@RR529 Thanks for the recommendation! Sounds like Kingdom Hearts III is a real mixed bag. I'm surprised the big cash cows, like Frozen for example, were elements which were handled so poorly. Perhaps it betrays a marketing demand that wasn't originally part of the developer's creative intentions.
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@Th3solution My word, sir! That's a review and a half, right there!
As somebody who loves plenty of broken, buggy and simply unfinished games, the debate raised by Trico's potential "it's not a bug, it's a feature" A.I. has always fascinated me, and you bringing it back up of late has me convinced that I'm just gonna have to play it for myself someday soon (even if I'm secretly terrified of how real Trico might seem, and therefore how emotionally attached to him I may become).
In other words, your journey from frustration to acceptance makes it sound as though you've just successfully trained a new puppy and, as somebody who'd love a dog but can't currently give one a proper home, I find that concept really appealing.
But I'm increasingly wary of "figure it out for yourself" games, having gotten far too comfortable with waypoints and HUD markers and tool tips in recent years. I wish I wasn't turned off by such things, because the joy of discovery is a potent one, but it's an inevitable by-product of trends in modern gaming (thank you, Call of Duty). It certainly sounds like, between the lack of command tutorials and its random trophy list, embracing the internet and its freely-available walkthroughs is more than justified. There are times where I feel ashamed to be typing certain gaming-related questions into Google, but I doubt this'd be one of them.
Great review, great use of screencaps, great arguments and overall, just a great piece of writing. Huge thanks for sharing it. You've given me a lot to think about.
Also, bonus points for using "loosey-goosey" in a formal sentence.
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
@RR529 I feel like KH3 is one of those games where the overwhelming nostalgic hype at launch eventually gave way to a feeling of gentle disappointment for a lot of people. Someone I talked to who had played it said that "it looks and feels like the Kingdom Hearts I love, but there's something missing."
It's too bad the developers didn't invest in making the worlds you explore bigger and better than they've ever been.
Still a beautiful game, though. I got to play some gameplay demoes at Disney World before it was released and was rather awed by the Toy Story world.
@Th3solution Great write-up! Even if it plays like a clunky PS2 title, there's something really cool about having a game where the core relationship you build is with an at least semi-realistic animal (Haunting Ground, a PS2 game I plan on revisiting soon, did something similar, albeit simplified, with the protagonist's trainable dog). Those sorts of AI improvements, leading to game design that would have been impossible in the past, are the sort of thing I hope to see when it comes to next-gen games. Ray-tracing, 4K, etc. are alright, but I'm always fascinated by games where the resources were clearly invested in areas that make a game feel like something that couldn't have been accomplished on weaker hardware.
@Thrillho Thanks, and I agree on the bond statement. The only other game I can think of where I felt such a bond form was The Last of Us when, by the end, the Joel and Ellie / father-daughter vibe was so strong and their care for each other so palpable.
@RogerRoger Thank you and I’m glad you liked reading it. If you love animals (and I know you do), I think I can recommend it. Especially if you’re tolerant to game design shortcomings. If you do try it out I’d love to hear your thoughts, of course. My advice would be to be patient with it and peek at a guide if you start to feel frustrated.
@Ralizah Interestingly, Ueda said that the original PS3 build had even more Trico movements built in, but they scrapped some of them when the project got ported over to PS4, mostly due to time constraints and needing to finish the project. But yes, I’m sure the AI and the graphics highly benefited from the newer hardware. And I’m with you, I’m just as interested in what developers can do with game logic and AI behavior as I am with how pretty the next gen games will be.
@DonJorginho Thanks, and I am looking forward to Death Stranding! I got it for Christmas so it’s not a matter of “if,” but “when” I’ll get around to it. I started Jedi Fallen Order after finishing The Last Guardian so it may be a little while.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Death Stranding is a hard game to process, it is one of the most unique art pieces in any form of media, and is bursting from the seams with ambition and beauty. However it has some large cracks which leak through nastier forms of problems into the mixture, and make this creation an ever harder task to understand and review than it was before.
So let’s start from the beginning, you play as Sam “Porter” Bridges, a grizzled recluse who has turned his back on humanity and his sole purpose is to deliver items and survive in the harsh version of America the game is based around.
