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| Hell-tastic! |
STORY- Taking place decades in the future, you play as the Doom Marine as he wakes up in a research facility owned by the Union Aerospace Corporation located Mars. All hell broke loose when demons started attacking the facility. Naturally, it's up to the Doom Marine to shoot and kill as many of them as possible, while also uncovering the source of the outbreak. As you progress in the game, you'll meet different characters, all following their sinister agendas. While Doom Marine is mainly silent, I found characters such Samuel Hayden, the facility's director, to be interesting. The story is pretty straightforward: Doom Marine kills lots of demons and saves the day, no questions asked. However, there are hidden story logs that sheds some light on characters' history and events leading up to the game. The main focus of the game lies mainly in the gameplay itself, which we'll be getting into now.
GAMEPLAY- Doom is a fast-paced first person shooter. You control the Doom Marine as he advances through large liner levels. You'll be mainly killing waves of enemies and completing objectives given to you, and there's enough enemy variety to keeps things interesting. The Dossier, accessed by touching the touchpad, is where you can upgrade your "Praetor" armor and weapons . You can also view the map, mission challenges, and view acquired extras. The Doom Marine starts off with a simple energy pistol, but quickly makes his way up to the insanely overpowered BFG (Big Fucking Gun) I found the shotgun, one of the earlier weapons you acquire, to be the most effective weapon to deal with enemies, especially when you equip it with burst mod. Speaking of mods, each weapons has room for two mods, you can only equip one. They're definitely make going up against a horde of large and tough enemies to be less of a pain.
Rune Trails are optional levels that can be found hidden in many levels. In them, you're always against the clock. In some levels you'll have to kill a set number of enemies before time runs out or collect a number of items before time runs out. Upon completion, you're awarded with a "rune", a helpful perk for your Praetor armor. Finish more and more levels and to open more slots, which let's you equip more perks.
Doom also packs a multiplayer mode and a "SnapMap". While I haven't tried either of them, I'll cover them over. Multiplayer modes include: Team Deathmatch, Warpath (King of the Hill), Domination, and "Clan Arena" (Last Man Standing). In each mach, you gain XP in order to level up. You can use it to unlock skins, weapons, armor, and power-ups. SnapMap allows you to create your very own Doom levels, ranging from single-player to multiplayer. You can test your level before posting it online for other players to play as well.
PRESENTATION- Doom looks great thanks to the id tech 6 engine. Environments and character models are detailed and fit the hellish setting of the game. The animations are also fluid, especially the rather gory Glory Kills. The voice work is good, though nothing spectacular. On the other hand, the soundtrack is pretty sweet; the tracks nicely fit the tense and hardcore atmosphere of the game. During my playthrough, I came across loads of screen-tearing. It wasn't an issue at the beginning, but it became an annoyance later on. That and there was some severe slow-downs towards the end of the game when many enemies start to gang up on you. Fortunately, there is a 17 gig update that claims to fix these issues.
OVERALL- I've had a blast playing Doom. While the story is alright, the gameplay is the main attraction of the game. It's fast, frenetic, and fun. The presentation compliments the game well, thanks to the great visuals and soundtrack. Despite the technical issues that plagues the game, it's still a lot of fun. Doom is one of my favorite games of the year and I'd recommended it to those looking for mindless faced-paced action.
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