So you have survived the children of the night, and dark depths of a man’s search for the answers of life and death, but now my dear readers, it seems that the demons of Hell itself have come for us AND ITS TIME TO MAKE THEM SCARED!

As you recall from my review of the original game, Doom is the first person shooter. But yet despite being the very image of the genera it hadn’t had much of an appearance in the genre. Doom 3 had more a survival horror angle that many people felt strayed too far away from the rocking action of the original. But an interesting thing happened during the making of this game, they realized that (yep they scrapped the original design because they realized it just wasn’t Doom, good).

In an age where what we had was cover shooters and modern war style shooters all trying to keep things “realistic” or had regenerating health by staying in cover, the new doom had you dash out at impossible speeds to rock music blasting demons apart with an array of weapons that would make the terminator look tame before finishing them off potentially with the gory as hell glory kills. So yes it completely does away with the perceived current idea of what a first person shooter is right away in favor of being a damn fun game (your fighting demons in hell I’m not going to care about language right now). This is very well executed and is applied to how the story of the game is implemented. Never once are you removed from the first person perspective and see your character talking about why he kills demons. His actions say it all. From every movement he does he clearly comes along as thinking “they did it again…” when looking at the people who try to justify opening a portal to hell.

In fact your character who is refered to as the Doom Slayer by the demons (yep the demons have a nickname for you, he’s that badass) has quite a history which is entirely optional for you to look up. He has no reason to have his intentions spelled out. His actions say everything, but he’s also not some emotionless figure as a moment when picking up a collectible allows him to have a little fun giving it a bro fist. But that lore that is optional for you to look up isn’t some dull stuff. They put a lot of work explaining how that happened in this setting and the creatures you have been taking down in awesome fashion. Basically the plot comes down to:- demons on Mars, go kill them but you can look up why there are demons on Mars if you want but it’s clear the Doom Slayer doesn’t care as he’s seen it so many times.

Playing this game you do get the feeling that they looked back at what made people love the original and updated it for the modern age. Secrets for you to discover- check (in fact you can find complete remakes of the original levels in this game) dashing continuously while never going tired – oh big check. Demons exploding into puddles of blood or falling apart after killing them – oh much more than a check. There are so many ways to kill them. Gory kills reward you with more health and ammo than just a regular kill, or you could use your chainsaw the instant kill one (assuming you have enough fuel) and watch as you cut it up and mountains of ammo spew forth from the beast and of course the BFG treated as a separate super weapon from the rest of the arsenal.  But they also updated things like upgrading yourself and weaponry to make you even better at killing, of course you have to find secrets in the game to gain the ability to do so, so you’re rewarded for looking about.

The monsters both from Doom 1 and 2 are all back. All updated for the current age ( and all with unique gory kills for you to experience). There are a few new beasts as well. Often the game has you go into a sort of arena area which you then have to kill EVERYTHING THAT MOVES to continue onward. You may think that gets repetitive but I could never tire of seeing you tear off a demon’s tusk, spin it in your hand before stabbing it in the eye with it.

There is a multiplayer but I didn’t play that and frankly didn’t think it needed it. On single player alone this game is awesome. In a time when you have so many bland first person shooters all trying to be the same thing it was great to see this come out. While the original design tried to do that they actually realized it shouldn’t and instead be its awesome homage to why people loved this stuff back in the day while at the same time not coming off as leaching off nostalgia. Of course the super action gore means if you’re a little child you shouldn’t be playing this (in which case why are you reading this?) but for anyone who is the intended age or older this is a must have. A testament to what games should be, f*****g awesome fun.

Rating:     

By id Software; Bethesda Softworks, LLC – several, e.g. http://bethsoft.com, http://doom.com and so forth, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48629619