DOOM (2016) Review

I used to be far more antagonistic towards Doom (2016), when it was still the new kid on the block. Most of my negative experience with the game can be attributed towards playing on the Nightmare difficulty. While this game is balanced to have a great experience on Ultra-Violence and lower, on Nightmare the devs simply changed damage values so a couple hits of anything can be fatal, and health you regain from glory kills is too little to be useful, unless you're about to die. This system does not work well with the gameplay, where demons spawn randomly in an arena. Call of Duty's multiplayer has a similar system--a couple hits of anything can be fatal, and enemies are constantly spawning at random in an arena. It leads to the same conclusion: unfair, b.s. deaths usually caused by something the player could not see or react to.

TL;DR The game does not have a very high skill ceiling, unlike its sequel. Play it on any difficulty, up to and including Ultra-Violence, but that is as high as one can go and still enjoy the experience. Nightmare isn't brutal; it's simply unfun. I hated this game for a while, simply because of my experience on Nightmare. Going back to it on UV, I realized it can totally be fun, even if a little easy.

However, it is because of my experience playing through several times on Nightmare difficulty that I really got a feel for the game's many shortcomings. I think there is a lot of merit in my earlier critique of the game, so I'm going to keep it up because I think it goes to show how Eternal pretty much fixed most if not all of the issues I originally had with this game. I'll highlight in italics and bold any portion I add now, commenting on my original critique/review.

This game is nothing more than repetitively shooting demons/monsters in an arena till no more spawn in, then moving forward through the level till you find the next arena and doing the same there, repeat until level ends. When pulled off well, this arena-style gameplay isn't necessarily a bad thing. In the "Foundry" level, for example, the player is dropped in the middle of a large facility, and it is up to you to choose which area to go to, kill demons there, and collect whatever key card or hit the requisite switch you need to continue. In these early levels, secrets are also well hidden and worth finding, because they contain new guns you normally wouldn't unlock until the next level or a health/ammo/armor upgrade. This rewards exploration and trying to go outside the normal area of the map, just like in the original Doom games. However, once most guns are unlocked secrets tend to give little more than useless collectibles, and they don't encourage exploration.

This is an objectively true description of the gameplay. It is unlike the classic Doom games, and closer to the Serious Sam series, in so far as you have linear levels with big arenas where most combat takes place, and a few small encounters in the areas connecting the arenas. Most of the earlier levels in the game do hint at a non-linear structure, like I said the Foundry is the best map in the game, but maps do quickly become just linear later in the game. Although you do still get some useful items in secrets in the late game--such as BFG ammo, it's not quite as useful as early-game secrets, which often let you unlock guns a whole level earlier than you otherwise would.

For the first third of the game, up until the Kadingir Sanctum level, everything is great. The story is very simple but intriguing (new characters such as Samuel Hayden and Vega, and the new spin on the UAC are interesting); gameplay is balanced; arenas tend to be larger and less cramped; levels are non-linear; secrets are worth finding. Once you reach Kadingir Sanctum, all of that changes. Levels become extremely linear, which makes the repetitive tedium of arena after arena much more obvious. The arenas themselves are much smaller, and are jam packed with so many demons that the player lacks enough room to dodge enemy projectiles.

As a big classic Doom fan, this arena-style shooter used to bother me. However, after having played (and fallen in love with) Doom Eternal, I now have absolutely nothing against this different style of shooter in Doom. That said, I do believe the criticism on arenas sometimes being too cramped is a valid one, particularly on Nightmare. In Eternal, id Software ameliorated this issue by making arenas huge, and giving you far more speed and mobility--dashes, dash refills, grappling hook (meat hook), acrobatics, etc.

I would say 98% of deaths in this game are completely unfair, bulls**t deaths by an enemy or its projectile that you could not see while you were fighting a different group of demons, or one that just spawned in right behind you in area you just cleared, or one you had no time to react to because your character can't change weapons fast enough. (The other 2% of deaths are accidentally falling off a cliff trying to jump to a hard-to-reach secret.)

