Gaming review: DOOM

(Bethesda Game Studios)
(Bethesda Game Studios)

Warning: Video contains images that may disturb some viewers.

It's dark, fast and brutal. If you're in the mood for some mindless digital slaughter, the latest DOOM remake is here for you.

DOOM encourages you to get right into the action. You can recover health by crushing an enemy's skull between your hands, you can recover ammo by shredding them with a chainsaw.

Pleasingly, the chainsaw doesn't automatically clean itself when you put it away. That blood is here to stay, for a while at least.

But I mean it when I say it's mindless.

DOOM is fast-paced but it's routine. Your surroundings change, but that's about it.

You circle, shoot, go for the melee kill, keep circling, shoot, throw a grenade just to spice things up, circle some more. Occasionally there's some jumping.

There's no precision, no stealth, no caution. Just blast and you'll get through it.

And the plot -- it's very slow to start, and it feels like it was shoved in at the last minute, as if DOOM was being play-tested and someone said, "Hey, don't we need to have a reason for all this?" It may have been done intentionally for "mystery" but to me it just felt irrelevant. I'm killing all these demons from Hell, sure. Why? Doesn't matter.

The subtitles are frustratingly small and it's a good thing the controls are mapped pretty standardly, with only a few exceptions, because every time it tried to tell me what to press I just couldn't read it.

Technically, the graphics were good. I didn't glitch through a floor or door or wall, which is always a bonus. No stuttering.

If you're a player who likes picking off enemies one by one, ducking and dodging, aiming precisely, DOOM isn't really the game for you. The same goes for if you place emphasis on the driving plot, or enjoy puzzling things out.

But at the same time, everyone has those moments where you just need to digitally blast things. You need to admire the shimmer of video game blood on the window, and the crunch when you rip off a demon's arm before you beat him to death with it.

Bethesda made a good call when they made DOOM's slogan "Fight Like Hell", because if you're going to get through it, you need to.

DOOM is a good enough game for sure, but not one I'll go back and replay.

Three stars.

Newshub.