The return of an FPS legend. It’s about damned time
Powerful word, Doom. Not just in the literal sense of ‘ultimate, unavoidable, apocalyptic badness’ – though it is, to be fair, pretty hefty in that respect. No, all that aside, in videogames, few individual words carry a more sizeable amount of historical weight.
It’s the name of the FPS genre’s daddy. The meaty, monstrous, marvellous masterpiece that set first-person shooting alight in 1993, established new standards for weapon-values and multiplayer modes, and launched an industry-fueling mod scene to boot. So: quite a big deal. It’s therefore fitting that this new entry should go by a single-word moniker. Because this isn’t Doom 4, sequel to oddball horror experiment Doom 3. Nor is it Doom: Generic Reboot Subtitle, because Doom does not need to be replaced with a modern, tangentially-related tribute game. Rather, this is just Doom, in its very essence, as if made for the first time all over again. It’s a brand new game, the fabric of its body made to exacting 2015 standards. But by gum, does it ever have the same bold, bloody heart and delightful, dirty soul of 22 years ago.
What does that mean in practical terms? It means that there are some things you’re going to be doing a lot of in this game, and some things – things you might be very much used to doing in today’s first-person shooters – that you really, really will not.
Going loco
In the former camp, you’ll be predominantly moving. Movement is king. Developer id used that phrase a lot at Quakecon this year, and after a substantial hands-on, we can clarify that it wasn’t lying. Before shooting, before aiming, before even picking a target, you’ll be moving. Forward, back, left, right, over, under, strafing, jumping – all at an exhilarating, bafflingly fast pace. If you don’t, you’ll die.
The things you won’t be doing? Stopping. Hiding. Waiting behind cover. Crouching. There’s no crouch function in the game at all, because, in the words of Robert Duffy, id’s chief tech officer, “crouching just makes you a slower target”. There’s only one way you survive in Doom. There’s only one way you win. You fight. You take that fight to the enemy, and you push it hard in their faces from every conceivable angle. You fight creatively, and cleverly, and with thrilling acrobatic flair, and you kill every single thing you see until it bursts into a great number of very dead pieces.
Don’t start thinking that Doom is just another goofy, shallow, retro throwback gimmick; Kung Fury with mindless rocket-spam and extraneous Hellspawn. It might be anarchically, hilariously violent on the surface (actually, no ‘might’ about it), but underneath, Doom is an intelligent, intricate, very well-on-sidered FPS design. Its philosophy of “Push-Forward Combat” encourages relentless assault of relentless opposition, but it does so knowing that brains always make brawnth much more deadly.
Clever cleaving
The game’s maps are never less than layered, free-wheeling adventure playgrounds. They’re blood-soaked theme parks o tactical exploration – both vertical and horizontal – in which a whole new approach to an enemy, to an angle of attack, or to a line of defence, is just a hop, skip, jump, double-jump, ledge- mantle, and spinning, mid-air shotgun-blast away.
Imagine an FPS with the same outlook on environmental navigation as a Super Mario Galaxy or a Tony Hawk. Imagine a shooter with the same whirling, improvisational, moment-to-moment, free-flowing musicality as Halo, only moving at a pace, and with a level of aggression, that makes the Chief look like a sleepy part-timer yawning his way through a teenage Saturday job.
Imagine all of that with a vast bestiary of cleverly varied demonic opposition – each with a unique role, unction, and set of challenges to overcome – and a line up of the chunkiest, most tactile, most gleefully, creatively brutal firepower with which to deal with it all. Right now, you’re imagining Doom. And you’re imagining an incredible, exhilarating time.
If all of the above sounds off-puttingly tough, it shouldn’t. After testing Doom’s none-more-polished shooting via the baptism of fire that is multiplayer, it’s clear that the balance of demand and reward is stacked just right. Yes, Doom’s guns – from chargeable electro-rifle-cum-railgun, to rocket launcher, to plasma rifle, to iconic, Super Shotgun – require finesse and precision. Mindless spamming is discouraged by low rapid-fire damage, long health bars, and smaller explosive splash damage than you’d expect. But that just opens up fathoms of enthralling, break-neck strategy and giddy, on-the-fly, cat-and-mouse teamwork.
The speed takes a couple of matches to adjust to, but that just makes the sheer joy of moving so much greater, and rapidly boosts your tactical game. The shock realisation of what you’re physically capable of quickly increases the scope of your strategic imagination, encouraging you to try more, experiment more, and frag enemies in ever more unexpected ways. Doom is not a game that wants to oppress you. It’s a game that wants to free you of FPS shackles, in doing so opening up endless meadows of gory possibility.
Killswitch engaged
It’s great, and as yet we haven’t discussed any of the more subtle stuff. Like the way those triumphantly violent Glory Kill melee executions – initiated at close-range when a target is low on health – play so beautifully into encouraging Doom’s up-close combat conceit. Or how the rocket-slinging, flight-enabled Revenant transformation gifted by the demonic Pentagram can turn any match into an almost MOBA-like boss battle for the opposing team (with an instant turnaround, as the power-up is dropped upon a successful kill).
And still there’s more: the completely free selection of load-outs, bringing about utterly open, anything-can-happen strategy, balanced against a friendly learning curve. The personal teleport beacons, good for confusing enemies, escaping tight spots, and (probably) setting up cheeky telefrags too.
All told, Doom is a really big deal. It was then, is now, and on current evidence, will remain so for a considerable amount of time to come. David Houghton