gen graphics would've been fascinating. What I saw didn't look much different from Doom 3 environmentally and enemy redesigns are entirely too cartoony with a strong leaning towards Gears of War's style. Even Doom's original lab/space station designs were unique and had a particular atmosphere to them. It seems like a shame that we had to trod down the utterly boring art design path Doom 3 took again regarding the interiors. Weapon designs also look like extremely generic 'nowadays videogame Sci-Fi' stuff to me.

-Lower level enemy types look extremely similar and dull if you're not up-close for the glory kill. They really had no distinguishing look to them other than their speed of movement to tell them apart. I found this especially tedious when enemies would spawn half a mile away in a giant Mars outdoor arena where everything is tinted brown/red on top of it. This 'samey' look was a huge problem for me in Doom 3 already and I'm not sure why this was continued here.

-My absolute deal breaker complaint would be the incessant reliance on arena/enemy wave style gameplay. This the antithesis of what I enjoy about Doom's original design. Outside of the randomly placed 'we need to fill space here' low level possessed engineer guys, there is absolutely no fixed enemy placement. Even by level 4 the game had devolved into an extremely predictable exploration corridor > arena > exploration corridor > arena rut. This is uncomfortably close to mindless Serious Sam encounter design and a baffling design choice to me overall. Doom could get chaotic, yes, but it was controlled chaos whereas this game feels like randomized, thoughtless chaos to me. I don't find this intense or visceral, I find it boring.

-While the level design is definitely a nice step away from modern FPS convention, I didn't enjoy the very strict exploration area/arena segmentation of the maps. Obviously the original games had many of these level design/arena faults I'm mentioning going on as well in some capacity, but they were extremely clever about shuffling them around and hiding them behind a thin veil that at least provided the illusion of more choice.

-The jumping mechanics feel very stiff and a bit odd for a game so heavily reliant on it. Not a big complaint or anything but jumping definitely felt a bit weird to me and the ledge grab randomly wouldn't work in odd spots.

-I do not now or will ever understand the Mick Gordon appeal. Especially as a long time Metal fan, it sounds like extremely generic Bro-Metal to me. His music is to Metal what Michael Bay is to Action films. The Ambient sound design in between arenas I really did like however.

-Shotgun felt and sounded really wimpy. A step up from Doom 3, but it's more like version 1.5 of the Doom 3 shotty rather than an actual, good revamping.

-The sound mix is really over-compressed and mushed together sounding. It reminds me of the loudness wars in music production that have been going on. Every aspect has to be so loud and in-your-face that the total mix needs to be so compressed that everything ends up sounding mushy and weak again ironically. I played on Sennheiser headphones and couldn't really tell where enemies were coming from which could also be because the enemy types don't really have very distinct sounds. The originals would 'alert' you to each enemy type with a specific sound that you learned over time. Hear a a baron scream? Ready this and that weapon.

Again, I realize most people won't care about many of these aspects but they are very important to me in a Doom game and overall I'd actually rate this below Doom 3. If I had to put a score on it, I'd give it a 6.5/10. It is what I expected it to be, a decent shooter with plenty of good intentions that just doesn't feel like a Doom game at all to me. Frankly, it reminds me more of the plentiful Doom knockoffs of the late 90s/early 2000s.

If you can be as into it as most people are on here, more power to you. A fun game is a fun game. I'd cut it much more slack if it wasn't supposed to be a 12 year in the making Doom sequel is the bottom line. I think the extremely positive reactions to this game also serve to point out how truly robbed-bare and burnt out the FPS genre is when a game with, in my opinion, so many issues compared to its big brother that came out over two decades ago can be called the best FPS in a decade.

Hopefully it sells well and lights a fire under id's, or others developers', asses to keep improving this first step of getting closer to the brilliance of the originals.


EDIT: Would also like to add that the SP campaign is most certainly an improvement over the miserable MP Beta for any potential players. I did not do MP in the retail/rental version however.
 
Man, God Hand is so good for similar reasons to this Doom. It doesn't have a load of variety in terms of what you are doing but the core gameplay is great and how you approach each encounter is really up to you.
 

Mupod

Member
this is absolutely not the kind of game I would expect to get high marks from EVERY reviewer. As someone whose favorite series gets shit reviews on the regular (monster hunter) that in no way bothers me. 7 isn't even bad.

That said while I will defend someone's right to give the game a bad score I still reserve the right to deride them for being shit at video games. This is definitely a game that I can't see being fun if you're playing like Polygon.

As for UC4 it's not impressing me at all so far. Doom ate its lunch, after 4 hours of barely anything happening I said fuck this and went and shot demons the rest of my weekend. But I mean, I'm not into the Uncharted series much in general and if I gave an Uncharted game a 6/10 I wouldn't expect most people to care about my opinion.
 

The Flash

Banned
Updated the OP with a lot of reviews from recognized names and smaller groups. Lots of 4/5's and 9/10's from both.

Still waiting on Kotaku and Giant Bomb to post theirs.
 
I think the extremely positive reactions to this game also serve to point out how truly robbed-bare and burnt out the FPS genre is when a game with, in my opinion, so many issues compared to its big brother that came out over two decades ago can be called the best FPS in a decade.

Completely respect your opinion but I also find it to be one of, if not the best, SP campaign FPSs in over a decade. Nothing comes close. It could be that COD/BF and the like are to blame for the trend of FPSs but regardless... DOOM(2016) is a GOTY for me.
 
this is absolutely not the kind of game I would expect to get high marks from EVERY reviewer. As someone whose favorite series gets shit reviews on the regular (monster hunter) that in no way bothers me. 7 isn't even bad.

