As a shooter nu-DOOM is undoubtedly better than old DOOM, as a game though there's a lot missing. Sure old doom is a fast-paced game and there's a lot of vector-based physics to the gameplay, but equally important are it's level philosophies. Old Doom levels were expansive and sprawling, and even in some cases non-linear. Equally important to your shooting ability was your knowledge of the map, what routes to take and when, resource-management for the harder encounters, when to grab the secrets, etc. 2016Doom has none of this, and most maps are combat tunnel to combat tunnel to combat arena to combat tunnel. 2016Doom is a strong enough shooter that this isn't a big problem enough to really tarnish the game, but it does limit it's potential by quite a bit. You don't have to ape the old doom 1:1, and I appreciate id is trying something different with the franchise, but the maps feels like a step-back in an important regard without anything equally good to replace it.

zombies
black crows
big snakes
crack toads
puzzles
statues
ambush
trap doors
push that
push this
shoot that
shoot this
reload
next clip
cock back
shoot quick

God Hand is a defensive beat-'em-up. That's not to say you can't run up and attack enemies whenever you want (you can try), but the game's bread-and-butter is juggling and launching enemies into other enemies and you need counter-hits and whiff-punishes to do this. An enemy that's just whiffed an attack can't dodge/block anything you do during the cool-down, so that's a good time to get in a juggle-move. Anything landed as a counter-hit (when you land an attack during an enemy's attack during gaps in their combos or before the hits land) will carry its full launch-properties and max juggle-height over. You'll want to launch enemies too because you're not surviving crowd-fights otherwise. Your last option is guard-breaks, which are unreactable at the peak of the game's dynamic-difficulty. You'll have to fish for them instead, which is completely unviable outside of 1 on 1 fights. It's a game that rewards patience and understanding, and it asks you to pay close attention to learn its systems on your own and expects you to go to the lab with the training-dummy. In a word, the game is 'inaccessible'.

The game is also by no means perfect. It's plagued by myriad cheesy-strategies. There's nothing stopping you from cancelling High Side Kicks as you lure enemies over 1 by 1, nothing stopping you from using Roulette moves to skip entire encounters, nothing stopping you from abusing Chain Yanker and Yes Man Kablaam to be fully stocked on tension to be invincible as often as possible, but you'll only be souring the experience by doing so.

I'm giving it a 5/5 because I am absolutely the target-audience, but also because I feel like even with its resurgence in popularity among a small niche from recent exposure it is still not appreciated in full for what it is. It will not cater to those who like the freedom of expression of Devil May Cry and the scattered sub-genres spawned from that release, but it is one of the premiere action titles ever made.

I admit, I was a little worried that the game wouldn't be as good as I remembered. Fortunately it was as good as I remembered and in some places better. But at the same time it was also a little worse than I remembered..
To start the graphics are as good as I remembered. It's no doubt one of the most beautiful games on the PS4. Everything is wonderfully colored and shaded. The lighting is great. More than ever it feels like a Möbius comic.
The gameplay managed to be better and somehow worse than I remembered. It feels like a definite improvement over 1. It is genuinely a lot of fun to just move around and explore the world. And the other gravity modes add nice variety to the shifting. However I feel like Lunar and Jupiter aren't really used enough in game. The sidequests don't really use them and the main story rarely has you use them asides from dungeons and some boss fights. I wish you could get more mileage from these modes in the hub world and the sidequests because they really are fun ways to shift. I love moving like I'm in zero gravity with Lunar and I love how fucking powerful Jupiter is in combat. While the gameplay feels good, I know that it could definitely be better if the game actually moved in 60 fps.
The story was just about the same as I remembered. In that it has some pretty damn fine highs, and really bizarre lows. I will admit playing 1 definitely made somethings easier to piece together and it felt good to get a pay off for some of the mysteries set up in 1. However my main problem with the story is that it felt like 3 different plots were stabled together haphazardly. Chapter 1 is about classism. And Jira Phaga Lao nicely reflects that with it's vertical design. Chapter 2 is about the inevitably time and how we can only let it flow. That's cool. But how do we go from classism to that? And then Chapter 3 feels like the conclusion for the whole series. If this sounds somewhat nonsensical. It kinda makes sense... But only really if you're that dedicated to GR's lore. Still I did enjoy it. Flaws and all. Kat makes the whole thing enjoyable.
In case it wasn't obvious with how much I've written, I really care about this game. It came at the right place at the right time for me as a teenager. I'm so glad it holds up to me as an adult.

A game that absolutely excels in just about all departments . . . except the gameplay.

The music is charming as hell, the art style is fantastic, the sound effects are nice and punchy, the voice-acting is good with great commentary by Proops and Dimaggio, and it bares a lengthy campaign full of incredibly unique bosses! Too bad playing this game is not fun at all.

The arcade style scoring system is a nice little idea, but they do almost nothing with it, I can only sign post + trashcan + dumpster toss a single enemy so many times. It's such a weird, ham-handed way to add some sort of "style" to this rough hack-n-slash. I occasionally try to go back to this game to see if it's better than I remember, and am reminded the harsh reality every time I try. Why_are_you_booing_Im_right.jpg