The new Doom isn't "bad", but it is a repetitive slog.

[BrawlMan]

Hey, opinions are like ass holes, everyone's got one.

I like the game for the exact reasons you don't. I want to be circle strafing and running around arenas, ripping and tearing my way through demons.

Disagree that there's no sense of progression and maze-like structure. You're rewarded with upgrade points for your weapons to give them alternate fire modes and I found some of the levels very circuitous and maze-like, especially when trying to find all of the Doomguy figures and praetor tokens.

At the end of the day DOOM's gameplay loop is going to grip you or it isn't. Sounds like you prefer more open ended, story-driven shooters.

I agree with you. As for the original poster, I did not like Shadow Warrior (2013). The game felt too slow paced, and uninteresting. I would still SW take over COD and its ilk, but overall, did not appeal to me. Doom was faster and better paced than SW. The execution kills were quick and not different from the Zandastsu mechanic from Metal Gear Rising. At least Doom had more variety in Glory kills compared Rising 3/4 only animations for most enemies when performing an execution. There is even a rune you can get through challenges that makes the glory kills go faster. Sure that not as fast compared Serious Sam 3's, but that is not saying much.

Sure Doom (2016) is not as fast as the original, but it still speedy compared to majority of contemporary shooters released now and during last generation. And that I have no issues with.

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

At the end of the day DOOM's gameplay loop is going to grip you or it isn't. Sounds like you prefer more open ended, story-driven shooters.

I prefer Doom 64, which has barely any story and has level designs that are looping corridors with open areas. Doom 64 remains, for me, the best game in the series. Scary, vicious, and nightmarish. There's a constant sense of not knowing what is coming next - much stronger than Doom I and II, even.

Doom 4 is an extremely predictable game because the entire thing is built around a single formula that is repeated over and over again. The doors seal, you kill everything. Doom 64 has open areas where you have to kill everything, but they didn't build the entire game around it. A good FPS game has variety. It has pacing that goes fast and slow and everything in between. Doom 4 is a game where you finish one repetitive combat arena, walk down a short corridor, and the game presents you with ANOTHER repetitive combat arena followed by ANOTHER. The game seems to have no idea how to be interesting beyond "spawn in some more enemies." The game doesn't even really manage to convey a sense of exploring an alien world the way other Doom games did because you're constantly being interrupted by respawning waves of enemies. And exploration is often kneecapped by the game deciding to lock doors to force you to fight yet another respawning wave of enemies.

edit:
And Doom 3 was paradoxically a flawed game because it was also ridiculously predictable. Yep, a demon will spawn behind me. Just like every other demon that spawned behind me. Vents? Spider monsters will come out those. And so on.

Okay, I see where you're coming from kind of. Doom 4 is very much structured around its arenas for sure, but why is that "repetitive"? It's not as if Doom 1 & 2 broke up their gameplay with mini games or dialogue or story beats. Doom has always been repetitive. There are demons that you shoot. There are keycards that you pick up. It sounds like you're upset that in the new game you shoot demons in rooms when you wanted to shoot them in hallways instead. But how would shooting them in locations other than open rooms make the game less repetitive? Same weapons, same abilities, just in a more confined space. I think you're being far too generous to the previous games by highlighting their pacing and variety.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

Okay, I see where you're coming from kind of. Doom 4 is very much structured around its arenas for sure, but why is that "repetitive"? It's not as if Doom 1 & 2 broke up their gameplay with mini games or dialogue or story beats. Doom has always been repetitive. There are demons that you shoot. There are keycards that you pick up. It sounds like you're upset that in the new game you shoot demons in rooms when you wanted to shoot them in hallways instead. But how would shooting them in locations other than open rooms make the game less repetitive? Same weapons, same abilities, just in a more confined space. I think you're being far too generous to the previous games by highlighting their pacing and variety.

The pacing of earlier Doom games was largely controlled by the player. You moved through these levels at your own pace and killed all the monsters that got in your way. The Doom series has great level designs, traditionally. And these levels were organic combat arenas, where you fought monsters as you encountered them.