You see, America has changed. After a series of explosions caused by multiple dimensions coming into collision with one another dubbed the “Death Stranding” America as it once was ceased to exist. The way people interacted was heavily different to the way you and I interact now, face to face communication was reduced, people went into hiding below ground, and the world relied more on porters than ever before. Porters like Sam were key to keeping societies alive and moving the country forward through scientific and technological discoveries.
America is a much more dangerous place to live in now as well, with beings from another dimension labelled ‘Beached Things’ roaming the land and claiming the lives of numerous people on a daily basis. An encounter at the start of the game is what brings Sam and BB together (Bridge Baby), BBs are seen as a must have if you want any chance of surviving outside, and use motion sensor technology to sense where BTs are and guide the individual to safety away from BT territory.
But even with all these dangers, America has not lost all hope. New discoveries are being spear headed by BRIDGES, the last defence for keeping civilisation from being fully wiped out and keeping hope for America to one day reconnect and evolve into something never before seen to fight the threats that the world of Death Stranding presents.
And that is where Sam is brought into our story, BRIDGES is run by Sam’s dying mother Bridget (who is also the President of America), and in her final moments she shares with Sam she pleads for him to join the cause to help reconnect America and bring forward a new golden age full of hope and promise for the country and maybe even the world.
So that brings us all up to speed with the main gist of the game’s narrative, you all know the headlines that have been attached to this game, and how it has polarised critics and fans alike. From being dubbed a walking simulator to a marvel in game design.
Now I cannot please everyone with this review and with a game that has received such diverse amounts of both criticism and praise, it is hard for anyone to have the definitive answer to what this game is, how good or bad it is, and whether it is worth experiencing, so I am going to explain my personal thoughts from my own near 90 hour playthrough of Death Stranding.
Packages, Packages, Packages.
By now you all know the gameplay loop of Death Stranding, you as Sam Bridges take on deliveries for multiple factions and individuals in different zones of America ranging from medical supplies, hot pizza and decomposing human bodies. This is all whilst navigating the harsh yet serene landscape of Death Stranding’s open world and doing your best to avoid (or take on) the threats that surround you, be it Separatists, Mules or Beached Things, there is always something to keep you on your toes.
And you will be on your toes a lot in this game, with a real lack of vehicles for the starting acts of the game, a lot of your early time with DS will be on foot using your trusty soles and equipment to get you from A to B. You will need to keep balance of your items, regularly change boots, stock up on tools and adjust the weight that Sam carries. This is done through multiple gameplay mechanics such as holding down on L2 and R2 to keep your balance whilst manoeuvring the environments of DS. Another mechanic is how unlike games where your inventory is a never ending bag of goodies with no penalties for carrying three master swords or 50 grenades, DS makes you feel the weight (mind the pun) of these decisions.
Every item has weight, from a non-lethal shotgun, to a flask of Monster Energy, and must be managed accordingly. Too little weight can mean you come underprepared for missions and have to make several trips to complete deliveries, however too much weight can mean you have to trudge through the land, making you more easily visible to enemies and at risk of being attacked.
This is the strategy of Death Stranding, and makes you carefully consider every move you make, “can I take that one extra climbing rope or do I decide to go off the path and venture into the potentially dangerous territory to save myself the added weight?” These are the questions I asked myself even 60+ hours into the game, and each delivery brought on new challenges to face and tips to embed into my brain.
You would think with a lot of this game being delivering that this game could grow a chore and make the player become tiresome of the loop, but for me personally that couldn’t be further from the truth. I was hooked from start to finish and it was one of the only experiences I have had in gaming where I can confidently say that game just kept getting better and more fun to play the more I went through with it.
The story is a large part of this enjoyment, with it being Hideo Kojima’s magnum opus of storytelling that is nowhere near as hard to understand as early trailers would make you think. Each character is meticulously crafted and the game steadily evolves your journey alongside them, making the whole package feel like a living entity rather than data on a Blu-Ray disc, I will not spoil anything or even discuss the story more than I already have, but is more than worth the price of admission to enter.
The other 4 sides of this square of enjoyment are made up of three things which I will discuss next: Exploration, Evolution and Tension.
