It's ironic, I was one of the few who really wanted to play this game after that first E3 trailer, when everyone was shitting on it. And in all the following years I remained excited about it. Yet here I am writing a sort of negative review.

All these years, since it came out, I thought I couldn't play this game. Perhaps in 2016-2019 that was true, but then I never bothered to try running it on my next two laptops, as they were both low-end. And all these years I really wanted to. This was possible in the top-10 of my post-2015 wishlist. Was going through some of my old YT subscriptions recently and came across the Low-Spec Gamer channel, and there was a video on how to run Doom 2016 on below lowest settings, so I figured I'd try.

To my surprise it ran well on the near-lowest settings, even with FXAA on. Could get close to 60 FPS on the lowest, but I tweaked it to be closer to 30, but it was still a smooth experience, and my laptop barely even got heated. Gotta give props to Carmack. Whether he was involved with this version of the engine or not, I'm pretty sure it's mostly his technologies running under the hood. This is one of best-optimized games I've ever played. Of course id has always come through with cutting edge technologies, but technologies don't make the game, as it's been proven many times. So how is Doom 2016 as a game?

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhh...

I don't think anybody can honestly say that it's bad, but is this really the game y'all have been hyping like it's the next coming of Christ?

To start with the simple stuff: I enjoy the music, and pretty much don't care about anything other than the gameplay. Doom 2016 has no atmosphere. I don't care if people think Doom 3 was too much of a horror game, the direction in the first Doom created a sense of desolation and rising tension, with brilliant environmental storytelling and what could only be called setpieces by 1993 standards. The way it played with lighting and sound and the player's expectations. None of that is in Doom 2016. They just throw Pixar versions of Doom monsters at you like a meat grinder, with the visuals being so generic, they actually remind me of that budget cashgrab Alien Rage. Doom 1 and 3 each had a very distinctive and memorable look, while this game looks sorta like every other big budget action game.

I remember the devs talking about how the story in this game was designed to be optional. You're supposed to be able to ignore it, yet the game keeps locking you in rooms with talking head NPCs. At least in Doom 3 it was usually cutscenes that you could skip or optional audio logs and emails. But Doom 3 actually made you want to pay attention to the story, at least for a while, because it spent a whole hour building a sense of the place and its backstory. Here it seems the protagonist himself doesn't care much, then why should we? It seems the devs wanted to make an old school shooter, but were too scared to fully commit to it, so they just threw in some arbitrary bullshit story just because they thought they had to.

But like, okay, fuck all of that, as long as the gameplay's good, right? Well, okay, it is good, but it could've been so much better. The levels have these huge combat areas with two or more elevation levels, and you're meant to do a lot of platforming and (mid-combat) backtracking. This is unlike any other Doom game. The closest id game I can think of is Quake 3, an arena shooter. Needless to say, this kind of layout is heavily dependent on good AI (for the lack of human opponents) to make it work, and Doom 2016's AI just doesn't cut it. It's very easy to outsmart or even straight up cheese opponents. For example, in one level there was this gap that a hell knight could not jump over. Instead he was forced to circle around this huge chasm, which allowed me to snipe him out with my assault rifle, and then, once he gets close, just jump over the gap again. See, this wouldn't be a problem in any prior Doom or Quake games because they never had combat areas this big and with this much verticality.

Another gripe I have with the combat is that for a game that's so focused on pure gorefest, they give you a surprisingly small amount of ammo. Sure, you can upgrade it, but in the 2.5 hours I played, the upgrade didn't make a noticeable difference. And this is a big problem in an old school shooter, because it means you can't strategize properly. You can't rely on a certain weapon because you never know if you're gonna have enough ammo when you next decide to pull it out. As a result you end up just using whatever you do have a lot of ammo for, which removes a lot of gameplay depth.

And how could I forget the god-awful new shield-carrying enemy? These guys are easily the most dangerous and worse than the hit-scanners in Doom 3. Civvie was like "good thing you have a chainsaw", yeah, except you only have like 3 ammo for it (why tf does a chainsaw need ammo now?). In fact, Civvie's entire review was just him gushing over all the blood and gore and the "coolness" factor, completely glossing over numerous mechanical flaws.

Between the fights, you search for keys, which is a mechanic that was fine in the 90s, but by early 00s became obsolete. Some games have attempted it since, to varying levels of success. Doom 3 and Quake 4 did it so organically, you barely even noticed you were keyhunting. But Doom 2016 takes you back to the 90s in a bad way. In the 2.5 hours I played, I got lost 3 times. I thought confusing level design is something we have collectively moved on from, a relic of the past, but no, here it is still, in 2016.

And, just as with a story, it feels like the devs' insecurity forced them to add a bunch of upgrades, side-quests, challenges, a compass and a 3D map, which I can't make heads or tails of. What is it, Doom or Elder Scrolls? Every time I pressed Tab, I just felt overwhelmed and left. There's just too much unnecessary stuff for a game that claims to be old school.

Finally, for an old school FPS with such a focus on verticality and exploration, it's really weird that they don't let you save. Not only because it's just convenient, but also because in games like this you often find places that make you wonder "can I get there?" Normally in those situations I quicksave and make the leap, but without the ability to save my progress, I'm not going to risk my life, knowing I might have to replay an entire battle or two. I don't really understand why the feature is not in the game, other than this was designed for consoles. This would also explain the weapon-selection wheel, which is an absolutely useless features on PC, where you can just press the associated number on your keyboard, and it's much faster and more convenient than the wheel.

Despite all my criticism, however, I do think that Doom 2016 is a pretty good game, if only due to its gameplay alone. It's just that I can name like 10 first-person shooters off the top of my head that are infinitely better. I mean, forget giants like FEAR and Quake 4, even budget fan-games like Selaco (at least from my early impressions) are better than Doom 2016 in terms of gameplay, and that's not comparing the other aspects of these games. In this day and age Doom 2016 is just mediocre and unremarkable.