Doom 4 is a game where every major combat encounter follows the exact same course. The doors lock. The enemies start spawning in. Little ones firsts, a few bigger ones, and then bigger. You kill them all. The doors unlock. This happens over and over and over again. There is no sense of organic progression. The world is blatantly a series of arenas. It's this "Fight Like Hell" thing Doom 4 is trying to push. In order to try and make the combat "frantic" the game resorts to crippling the player's mobility by blatantly locking them in a small room, which is actually really ironic for a game that is supposed to be about player mobility.

In classic Doom games, you open a random door and you're staring four pinky demons in the face. You run backwards really fast, shotgun blazing. They come charging after you, and you try to navigate your way backwards through a normal environment.

Doom 4 is completely different. You will never open a random door and suddenly be fighting a big monster that comes charging through. Every single such encounter will take place in an arena that is 100% telegraphed and that follows the exact same formula as every other encounter. The best the game does is sprinkles a few monsters out in the open as you proceed through the corridors that link each arena. But the game has created a stark difference between "exploration" and "combat". The combat during exploration is always half-hearted. There's no real risk. It's just boom-boom filler.

 

[Cheesy Goodness]

Yikes, I couldn't disagree more. I think DOOM 4 is the best FPS to come out in a long time. Instead of listing out the reasons why I love it so much, I will direct you to the video below, which clearly describes what makes it so good to me. I think this a return to form for the series, because Doom 3 was a massive misstep.

<youtube=_uvbO3kLkgw>

 

[Dizchu]

Okay, I see where you're coming from kind of. Doom 4 is very much structured around its arenas for sure, but why is that "repetitive"? It's not as if Doom 1 & 2 broke up their gameplay with mini games or dialogue or story beats. Doom has always been repetitive. There are demons that you shoot. There are keycards that you pick up. It sounds like you're upset that in the new game you shoot demons in rooms when you wanted to shoot them in hallways instead. But how would shooting them in locations other than open rooms make the game less repetitive? Same weapons, same abilities, just in a more confined space. I think you're being far too generous to the previous games by highlighting their pacing and variety.

The mechanics of Doom have always been really simple, especially with the older games. The most important part is the level design which contextualises those mechanics, and seeing as I have played Doom for two decades (I'm 24 so yeah) and have never become bored of the core gameplay I think that says a lot.

I mean here are some screenshots of map packs:

Spoiler

Each one feels completely different despite having the same basic rules. The extremely limited nature of SnapMap means that Doom 2016 will never be able to live up to Doom and Doom II. At most it's probably a fun spin-off, a better one than Doom 3.

Whenever someone describes the original two Doom games as "repetitive" I really have to wonder how much attention they have paid to the level design. From what I've seen Doom 2016 has some good ideas but very limited theming when it comes to levels, and the arena fights being used as a crutch is admittedly something I'm not looking forward to when I eventually play it.

 

[Worgen]

Welcome to gaming in the days before cod. They tended to focus on doing one thing and doing it really well. Which doom does, but you wont find any sniper stealth sequences.

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

The pacing of earlier Doom games was largely controlled by the player. You moved through these levels at your own pace and killed all the monsters that got in your way. The Doom series has great level designs, traditionally. And these levels were organic combat arenas, where you fought monsters as you encountered them.

Doom 4 is a game where every major combat encounter follows the exact same course. The doors lock. The enemies start spawning in. Little ones firsts, a few bigger ones, and then bigger. You kill them all. The doors unlock. This happens over and over and over again. There is no sense of organic progression. The world is blatantly a series of arenas. It's this "Fight Like Hell" thing Doom 4 is trying to push. In order to try and make the combat "frantic" the game resorts to crippling the player's mobility by blatantly locking them in a small room, which is actually really ironic for a game that is supposed to be about player mobility.

In classic Doom games, you open a random door and you're staring four pinky demons in the face. You run backwards really fast, shotgun blazing. They come charging after you, and you try to navigate your way backwards through a normal environment.

