I believe it was Doom co-creator John Romero who once said that the plot of a video game should be like the plot of a porno—just enough there to give us some context but it doesn’t get in the way proper. Now, as controversial as such a statement may be in today’s world of Last of Us’s, Bioshocks and Witcher 3 and even as controversial a statement in the days of Final Fantasy, Escape from Monkey Island and Fallout, I can kind of understand what the man is getting at with that particular statement. Yeah it wasn’t exactly put the most elegantly—this is after all the guy who told the various teenagers of the 90s that he was going to make them his bitch because Daikatana was supposedly so damned good—I can kind of understand what he was getting at, at least in terms of FPSs, and id software’s games in particularly, was getting at. While there may have been games with plots back then—Thief, System Shock—most console games and FPSs tended to sell more the feeling of a world as opposed to a coherent, proper world. Who gave a damn why there were mind-flayers and satanic looking mother fuckers in the same place when they’re throwing fireballs at you and that missile launcher of yours isn’t going to fire itself.
But, as I mentioned earlier, I think that Romero’s sentiments could’ve been articulated better. For one thing, I think a better comparison would’ve been something to the effect that the plot of such games is like the plot of a good action or horror movie. It’s primarily there to give the main character a reason to punch, shoot, and generally badass their way through the story. That being said, there isn’t a reason that the story of an action movie necessarily be bad. Rambo to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon have great stories and great action, so what I’m saying is that you don’t have to sacrifice one just because you wanna focus on the other. I bring this up because I’d like to think that this is the approach ID went with when designing the most recent Doom game. Because make no mistake: the 2016 Doom game is fucking awesome. It manages to capture what Doom was all about while not only updating it for the modern era but also managing to sneak in something of a rather clever plot. Now, while folks might have been disappointed by the apparent new direction the game seems to have taken—the emphasis on verticality, the addition of pistol whipping, the glory kills—I was actually somewhat cautiously optimistic by what I saw in that fine trailer. And frankly, I can’t tell you how happy I am that to have turned out right. The combat feels just right, although it takes a bit of getting used to, feeling borderline slippery to someone who isn’t used to it. And while some of the weapons, like the pistol and plasma rifle feel kind of meh compared to the others, most of the weapons are satisfying as fuck to use. It doesn’t hurt that the weapons themselves can be upgraded not to mention have various mods attached to them. I was a particularly large fan of the super shot gun’s double-shot ability and the lock-on ability for the rocket launcher. It was fun to try and avoid baddies while dodging their attacks like I was Samus from Metroid Prime, and will probably one of the closest things I’m gonna get to a proper Prime experience. Speaking of jumping about, I loved the element of verticality that was added to the game. While purists might kvetch, I’d argue that it made things all the more frantic and also forces you to be much more inventive and creative with your moving about. Other little bits that’ve been added were the beautiful colors, the crazy updates they’ve made for all of the various baddies in the game not to mention secrets ranging from power-ups to levels from the original Doom All of that said, one of the best things about Doom is how it so internalized the idea of a plot being a non-intrusive element. Bits of lore are scattered throughout the world of Doom, and we get all sorts of discussions between Samuel Hayden and Emily Pierce about what’s been going on and how. We even learn the origin of this particular iteration of the Doom Marine himself. There’s a definite world there for those who want to explore it, but if you just wanna kill demons, that’s perfectly okay as well. There are a couple of nitpicks I have. The first few levels feel constricting and replaying them feels kinda pointless with the better weapons you get later on. Some of the adjustments you can get for you weapons can feel a little pointless. Why the hell would I need to fire my shotgun three times, especially when the game introduces grenades so early on. All in all, buy this game. It’s not perfect, but it’s a lot, a lot of fun which is a lot more than can be said than most of the product
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AuthorHello all and Welcome to Jacob's Latter. Here I will be giving my opinions on everything from movies, video games and books to my general outlook on the world. Archives
January 2018
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