Again, Eternal fixed this issue with the increased mobility and bigger arenas, making it much easier to see where enemies are, and especially to avoid them and their projectiles. Eternal also adds in the much-appreciated 1up system, so even if you do die in combat, you can use an extra-life and keep fighting without having to reload checkpoint. Eternal also lets you unlock the Saving Throw rune from the very beginning, if you so choose, which in 2016 is only available near the end. Finally, in Eternal falling off a cliff no longer reloads the last checkpoint, instead you just take some damage, reducing the number of frustrating deaths.

Now, one possible answer to this problem is, "Well, you're not supposed to kill one demon at a time, but survive the entire horde. That means keep running around." Okay, fine. I get that; Serious Sam is like that. However, Serious Sam also allows quicksaving and has MASSIVE levels that allow for huge numbers of enemies and enemies spawning in from previously cleared areas. If you die in Doom, not only do you have to restart the entire arena, but very often you have to do a lot of backtracking just to get back to the start of the arena, due to how awfully placed several of the checkpoints are. Moreover, enemies are often placed in areas where the player could not see or react to unless he'd already died from them before. For example, in one arena, after finally taking out all the waves, you think it's over and you're safe, but you're not. Out of nowhere, two Barons spawn in in this very small area, and they will probably kill you if you didn't know they were coming. Does the game give you a checkpoint before this hard to survive death trap? No, you have to go back and do all previous waves all over again, and you also have to fight your way to the start of the arena all over again. Having fun yet?

You can see how mad Nightmare made me. I still agree, checkpoints could have been better placed in 2016. However, it's an issue that isn't really a problem on lower difficulties, but that doesn't excuse it, either.

Another problem is the progression system. The upgrades themselves are pretty cool, and the alternate fires for your guns adds more variety, as well as makes some lower-tier guns still useful against tougher foes. However, you can also use tokens (which are easy to earn) to upgrade your alternate fires, to the point of being over-powered. The normal Super Shotgun feels powerful, but is balanced by a slower reload time, just like in the original Doom 2. However, when fully upgraded, which happens quite quickly, it becomes one of the most OP weapons in the game. The same can be said of the Gauss cannon (a railgun essentially) and the chaingun. Hell Knights, Cacodemons, Revenants, even Barons all become a joke. They're so easy to kill by this point that there's no real sense of challenge or fear.

This is a big one, and it's why I believe the skill ceiling is relatively low in 2016. Even on the highest difficulty of Nightmare, enemies are still weak and quite easy to take down--even bosses--which make killing things in endless waves in generic arenas kind of boring and repetitive. Eternal has a very similar arsenal to 2016 on the surface, but boy it is SO much better. More options for killing, yet far more balanced. Every single gun and attachment is still useful in the end game, whereas only about half the arsenal is good in end game in 2016. Eternal's weapons demand both skill and creativity from the player in defeating foes, which is ultimately more fun and rewarding. 2016 has a good weapon balance early on, but you just become too powerful later on that there's no need to develop different strategies when certain weapons are just so useful to use over and over.

In an attempt to counter-act just how OP the player is even by the half-way mark, the game starts throwing more and more enemies at you, without much thought going into enemy placement. Keep in mind by this point arenas have also become very small, and you can see why the ensuing clusterf**k leads to unfair deaths, which becomes even more infuriating by the lack of manual saves.

Boss fights are very average. They're essentially huge bullet sponges, and the BFG barely does any damage to them, unlike the original game. They're not terribly bad or difficult, just take a few tries to beat.

The tone of the game is also way off. In the original Doom from '93, you started off in just a sci-fi moon base with mostly enemy zombies, and the only demons were Imps and Pinky's. Then once you reach the Deimos base, things gradually get more and more demonic, so the tension increases. This all reaches the climax with the Cyberdemon boss fight, after which the game holds nothing back and goes as intense as possible in hell itself.

