"Doom" Review

The original doom way back in the day is considered to be the father of the first person shooter. Regardless of whether you enjoy them or believe they are the most generic, dumb games on the market (I tend to go back and forth on that position), Doom was one of the first and it was definitely the first one to attract the kind of attention that modern FPSs attract.
Oh, and I never played it.
That is right, if you came here hoping to get an informed opinion from a veteran Doom fan, you are not going to get it. This review is mainly meant for folks like me: people who have never played Doom before and wanted to try out Bethesda's reboot. This review is for the folks who are thinking about getting this game but don't know if they'll like it or not.
Did I like it?
Well, let's find out.

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I suppose I will start this review off talking about something that matters very little in Doom: Story and Characters. Neither of these things are very good. However, it never took away from my experience, so I won't be counting off for it.
Basically, you play as the Doom guy...I think. Having not played the original trilogy, I know nothing of the lore, so I don't know who you play as. Regardless, you play as a guy that likes to break things and kill things and doesn't do what he is told to do. That is all there is to him. From there, the only other characters are Olivia Pierce (the "villain"), Samuel Hayden (The corporate guy who talks about making sacrifices but isn't technically the villain), and Vega (the AI). They do their jobs in this story, so they are definitely functioning characters, but that is really all there is to say about them.
The story is pretty basic as well, as should probably go without saying at this point. You have been awakened from your slumber because the evil sci-fi corporation harnessed the power of hell to solve the energy crisis and now a faction of the evil sci-fi corporation has started to worship the demons or something. It is painfully cliche, but admittedly it works in this context. Enough about the story and characters, though, because I know that literally nobody came to this Doom review to read about that.