Doom 4 is completely different. You will never open a random door and suddenly be fighting a big monster that comes charging through. Every single such encounter will take place in an arena that is 100% telegraphed and that follows the exact same formula as every other encounter. The best the game does is sprinkles a few monsters out in the open as you proceed through the corridors that link each arena. But the game has created a stark difference between "exploration" and "combat". The combat during exploration is always half-hearted. There's no real risk. It's just boom-boom filler.

I don't know man. This sound a lot like you described

https://youtu.be/_fPs7zp4jbI?t=1149

Obviously it's not quite the same as the previous games but some concessions had to be made to update the game for a modern audience. This is probably as close as we're going to get to that classic Doom experience. It sucks that you aren't enjoying it. I hope the game gets better for you.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

Yikes, I couldn't disagree more. I think DOOM 4 is the best FPS to come out in a long time. Instead of listing out the reasons why I love it so much, I will direct you to the video below, which clearly describes what makes it so good to me. I think this a return to form for the series, because Doom 3 was a massive misstep.

<youtube=_uvbO3kLkgw>

Doom 3 wasn't really a "misstep", though. Doom 3 was Doom as a survival horror game. It's a different genre to the other Doom games, essentially. It's a fairly decent game sabotaged by the fundamental repetition of its combat. Someone at iD thought it would be FANTASTIC if hundreds, even thousands of demons teleported directly behind you with a telegraphing sound effect. The game did it over and over and over again. As a horror game, Doom 3 feels clearly influenced by Doom 64, especially in terms of the soundtrack and the general vibe. But the game design flaws create a very repetitive and tiresome experience in the long run.

Additionally, people who think that Doom 4 is "old school" are very, very wrong. The game is almost nothing like Doom and Doom II mechanically. It's about as "old school" as Wolfenstein: The New Order. The video makes a big deal about health packs. Well, Doom 4 doesn't really rely on health packs in the traditional sense. It instead showers you with health items for killing enemies in something akin to a generic brawler game where smashing stuff makes enemies drop health items. The health system in Doom 4 is nothing like an "old school" FPS game.

Doom 4 is no "truer" to the spirit of Doom than Doom 3 was. The game is a wild tangent that feigns "old school" design while in fact being a blatant clone of the Shadow Warrior reboot that was not at all "old school".

I don't know man. This sound a lot like you described

https://youtu.be/_fPs7zp4jbI?t=1149

Obviously it's not quite the same as the previous games but some concessions had to be made to update the game for a modern audience. This is probably as close as we're going to get to that classic Doom experience. It sucks that you aren't enjoying it. I hope the game gets better for you.

You step through the door, which is a scripted event, and the door immediately locks behind you, locking you into a thinly disguised combat arena where you... yep, have to kill everything to make the "demonic presence" go away. The game blatantly locks you into a series of combat arenas. It's nothing like the free-flowing exploration of earlier Doom games. Even Doom 3 was more free-flowing and allowed more player freedom. It's more overtly linear and scripted than the average Call of Duty game in some cases, which is ridiculous.

I know WHY they're doing this. Because they can't figure out how to make exciting combat without restricting the player's movements heavily. But it feels like such a cop-out and makes the game feel overscripted and not really rip-and-teary.

And I don't think it's a bad game, I must emphasize that. I just think it has made some terrible design mistakes trying to translate Doom into a modern pseudo-retro FPS formula, and it could have been a significantly better, free-flowing rip-and-tear game that balanced action and horror.

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

The mechanics of Doom have always been really simple, especially with the older games. The most important part is the level design which contextualises those mechanics, and seeing as I have played Doom for two decades (I'm 24 so yeah) and have never become bored of the core gameplay I think that says a lot.

I mean here are some screenshots of map packs:

Spoiler

Each one feels completely different despite having the same basic rules. The extremely limited nature of SnapMap means that Doom 2016 will never be able to live up to Doom and Doom II. At most it's probably a fun spin-off, a better one than Doom 3.

Whenever someone describes the original two Doom games as "repetitive" I really have to wonder how much attention they have paid to the level design. From what I've seen Doom 2016 has some good ideas but very limited theming when it comes to levels, and the arena fights being used as a crutch is admittedly something I'm not looking forward to when I eventually play it.

