I actually ended up playing this for free with the 7 day PS Now trial, in preparation for Doom Eternal. It was much better than I was expecting.

Pros:
+The action is so fast paced and explosive. It's some of the most fun single player FPS I've ever played.
+Menu shows total amount of collectables in the area so you can know if you’ve missed anything
+Constant upgrades left a great feeling of progression, speaking of which:
+The difficulty curve was perfect. I always felt I had the same level of "just right" challenge. This is partly due to the upgrades mentioned above, and also the introduction or more and more enemy types.
+The weapons for the most part don't suffer power creep. Thanks to the upgrade system, even the starter shotgun was useful to me well into the end of the game.
+Multiplayer is fun, even if it doesn't do much to stand out from every other FPS multiplayer.

Cons:
-The map is absolutely horrible. If you're using it to try and find out where the collectables are, you're going to struggle through the lack of any indication of where walls are, making the different rooms and floor levels impossible to tell where you can get to room A from room B. You also can't zoom or pan much further than where your icon is, so if you're trying to look for where that one collectable you missed is, you're out of luck.
-Some levels have arbitrary point of no returns, which goes against the entire of exploring every nook and cranny for secrets and upgrades. It wouldn't be so bad, but thanks to the huge open-nature of the stages, and the horrible-to-read map, it can be hard to know exactly which parts you can get to at the current moment, and which parts will be locked out if you go through this door and it locks behind you.

Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro/con:
~I ended up with a glitched trophy that didn't pop, preventing me from getting the Plat without playing the entire game again. While a glitch is a clear con, the fact it only affects the trophy system, which isn't technically part of the game, means I can't give the game a con for it.

I think too much. This has been the case for as long as I can remember, an unfortunate lifelong trait that fuels the train of thought endlessly careening around my head. As a working adult, playing games offers a much needed respite from the stresses and worries of the outside world, but it only does so for as long as it can hold my attention and keep extraneous thoughts from dominating my headspace.

For me then, one of the more infuriating signifiers of the modern AAA climate is a tendency of developers to intermittently take control away from the player. There's perhaps nothing more effective at breaking up a game's flow or your immersion in it than the 20th tutorial tip or an ill-timed cutscene that halts any sense of momentum; when these crop up, my focus is instantly shattered and my thoughts drift from what's on screen to what I should make for dinner, or my dog's vet appointment, or Trump's handling of the coronavirus outbreak… and so on. From this frustration I've at least gained a greater appreciation for games that don't put up any barriers preventing you from just jumping head first into the experience and making it your own.

One of Doom's defining qualities is that it mostly sets aside this form of videogame baggage—literalized in an early scene in which Doom Guy violently pushes aside a monitor that someone is spouting needless exposition from—which is honestly its own form of catharsis for me.

It becomes clear shortly after that it's all about the gameplay: a high-octane shooter in which you wield an unholy barrage of heavy weaponry to disembowel score after score of demons as you attempt to keep separate the world of living and that of hell. Or something like that—I mean does it really matter?

I've drifted away from first-person shooters as I've gotten older and many of them have similar struggles to retain my attention—too much time spent crouching behind cover, lining up the perfect shot, listening to mission briefings and so on. There's a stripped back approach to Doom which circumvents these issues, with each combat encounter providing escalating doses of adrenaline that will have you bouncing around arenas and blasting demons away without second thought. This is perhaps its most valuable asset—the speed and intensity with which fights are carried out means the only option for me is to turn big brain off and let pure instinct take over. I can't think too much or get distracted when I play Doom. I just play.

Beyond the simple beauty of that, I was taken with how many smaller pieces of the game deftly lock into place to bolster that fantastic gameplay loop. The pacing is well-tuned, as periods of traversal and optional exploration provide respite after hectic combat scenarios. Upgrades to your arsenal are surprisingly meaningful and inform the way you play the game, as you begin to intuit how certain weapons and power-ups play to your advantage against different enemy types. On top of it all is Mick Gordon's heavy metal score that gives Doom its juice (surprise bonus points go to the bits of spacey ambient that delicately underscore some quieter moments).

