Most video games resemble a product where the sum of its parts is greater than the strength of each individual part. The best AAA games find a symphonic balance between strong narrative, distinguishing visuals, and enjoyable gameplay in a structure that is paced in such a way that there's a constantly alternating cycle. Shooters like Call of Duty are proof that constant gunfights can get exhausting or droll in repetition, while more story-oriented games are a great example of how long cutscenes or stretches of simplistic gameplay lead to a lacking interest and engagement in the game.
Doom is a game where the sum of its parts is worse than each individual part, or, frankly, one individual part. It's design is fairly flat and simplistic, like most shooters. There are two core components of the game--shooting, and traversal. Generally, every FPS follows this simple kind of design (although a few, like the Call of Duty games, might throw in an occasional stealth section). It works, right? You buy an FPS because you want to shoot a gun. You buy Wolfenstein because you want to kill Nazis. You buy Doom because you want to shoot the everliving shit out of small demons, large demons, and all the demons in-between.
Doom manages to elevate the shooting part of the shooting/traversal FAR above most FPS's. The past decade has seen a popular increase in cover-fire shooters that encourage cowardly play and overpowered weapons. Doom is certainly a reiteration of id Software's 90s FPS games and returns to the aggressive, fast-paced style of play seen in those games. You're encouraged to constantly move, especially as the threatening demons stalk you in this pseudo-pathfinding manner. Different demons are weaker to certain weapons as well, which encourages diversifying your gameplay style by constantly swapping weapons. Each weapon feels quite distinct too, and the spectacular Big Fucking Gun 9000 serves as a sort of "get out of jail free card" by dealing massive damage to every enemy in the room.
So...wherein lies the problem?
Doom never attempts to make the game interesting outside of the first few hours. Those first few levels are quite magnificent--new guns, new upgrades, amazing environments, and you're constantly discovering new enemies. But about halfway through, the game starts to lose that sense of innovation as its entire hand is shown, and you're forced to choke down several more hours of dreary gunfights. It suffers the same issues that most other FPS campaigns do--exhaustion and lack of interesting, engaging gameplay. Walk to the waypoint, shoot demons, walk to the next waypoint, shoot demons, rinse and repeat. It gets so repetitive that you can easily identify shooter arenas before you even enter them. Arenas are also particularly uninteresting. There are a few areas that experiment with verticality by making multiple-level arenas with quick ways to cross them, but most arenas are just self-contained loops with a few pillars and elevated areas containing health, armor, and ammo drops.
The game really suffers with the emphasized upgrades and side content system. Little runic challenges are scattered throughout the maze-like levels that promise upgrades, and upgrade tokens can be found for both your weapons and armor. Luckily, on easier difficulties, these upgrades are completely unnecessary, but they get more challenging to work around on higher difficulties. That traversal side of the shooting/traversal mentioned earlier becomes extremely exhausting and dull as you find yourself circling corridors trying to find some random dead body that has a keycard on it to move onto the next level. After the 6th or 7th mission, you've found everything the game has to offer and the game limps along for an additional 5 hours.
I never thought that a game like Doom could be described as "boring" but...yes, it is boring. The core gameplay is fun but my interest in it waned as the game progressed. Most shooting encounters didn't feel like intricately-designed, sprawling arenas, but rather dreary rooms with a small suite of grunt enemies and, say, one or two larger enemies. Even the boss fights are a snoozefest, with easily-dodgeable attack patterns and large hitboxes that you can rail against with a few different weapons until they die. While Doom may have been innovative and amazing back in the 90s, there's nothing that heavily distinguishes this game from the horde of uninteresting FPS's for me.
Doom is a game where the sum of its parts is worse than each individual part, or, frankly, one individual part. It's design is fairly flat and simplistic, like most shooters. There are two core components of the game--shooting, and traversal. Generally, every FPS follows this simple kind of design (although a few, like the Call of Duty games, might throw in an occasional stealth section). It works, right? You buy an FPS because you want to shoot a gun. You buy Wolfenstein because you want to kill Nazis. You buy Doom because you want to shoot the everliving shit out of small demons, large demons, and all the demons in-between.
Doom manages to elevate the shooting part of the shooting/traversal FAR above most FPS's. The past decade has seen a popular increase in cover-fire shooters that encourage cowardly play and overpowered weapons. Doom is certainly a reiteration of id Software's 90s FPS games and returns to the aggressive, fast-paced style of play seen in those games. You're encouraged to constantly move, especially as the threatening demons stalk you in this pseudo-pathfinding manner. Different demons are weaker to certain weapons as well, which encourages diversifying your gameplay style by constantly swapping weapons. Each weapon feels quite distinct too, and the spectacular Big Fucking Gun 9000 serves as a sort of "get out of jail free card" by dealing massive damage to every enemy in the room.
So...wherein lies the problem?
Doom never attempts to make the game interesting outside of the first few hours. Those first few levels are quite magnificent--new guns, new upgrades, amazing environments, and you're constantly discovering new enemies. But about halfway through, the game starts to lose that sense of innovation as its entire hand is shown, and you're forced to choke down several more hours of dreary gunfights. It suffers the same issues that most other FPS campaigns do--exhaustion and lack of interesting, engaging gameplay. Walk to the waypoint, shoot demons, walk to the next waypoint, shoot demons, rinse and repeat. It gets so repetitive that you can easily identify shooter arenas before you even enter them. Arenas are also particularly uninteresting. There are a few areas that experiment with verticality by making multiple-level arenas with quick ways to cross them, but most arenas are just self-contained loops with a few pillars and elevated areas containing health, armor, and ammo drops.
The game really suffers with the emphasized upgrades and side content system. Little runic challenges are scattered throughout the maze-like levels that promise upgrades, and upgrade tokens can be found for both your weapons and armor. Luckily, on easier difficulties, these upgrades are completely unnecessary, but they get more challenging to work around on higher difficulties. That traversal side of the shooting/traversal mentioned earlier becomes extremely exhausting and dull as you find yourself circling corridors trying to find some random dead body that has a keycard on it to move onto the next level. After the 6th or 7th mission, you've found everything the game has to offer and the game limps along for an additional 5 hours.
I never thought that a game like Doom could be described as "boring" but...yes, it is boring. The core gameplay is fun but my interest in it waned as the game progressed. Most shooting encounters didn't feel like intricately-designed, sprawling arenas, but rather dreary rooms with a small suite of grunt enemies and, say, one or two larger enemies. Even the boss fights are a snoozefest, with easily-dodgeable attack patterns and large hitboxes that you can rail against with a few different weapons until they die. While Doom may have been innovative and amazing back in the 90s, there's nothing that heavily distinguishes this game from the horde of uninteresting FPS's for me.