Those levels look really cool. Admittedly, I'm not as familiar with the old games as many on this forum are. But, to be fair, the levels don't change the mechanics. Doom is a simple equation. Guns+Demons+Blood=Fun. Changing the window dressing doesn't change that repetitive gameplay. And I think that's a good thing. Get the gunplay stripped down to its purest, most satisfying feel and run with it. That's why I like the new Doom. Give me a space to kill demons in with a variety of weapons and let me figure out how I want to rip through them.

 

[Dizchu]

Those levels look really cool. Admittedly, I'm not as familiar with the old games as many on this forum are. But, to be fair, the levels don't change the mechanics. Doom is a simple equation. Guns+Demons+Blood=Fun. Changing the window dressing doesn't change that repetitive gameplay. And I think that's a good thing. Get the gunplay stripped down to its purest, most satisfying feel and run with it. That's why I like the new Doom. Give me a space to kill demons in with a variety of weapons and let me figure out how I want to rip through them.

Well, the level design is more than just "window dressing". Maps can be claustrophobic, expansive, short and sweet, long and drawn-out, they can encourage careful combat or outright slaughter. You have map packs like Congestion 1024 which purposefully restricts the size down to 1024x1024 map units and map packs like Vela Pax that have levels that take hours to finish. There's laid-back classic-style levels like the Doom the Way id Did series which seeks to emulate the original maps and absolutely ridiculous maps like Speed of Doom which require the kind of reflexes a bullet hell game would demand.

Give a few of them a try if you have the chance, they pretty much transform the entire game for me.

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

Those levels look really cool. Admittedly, I'm not as familiar with the old games as many on this forum are. But, to be fair, the levels don't change the mechanics. Doom is a simple equation. Guns+Demons+Blood=Fun. Changing the window dressing doesn't change that repetitive gameplay. And I think that's a good thing. Get the gunplay stripped down to its purest, most satisfying feel and run with it. That's why I like the new Doom. Give me a space to kill demons in with a variety of weapons and let me figure out how I want to rip through them.

Well, the level design is more than just "window dressing". Maps can be claustrophobic, expansive, short and sweet, long and drawn-out, they can encourage careful combat or outright slaughter. You have map packs like Congestion 1024 which purposefully restricts the size down to 1024x1024 map units and map packs like Vela Pax that have levels that take hours to finish. There's laid-back classic-style levels like the Doom the Way id Did series which seeks to emulate the original maps and absolutely ridiculous maps like Speed of Doom which require the kind of reflexes a bullet hell game would demand.

Give a few of them a try if you have the chance, they pretty much transform the entire game for me.

Thanks, maybe I will! I have Brutal Doom installed right now but never thought much to really dive deep into all of the wads and map packs and such. It's a shame snapmap is so limited. They just don't make them like they used to huh? Or rather, they sure don't trust their customers like they used to huh?

 

[shrekfan246]

At the end of the day DOOM's gameplay loop is going to grip you or it isn't. Sounds like you prefer more open ended, story-driven shooters.

I prefer Doom 64, which has barely any story and has level designs that are looping corridors with open areas. Doom 64 remains, for me, the best game in the series. Scary, vicious, and nightmarish. There's a constant sense of not knowing what is coming next - much stronger than Doom I and II, even.

Doom 4 is an extremely predictable game because the entire thing is built around a single formula that is repeated over and over again. The doors seal, you kill everything. Doom 64 has open areas where you have to kill everything, but they didn't build the entire game around it. A good FPS game has variety. It has pacing that goes fast and slow and everything in between. Doom 4 is a game where you finish one repetitive combat arena, walk down a short corridor, and the game presents you with ANOTHER repetitive combat arena followed by ANOTHER. The game seems to have no idea how to be interesting beyond "spawn in some more enemies." The game doesn't even really manage to convey a sense of exploring an alien world the way other Doom games did because you're constantly being interrupted by respawning waves of enemies. And exploration is often kneecapped by the game deciding to lock doors to force you to fight yet another respawning wave of enemies.

edit:
And Doom 3 was paradoxically a flawed game because it was also ridiculously predictable. Yep, a demon will spawn behind me. Just like every other demon that spawned behind me. Vents? Spider monsters will come out those. And so on.

