Played on Gamepass - It's meh

[kannakamui.de]

I don't know. If the game wasn't called "Doom" but just something different I might think differently about the game.

The first thing that throws me off is the amount of story. When I think of Doom, I think about doing a satisfying demongenocide and not endless storytelling.

The next thing is the Mecha and Dragon Scenes... They don't fit in and are just bad. The mecha can't do anything inpactful. It just feels like a slow version of yourself with no or minimum weapons. The dragon is badly designed to move. Instead of clean up and down movement you can only "boost" up and down. The stages for these two also look absolutely bad and extremely low effort. I do agree it's fun to e.g. walk through buildings but the looks of it still looks bad.

Same goes for many levels outside the main areas. Some levels do look really cool on their main areas, but walk off of these, e.g. to find secrets or try to find some healing because you're almost dedge and what do you get for exploring? Empty spaces, rushed levelparts... loveless.

Animations from non-main things are bad. The extremest example is before your get the mecha, you see a giant demon and a mecha-slayer battle it out and when the demon wins it turns its back to the player and slams his mace into the dead guy and the position of the weapon warps around like it was attached to something wrong or just manually frame-by-frame animated by someone who didn't want to.
There are MANY bad animations. Same with the feared humans all over the place. It feels like they all have the same 5 to maximum 10 animations that just look rather like a placeholder than anything for a 80€ game.

Next are the weapons. They don't give you the feel of BANG that earlier entries gave you. You just don't feel the satisfaction of using the super shotgun. Ya it kills medium sized stuff quick but neither the sound, animation, impact or enemyreaction gives you the feel of that big bang you had in earlier games.
In general all weapons feel the same when shooting them. Yes some have a few gimmicks and extra functions but they are all bland.
Same goes for the skins you can find. They are the most generic boring thing they could ever do. The skins you find in levels are just red outlines and a symbol. Rest of the weapon stays the same. They could have done cool skins, maybe even giving them "texture" in terms of making them look like they're made out of demons or even something silly would be nice but every single weapon the very same edit to the skin that's just some red lines? It does not feel rewarding at all.

Next is the Level Design. Some parts of the game do look cool but most of the stuff looks very generic. I loved it when you first saw the giant demon at the shore, it looked cool at first but everything around it? bland... Also we don't just have yellowpainting, we also have green and blue painting... There are MUCH more subtle ways to communicate to a player something. Same with keys. They have a 5 meter high holograph above them.

While I love minimaps, I hate it when they pre-show all secrets. How is it a secret if the secret now is in almost 80% in absolute plain sight and fully displayed on the minimap, making it not a secret but just a "okay, I have to go around this way or jump to that place from there" pre-planned from the minimap.
"But just don't use the minimap then" but that's where you are wrong. What I loved about the doom1/2 minimap so hard was it showed you where you have been and what you have seen and sometimes gives you a clue which is only visible from the smart level-design setup. But the newer games sadly pre-show everything. Also I have a bad short term memory so I really appreciate minimaps, as I would else run through the same part twenty times. We have accessibility options for everything nowadays but the option "Don't show secrets, secret areas, areas you do not have been too" is sadly not on there.

Next topic is the fightingsystem.
When I play a doom game, I think about: Start the game with a puny weapon, slay some demons to get the feel of it, find the first real weapon and then go more and more into a pure demon slaughtering machine and once everything is dead you either hop on into the next level or you try to find the hidden areas, secrets etc. You just kill, loot, advance.
Every demon above these fodder demons have their attack pattern that includes a stupid green-paint projectile that you have to rightclick to deal massive extra damage and is like at least 60% of the whole fighting system. Either to rightclick or dash into or away from green shots/attacks. So instead of mindless Demonhordevaporizing you are doing permanent quicktime events/rythmgame events. Also you gotta switch weapons not because "Oh big guy, I need something that hits big that would be a waste on small demons" no its "Oh this big demon has metal plating, I need to open up the menu (because melee weapons don't have a quick switch button you can assign) change from punch to flail, so I can slam off the metal plating, then open the menu again to switch back to fist, because my fist has an upgrade that will make him take more damage, but since I switched, I now need to wait for a green attack or time (if no punch-recharge lays around) to do that and then I can fully shoot the big one for effective damage.

That's not fun.

But what is doom now?
Have 70% of all demons be useless demons that are technically just tools for explosion or ricochet tool for effecst for weapons, they don't actually do anything unless you stand next to them...
Rest of the game is slapped in with dumb little "puzzles", green/blue painted stuff you need to shoot or use to jump, while you permanently do that stupid evade/parry green stuff while shooting stuff.


It's not a doom game. It's an action shooter with RPG Elements.
As a complete different and new franchise that advertises itself as an action shooter with rpg elements, I could see the game being something (still not for me as I dislike the the parry stuff) but using a franchise that is know for "Turn brain off and just shoot your way through cool levels" goes more and more into something completely different it rarely is rightfully doing so.
Don't get me wrong, I don't wanna talk it down for people who enjoy it, there is a lot of them that enjoy the game. I am writing this solely out of my perspective that plays doom since the very first one.

It just has WAY too many gimmicks and stuff taken from other games that currently/have been big in gaming and just added stuff because other games where big for that one feature. It's the same thing as PoE or Last Epoch putting in a roll because Elden Ring was big and everyone loved dodge roll in the game.

I am not sure if I will finish the game at all because of these things. The game definitely has its moments but for me they are too rare. Also the game really does not feel like a AAA title in a well established 30 year old franchise. It's feels like something an indie studio would make and slam out for 30-40 bucks. For that money it would probably a fair buy but not at 80... For that it lacks too much QA and is way too far off of what Doom is.

Sorry for the bad english, ESL...