Exploration
Exploration is a key theme in Death Stranding, with it being the way you communicate with the world around you and is integral to moving the story and game forward, and luckily Kojima Productions has made a world fully worth delving into and exploring at your own pace.
From the snow covered peaks, to flowing rivers and forests to cavernous ruins and abandoned shopping centres, Death Stranding has a multitude of environments for the player to navigate through. Each of these vistas is jam-packed with beauty and mystery and allows the player to take in everything at their own pace, it also allows a lot of freedom throughout the world, it really takes the Todd Howard “You can climb that mountain” phrase to a whole new level. You can shimmy Sam up cliff sides, ride floating carriers down rocky terrain and use ladders to get onto rooftops of almost any building which allows player freedom to go to another level that can only be rivalled by BOTW.
There are secrets to find, deliveries to make and paths to create and experiment with, and this exploration is boosted by the multiplayer support in the game. Death Stranding uses a strand online system that expands on the technology used by From Software in their games and takes it to a whole new level, players can unite with one another without ever coming into contact with one another to create safe houses, roads and so much more to enhance the experience and make the world a little easier to traverse. This not only keeps the player engaged in the world but allows them to make connections they otherwise would never had made and see places they may never had seen if it wasn’t for the helping hands provided by other players.
Exploration and Teamwork go hand in hand in this aspect and allow the game to evolve into a living, breathing community which is one of the most positive I have experienced in gaming, there is far less trolling that the Souls games and their notes and I have not experienced one player note or construction that didn’t benefit me in some way. I even went out of my way to build an entire network of zip lines connecting parts of the map in the more brutal snowy mountain regions to help players deliver items faster and without the hassle of BTs, and this was all for other players, I hardly had to use that network once I built it but I was happy knowing it would make someone’s experience a little more easier, and coming back to that creation now it has surpassed tens of thousands of likes making me feel justified in my generosity.
The world of Death Stranding truly immerses you and really makes you fall in love with what this game has to offer and boosts your own bond with this creation as you are always in awe of what the game presents to you through its mesmerising visuals and amazing soundscapes that make this world feel like the main character in the game, with Sam and Co just being there for the ride.
Evolution
Death Stranding is a game that truly evolves and shapeshifts as you delve further into it, it goes from immersive sim, to fully fledged horror and then back to a vast multiplayer survival sandbox, and it all feels natural and meaningful. It also evolves in more than just genre, you discover new ways to traverse the world and interact with it as you go on with the story which acts as the adrenaline to keep this beast of a game going on its journey and reinvigorates the player on their own personal journey.
The difference from hour 2 to hour 20 was massive as was the difference from hour 35 to hour 70. It just keeps showing off new areas, methods and tonal changes that make this game an amazing experience that is almost unrivalled in the industry. The games grows and evolves with the player and as you find an efficient way of doing something, DS opens up and throws new challenges and with that new equipment and methods to tackle those challenges all without taking away freedom from the player and making everything feel fresh.
The theme of Evolution runs deep in the game and has contact with all parts of the game, with the way the actual world can physically change around you, be it with player structures, craters being left behind, the time-fall that forever moves around the map freely or structures of your very own, it means the world never stays predictable and as a result the game never feels predictable in a sense, yes you are delivering packages for the duration of the game, but somehow it feels fresh even in the 80th hour.
Death Stranding’s story also evolves freely during its runtime, with story beats and characters being introduced at every turn and with the game hitting you hard with constant emotion making you care that much more for the task at hand, and it does an amazing job at explaining each new thing that it has to offer and makes the ending feel that more rewarding as a perfectly crafted self-contained story.
This game not only evolves itself but also will spark an evolution in game design and see more and more studios take on unique IPs and choosing artistic integrity over sales figures.
Tension
Tension is a huge part of any memorable experience, from the dread you felt having to navigating the demented world of Silent Hill, to the tension you felt in a scintillating boss battle in Bloodborne when you’re on your last healing item. Tension can add layer upon layer onto experiences and make our connection to those experience even stronger, and Death Stranding succeeds with flying colours in this aspect.