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Lets get right to the meat, then: Gameplay. Those of you who are veteran Right Trigger readers will know that I tend to be mixed on fast-paced gameplay. I enjoy fast-paced gameplay when it is handled like Uncharted or Bloodborne, where there is some balance and some degree of elegance and thought. I do not, however, enjoy past-paced gameplay when it is handled like Bioshock: Infinite, where it is just mashing the right trigger or r2. By now, anybody who has seen anything from the new Doom knows that it is fast-paced. So, which of the two fast-paced methods is it?
I'm happy to say that it is, in fact, the former.
Here's the thing folks. I'll just come out an say it. I've never had so much fun with gameplay in my life. That may sound like an exaggeration, and I'll be the first to admit that I often overexaggerate when it comes to my enjoyment of any game, but take my word for it here. Doom is the most fun game I've played. It isn't the greatest game of all time, don't mistake me, but in terms of just sheer raw fun, there is none better than Doom.
So, what is it about the gameplay that makes it so good?
Well, to be fair, there is very little time to actually think about it while it is happening. Doom is a game that demands that you constantly move. If you stand still even for one second, you'll be overwhelmed by enemy attacks. Unlike in most games, every second that you are in combat in Doom you will be doing more than one thing. If you are aiming, you will also be moving. If you are hiding from enemy fire, you will still be moving and gunning down the smaller, faster enemies that you'll have a hard time escaping from. Doom's gameplay is about as "in the moment" as it gets. You don't do any planning, you just go off of instinct, and depending on your judgment you will either succeed or die.
The things about Doom's gameplay that really makes it stand out even once you start thinking about it, though, is its incredible sense of balance. Doom is an old-school game (as it should be). What this means is that there is a good old-fashioned, non-recharging health bar, there is no weapon reloading, and there is some degree of reliance on powerups. This does wonders for the already break-neck pace of the combat, as hiding behind a wall for a few seconds will do nothing for a drained health bar, and really, aiming for the head won't cause a giant enemy to die instantly. For some, this will be a negative, as your health bar will get drained very frequently and you will often find yourself low on ammo once numerous boss-level enemies appear. However, this is where that great sense of balance comes into play. This will take a few paragraphs to fully explain, so bear with me for a moment.
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First, there is health. Like I mentioned, you will be drained of health quite often in Doom. However, Bethesda added in a system to put some power into your hands. This system is called a "Glory Kill." Basically, you get an enemy low on health and they will start flashing blue and yellow. When that happens, you run up and melee attack them, and you regain some (not a lot, but enough to get by) of your lost health. There are often weak enemies wandering the battlefield who do no real damage and can be killed in two hits, and they are there for this exact reason. I may not have been entirely truthful when I said there was no strategy involved in Doom gameplay. There is, in fact, some degree of strategy involved here. These weak enemies are typically there for you to glory kill when the time comes. Most encounters int he game will throw as many as 5 boss level enemies at you at a time, and your health bar will reflect that quite often, but if you space out your killing of the cannon fodder enemies well enough, you can keep a steady flow of health replenishment going. It is a unique game mechanic that rewards you for actively engaging with the combat in tense situations, and actively engage, you must, because if you wait too long to glory kill an enemy, they will recover some of their health and you will have to whittle them down again to glory kill them.
Then there is ammo. You have a weapon inventory the size of Gordon Freeman's in Half Life 2, but none of these weapons carry very much ammo. Thankfully, though, when you run out of ammo, your weapon automatically switches. I can't think of a single time that I cared which weapon I was using. Basically, throughout my time playing Doom, I would run out of ammo and just use whatever the game threw at me. It was an absolute blast. I would run out of ammo, figure out what I switched to, and keep on shooting and running. What it means is that I didn't get to use my favorite weapon (the heavy assault rifle) all the time, but it did mean that I was forced to make use of every weapon in the game, and that is where the sense of balance comes through in the ammo and weapon aspect. Everybody has their favorites, but in the end, everybody ends up having to adapt to their situation.
If you run out of ammo for every weapon, though, it isn't the end. You also have a chainsaw with you, and when you kill an enemy with this chainsaw, the enemy drops a whole boatload of ammo for every weapon. This chainsaw is a one-hit kill, but it requires different amounts of fuel for different sized enemies.
If you are out of ammo, out of fuel, and are faced with an army of enemies still remaining, there is an option for you at this point as well, though it should be used sparingly. After all, you never know when you might face an even larger horde. This other option is called the "BFG" (which, if I'm not mistaken, literally stands for "Big F***ing Gun"). You shoot it and it destroys every enemy in its path, no matter how big it is (unless it is a boss). It is the weapon equivalent of a big red button, essentially.
Then, finally, there are the powerups. These are basically just temporary buffs that make life easier for a few seconds. Some of these include: turning your fists into one-hit-kills, moving twice as fast and doing everything twice as fast, doing quadruple the damage you already do, and invulnerability. Like I mentioned, these only last a few seconds, but they add another degree of nuance to the gameplay. You decide when exactly you want to use them, and there is some degree of thought involved in this decision because you never know when more powerful enemies will show up. Powerups are just another way that Bethesda gives you the option to turn the tide of the battle.
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Beyond the story and gameplay, Doom also sports some of the best graphics on a game to date and definitely the best graphics of any Bethesda game. In addition, with the exception of one fraction of an area, Doom maintained a smooth 60 frames per second my entire time playing it, which is phenomenal considering its Bethesda development. Unfortunately, these phenomenal graphics tend to render very same-y looking environments throughout the game. If you're not in an orange landscape, you're in your average sci-fi research complex.
There is really only one last thing that I would like to talk about, and that is the final boss. I won't spoil it for you, but it was quite anticlimactic. The bosses in this game are phenomenal, aggressive, and they test out everything you've learned from playing thus far. The final boss, however, had an attack routine far more predictable than any of the others, and it was just kind of an easy filler fight. Lo and behold, though, it turned out to be the last one. It was a lackluster little cough at the end of the roar that was the rest of the game.
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So, now I've talked at length about Doom, and it should be clear that I had a great time playing it. It has some of the best gameplay I've ever seen, and it has an old-school feel to it that the modern gaming industry would really do well to remember. However, Doom is not without its faults. It puts you through environments that look exactly the same far too often, and the final boss felt like a placeholder. When you look past the faults, you have a game that performs well 99% of the time, and you have a game that is worth playing even in that 1% where it doesn't.
For Doom, I will be taking off for the following:
Not much variety in the environments - .3
Lame final boss - .4

With that in mind, my final score for Doom is:

9.3/10 - Fantastic

Excellent work, Bethesda, excellent work.