Member the games you used to play? We member. The basement at the Hardcore Gamer office has a section known as the Crust Room, with an old grey couch and a big old CRT TV. All the classic systems are down there collecting dust, so in an effort to improve the cleanliness of our work space, we dust off these old consoles every so often and put an old game through its paces, just to make sure everything stays in working order. We even have a beige computer with a floppy disk drive.
When the original Doom came out in 1993, it wasn’t the first first-person shooter, but it was the introduction to the genre to legions of players. It was so popular that many subsequent first-person shooters were colloquially referred to as Doom clones. Doom was considered the gold standard for the genre for a while, but the last main entry for a while was Doom 3 in 2004. That is until 2016, whenDoomfinally burst out of hell with a reboot. And so, a generation of gamers along with the aging original Doom fans were given a new opportunity to travel both to Mars and to hell in order to kill countless demons.
Doom: The Dark Ages Turns the Doom Slayer into a Dragon Riding Iron Tank
Doom and the Doom Slayer are back in Doom: The Dark Ages, taking players back in time to experience a medieval war against hell.
To Hell And Back
The story of Doom could serve as a cautionary tale as to what may happen if Earth’s energy crisis is not handled properly. The Union Aerospace Corporation (UAC) has set up shop on Mars. It is on Mars where they constructed the Argent Tower, which serves as a gateway to Hell, which is an excellent source of Argent energy. This is speculation, but it’s likely that environmental and religious organizations lobbied against the UAC to different international governments to prevent drilling into Hell in their country, which is why UAC had to move their operations to Mars. It really sounds like a lot of unnecessary effort, like how much danger potential is there from extracting energy from Hell compared to a conventional oil rig or windmill?
Apparently, these concerns did hold water, as a portal to Hell did open up on Mars, and all Hell did break loose, both literally and figuratively. But as luck would have it, there just happened to be a sarcophagus containing the Doom Slayer. The Slayer is awakened, and he happens to have his signature Praetor Suit, and once again he is ready to take care of the demonic threat. The mission given to the Slayer is to fight his way to the Argent Tower, take the express elevator to Hell and hopefully survive long enough to return to Mars.
…All Out Of Bubblegum
The gameplay of Doom is exactly what fans would have expected from a modern reboot of the ’90s classic. The primary objective is to not get killed by the demons, and the best way to ensure survival is by killing all of them first. The single-player companion has thirteen levels of carnage, which in addition to malevolent demons, includes branching paths that encourage exploration. Easter eggs that include references to previous Doom games along with other Bethesda properties are found hidden throughout the game, along with each level having a section that is a nod to levels in previous Doom games. A patch introduced an arcade mode, which allows the player to begin a playthrough with all upgrades unlocked.
Doom has always been known for giving the Slayer an arsenal of weapons and the reboot is not lacking in this department. The Slayer has a multitude of weapons, such as a Chaingun, Gauss Cannon, Grenade Launcher, BFG9000 (which we all know stands for Bio Force Gun) and the Chainsaw. The large assortment of firepower from the various weapons is the most practical approach to dealing with the demons in Doom, but the chainsaw has long been a fan favorite of the franchise. There’s just a certain feeling of empowerment in mowing down demons with a Chainsaw, making the Doom Slayer seem like a space marine version of Ash Williams.
It’s an example of a well done reboot, and one of the best first-person shooters of the past ten years.
Doomed Friendship
Doom is a great single-player experience, but the most popular first-shooters attain their popularity and longevity through multiplayer. Players can go online, choose a couple of weapons for their load out and enter into a variety of online battles. Team Deathmatch is the basic multiplayer mode that has been in many shooters before. Players squad up and hunt down members of the opposing teams. Freeze Tag is a more violent and more literal variation of the children’s game. Defeated players are cryogenically frozen until a teammate thaws them out. King of Hill is a fight for domination of a hill that moves about the map, where Domination is a similar mode except teams must capture and control three locations. Clan Arena is another team based mode where the winner is the last one standing and Soul Harvest is a mode where players collect the souls of their slain opponents.
One of the more memorable features of early Doom games was the level editor, which allowed players to create their own levels. This reboot continues the tradition with a feature called SnapMap, a tool that allows players to create and edit maps. This can be used for single-player levels, along with both co-operative and competitive multiplayer maps. Using in-game assets, players can create their own layout of enemies or rely on AI-generated enemies to make encounters more surprising.
Hell Of A Good Time
The reboot of Doom succeeded in what it was intended to do: recreate the classic demon destroying carnage of the original while appealing to the modern fans of how the first-person shooter genre has evolved. The details of the plot might seem contrived, but when someone is dealing with a Martian portal to Hell, a concern for realism is pretty much out the window at that point. The frenetic action of the high-stakes gunplay never gets old, but one of the real highlights of Doom is seeing monsters such as the pink demon, mancubus, cyberdemon and spider mastermind reimagined through the advancements made in graphics technology.
Doom (2016) is currently available on PC, PlayStation 4, Switch and Xbox One. It’s an example of a well-done reboot and one of the best first-person shooters of the past ten years. Doom is highly recommended to all fans of the genre. It has a sequel, Doom Eternal, and has a prequel, Doom: The Dark Ages, scheduled to be released later this year.
