Hm, it seems as though I haven’t played enough fps games…well I guess another doom game wouldn’t hurt. And anyway, I have ps plus and they always put some of the best games on their subscription service, just like Microsoft. I’m sure this is not just gonna be a pretty pissy version of half-life with a few things from doom shoved in there. Unfortunately, it was a pretty pissy version of half-life with a few things from doom shoved in there.

You play as ‘marine’ as you are forced to go through a research facility and destroy the demons from hell. It’s basically doom 1 again but with a hd lick of paint and…yeah. In fact, if you really broke it down…it’s basically half-life. You go through a big research facility, help certain scientists to proceed, and then have to go into hell to destroy the final set of demons. It’s not interesting in the slightest and it comes across as just ‘ooo what if we tried to do what half-life was doing’ and ‘let’s make the next big revolutionary fps game’ but it just doesn’t work in the slightest. Nothing about the plot screams ‘revolutionary’ and only feels like a very very big copy. Oh well maybe the gameplay can scratch my good fps gameplay itch…never mind.

So you have most of the weapons you had from the original doom games. You have the classic pistol, machine gun, shotgun, Chaingun, chainsaw, plasma gun, rocket launcher, and the bfg. And we have grenades as well I guess. The weapons aren’t necessarily bad but like, let me explain it simply. So in the original doom games, you would be stuck with the pistol if you died at points. Now, even with the pistol, it was still a pretty good weapon. In doom 3? If you even kill one enemy with the pistol after a few levels I’d be impressed. The game just makes the earlier weapons feel completely unusable and pushes you to use more beefier weapons which is great and all…but the ammo runs out very very quickly. So whether you like it or not, you are gonna have to use some earlier weapons.

The level design also feels very uninteresting. Remember the differently coloured keys you got in the earlier doom games which would open up doors to new areas? They stuck out quite a lot when you were playing and felt just as important as your weapons and health/armour upgrades. What’s the more ‘realistic’ replacement for those? The most basic pieces of dog shit I’ve ever seen. You now have these crappy little entry passes which are the same coloured and don’t stick out like they used to. They aren’t even put in interesting places, they are, 80% of the time, put on a control panel next to a body and it just feels…lazy. When you were playing the original doom games they would be given to you in an interesting place which you usually had to solve a small ish puzzle to get to. Here it’s just, blast a few enemies and it’s right there. Earlier doom games had smart levels, doom 3 has the dumbest things I’ve ever had the pleasure of sitting through. It’s not even like it didn’t have the potential to have some good level design. There was one level which actually really felt like a classic doom level. Whereby there was a berserk orb and everything. But after that small glimpse of hope. The game just began falling very very flat.

By the time I got half-way through, I was already getting extremely bored of the same old gameplay and shitty story beats. The only thing I can truly say is pretty good about the game is the lighting. For an original Xbox game it does have some impressive lighting. But, lighting is not gonna carry the shitty gameplay, weak and boring plot, basic music (if there even is any), and repetitive enemy designs that just make me lose it. They could’ve done something really good and they just decided to piss on what was a great and meaningful franchise.

Terrible story, ok ish gameplay for a little while, barely any music that sticks out, good lighting?, repetitive enemy design, no interesting mechanics, fuck those skeleton pieces of shit