Whether it be carrying multiple delicate packages over a unreliable cliff, knowing the slightest loss of balance could send you and your cargo flying off into the depths below, or be it when you are navigating BT territory with a handful of grenades and a baby in a jar being the only two things keeping you alive. Death Stranding really nails these feelings and made me grieve the loss of PT even more as it really shown how skilled Kojima is at creating true terror for its players to experience.
This tension is built from the derelict environments you explore, the terrifying beings you come across and the gameplay mechanics put in place to allow these parts to excel as one. The way Sam has to hold his breath around the other worldly creatures that surround him mixed with the fact you have to stand completely still to be able to even see those creatures for a split second creates a never before seen game of cat and mouse that never loses its tension even when you have rocket launchers and grenades in your arsenal.
The sound design goes a long way to making the game feel even more tense and filled with terror with its bass filled booms and whispery moans of the BTs mixed with the sound of Sam’s muffled breaths alongside the unforgiving weather give off sinister vibes that send shivers up your spine.
Flawed Stranding.
My love for this game is immense and I have thoroughly explained that in the previous 2304 words before now. However I am not going to let my love ignore the reality that this game has some serious flaws that may put some off the game entirely.
This game is a magnum opus in world building, immersion and story for Kojima but is easily his worst in areas such as controls and some of the gameplay mechanics that made his games something special.
The controls to this game are hit and miss, when they are going your way they are amazing, but when they miss they miss HARD and FAR. Sam will randomly clip on areas of the world he shouldn’t be colliding with, he will slip on seemingly nothing in a constant animation loop of him skidding on the spot before slamming to the floor and leaving your frustration on the backburner as you have to tend with the constant crying of your BB, with yourself having to manually take the controller and slowly rock it till BB goes back to sleep, with neglecting BB leaving it vulnerable to being stuck in a state of autotoxemia rendering it helpless to you or itself against the dangers of the world.
The way vehicles act in this game is enough to put you off them, with a monster of a truck being seemingly unable to get over one lonely rock whilst you can manage to manually force your bike up any cliff just because the game says so.
Combat is an option in the game but with how poorly it works and how bad the guns feel to fire you are better off avoiding it as much as possible, gun variety is severely lacking in the number and idea department which make combat even more unenjoyable.
Stealth is also an option to the player but compared to the masterful mechanics in MGSV, DS is so paper-thin here that you can exploit it without trying or even meaning to, this means encounters against fellow human enemies lose all excitement and it becomes a slog to steal things from enemy camps as it doesn’t push the player or give them a sense of enjoyment.
Luckily the BT AI is much more advanced and will keep its tension and enjoyment when you face them but if they were always visible I have to ask myself a question of whether I would had loved the encounters so much?
And finally the biggest flaw of all, is the boss battles, Kojima has always had iconic boss battles in all his titles, from Sniper Wolf to Psycho Mantis, Hideo and his team pushed the bar of what to expect in boss battles and created memorable experiences solely based off those.
However I am sad to say that boss battles are heavily uninspired and lacking any challenge even on the hardest difficulty, the designs are generic for a lot of the enemies and can basically be classes as Tar Squid, Tar Whale etc. This kills enjoyment and makes boss battles a tedious task that you end up dreading instead of awaiting full of hype like you would had done in the past.
They also follow similar methods to being defeated which make them really repetitive, for example most bosses come down to shoot gold sections on the enemy body or the head/mouth and reload, then rinse and repeat, the encounters lose all difficulty as some bosses just tend to roam aimlessly around the arenas making you have to go out and find them, which takes away from the experience.
The bosses that look the coolest also hit the player in the face with disappointment as they appear to be nothing more than static shooting gallery’s built into a 3D model, making you just pop away at the static enemy till they die, they occasionally may fire a easy to avoid projectile but apart from that it never really moves from there sadly.
Conclusion
Death Stranding is a game that deserves to be experienced, it pushes the boundaries of game design and narrative formulas to never before seen highs and is at its core a team of talented creatives embracing their craft to create a near masterpiece, however along the way their ambitions clouded their general knowledge and as a result they missed the beat on some basic elements of the game that could have made it a once in a generation experience.
This game is not and will never be for everyone, it will always be as polarising as it was when I started this review and it will not change as a result of my review either, Kojima Productions has delivered a great and solid enough debut game from their team which is something I have never experienced in gaming and is an experience I will never forget nor do I think will ever be matched in parts, however there are parts of this game that have been done better in games that Hideo Kojima himself made years ago on older generations of platforms without the power that development teams have at their hands nowadays.