Okay, I see where you're coming from kind of. Doom 4 is very much structured around its arenas for sure, but why is that "repetitive"? It's not as if Doom 1 & 2 broke up their gameplay with mini games or dialogue or story beats. Doom has always been repetitive. There are demons that you shoot. There are keycards that you pick up. It sounds like you're upset that in the new game you shoot demons in rooms when you wanted to shoot them in hallways instead. But how would shooting them in locations other than open rooms make the game less repetitive? Same weapons, same abilities, just in a more confined space. I think you're being far too generous to the previous games by highlighting their pacing and variety.

OP seems to want to be taken by surprise, and gives the previous Doom games more credit in that regard because... they had enemies prespawned in their maps, I guess?

I mean, I get that monster closets can be annoying, but you can just memorize the layouts/monster locations in the original Doom games and then... it really wouldn't be all that different. You're still just going from room to room killing everything in your path. I'm not sure I see much of a distinction in pacing between killing enemies that spawn vs. killing enemies that were there. Sure, you can just zip past most of the enemies in the older games if you want, but unless you're trying to do speedrun tactics why would you?

 

[Ambient_Malice]

Those levels look really cool. Admittedly, I'm not as familiar with the old games as many on this forum are. But, to be fair, the levels don't change the mechanics. Doom is a simple equation. Guns+Demons+Blood=Fun. Changing the window dressing doesn't change that repetitive gameplay. And I think that's a good thing. Get the gunplay stripped down to its purest, most satisfying feel and run with it. That's why I like the new Doom. Give me a space to kill demons in with a variety of weapons and let me figure out how I want to rip through them.

Well, the level design is more than just "window dressing". Maps can be claustrophobic, expansive, short and sweet, long and drawn-out, they can encourage careful combat or outright slaughter. You have map packs like Congestion 1024 which purposefully restricts the size down to 1024x1024 map units and map packs like Vela Pax that have levels that take hours to finish. There's laid-back classic-style levels like the Doom the Way id Did series which seeks to emulate the original maps and absolutely ridiculous maps like Speed of Doom which require the kind of reflexes a bullet hell game would demand.

Give a few of them a try if you have the chance, they pretty much transform the entire game for me.

Thanks, maybe I will! I have Brutal Doom installed right now but never thought much to really dive deep into all of the wads and map packs and such. It's a shame snapmap is so limited. They just don't make them like they used to huh? Or rather, they sure don't trust their customers like they used to huh?

It has a lot to do with id Tech 6, I believe. id Tech 6, like Frostbite, is not very consumer-friendly. It relies on huge amounts of prebaked data. In Frostbite's case, it's prebaked lighting data. In id Tech 6's case, it's prebaked texture data. (MegaTextures.)

SnapMap was one of the last things John Carmack was working on at iD before he departed and was replaced by Tiago Sousa from Crytek. (Tiago Sousa was lead graphics engineer on every game from Far Cry to Ryse.) The unfortunate aspect of this affair is Tiago Sousa's CryEngine was, and to some degree still is, an engine where what you see ingame, you can make yourself in a "what you see is what you get" editor. If Doom 4 had been a CryEngine game instead of an id Tech 6 game, we would likely have a proper map editor, or at least the possibility of one down the road.

iD Tech 6 remains, like id Tech 5, an engine which basically can't be modded properly because normal people don't have the resources to make Megatextures, or at least id Software isn't interested in making such tools available. This has been a problem ever since RAGE, and it's kind of sad that iD tech have abandoned the modding community that helped put them in their current position.

OP seems to want to be taken by surprise, and gives the previous Doom games more credit in that regard because... they had enemies prespawned in their maps, I guess?

It's more complex than that. Doom games did not feature a series of rooms where the exact same thing happened in every single room. Doom 3 went down that road, where every single time you rounded a corner a demon teleported behind you, and it was a serious mistake. In fact the "let's spawn in enemies in the exact same way every time" business is very much a Doom 3 trait that Doom 4 has inherited in a sideways fashion.