That said while I will defend someone's right to give the game a bad score I still reserve the right to deride them for being shit at video games. This is definitely a game that I can't see being fun if you're playing like Polygon.

As for UC4 it's not impressing me at all so far. Doom ate its lunch, after 4 hours of barely anything happening I said fuck this and went and shot demons the rest of my weekend. But I mean, I'm not into the Uncharted series much in general and if I gave an Uncharted game a 6/10 I wouldn't expect most people to care about my opinion.

Doom is beating out uncharted for me right now. Not because it's necessarily better but just because I'm way more engaged. Uncharted is great. The game picks up, the story is fun, the set pieces are amazing but Doom just feels so pure. I want the shoot bangz and Doom is just scratching that itch so perfectly.
 
To clarify, I played a few hours total to the 4th level

Don't miss out, man. I'm telling you. I had a lot of mixed feelings in the back of my mind about the arena waves, modern FPS tropes, the readability of the art design, the way it played etc for much of the early game too. About halfway through it just started coming together nicely and started clicking, and by the end every critical reservation I had was completely irrelevant. It became an amazing game loop, where everything just looked, felt, and sounded crazy good.

Even the music early on I was like "eh, this is kinda cool I guess... not really my thing" - first Hell level when things jump off, I was blown away and from then on the whole sound scape was outstanding to me.
 
Don't miss out, man. I'm telling you. I had a lot of mixed feelings in the back of my mind about the arena waves, modern FPS tropes, the readability of the art design, the way it played etc for much of the early game too. About halfway through it just started coming together nicely and started clicking, and by the end every critical reservation I had was completely irrelevant. It became an amazing game loop, where everything just looked, felt, and sounded crazy good.

Even the music early on I was like "eh, this is kinda cool I guess... not really my thing" - first Hell level when things jump off, I was blown away and from then on the whole sound scape was outstanding to me.

I honestly just kept playing to see if I would eventually get into it somehow but found myself forcing myself to continue just for that reason. I just didn't enjoy playing it at all, sorry. When I can die in old school games and stuff like Dark Souls or more recently NioH Alpha twenty times in a row and still come back for more and even one death resetting me to a checkpoint in this game is torture to me, it ain't for me.
 

-tetsuo-

Unlimited Capacity
The "it's not Doom" stuff is silly. It is made by id and it is called Doom. They define what a Doom game is, because it is theirs. Also, Doom is over 20 years old now. Of course it isn't going to play the same. I guess you shouldn't be able to jump or look up as well?

They distilled it to what it needed to be. In 1993 it was fun to run around some levels looking for keycards and holes in the wall while blasting demons with a bunch of guns. In 2016, they have replicated that.
 

Experien

Member
I haven't played DOOM YET but wouldn't Wolfenstein be Fury Road? That was amazing stuff! This is like the eventual "Fury Road 2."
 
They distilled it to what it needed to be.

What it needed to be in your opinion and for your enjoyment. Don't forget that this is also just your perception and not a fact.

EDIT: Just to clarify, I just answered to your post because I assumed it was targeted towards me being the last person to mention something along those lines.
 
i agree it isn't what I wanted from DooM.

However, the emphasis on simple, quick, and challenging combat is enough for me to be very happy.

I hope that a sequel can be made with better sound design and way less emphasis on "gore nests"/arena combat (as fun as it is).
 

Cudder

Member
Man, I'm surprised to see so many people shit on the multiplayer, as if it's straight garbage. I'm not an arena shooter connoisseur by any stretch but I remember playing games like Quake, Unreal Tournament and Red Faction on PC when I was younger, and this is totally bringing back that feeling to me, something I didn't even realize I missed until playing this new Doom. Everybody jumping around, lots of verticality in the assymetrical levels, crazy guns, no "perks" like every other shooter out there nowadays. Multiplayer is pretty awesome to me. I played more multi than single player the first couple nights I had the game.
 
Laughing and having a good time over a simple joke image? Right. I hate to see you when you are my age then. Lighten up, pal.
What's funny about it?

Can you explain the joke to me?

Because I see an image with two reviews written by two totally different people with different sets of opinions.

So where's the joke?
 

Mupod

Member
Man, I'm surprised to see so many people shit on the multiplayer, as if it's straight garbage. I'm not an arena shooter connoisseur by any stretch but I remember playing games like Quake, Unreal Tournament and Red Faction on PC when I was younger, and this is totally bringing back that feeling to me, something I didn't even realize I missed until playing this new Doom. Everybody jumping around, lots of verticality in the levels, crazy guns, no "perks". Multiplayer is pretty awesome to me. I played more multi than single player the first couple nights I had the game.

I remember playing UT4 on PC a few weeks ago and this game's multiplayer is embarrassing in comparison. And UT is free and in pre-alpha. Nevermind Overwatch, even.

I have a hard time nailing down exactly what is bothering me about it other than just 'everything is meh'. Maybe that it's got map design and powerups like an arena shooter despite having loadouts. I wiped an enemy team by camping the chainsaw and W+M1-ing my way to victory. Spawning is busted and it just kinda puts people wherever. You could probably roll your face across the keyboard while in demon mode and still kill people. Guns sound and feel like garbage, hit feedback and audio in general is terrible. Worst announcer ever (ok this one is minor but jesus fuck just get the Q3A guy).

I mean I'd play it over COD. But I don't play that series for a reason. I do keep going back to it hoping there's something I'm missing but I'm around level 15 and I keep quitting out wondering why I'm wasting my time.
 
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