Death Stranding is a near flawless masterpiece of art, however deeper inspection of the painting that is the game reveals flakes of paint coming off, mistakes in the placement of the brush upon canvas and a general lack of polish in certain areas that take away from the overall experience.
@RogerRoger, while there isn't any hard confirmation, there are rumours that the Frozen world in KHIII went through some last minute changes, likely at the behest of Disney, and that's why the end product was so ho-hum.
Just like in the movie, Elsa is unsure of her powers, and in KHIII much is made of the fact that depending on her own feeling towards the matter, it could be a power of Light or Darkness (with the assumption being that it's her own doubt that is bringing the darkness/Heartless to the world), however they unceremoniously drop the theme at the end and it's revealed that Hanz (the evil prince from the movie) is the source of the darkness. However, there are oddities to make note of:
Hanz has maybe 1 minute of screen time at most, with no dialogue (indicating that he may have been a last minute inclusion). Plus, his darkness spawns a Heartless with immense ice powers (which doesn't make much sense other than the fact it's a winter themed world. It would make more sense brought forth by a fallen Elsa).
Despite it being one of the film's most iconic locations, you don't get to visit Elsa's ice palace. However, at an earlier point in the world, one of the Organization members (the main antagonists of the series) traps you in a totally unrelated ice palace (other than being a darker interpretation, it shares many aesthetic similarities to Elsa's), yet it doesn't even appear on the map (you travel to and from it via a warp point). The idea being at one point this was supposed to be the interior of Elsa's palace, yet they had to re-contextualize it's existence late in development.
The idea is that at one point in development Elsa was supposed to fall to the darkness due to her own doubt, and either Disney was afraid of having her appear as a villain, or due to the film's more feminist sensibilities didn't want her to be openly saved by a male character(s), so forced SE to change it.
@Ralizah, the Toy Story world was genuinely fantastic (as was the Pirates of the Caribbean world), and had me smiling all the way through. It was an early world though and set up an expectation the rest of the game just couldn't keep up with.
Currently Playing:
Switch - Blade Strangers
PS4 - Kingdom Hearts III, Tetris Effect (VR)
@DonJorginho Man, that’s a great review! It was a very enjoyable read and it makes me want to start the game. I’m glad to hear that the gameplay loop doesn’t get boring or old over the long runtime. It’s also good to see that you feel the narrative has the epic quality and that I’ve been hearing about. I also appreciate your objectivity in recognizing and acknowledging the games flaws, although they sound like they don’t detract from a consistently enjoyable experience.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution Your review and subsequent recommendation made me look it up on the PS Store and it's currently only a tenner, so I'll pick up some credit in town tomorrow. In advance of the experience, however it may turn out, I'm grateful for your thoughts!
@RR529 Interesting! That does sound like typical Disney licencing caution. Shame they couldn't work it out, as the original intention would've made much more sense.
Not even getting to visit Elsa's ice palace is criminal. Welcome to corporate protectionism!
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@DonJorginho Blimey, what a day for reviews around here! This was an awesome read!
And I've gotta say, you did a far better job of summarising the plot of Death Stranding for me than any other "professional" review has. I don't feel spoiled, yet I have a clear understanding of the concept and stakes now, whereas before I'd been left confused by so much vague hand-waiving. Such a fine line to walk, and you've walked it masterfully. I'm really grateful, thank you!
Your equally-awesome descriptions of the gameplay have me convinced that it isn't quite for me (its tension in particular), but that still means that they've been helpful. I'm really pleased to hear you enjoyed parts of the game so much, especially building that zipwire network for others to use; in the very few multiplayer games I've played, being randomly helpful to others has always been the most rewarding experience, way more than any killstreak. It's awesome that Death Stranding can provide that for many (even if I'm left wondering just how cluttered and easy to traverse the game's landscape will be to those picking it up in a year's time).
