Doom 2016

Doom's modern return is the best kind of power fantasy.

Why

Why not

Impressions

This is very different to the games I usually play. Some of my favourites are Baldur's Gate 3, Divinity Original Sin 2, Slay the Spire and obviously souls-likes. All fairly slow paced, deliberate games with excellent story telling and characters. Doom does not have a story or characters. Technically they exist, but in reality they're plot devices which point you at the nearest group of demons in dire need of some murdering. Despite, or perhaps because of this, I really enjoyed my ~13 hours turning the population of hell into a fine red mist. Half-life may have introduced us to the idea games can tell a story, but Doom reminds us you don't need one if your mechanics are top notch.

Mechanics

Doom wants you to always be on the move. Levels are essentially (very nice looking) corridors linking arenas of hellspawn who'd very much like to put your insides on the outside. If you stand still for more than a second, they'll probably succeed in doing so. Doom incentivises you early into always pushing forward by giving you limited ammo and making enemies pinatas of supplies. Low on health? Better get murdering, most of the time your only healing drops explodes from the corpses of your enemies. Need ammo? Bust out your chainsaw, instakill some demon foolish enough to get in melee range and watch them turn into an ammo fountain. These are very video-gamey mechanics which make no sense, but Doom is not interested in making sense. Doom is interested in you killing many demons and having fun doing it.

Weapons/Enemies

You start out with just a pistol and the ability to elbow hostile demons, doors and plot devices to death. By the end of the game you'll have a rocket launcher, portable railgun, double barelled shotgun, the notorious BFG and more, plus their attendant upgrades. These are drip-fed to you throughout the campaign, just as you might be getting used to your current options, and can be modified to do things like fire homing rockets, gain power while aiming or spectacularly overheat, disentegrating anything in a general forward direction.

Enemies follow the same general pattern, starting out with your garden variety zombie standins and eventually scaling up to towering hell knights deadly at close range and still a major threat at range. They even get their own upgrades; turning translucent or creating hellfire where their projectiles land, further incentivising you to always be on the move. The only minor letdowns are the bosses, who provide a spectacle but are often more like annoying departures from the usual gameplay than unique challenges, with their empty arenas and gigantic health bars. They introduce some interesting new attack patterns to overcome, but I found myself treating them as an annoyance to be dealt with before getting back to the game.

Conclusion

Sometimes you just want to make stuff go boom, and Doom makes stuff go boom like few others. Go play it.