Doom

Released on November 10, 2017 for the Nintendo Switch by Bethesda, developed by id Software and ported by Panic Button, Doom features an updated take on the frenetic, hyper-violent, first-person-shooter action of the 1993 original.

Yep, it's Doom. You run around and annihilate demons with gigantic guns and a chainsaw. There's not much more to it than that, and there shouldn't be. Oh, but you're a Nintendo console owner? Everyone knows they just make games for babies. No Doom for you.

You can have Super Turbo Turkey Puncher 3, instead.

Just kidding. That's never been true, and it's certainly not true here. This newest Doom game, titled after the original, came out for all non-Nintendo consoles in 2016, and it seemed things would stay that way, not because the game is too dark and violent, but because Nintendo's upcoming console, the Switch, didn't seem powerful enough to run it. Thankfully, Panic Button, a game developer who makes ports, as well as original games, strongly disagreed with these notions of impossibility. They have very competently taken Bethesda/id's graphically intense game to a console with a 6.2 inch screen, that you can play at Panda Express while standing in line for your Kung Pao Chicken. Or on your living room TV screen in the comfort of your own home, though what Panda Express customer doesn't want to hear demon death squeals over the whirring sound of a chainsaw? It beats the sounds of kids arguing over mom's iPhone!
Yeah, Doom on the Switch doesn't look as good as the PS4 and XBox versions. It also isn't tethered to your living room. For a version of the game you can take anywhere, Doom looks and plays damned great, with only small graphical downgrades (slightly less detail, slightly slower frame-rate), and the main mission mode of the game intact. I played through it, surely causing as much violence and mayhem on the screen as anyone, and the game only noticeably slowed-down from the carnage twice. The only times I myself slowed down was to look at the beautifully hellish landscapes id created for Doom, which may be THE MOST METAL GAME OF ALL TIME.

The Umbral Plains!

Yep, according to the game's graciously minimalist story, some idiots have again opened a portal between hell and a Mars science base. It's up to the player, as the Doomslayer, to bounce back-and-forth between worlds, fires burning over red, rocky plains, waterfalls of blood pouring down infernal mountains, as they destroy the demonic hordes and close the link between worlds yet again. Expect dead, mutilated bodies everywhere, ridiculous, over-the-top violent scenery, and satanic imagery strewn about the landscape. But hey, like I told my mom back in 1993, I'm KILLING the demons! They're the BAD GUYS!!! And kill them you will. Oh, you will kill them. Back in my day, first-person shooters didn't just allow you to just hide while your health meter steadily regenerated. You had to run straight ahead and annihilate anything in your path, picking up health and ammo along the way. Doom encourages this, and frequently reminds the player throughout the game that sitting makes you a duck in a field where even the grass eats ducks.

 

Sitting definitely didn't help these guys, though bonus points on the hardhat. Also, dibs on the hardhat.

However, this is a modern game, and modern gamers expect more than shoot, shoot, reload, shoot. While I'll never whine about straightforward, "No time for a long tutorial," gameplay, I appreciate the care and thought that has gone into Doom's finer details. The game is full of stuff to collect, and RPG-like upgrades for its main character. Find each level's weapon-mod robot, and you can learn mods for the game's many collectible weapons. Kill enough bad guys, and you earn points to level up those mods. With mods, you can do things like turn your shotgun's shells explosive, fire a giant, nail-like bolt of energy from your Gauss Cannon, or zoom in with your assault rifle. The game's varied weapons are awesome enough as they are, but the choice of which guns to mod adds layers of strategy to the game without slowing it down(in real-time gameplay, mods can be activated at the touch of a button). The player can also find upgrades for their experimental marine armor, as well as increases to their health, armor, and ammo count. There's hidden stuff everywhere. Even though the large levels are refreshingly straightforward, plenty of chances for exploration are presented.

Right now, I'm exploring the contents of this undead's skull.

That the game rewards both going straight at enemies, and exploring the terrain is extremely satisfying, resulting in a very well-rounded experience. There are even hidden "rune challenges," where players must complete difficult tasks. These include taking out a large number of enemies within a short time limit, or completing a task with a minimum amount of ammo, and their completion gives access to special abilities, like having faraway health or ammo fly toward the player. Thankfully, while the player can find boxes of health and ammo, there are more up-close-and-personal methods of receiving the two. For instance, shoot a demon til he's near-death, and he'll begin to glow. Run up to the dying fiend and tap a button, and you'll perform a glory kill, which is a hilariously over-the-top melee attack that generally rips your foes to bits...and rewards you with health. Even better, find a chainsaw, which has limited, but rechargeable fuel, and you can carve directly through your foes, and be rewarded with weapon ammo. Yes, if you do something awesome, this game rewards you, and doing something awesome in Doom is fun (Unless, I guess, you are a Satanist, in which case, the fun things in this game might be a little awkward for you..."Sorry, Satan, it was just a video game, I didn't mean it, honest! You know I'd never chop your minions in half in real life!"). The fun-factor, coupled with this game's delightfully sick sense of humor, is a win-win situation.

Except for for this guy.

Backing up all of those awesome things is the sweet, double-bassing chug of a death-metal soundtrack by Mick Gordon that somehow makes a game whose any random screenshot could be a metal album cover even more metal. The game's score even has some epic choir singing and minor dubstep-references thrown in for good measure. Adjoin that with some nice ambient moments to soundtrack the game's few quiet sections, and high quality demon-roaring and bass-thick gun blasting sound effects, and you've got aural bliss (Again, unless you are a Satanist. "I'm sorry, Satan, I promise I didn't derive any pleasure from the sounds of your legions' death moans!). There's also some excellent voice acting, with my favorite coming from a deep-throated demon historian, who gives the player snippets of the past Doomslayer's hell-razing deeds. I love when a game gives a sense of how much horror its protagonist has instilled in their enemies, like the space pirates scribbling terrified screeds about Samus on the walls in Metroid Prime 3.

The only thing on these walls is gonna be demon guts. Also, the BFG is better than ever in this game.

Doom's main 13-level mission takes about 15 hours to complete. It isn't easy, and newcomers to Doom or the genre will certainly want to play on the kindest of the game's three difficulty levels. Once the game is beaten, the player can always go back to any level of their choosing and collect all the items they missed the first time. The game's story can also be more fully explored by collecting data entries (there are about 1 billion of them), which makes for a lot of surprisingly detailed reading for those who care. There is a multiplayer deathmatch mode, as well, though a level creation mode present in the game's other console editions is missing. Admittedly, for someone my age, with limited chances to play video games, and with a desire to play a game for 20-30 hours, complete it, and move on to the next, I didn't find myself missing it.

Hey, buddy, WHY SO BLUE?!

A few years ago, I read David Kushner's excellent Masters of Doom, which chronicles the daddy-issue-addled lives of John Romero and John Carmack, the creators of the original Doom. If anything embodied the LOUD AND IN YOUR FACE element of the mid-90's it's the work of that duo. Those guys would love this game.

SCORE: 9.0/10