Your balance and fairness in recognising the less-well-crafted sections of the game is appreciated as well, not least because Mr. Kojima's name often elicits extreme hyperbolic reactions from many (both in terms of attack and defence). I love your conclusions, particularly that last analogy, given how detailed you'd gotten in your descriptions and analysis. I feel like I've taken a close-up look at the painting for myself now. Really helpful stuff. Cheers!
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
@RogerRoger Good to hear, and I hope it works out for the better and that Trico ends up being a new favorite for you. (My gut tells me it will). And consider the recommendation as payback for your high endorsement of Fallen Order — the opening hours have blown me away. I’m really impressed with the quality of the game. As a Star Wars fan, it’s currently exceeding my expectations, and as a video game fan it’s scratching the “have some fun exploring and wielding a laser sword” itch that I began to have after several hours of non-combat animal training. 😅 I have a feeling I’m going to enjoying this ride. The biggest problem with the game is how addicting it is. All I want to do is go home and play it and I’m stuck at work. I’m sure I’ll be leaving more impressions on the dedicated thread over time. Anyways, so thanks right back at ya!
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@DonJorginho Excellent review. Death Stranding is probably not something that I'd be too keen on playing, but its uniqueness does keep me very curious about it.
@Th3solution thank you man, I don't think this was bad for my first review on here! 😅
And yeah the game is amazing man, it has it's issues but really is a wonderful title and I have barely scratched the surface of what this story has to offer, literally made me cry in parts was so powerful.
I hope you really enjoy it man, and be sure to let me know how you get on when you start it!
@RogerRoger thank you for the kind words! Was at work and had a quiet period so thought why not get to writing that review, I tried my best to describe the story whilst not spoiling or confusing people so to hear your feedback is great!
This game is truly great but I had to be balanced and pick out its flaws as they really annoyed me at times and I'm someone so adored this game so didn't want to mislead people who could get easily fed up of those issues.
Might do a review on Days Gone next or Nier once I finish it, and I'd highly recommend watching all the cutscenes of this game. It was better than most big blockbusters!
@crimsontadpoles thank you so much, it isn't for everyone and unlike some fans that swear by Kojima I can respect and fully see it's issues and understand why some hated it.
If you never play it, it's worth watching the cutscenes imo
@Th3solution just a comment on TLG - I literally had one frustrating moment, that took all of 5 minutes to resolve. I guess your mileage may vary with this game, but other than that I honestly don’t look back and consider the game frustrating at all.
@kyleforrester87 Yeah, it’s weird because I even watched some YouTube videos of places I got stuck and Trico would fairly quick and easily mosey into place to do what he was asked. Then I’d try the same tactic and my Trico would be sniffing the grass and ignoring me. Honestly, I think I wasn’t doing the small things well enough like feeding him extra barrels and petting him to calm or reassure him. After I started doing that more it seemed like I struggled less.
Nevertheless, I nearly quit the game permanently at the part where there are a couple underwater passages you have to transverse through him with that I spent a good hour trying to get through. By sheer luck I happened to be diving in the first pool and he dove down too and I was able to grab him and he swam by and we went through the passage together. Then in the next pool, no matter what mechanism to encourage him to dive that I tried, he just wouldn’t go under. I yelled at him, pointed, gave him every command in the book. Jumped on him, jumped off him, gave him commands from above, below, to the right to the left.... it was maddening. At one point, I was able to encourage him enough to dive but he left me behind while he went through the passage and I was stuck permanently in the room by myself and had to reload the checkpoint. ... I resigned myself to the fact that I would not ever finish the game. Then I got on Gamefaqs and found the walkthrough. There was a special link entitled “Making Trico Dive” and I clicked that and the author said that a lot of people have trouble with it, but it’s easy if you know what to do. Simply jump in his back, push R1 and forward on the left analog, which basically makes the boy point toward the wall and Trico should dive. The next chance I got I did that and just like magic it worked! I was both relieved and upset at the same time. The solution was simple. Yet the command didn’t make sense in my mind. So for one person it would take 5 min., and for me it took and hour and then a search of the internet. I also found that video walkthroughs didn’t help as much because you couldn’t see what buttons were being pushed to get the desired outcome. Having it explained to me through written instructions helped me more.
@Th3solution You're more than welcome; real glad to hear you're enjoying Jedi: Fallen Order. Given how all of your recommendations have been spot-on for me of late, it's nice to know the same applies vice-versa. Looking forward to reading what you make of it as you progress!
