July 2018 Playthrough - DOOM (2016)

[GrayGhost81]

 

PARTICIPANTS:
GrayGhost81 (host)
singlebanana
MetalFRO
Duke.Togo
Pam
zophar53
douglie007

CHECKPOINTS:
Week 1: July 1st - 7th - Finish the Foundary area
Week 2: July 8th - 14th - Finish Kadingir Sanctum (Hell) area
Week 3: July 15th - 21st - Finish Lazarus Labs area.
Week 4: July 22nd - July 28th - Finish VEGA Central Processing area.
Final Days: July 29th - 31st - Finish the game.

[Raidou]

dot hack?

[MetalFRO]

I'm in for this one!!!

[Duke.Togo]

I’m in for Doomy Doom.

[Pam]

Interesting. This is also CC's playthrough for September. I guess I will push forward my next playthrough.

[singlebanana]

Interesting. This is also CC's playthrough for September. I guess I will push forward my next playthrough.

Ah man!  I didn't even look at their schedule before we made this selection. Would have been cool to play a game on both sites again.

[ReddMcKnight]

Will there be Multiplayer Match-Ups too?

[GrayGhost81]

Will there be Multiplayer Match-Ups too?

I'd be willing to give it shot.

[zophar53]

Seeing as though this was my favorite game of 2016, how could I not sign up for this one. I'm in! I've already beat it on Hurt Me Plenty though, so I'll have to step it up to Ultra Violence.

[douglie007]

Doom... I'll do it

[singlebanana]

So I started playing two days ago and have made some decent progress in the game already (can't reveal my current location as it is a bit of a spoiler). As many of you know, I'm not much of a FPS gamer and even Shawn was surprised when I agreed to play DOOM (2016).  Not that I don't enjoy these games from time-to-time (I'm sure you'll hear about my history with these games), but I'd probably say that this genre probably ranks just above sports and racing games for me. Just a personal preference. Anyway, to the surprise of some and maybe even myself, I was really excited about starting this game. I saw that it made many of our site members best of year end list for 2016 and over the last few months, I had listened to a good bit of the soundtrack via YouTube, which (podcast spoiler), I love.

I have to admit, it took me a few levels to get used to the controls of DOOM, especially the aiming, but after that brief period, I found myself taking to them rather well. I feel that they did a great job with the button-mapping. While the game has some duck and retreat mechanics like its predecessor, I find that the more open areas of this game require a more aggressive approach, which I like a lot.  I'm not sure if this method applies to the more difficult settings, since I'm playing on "baby game for baby gamers" mode, so maybe some of the rest of you can chime in. Still, I find that even the easiest setting is pretty challenging and have died several times; I'm quite happy with this. I feel like the controls are very smooth and well-done, however, there are some platforming bits further into the game that are a bit annoying, though still, I never felt frustrated.  I had to reset my game once because I got stuck in a groove I couldn't get out of, but with the games nice and frequent auto-saving, I didn't have make up much progress at all.

So far, my favorite part of DOOM is the story.  I played the original, PC version of the game back in the day and honestly don't recall whether or not there was a story. Perhaps there was one in the instructions or on the box, but of course, these were the "Wild West" days of the World Wide Web, so I doubt my college roommate had either (*wink* *wink*). The story in DOOM (2016) is captivating and it's really cool that it begins right off the bat with you being strapped to a table, waking up with demons all in your grill, and having little to no idea of what is going on.  I'm really impressed with how this story is beginning to unfold and I love that your disgruntled character still has that gritty attitude that I remember from the original game. The use of holograms to tell the story in a very industrial way is really cool and helps aid in you being able to put what's going on together.  I often find myself chuckling (sometimes nervously) at their comments.  I have to say that I get some of the same feels as I did in Beyond last month, those "is the human race taking technology/science too far" sci-fi fuzzies.  I always like when a game makes me reflect on our present and this game surely does it. I have a sneaking suspicion that there is a twist coming...

The guns and upgrades are fun. I really like the variety and the enhancements. Suit upgrades are neat, but I sometimes question whether they really add much value. The Rune side quests are kind of lame to impossible, but I figure these are made for coming back to and replayability.  The enemies and environments look incredible!!....except for the shield guys, they are bastards. And finally.....GORE KILLS!  Wow, these are really nice and I really like how they differ from enemy to enemy. Brutal and fantastically fitting.

Alright, that's all for now.  I'll leave you one more item of interest: GORE NESTS! Love 'em.   

[MetalFRO]

I messed around with the game a bit last month and I must say, it's INTENSE! You're definitely right about needing an aggressive approach. If memory serves, Pam mentioned in her review video that you really can't stand still, and there's a lot of truth to that. I found that there were a couple places I could hang back and snipe demons a bit, but mostly, you have to jump into the fray and really just move around to avoid attacks. Also, you really need those glory kills in order to regain life, so you kind of need to be in the thick of it regardless, unless you can avoid any and all oncoming attacks. Hoping to put a bit of time into this game over the weekend.

[douglie007]

That must be my issue, I am getting killed a lot, but I don't run around much, I try and stand my ground.

[zophar53]

Yeah, staying mobile is absolutely vital to staying alive, especially in the later levels. The nice thing is that by using the glory kills to gain back health and the chainsaw to gain back ammo, it creates a gameplay loop where you get in trouble and close to death only to fix the problem by being aggressive. It takes skill and is nerve-wracking when things get hectic, but is very satisfying and feels awesome when you get into a good groove, especially with the neo-metal soundtrack in the background lol. It's nice to hear that even on lower difficulty levels it's balanced enough to allow for this.

The first time I played through this game it was on medium difficulty. Now that I'm playing it on the next one up, oof it's rough. I'm only on the 2nd level so far and have died a lot haha. I'm not sure if that's due to the game or me being out of practice. Probably a bit of both. I'm still having a lot of fun with it though. I think if the controls were not as well-structured or the combat not as well-balanced it wouldn't work. Tiny non-story spoiler, but there are methods you can unlock later in the game to speed up the glory kill animations even more (stick with those rune bonus levels. Not all of the upgrades you get from them are useful, but some are helpful later on. But yeah, they're too hard), so it gets even more frenetic. I didn't have much trouble with the platforming though. All the ledges that you can grab are marked with lights in some way, so between that, the double jump, and fairly generous ledge grabbing "stickiness," I rarely missed a jump unless it wasn't one that was intended to be made. The 3D map is a big help too in some of the larger areas where it can be hard to tell where you're supposed to go.

I love the story! Especially how the DOOM Guy doesn't really give a crap about any of it. He just wants to kill the demons haha. The demon logs are my favorite I think. I won't spoil them here, but they add some great flavor to things. Has anyone listened to the announcements going on over the loud speakers in the facility? They're so great. "Demonic presence is at unsafe levels." So, ummm, what would you call a SAFE level of demonic presence lol? And the flavor text in the logs is really fun too.

I'm glad people are enjoying this game. I still love it just as much as I did when it first came out.

[MetalFRO]

Holy crap this game is hard! I reached the Vega terminal and got the upgrade, which I opted to put towards max health. However, I have no more gas for my chainsaw, so the shield enemy in the next section takes me out fast. Is there another way to kill these creeps?