So where do I begin with trying to describe this hellspawn of a game? To be honest I’m still trying to recover from the few hours of constant adrenaline  pumping around my body from playing. Doom is mental, and it does mental well. The game starts out swiftly, straight away putting a laser pistol in my hand to defend from the incoming flows of zombie-esque demons. It was safe to say from this point that Doom was going to be something special. And it really was.

If you’re like me and have grown up with PC games for pretty much your entire life, you would have come across the original Doom released in 1993. It was an absolute gamechanger, a first person shooter with no ability to look up or down. But even still, it was great. My father told me  when I mentioned that he should give the new one a try that he sunk an entire night and most of the next morning into finishing it. That’s where the nostalgia comes from.

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You will recognise the not so friendly faces of Doom’s universe. Demons from the original game that have had some kind of drug infused injection to seem more harmful and deadly. I mean I felt like these things were wanting to hurt me. They’re relentless, and there is a lot of them. Which is what makes Doom so cool. You have to be on your toes. There isn’t really much chance of getting lost navigating the levels, and although they look beautiful, especially if you’re rocking some decent hardware, they’re boring. However, as soon as you enter battle this feeling of dullness is completely forgotten. During downtimes there is the chance to hunt down secret locations. There are usually three to find in every single level, and some hold some pretty decent upgrade stuff. The others give you a small statue type reward of your soldier which is fine, but not really worth the extra time you’ll be putting into the shooter.

Doom has been improved since the original, now offering a more personal play style. These come in the form of upgrades to your gun and your armour. After all, you are fighting the demons of hell. Gun upgrades for example come in the way of firepower. Your shotgun, which I personally love, has the ability to be able to charge three shots to fire in one go, or to pump an explosive towards an enemy. The heavy machine gun, if upgraded the right way can fire out tiny missiles as bullets to really give the enemies something to run from. Although they don’t, ever. Give me a break God Damnit!

Doom’s violence, of blood and guts gibs flying from enemy stomachs also come in the form of Glory Kills. These can be activated once you have stunned an enemy with a swift melee attack. You gain some potential rewards for getting kills such as health and ammo but for a glory kill you’re always given an influx of health. This gives you a want to be in the centre of the fray all the time, even if you are on a very small percentage of health. It incentivized you to be daring rather than that cautious guy in the corner. +

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There is also a multiplayer mode which comes with a variety of Team Deathmatch and Domination game modes. Nothing really new and exciting here unfortunately and can really be compared to every single other multiplayer shooter out there. You fight to win, the more kills you get the higher chance of that win. That’s it. There are different loadouts you can customise yourself through a ranking unlock system, and it’s nice to see people’s body armour colour schemes, but it’s not exciting. There is a chance to step into a demon’s shoes though if you pick up the right enhancement from the ground, and that can be fun for a while. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still exciting and extremely quick, but it’s not different to what we’ve already seen time and time again.

There is a mode called Snapmap, a template driven map editor where players can produce their own arenas. Whether this is for competitive or co-operative, there are already large amounts of maps being released by players online. This gives Doom’s multiplayer huge replayability in a sense that everything you will be downloading is different from the last, however small or large. Co-operative horde type modes are usually a go-to for me, so I am super happy there is the ability to defend your arena with your friends.

Doom is exactly what it was back in 1993, a run-and-gun shooter. There is no difference, and it can get quite tedious and boring very quickly. However, the harder difficulty models does spice up your gameplay some what. Multiplayer is extremely standard but again, with the implementation of Snapmap’s custom level designs makes it feel fresh. I must say I did enjoy my time with Doom but once I complete it I can’t see myself really returning.