Ah, DOOM.

A little history about my relationship with this game: I've been watching the development of this reboot for years. When the first attempt was abruptly cancelled/retooled/tossed out a couple years ago, i was devastated. "We were so close!" i shouted at my screen, it silently glaring back at me with the news that it would never see the light of day. A few years passed, and we started seeing some action in the news outlets about the game. FFWD to late 2015: the first MP beta reports came out -- "so mediocre" so many of them said, I resigned Doom again to a very sad sideline, the "maybe for $10" pile. It stayed there until after the open MP Beta, and still feel like the MP is going to need some retooling or Snapmap fixes to get to a point where i'd want to play it.

That said, DOOM -- the single player game -- is perfectly in line with what i expected in some ways, better than i expected in some ways, and a little disappointing in some ways. There are hordes of demons, just like the original two games, and the way things have been brought to feel modern has been done with just the right touch to make it still a game about speed, made more complex by a little bit of move variation and the need to use your guns strategically.

On the negative side, the main complaint is the inability to completely mod maps like the original game. It's amplified by the fact that the original was so easily modifiable, and was so popular with modders -- even I had some success as a mapmaker back then. What DOOM 2016 gives you in comparison is meager support for modding, if you can even call it that. Snapmap is a sandbox with very high, very thick walls to keep anyone from going beyond the game's allowable changes, but it is still versatile for what it is, and i hope that the versatility will expand beyond this to allow custom textures, structures, enemies, or anything else the community is hip to change. Until then, the mod community may not even touch Snapmap, but if you're curious there are several long videos out already that show what you can do with it.

Greater capacity for mods would have made this game a 100% for me. That said, i'm still completely satisfied with my purchase. This is after being on the fence right up until i saw the Vulkan API demo that was posted just a few days before release. Very glad i didn’t let the sadness of the MP beta color my hope for the game overall, though like i said, it is possible that has even been made palatable with a couple basic tweaks, either by the devs or soon to be implemented by a crafty snapmap creator.

The right way to play Doom is to make it feel challenging right from the start. The highest difficulty you can try before beating it presents a decent challenge. Level, AI and enemy design have been tuned so tightly that you literally cannot be still once the demons start spawning into your area. No reloads, and no way to sprint either (good limitation, turns out). The first thing you'll notice after this, if you're playing it on the right difficulty, is that there is a definite rhythm to combat. BTW yes, movement feels much better in SP, speed seems tweaked, or maybe it’s simply that i’ve upped the fov to 120.

Believe it or not, this is a skill-based run through hell. Failing to read the environment, or sneeze, or blink a little too slowly will definitely result in death. As soon as the demons warp in they are on your location instantly & very good at predicting where you’re moving, too.

So yes, Doom is this ballet of finding the safe spot to turn, switch to rocket launcher to blast that big guy, switch to shotgun, jump down and crack a demon's skull open with a shotgun blast, to turn around toss a grenade as 3 laser-wielding demons spawn in, then dash down a hall to pick up health before the next shot ends you… you get what i mean. Circlestrafing didn't become necessary until the later levels, much like the original. The first few start with shamblers that barely move, but are soon followed up by explosive demons, and highly acrobatic ones that can hold onto high places and launch a deadly fireball with precise aim. Much of the level design is an alternating beat of an environment puzzle with mild platforming that feels great immediately against an arena type lockdown area where the rifts between hell and our universe are overlapping, clearing a bunch of dudes before heading back to moderate platforming and searching for powerups that will help you survive the next encounter.

It runs better than it looks on my 970, the ultra-level details are decent enough but the texture work varies from just "okay" to "really amazing", much like Rage before it. The texture (and shadows) setting beyond ultra is locked out by the game if it detects you have less than 5gb ram, so i guess i’ll have to wait til i get my new rig to see how good it can possibly look, but it does seem to run smoother than Rage ever did, and overall feels very polished. Can’t wait to see what the Vulkan patch brings as far as improved performance, too.

The SP level design is much more varied too, it feels like an extension of Doom 3 in a couple ways early on, like the way computers work and have fully legible screens on them throughout the UAC complex. Later levels cover where you'd expect, but the design and color palette expands and the artwork becomes more creative. So much of the sp campaign is perfectly polished from a gameplay standpoint - thankfully almost no out-of-game cinematics, and only a few unskippable in-game moments push the story forward. Catering to new fans, there is a rather robust set of lore you'll acquire automatically as you play the game, but you never even have to look at any of it if you don't want to. You have to remember from a publisher's point of view, they'd have to make a game that was not only great for the original DOOM loyalists of 23 years ago, but also palatable and coherent for those new to the series. A delicate balance, for sure, but i think id actually pulled it off in the least offensive possible way. Everything so far has been really entertaining, and I hope that the rest of the elements extend the experience, suppose this is the first draft of this review, as it is.

What i haven't yet seen blossom is the snapmap capability, perhaps too early to call that a reason to balk though. I haven't even gone there more than once on the first day, and opened up the editor just to see how it works. I hope to contribute to levels soon enough, but the challenge of the SP campaign has kept me occupied there in my free time this weekend... so far very little of it... but i know in the coming weeks i'll dig into that side, and even give the regular MP a shot again. Generally I do enjoy mp games, but i didn’t expect the MP to be the best part of this game. If Snapmap turns out to be versatile enough to make some new spots to fight through with some friends, then that’s good enough for me.

It's probably been mentioned - but don't buy this game explicitly for the MP. Like the original Doom that came to us way back on December 10, 1993, this game is primarily a single player experience. Thankfully nobody has to fiddle with a LAN configuration anymore to play the MP, but to buy this game FOR the MP aspect would be missing the meat of the game. If you want an amazingly high-polished, well tuned SP experience that will touch just a bit of the sentimentality and nostalgia you probably feel towards the series, this is your game. It does not follow in the footsteps of Quake 3 in the MP department, and only time will tell if MP becomes entertaining enough to enough people that Snapmap brings us more content.

Overall, glad i was able to look past the MP beta. The King of high speed demon slaughter is back.