In Doom 2016, you start off the game from the very first level shown a hellish/demonic flashback, and blood and pentagrams are everywhere. Then you get the intensity of hell, then you go back to the bases, then back to hell again. It's all over the place, and you've been seeing the same imagery from the beginning, so all that blood and satanism doesn't have any impact. There's no tension building up from one level to the next, and images that are meant to be scary...well, aren't.

This is true, and I still believe is a valid criticism. The gradual increase in tension and horror from level to level seen in the original games is absent here. However, I can understand that the mindset behind 2016 was, "You know the plot, I know the plot; it's like Super Mario, it doesn't need to be taken terribly seriously. We both know you're just here to shoot demons." 2016 did however create some mystique, with its introduction of the Sentinel Crusaders, the Wraiths, and Argent D'Nur; and the characters of Samuel Hayden and VEGA are interesting and well-voiced.

Finally, I'd like to add that Eternal really upped its game in terms of both the writing of the plot, and having much greater variety of level design. That can be attributed to Eternal really going off in its own direction, and only loosely being a reboot to Doom II or a sequel to 2016.

Another major letdown is the way the protagonist's character is handled. Do you know why he's called the Doom guy, or the Doom marine? Because HE HAS NO NAME. He's so ridiculously unimportant, that he doesn't even need a name. That's why you feel much more badass when you, an ordinary nobody, actually survived and made it out of hell, where no living mortal is meant to go. Doom '16 doesn't understand this. They think "Doom guy" is his name, and not only that, but he's the most important being in the cosmos, a literal legend that predates man and even the Demons are terrified of. In short, he's been turned into a generic superhero. There's nothing special or cool about killing demons that fear you. That's like Superman arresting the Joker, or using IDKFA to BFG the Cyberdemon. Nothing cool about a god slaying fearful demons. What's cool is a down-to-earth man surviving the unspeakable horror of hell. He has to be a badass killer out of necessity to survive, not because he likes to.

As you might have guessed, it isn't until the Kadingir Sanctum that this new interpretation of the Doom guy is revealed.

This is another culture clash moment. I didn't like 2016's new idea of Doom Guy when it was the odd man out in the series. Now that Eternal is out and has a similar take on Doom Guy/Slayer, I've come to accept it for what it is. However, since 2016 was originally supposed to be a recreation of the original Doom, I think it's still worth mentioning this disparity.

Another unneeded feature is Glory Kills, or short QTE finishers on nearly dead enemies. These replenish health when you're low on it, and the chainsaw (also a QTE now) replenishes ammo. These Brutal Doom-inspired finishers exist to look gory for the sake of looking gory. However, this mechanic of infinitely farmable health/ammo removes a lot of nuance from the gameplay. In classic Doom, placement of health/ammo pickups could drastically alter how a map is played. You lose that depth here.

From the perspective of a classic Doomer, this is very true. The nuance of the combat that kept it interesting came from hand-crafted level design and intentional placement (or dearth) of ammo and health pickups.

TL;DR I once heard someone say Eternal takes the combat loop of classic Doom, but compresses it down and supercharges it at lightning speed, and I think that's very true. 2016's system was a good start, but it had flaws and would not be perfected till the sequel.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the soundtrack. A lot of it is electronic, and initially felt out of place in Doom. The best parts of the soundtrack were very often just parts that harken back to the original game's music, such as the new versions of "At Doom's Gate," and "Sign of Evil." However, over time, it has grown on me. Particularly since I love the Doom Eternal ost, which is closer to the kind of metal seen in the original, yet still entirely its own thing. It's given me a new appreciation for the musical genius in some of the standout tracks of 2016, such as "BFG Divison" and "Flesh and Metal."

There's also a SnapMap mode, which was id's attempt at bringing Doom's massive legacy of modding and mapping to the new Doom, accessible to the console audience as much as PC gamers. It was a good idea in theory, but in reality there was little room for creativity. All you could do was select one from a handful of pre-baked room types and plug those in together. It pales in comparison to the options available in classic Doom map editors, and ultimately very few people made maps in SnapMap. Even when I bought the game back in 2018 or so, SnapMap was already dead even then. Ultimately it became dead weight just padding up the game's file size.