Tonight we dine in hell!
Respecting the past while raising a fresh kind of hell
GAMING IS STILL a fairly young artform. As a result, it has a difficult relationship with its own history. No one’s going to remake Breakout in Unreal Engine 4 and charge $60 for it, but 23-year-old game mechanics can still be repackaged with a few updates, a massive graphical overhaul, and a new soundtrack from the crunchier genres of metal.
Yes, it’s still Doom. Red keys still open red doors, and there’s something nasty in the woodshed. The game that ran as a 320x240 slideshow on a 33MHz 386, but which you persevered with because it was so frickin’ cool, and these days takes up less disk space (2.3Mb) than the average web page. The previous game in the series, the survival-horror flavored Doom3, is 12 years old, recommended 128Mb of video memory, and ran on the original Xbox. Doom2016 brings things right up to date, with the latest version of the id Tech engine, and a suitable bump in recommended specs, but leaves the gameplay rooted solidly in the ’90s.
This time around, the world’s worst renewable energy scheme has attracted the ire of Hell. We’re not sure if this is a comment on future energy security or not, but a Tesla Powerwall would surely have been a lot less bother.
Once again Mars has been chosen as the location. This leads to a samey industrial look to the early levels, and the game inherits Rage’s static world, a hallmark of previous id Techs’ megatexturing, where only enemies and explosive barrels have been imbued with physics properties. Fire your shotgun into a slumped body or pile of oxygen cylinders, and they don’t react in any way, apart from during scripted sequences when you open airlocks. There are plenty of smoke and particle effects, and entrails strung from the ceiling at least swing in a realistic fashion. Heading into Hell adds a splash of red to the proceedings, and a dash of imagination to the corridors and arenas—although it never really lets itself loose; possibly a condition of the engine.
But what a marvelous thing id Tech 6 is. Given the ridiculous speed at which Doomguy now moves—he’s faster than just about every demon in the game, something you’re encouraged to make use of—the engine has a lot to keep up with, and this explains the enclosed arenas and demons that come in efficient waves, rather than all at once. We didn’t notice any poor textures or frame rate chugging while playing on ultra settings, however, and there are special graphics options for those blessed with 5GB-plus of video memory.
As for the bad guys, every favorite from the series is back in one way or another, and some of them are a joy to unload heavy ordnance into, but can feel wasted thanks to the game’s tendency to funnel you into arena battles, where you’re locked in and can’t leave until you’ve shot everything. When a game’s idea of AI is for the monsters to either run at you or hang back and open fire, this can get stale quite quickly. We perhaps shouldn’t expect demonic hellspawn to have much in the way of selfpreservation instincts, but a little bit of flanking or fire avoidance, beyond climbing a pillar or jumping on a box and continuing to shoot, would be nice. The exception to this is the possessed security guard, with his
energy riot shield, who follows the tradition of all shielded enemies ever by being plain annoying to fight. GLORY BE! This season, the House of Carmack’s demons are looking a lot more Doom3 than Doom2, accessorizing a general gray and brown color scheme, with red fireballs, and at least one artificial leg. You’ll actually get to see them this time, because the game has abandoned Doom3’s aggressive shadowing, and the new Glory Kills bring them right up to your face, before ripping their arm off and beating them with it.
These kills, which have been a touch controversial in certain areas of the Doom fanbase, add to the formula by making melee strikes that don’t use the chainsaw or berserk pickup worthwhile, and precipitate a risk/reward choice by offering health packs in return. Get a bad guy in a position where he’s stunned and flashing, then move in for a punch, and a gory scene plays out. It doesn’t take long, barely interrupting the rhythm of combat, and there’s a decent mix of head-smashing, jaw-ripping, and stomping (for which Doomguy regrows the legs he’s missing for much of the game). Cannon-fodder enemies have been designed with this in mind, a useful top-up before you return to the larger blasphemous perversions of flesh and metal.
The other big additions are upgrades for both armor and weapons, adding additional fire modes and increasing your maximum health and ammo capacity. The arsenal (and presumably Doomguy’s holdall) has been expanded, grenades are now present (weirdly, they recharge once thrown), and the chainsaw and BFG have moved to dedicated buttons, as befits their importance to the canon. There is a handful of multiplayer modes that play like Quake, and then there’s Snapmap, a level design tool with which you can create areas with monsters, event triggers, and other game logic, before sharing them.
This may turn out to be where Doom’s longevity lives, as despite secret areas and multiple difficulty levels, there’s not a lot of replay value in the single-player game.
While not every game has to be Deus Ex, it’s easy to look at Doom in 2016 as unsophisticated. There’s a distinct lack of moral complexity, and no gray areas that aren’t metal walls. Blasting and chainsawing your way through the infernal legions is still frickin’ cool, however; the additions to the formula thoughtful, and the game’s speed remarkable. Indeed, it would be wrong to call Doom one-note because there are two: you’re either frantically shooting, or you’re not. This reincarnation of Doom could be the cleverest dumb game we’ve played all year.