Biggins Plays: Doom Campaign

Hello everyone, my name is Biggins and now I’m doing Doom again.

Sorry , it’s been a wee while since the last episode of whatever this nonsense is. The last episode got some traction so there’s been a decision from the higher ups that we need a regular series which has caused some growing pains. Couple of the projects my editor suggested didn’t turn out right.

Brief leave of absence later, I’m here, I’m medicated. Nobody’s getting fired and I don’t have to play the fucking PS4 ZOMBI port anymore.

So here’s the thing; we talked last time about the Doom multiplayer and all the soiled nappies weeping about Doom’s relatively nondescript multiplayer experience. I mean in retrospect, I think we can all agree that it wasn’t really worthy of all the crying and the puked blood in the end, it was a pretty harmless addition to what I have always considered a predominantly single player experience. Come to think of it I don’t really understand why they bothered to show the multiplayer at all but anyway, in the end some of us had a good time, some of us didn’t. But now it’s time for the meat and potatoes. The headline act. The poster boy. Time to see if it was worth defending. Boys and girls, lets play some Doom.

So you wake up in a fucking sarcophagus and you’ve barely got time to check if they managed to render Doom Marine’s balls before you bust out of your chains and Begby your first zombie. This is a considerable departure from Doom 3 which took the Half Life approach of walking you through the UAC centre when everything was happy as Larry before all the fireballs and exploding nobodies. And folk didnae like it because it wasn’t Doom. Good news is that New Doom seems to agree with them. New Doom doesn’t fuck about.

You’ve leapt out of your helltomb in the buff and go to town on some shambling spastic completely starkers armed only with a pistol. It’s a six to midnight moment if you’re an anaemic little shit like me where you get to go Charlie Bronson within seconds of booting up the game the kind of opponents so evil you needn’t think about it. Unfortunately the pistol has got all the weight and punch of a gun that fires rude comment which unfortunately gets in the way of the power fantasy, but it isn’t long before Doom starts tarting its more deliciously gaudy and violent weaponry to shoot, burn, cauterise, explode and liquify whatever Demon scum happens to get in your way. In my opinion, however, all of this is only able to work because ID nailed the design of the Doom Marine.

The game makes it clear right from the fucking start that you became the most dangerous fucking thing on Mars the minute these poor lost souls managed to wake you up. Everything about the Doom Marine, the mechanics of his play to the implied characterisation of his actions and gestures screams power, rage, fury and the kind of contempt for life that’d make Himmler and Jeremy Kyle nod in silent approval. John Romero said back in the day that the reason the guys at ID never developed the Marine’s backstory is because they felt he was the player, the reflection of the players actions and intentions and consequently he was whatever the player needed him to be. Now obviously the whole’ tabula rasa fps hero’ has been done to death now, but these guys in my opinion are allowed to adhere to tradition because, well, they started it in the first place.

What I love about what they’ve done is that a degree of personality is actually communicated by the Marine through the way he interacts with the world outside of the combat. Obviously he’d be the bodily manifestation of rage during the fighting but it also extends to his actions outside of combat. At the start of the game at least, the Marine shows an utter contempt for the NPCS and major plot figures throughout the game. You could argue that its a result of his rage at the figures responsible for unleashing hell upon the UAC again, however I like to think (wanky comment incoming) that ID are making a not-too-subtle comment about contemporary story driven FPS’. The Marine takes every opportunity to interrupt, ignore and smash communications with major NPCS. It’s almost as though they are acknowledging that ‘look, you’re here to play a DOOM game, we need to stick the plot in there to keep the critics off our backs but we know what you want. And they’re right.Even the customary amount of plot they have in there gets in the way sometimes, especially at the end. Hell’s unleashed upon Mars, I don’t have time for you, Samuel Hayden, there’s hordes of demon filth pouring out of the maw of hell itself. Energy crisis, what? Give me a fucking gun and let me get to work.

And see when you go to work, boys and girls. My god. It’s breathtaking. Playing Doom is like taking a day job as the Grim Reaper after the Grim Reaper had just watched John Wick and Man on Fire. You fly around the map like the spectre of death, ascending the maps verticality, blasting beautifully animated monstrosities, smashing the weak ones with your powerful hands. I think we all thought the glory kills would get old. Games like RYSE and the new Castlevania have all taught us to be suspicious of the melee executions. Repetitive and slow kill animations that are watched over and over and over and over again have made cynics of all of us. However ID have incorporated their ‘glory’ kills into the combat seamlessly – a demon flashes blue when it is staggered and killing them with a melee attack grants health. The animations are satisfying, varied and, most importantly, quick so they rarely feel like they interrupt the flow of your wrath. I read somewhere that the design philosophy of Doom was based around the concept of a 30 second loop of gameplay – 30 seconds of killing, leaping, executing, looting – that made up the core of the games appeal. This thirty second loop needed to be satisfying and varied enough to keep players interested in repeating throughout the completion of the campaign. I think there’s something honest and quite amazing about recognising that purity of essence in a games design and prioritising the realisation of that concept over adding any superfluous features extraneous to Doom’s pitch. Kill a lot of shit and make it feel good.

Something that feels equally as satisfying to the combat is the exploration side of things, which I
absolutely did not expect. The maps in Doom often reveal themselves to be wide, sprawling and complex which gives the game plenty of excuse to hide extra goodies, collectibles and upgrades squirrelled away in the nooks and crannies of its level design. If that kind of shit isn’t your bag then I understand, it usually isn’t mine however Doom incorporates this side of the game into the design so adeptly that I honestly recommend you give it a try. Doom circumvents a lot of the problems that plague the secret and exploration segments of other games with some smart design elements; the 3D map also displays how many secrets there are still to find, you can upgrade your suit to highlight collectibles on the map and the controller will vibrate the closer you are to a secret.

Actually finding the goods becomes incredibly satisfying due to Doom’s pacing and the sensible incorporation of the games verticality – mantling and vaulting is quick and easy. Something i really appreciate is the use of colour cues in the game – the saturated yellows and reds of Doom’s landscapes mean any colour contrast really stands out. This is actually used a design feature – There’s normally green lighting of some kind on a usable ledge which can help lead the player without ever explicitly telling them where they need to go. The game doesn’t stop the flow to tell you to watch out for these cues, you just start to internalise them as you play, incentivising you to explore the maps geometry and solve the puzzle of how to reach certain inaccessible areas. I heard the term Conveyance used to describe this concept in a Sequelitis episode and i really like the term. Doom has shit hot conveyance. The games gives you all the tools to make figuring it out easy, without spoon feeding you a highlight reel like many other triple A releases.

Honestly, I could go on further but I’m already starting to waffle so I’ll summarise the remaining points I’d like to cover that i think can be communicated succinctly whilst still doing them justice. Enemy variety? Top notch. Pacing? Exquisite. Characters? Boring, though I get this weird feeling they are supposed to be. Lore? Passable but for the most part irrelevant. Bosses? Bit disappointing on normal. Replay value? Well I completed a 100% completion run on normal and the first thing I wanted to do after the credits rolled was to play it again on a higher difficulty.

Big question: is it a worthy reiteration of Doom? In my opinion it absolutely is. It’s a surprising, elegant and well executed example of why simple doesn’t mean stupid. Top marks ID. I knew you fuckers had it in you.