Isn't the theme of every game really just, "capitalism is bad"?

Doom (2016) embodies every reason a Middle-Aged White Midwestern Christian Mom thinks video games should be banned. And it embodies everything an 11 year old boy thinks is cool. Blood, guts, gore, violence, big guns, explosions, monsters and demons. Gorey without remorse. The Doom franchise reboot is everything it was when the very first Doom released, and more.

Doom doesn't have much pretense. It simply doesn't give a fuck. And it never much pretends to. The game starts out almost instantly as violent as you can imagine. And the game regularly encourages and rewards you for bathing in its goriest moments. Nicely weaved, you go from decapitating demons with your fist to blowing them up with rocket launchers and even sawing them into pieces with a chainsaw that ensues in a blood tsunami.

And these gameplay schemes work so well. You need more health? Go for the glory kill which violently dissects an enemy with your bare hands and rewards you with health. Need more ammo? Pull out the chainsaw and tear an opponent to bits which floods you with ammo as a reward. In between you use a buffet of diverse weaponry to annihilate the inhabitants of Hell.

The game never quite gets old. While the initial novelty of the grotesque and gruesome executions does wear off, it never gets tiring. And every now and again, during the relatively short campaign, you can find yourself still chuckling at an animation you hadn't seen before. I particularly like when you rip open the ass of a Pinkie and stab it to death with its own tailbone.

It's hard not to smile at the first time you rip the horn off of a Baron of Hell and stab him in the eye with it. Doom knows what its doing. And it does do it quite well. Gory, bloody, violence draped over a slick, quick-flick trigger happy arena shooter experience. All the fun of Quake III Arena gameplay with all the lavishly immoral Doom trimmings. It's easy to see why Doom was a massive hit in 2016 and still easy to see why it was so popular when it originally released in 1993.

Doom has some drawbacks. On one hand, there's plenty of lore. On the other hand I wish there was either moreorless. The story starts off ripshit into the action. You barely have yourself situated at all. Why the fuck are we on Mars? You immediately start slaying demons with little introduction as to exactly why. The game trickle feeds you the info in the form of audio voice communications and some ethereal cryptic visual projection holograms. You gradually piece it altogether but the story doesn't get convoluted. The story STARTS convoluted. It never quite unravels into anything easier to digest either.

This in-and-of-itself isn't too bad. After all the true appeal of Doom is blasting away deformed demons monsters with a rocket launcher in small, stacked rooms. Leaping quickly from platform to platform collecting shields and ammo to keep exploding wave after wave of hellspawn. But. Doom does force upon you this storyline. It's clearly invested in it and the production quality isn't low. It wants to tell you this story. I wish it was done better. You could just as easily have provided even less story and simply said, "You are the Doom Slayer. Your purpose is to wage dimensional genocide on the inhabitants of Hell. Kill your way to Satan, then kill him too." From there on you could just blast your way through each map. I don't think the game would be in any way appreciably worse or even any different.

Instead, there's a winding unfolding story with characters and lore and worldbuilding. It's not nothing. And it's 'okay.' It's just never very grasping and the story is a bit too wild. It requires you to spend ample time collecting and reading codex bits to tease out the storyline from text in the game menus. Always a poor way to tell a story. Comparatively, a game like Mass Effect has a sprawling codex full of this sort of information, bursting at the seams like an encyclopedia. And you never have to read any of the codex in Mass Effect to fully understand the story in front of you.

I also have a few quibbles with some gameplay and map design decisions. While I very much love and appreciate Doom's level design guiding you from objective to objective with green lighting, I did often feel as though the maps were a bit too confusing. Or could be. They encourage you to explore nooks and crannies for collectibles and special trinkets, but there's far too many dead-ends in the game. Areas that look like something should be there but just wind up as window dressing. A few strewn rocks or pillars. It often made exploration a little too tedious. Doom is a fast paced game. I want to get to shooting things. Dallying in exploration was sometimes a drag and even worse when I found myself waddling into corners of the map with absolutely nothing in them.

Sometimes during big fights there was too much focus on bullet sponge-y enemies. While it took me much longer than I care to admit that the gunplay was a 'right-tool-for-the-job' kind of design, still many enemies simply required too much shooting. Given the nature of Doom I think I would have preferred more waves of imps or possessed to chomp through with my rocket launcher than blasting away at a Cyber Mancubus or Baron of Hell. Especially by the end of the game where these kind of enemies began to become trivial anyway with my upgraded Gauss Cannon.

I also too frequently found myself stuck in corners of the map. Wedged in areas I couldn't escape from due to poor map geometry. I ended up having to crouch repeatedly or shoot rockets at the ground to jimmy myself loose on more than one occasion.