I mean, I get that monster closets can be annoying, but you can just memorize the layouts/monster locations in the original Doom games and then... it really wouldn't be all that different. You're still just going from room to room killing everything in your path.

You're killing monsters that are in actual physical locations. You're not wandering into a conveniently placed combat arena so enemies can suddenly spawn in. In the third person shooter genre, a common design mistake is to have corridors connecting open areas with a bunch of conspicuous waist-high walls that scream "Wow, there'll be a 'surprise' ambush here! Just like the other 30 'surprise' ambushes so far!"

I'm not sure I see much of a distinction in pacing between killing enemies that spawn vs. killing enemies that were there. Sure, you can just zip past most of the enemies in the older games if you want, but unless you're trying to do speedrun tactics why would you?

The problem is the game gets stuck in an eye-rolling, "Oh, great, another wave of enemies spawning in when the door magically locked because the "DEMONIC PRESENCE" detectors went off. Wow, this game really keeps me on the edge of my seat doing the exact same thing every 2 minutes for the course of several hours."

 

[shrekfan246]

Whenever someone describes the original two Doom games as "repetitive" I really have to wonder how much attention they have paid to the level design. From what I've seen Doom 2016 has some good ideas but very limited theming when it comes to levels, and the arena fights being used as a crutch is admittedly something I'm not looking forward to when I eventually play it.

I don't think it's fair to compare the base of DEUM to Doom/II + twenty years of community modifications. The base games aren't nearly as varied as all of those things you've posted, and obviously there's not going to be the same level of variety in a game that's less than two months old, regardless of how limited their map creator is or isn't.

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

It has a lot to do with id Tech 6, I believe. id Tech 6, like Frostbite, is not very consumer-friendly. It relies on huge amounts of prebaked data. In Frostbite's case, it's prebaked lighting data. In id Tech 6's case, it's prebaked texture data. (MegaTextures.)

SnapMap was one of the last things John Carmack was working on at iD before he departed and was replaced by Tiago Sousa from Crytek. (Tiago Sousa was lead graphics engineer on every game from Far Cry to Ryse.) The unfortunate aspect of this affair is Tiago Sousa's CryEngine was, and to some degree still is, an engine where what you see ingame, you can make yourself in a "what you see is what you get" editor. If Doom 4 had been a CryEngine game instead of an id Tech 6 game, we would likely have a proper map editor, or at least the possibility of one down the road.

iD Tech 6 remains, like id Tech 5, an engine which basically can't be modded properly because normal people don't have the resources to make Megatextures, or at least id Software isn't interested in making such tools available. This has been a problem ever since RAGE, and it's kind of sad that iD tech have abandoned the modding community that helped put them in their current position.

This is incredibly interesting, thanks for filling me in.

 

[Dizchu]

I don't think it's fair to compare the base of DEUM to Doom/II + twenty years of community modifications. The base games aren't nearly as varied as all of those things you've posted, and obviously there's not going to be the same level of variety in a game that's less than two months old, regardless of how limited their map creator is or isn't.

Let's compare it to Doom 3 that has had over a decade to make its mark. The modding community for that game pales in comparison. Doom actually wasn't released with a map editor, and the most popular ones (like Doom Builder) were only made because John Carmack released the game's source code. Maybe that'll happen with Doom 2016, maybe not.

What I can say however is that SnapMap is not a particularly great modding utility and hopefully it'll be updated in the future, but I have my doubts. That said, vanilla Doom and Doom II did have a large variety of environments, especially Doom II. There's a lot that you can do with those textures actually, and many modern maps don't diverge much from them.

 

[Cheesy Goodness]

Doom 3 wasn't really a "misstep", though. Doom 3 was Doom as a survival horror game. It's a different genre to the other Doom games, essentially. It's a fairly decent game sabotaged by the fundamental repetition of its combat. Someone at iD thought it would be FANTASTIC if hundreds, even thousands of demons teleported directly behind you with a telegraphing sound effect. The game did it over and over and over again. As a horror game, Doom 3 feels clearly influenced by Doom 64, especially in terms of the soundtrack and the general vibe. But the game design flaws create a very repetitive and tiresome experience in the long run.