With the number of sequels and reboots that exist in the industry, it's refreshing to see one with an obvious level of care put behind it. While Doom is not flawless—even while the combat mostly thrilled me throughout, after some time it doesn't feel like there are any more surprises left and some fatigue can set in, among other minor quibbles—my complaints pale in comparison to how much of a pure joy the majority of the game is to experience, a callback to time of the original Doom, when fun was always at the forefront of games. I wish more developers would remember the simple power of that these days.

Doom (2016) has sat on my backlog for years; it’s a game I have dabbled in from time to time, but never quite understood in my COD-shaped view of the FPS genre. However, a few days ago, I fully committed to this game and fell in love with its frenetic, challenging, and tactical combat. Id Soft absolutely knocked this game out of the park, creating interesting battle arenas and distinctive art design, as well as an uncountable number of gory glory kills, to keep the game fresh. The trophy list was highly attainable, and forced me outside my comfort zone, increasing my enjoyment of the game. The only real downside to the game was its relative lack of story, but that hardly matters in a game seeking to accomplish what Doom accomplishes.

I always get nervous when they reboot a franchise that I have nostalgia for. Doom classic is impossible for me to describe without coloring it heavily with my memories, so this reboot had me worried. Thankfully the team took the loss of Carmack in stride and produced what I feel is one of the best franchise reboots of all time. The overall presentation is fabulous, the pacing is amazing, the story is cohesive (for a change), and the game is technically impressive regardless of what platform it runs on (yes, even the Switch version looks great for the hardware). If you don't like heavy action titles or first-person shooters then obviously steer clear of this title. If you were on the fence then get off it and suit up. This has to be one of, if not, the best entry into the series.

Yeah this was surprising for me too.

There are things to like in Doom 2016 for sure, there's the powerful attitude fuck you and rip and tear that doomslayer shows in certain cutscenes. There's the music which is excellently well made and makes the fights pleasant at times, especially when it heightens after every glory kill. A lot of the mechanics on paper are well designed, with enemies using tracking moves that should punish strafing, and it does give freedom for player expression in certain avenues with gauss boosting and cool speedrun tech. There's also a few encounters with some genuinely well designed enemy waves, and arcade mode allows for more emphasized fun times to be had.

That being said, none of it was good to me overall. I could not garner much fun from the mechanics at all for longer than a minute. That has widely to do with how doom 2016 keeps shooting itself in the foot, from the start of the game all the way to where I stopped. You are so overtuned for fights, with weapon mods and powerups that break the game in twine, and even on those best encounters i mentioned there are invulnerability and quad damage powerups or even berserk there. All of that shit makes the game pathetically easy, and it isn't helped when you up the difficulty to Nightmare. In fact that generates more problems, because the game's audio and visual design for enemies is not well designed, with several enemies getting hits from behind or behind cover. Summoner shots can come from nowhere as well as imp fireballs that you can't see. I primarily played on ultraviolence, which is definitely easier than nightmare but it meant potshots wouldn't necessarily kill you.

But, even on nightmare, the game's balancing is trash. You'll never run out of ammo, so you can get off to just using one gun to breeze through shit, and strafing isn't perfectly punished with tracking shots anyway. Your capacity to just turn your brain off is high enough to where it almost becomes super boring. The best way to sum up everything in a nutshell is that the most often times I died was shooting a rocket launcher or a grenade shot in an enemy right in front of me close range because I was largely able to just coast on bullshit.

This may sound super scathing, and it is. I understand the ways Doom 2016 can be enjoyable, I have witnessed the times where it gets oh so close to being good. It just doesn't, and this back and forth tease where there are entire hours of content where not a single minute i spent I could describe as good left me frustrated rather than just a feeling of "it's alright." I still think though, after introspection, that in execution it's an alright game, that I do think is better than a lot of fps on the block. I'm sure that with a shitton of limits on what you can do going against the grain of the game design that you can craft a doom 2016 experience that is fun. But to me, it's still not a good game though, it gets SO close, but it's not. So I'm done playing it, but I can recommend trying it as a decent timesink. You're far more likely to enjoy it than me, and I think it's better than average at the very least.