I played the game on Nightmare difficulty. And I did really struggle with remembering to switch guns or to search for powerups in the arenas. I found often times I'd just bounce around using the Super Shotgun, by far the best gun in the game, with a selective usage of the Gauss Cannon or Assault Rifle when I needed to fire from distance. In more instances than I can count, I discovered a powerup such as berserk or quad damage only after clearing an entire room. Or maybe I'd grab it too early in anticipation of enemies spawning and have it run out either just-as or before the enemies appeared. What would happen in most cases is I would be too caught up in fearing for my life and trying to just eradicate enemies that I wouldn't notice the orbs. Instead using the combat skills to get ammo and health while picking up whatever dropped, wherever it dropped. I didn't die very often, I completed the game without many deaths at all. Though I wouldn't say the Nightmare difficulty was easy. It pushed me right up to about all I could handle without causing Souls-like deaths and frustration. Maybe I was just too bad at the game to manage finding the powerups.

The music is great. A real hit. I don't care at all for the genre in real life but it is so god damn good while thrashing hordes of demons. Just really drives the player to want to continue playing. In fact, I even wished there was a little more of it and that it was a little more prevalent.

A final few thoughts. The Super Shotgun was definitely the best gun in the game for most enemies. Even ones where it wasn't really supposed to be ideal. I didn't like that it was hidden, I couldn't imagine playing the game without it. I also didn't like that it didn't have mods like the other weapons. My combat shotgun was rendered useless by the super shotgun. I also hated that when the guns would auto switch it would auto switch back to the combat shotgun instead of the super shotgun. As-if it were only interested in my weapon with the nearest same ammo type.

The Cyberdemon was also by far the toughest boss in the game. I didn't struggle nearly as much with the Hell Guards and comparatively the Spider was the easiest boss of 'em all. I was also impressed by the multiplayer. Not only was it a lot of fun but 5 years after release the online modes had a healthy playerbase, rarely taking more than 2 minutes for a queue to pop, even during off-peak times.

Doom (2016) is a tremendous game. A really fun experience. It extolls its excess and shoves the offensiveness in your face and down your throat. The game's violence so thoroughly jumps the shark that its hard to even be mad or critical of it. After five minutes the gore is hardly even shocking. All your left with is a very pleasing blast-em-up romp through claustrophobic arenas and quick-flick gunplay. It requires different tactics and strategies and gun switching in every level, and is always engaging. I'm excited to play the sequel.

Solid return to the franchise's fast-paced action roots after such a long period of no new games. The game got rid of the overbearing story, while also not compromising on building atmosphere, resulting in a sort of hybrid between Doom 3 and the original Doom games. The soundtrack by Mick Gordon cannot be understated, as it serves to make the numerous arena fights in this game all the more enthralling. In terms of graphics and visual style, the game achieves a far more believable and impressive futuristic style, especially in the look of the weapons. The weapons from Doom II return, along with a new powerful "Gauss Cannon." The weapons feel very good to use, with combat encouraging swapping between weapons of different ammo types to keep reserves up. Most weapons offer two choices for modifications allowing for different playstyles. The chainsaw serves the main purpose of giving ammo upon killing enemies with it. Occasional powerups found in the levels keep things interesting, with the "Berserk" powerup allowing you to decimate all enemies in your path. A new addition to combat is the "glory kill" system, allowing you to deliver brutal and satisfying killing blows to demons once they have been staggered by enough firepower. Most enemies from Doom II return, which look very cool in the new art style and pose very serious threats in combat arenas with their unique attacks and abilities. Enemies are a lot more agile and can be very devastating if you do not move around. Despite the need to move, mobility felt very lacking, especially after playing Doom Eternal. There is plenty of replay value, with many collectibles and challenges specific to each level. Higher difficulty levels can become very punishing. Arcade mode rehashes campaign levels and implements a scoring system with a multiplier. SnapMaps (custom maps) & Multiplayer allow for cooperative and competitive play, but are not really good anymore since the servers are mostly dead.

This is how you reboot a franchise in the most optimal way. It took everything that was great about the classics and adapted it to modern graphics and controls. It's so consistent despite being a very linear FPS that the gameplay itself is worthy of multiple replays just to satisfy that itch. There's definitely room for improvement in both the levels and combat though even if the new mechanics like glory kills fit perfectly with Doom's identity. Overall, a really solid arena shooter, reviving a franchise that fully deserved its second wind.

yeah i like it. this game is basically the idea of doom turned into a game. love the mix of modern aaa shooter mechanics and arena shooter stuff, didnt know i needed that from doom. the gameplay is a little sluggish in parts, maybe a bit too repetitive. og doom never let you think for a damn second, and this game is a bit less deep than those games and it gives you whole entire half minutes to think. so i think it could have done with some sort of extra aspect to replace the memorization-traversal of the old maps w/ the keycards/scrounging for ammo. otherwise this game is extremely hard to not like. its campbell soup chunky demon murder at a never before seen scale. you gotta dig it.