Additionally, people who think that Doom 4 is "old school" are very, very wrong. The game is almost nothing like Doom and Doom II mechanically. It's about as "old school" as Wolfenstein: The New Order. The video makes a big deal about health packs. Well, Doom 4 doesn't really rely on health packs in the traditional sense. It instead showers you with health items for killing enemies in something akin to a generic brawler game where smashing stuff makes enemies drop health items. The health system in Doom 4 is nothing like an "old school" FPS game.

Doom 4 is no "truer" to the spirit of Doom than Doom 3 was. The game is a wild tangent that feigns "old school" design while in fact being a blatant clone of the Shadow Warrior reboot that was not at all "old school".

Doom 3 may have had survival horror in mind, but I don't think it did that very well. Mind you, I don't even hate Doom 3. My opinion of it has soured a little as the years have gone by. I just find it lacking in scariness and the guns feel very weak.

You also seem to have this massive affinity for Doom 64, which isn't bad either. Doom 64 is a Midway-developed, console-exclusive game that makes up for it slowness with tons of atmosphere. I also find it hard to keep playing that game because the abundant darkness and dreary music make all the levels blur together. I think it is neat for what it is, but nothing more.

In my opinion, I find DOOM 4 very much in the spirit of the older games, while not totally copying what Doom 1 or 2 did. It just adapts a few good things left from modern shooters, and kind of shamelessly steals some stuff from Brutal Doom. Anything that reminds of Brutal Doom is a-okay with me. I think the arena elements help make the combat feel frantic, in a good way. Killing things is completely satisfying, the movement is fast and fluid, and the glory kill system makes aggressiveness rewarding. I enjoying combing through the levels for secrets and love the verticality of areas too. If they were to make another modern Doom, I'm unsure how else they could pull it off so well. This may not have been what you were looking for, and that's cool, but it scratched an itch for me. The only thing that falters is the SnapMap system. It is a poor substitute for true modding.

 

[DarthCoercis]

While I do miss the neon greens and blues of Doom and Doom 2 (which I'm more than old enough to have played when they first released), the 2016 Doom has been one of the most fun games I've played in years, hitting both the nostalgia button and the holy-fuck-this-is-sweet button. No npcs ordering me around, telling me where to go and who to shoot before they'll open a door to let me progress? Fuck yeah.

Maybe I'm just way too old and am enjoying a game that's so similar to the type of games I grew up with too much, but Doom 2016 is, for me, the most fun game I've played since Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

 

[Skops]

I really have just two complaints about the new DOOM;

1) It's clear that due to technical limitations, we'll likely never see the enemy count of the Classic DOOM games again. I think I've seen up to 11 enemies on screen at a time in campaign, SnapMap only allows up to 12 enemies per room, and I think 61 total enemies per map. Pretty small in comparison to the old games where there were hundreds.

2) SnapMap sucks for making DOOM maps. It's fine to make gimmicky mini games like "Count to 10", "DOOM Fashion", and the piano keys.. But for actually making Maps that capture the feeling of DOOM, it fails. Even people trying to recreate E1M1 or E1M2 levels feel weird, disjointed, and overall poor.

Other than those, I think it's a fantastic game. Deserving of the praise and discussion about it.

 

[Zombie Proof]

I see where you're coming from OP. The game feels so damn good to play though that I don't really mind. The repetition is probably why I don't play it for more than a half hour at a time though. Don't need much more than that to get the cathartic release that I crave from it.

I also agree with you on Doom 64 being the best Doom all around. It kept the creep factor of the psx version of doom 2 and final doom and was was overall pretty amazing. In fact, I'm gonna dig out the old '64 and give that baby a spin over the weekend now.

The music in this new DOOM is also poop. I forgo the amateur sounding "you're not the boss of me/get out my room dad/jump metal" and replace it with some genuine bad ass metal when I play. The experience is so much better for it.