DOOM First Impressions Review + 1080p 60fps Gameplay

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TSC Gaming’s Fred Richani gives his first impressions of DOOM aka DOOM 4 from Bethesda. How does DOOM stack up to other first person shooters on the video game market like Destiny: The Taken King, Halo 5: Guardians, Battlefield 4, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 3? Find out! Note: Fred is a DOOM n00b and is reviewing this game on PC with a Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti video card with all settings on Ultra.

Specs:

• GPU: GeForce GTX 980 Ti
• CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K @ 4.00GHz
• Memory: 16 GB
• Resolution: 1080p, 60Hz
• OS: Windows 10 Home
• DOOM Settings: Ultra

Written Review

What’s up everybody? This is Fred Richani of TSC Gaming here to give you my first impressions of Doom 4. Well, technically it’s called Doom. Not sure why it’s called Doom when it’s Doom 4, but hey, go figure. The Doom franchise has come a long way since the early ’90s, when it revolutionized the first-person shooter genre, and this is one highly anticipated game.

Full disclosure, I’m a Doom noob. I played a little of the first three, but not much; I wasn’t really a PC gamer growing up, mostly console. Finally, I got to the point where I said, you know what, I need a big-boy rig, and I got myself a GeForce GTX 980 Ti. I was looking forward to at least attempting to run this at 60 frames per second with no issues whatsoever, and I’m happy to say it ran just fine at 60 frames per second, all Ultra. It’s a really nice-looking game, definitely the best-looking Doom game. What’s interesting is that it’s debuting on PC and on Xbox One and PS4 at the same time, so a lot of people like me, mostly on console I’d imagine, will be having their first-ever Doom experience. This is the first Doom game I’ve ever bought.

I dove in for a couple of hours, after playing a little of the multiplayer beta, and so far, so good. In the single-player campaign, I didn’t get my ass handed to me like I did in multiplayer, so that’s a good start. The Mortal Kombat-style melee effects are awesome. It feels like Mortal Kombat, where you go finish him and rip out a guy’s heart or rip off his head, whatever you’ve got to do. Meleeing is so freaking fun in this game. I have a tendency to shoot dudes in the head and then melee them; that’s how I play Destiny, one of my favorite first-person shooters. But in this game you have to be careful, because sometimes you get overwhelmed or a bit overzealous. Still, those melee effects look so freaking cool. The few guns I tried felt good so far, the level design is pretty nice, and the little voice acting I saw is pretty good, but the story itself hasn’t really gripped me yet. Then again, I’m assuming Doom isn’t really about the story. While the story lacks substance, it definitely has style, and at the end of the day it’s about the meat and potatoes, the gameplay, which has been pretty good and pretty easy to grasp, though not the easiest game for sure.

Where this game really shines or falters, depending on your skill level, is multiplayer. There’s a decent number of options: traditional Team Deathmatch, Domination, Warpath, Clan Arena, Freeze Tag, yes, freeze tag, only in an ultraviolent fashion, and Soul Harvest, where you harvest people’s souls. What got me interested before was becoming a demon. You mean I can become like Godzilla, or a reptilian King Kong, or one of those dudes from Independence Day, and wipe out dudes? Hell freaking yeah. Much like other first-person shooters, you can customize your loadout with an array of weapons and customize your character. But compared to a game I play all the time, Destiny, especially online, you have to keep moving. You can try to take cover, gather gear, reload or take a breather, but you will fail over and over again. One thing I really like so far is that, in multiplayer or single player, it keeps you on your toes. If you don’t bring the action, the action comes to you, and I learned that the hard way multiple times in multiplayer. A word of advice for anybody who hasn’t played Doom or a competitive shooter like this where you can’t really take cover: you can pick a sniper loadout and snipe or sneak up on people, but these dudes come at you, and they are ruthless. Best be warned.

Overall, my first full Doom experience has been a positive one so far. But will it keep me hooked? Will it keep console gamers hooked who might be addicted to Halo, Destiny, Call of Duty or Battlefield 4, enough to drop those games or dedicate a lot of time to becoming hardcore Doom players? That remains to be seen. If you just got a new gaming PC and want to max out your machine for that true PC gaming experience, what better franchise to start with than Doom? If you’re not big into PC gaming or don’t care for the franchise, it might take more than cool melee scenes and becoming a demon to hook you. I’d love to hear from you: are you playing Doom right now, or holding off? Were you turned off by the multiplayer beta, or by Bethesda not sending out review copies until launch day? I don’t get that, but that’s the way they want to do things. Let me know. Until next time, everybody, as always, enjoy the games, and you’d best believe, watch your back.