@DonJorginho I might do as you suggest and watch the cutscenes at least, yeah. I'm a huge Metal Gear fan, so it isn't the divisive nature of Mr. Kojima's unique style which has been turning me away, as I'm used to his auteur-like surrealist enforcement of his themes. In the meantime, here's to your next review!
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
Platform: PC, PS4, XBONE, Switch, Switch Lite (reviewed), and a dozen older consoles as well
Completion: Completed all four episodes, although my actual completion rate within each level varied. Some levels I missed a bunch of stuff, whereas, in others I found all items/secrets and killed all the enemies. I also replayed an episode or two on PC.
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DOOM is commonly regarded as one of the most important and influential video games of all time. Besides helping to spread the popularity of the FPS genre, it also made at the time unparalleled use of 3D space, full texture mapping, extreme violence, and uneven level geometry within 3D space. I've never actually given this series a go beyond the widely contentious DOOM 3, however, so I wanted to change that. What better place to start than with the demonic grand-daddy of the genre itself?
The structure of the game is very weird. The first episode of the game, titled Knee-Deep in the Dead, featured eight episodes and was distributed as freeware. This, more than anything else, contributed to the game's almost immediately titanic impact on the industry, having been installed across 10 million computers by 1995 (following its 1993 release). The second and third episodes, The Shores of Hell and Inferno, were contained in a paid version that was only available at the time via mail order. It was only upon the game's re-release as a boxed, commercial product that the fourth episode, Thy Flesh Consumed was released.
Every episode features eight normal levels, one boss level to cap off the episode, and one secret level. Progress carries between levels in an individual episode, but not between episodes, meaning that, at the beginning of every episode, you're forced to scrounge for ammo like at the beginning of the game. Despite this, there are little screens featuring narration that give the episodes of the original DOOM a minor sense of continuity.
I do want to emphasize how minor this is, though. Aside from these screens and some early bosses showing up later in the game as minibosses, the original DOOM (or "The Ultimate DOOM," as the commercial release in 1995 was called) is really just four short games packaged together. Episode themes as well as level design varies drastically between the various episodes.
The first episode features one of the most iconic environments in video game history, and begins in a UAC (Union Aerospace Corporation) facility on one of the moons of Mars, Phobos. You play as a nameless space marine (dubbed Doomguy by fans, who seems slightly distinct from the Doom Slayer of DOOM 2016 and DOOM Eternal) who fights off a demon invasion and, eventually, fights against two Barons of Hell so that he can transport to Deimos, which is also overrun by hellspawn. The militaristic and technological setting of this episode combines with maze-like levels. In general, you'll spend the bulk of these episode trawling the hallways of various installations looking for blue, red, and yellow keycards in order to unlock various doors. A level will end when you reach a specified endpoint, with the level completion screen afterward informing you of how many secrets you found, what percentage of the monsters you killed (there's a fine number in each level), and what percentage of the level items you collected.
The second episode is set on Deimos, and, thematically, is similar to episode one, except for certain changes that emphasize the increased demonic influence in this location. Some levels, for example, require colored human skulls instead of key cards to open doors, and the misty mountain view from Phobos has changed to one outlined by blood red clouds. At the end of the episode, you defeat the Cyberdemon in charge of the invasion of this moon and, discovering that the moon is hovering directly above an opening to Hell, decide to rappel down to the abyss itself to confront the forces that engineered this invasion in the first place.
Episode three is set fully in Hell. The walls have become more fleshy-looking, impaled humans and lava are everywhere, and, in general, the architecture is and level structures are less orderly in terms of their design. It's here you confront the Spiderdemon who engineered the demonic invasion of the moon bases.
Episode four is supposedly set on Earth, although its chaotic, fractured level design and demonic design motifs seem to suggest otherwise. It's in this episode that we learn Doomguy's true motive (it was probably a joke, but I like to think it's true, and it's in the game's narration, so... sticks out tongue): he wants revenge for the death of Daisy, his pet rabbit, making him, I guess, the supernatural, sci-fi-themed version of John Wick. Anyway, the (ostensibly) Earthly setting of this episode suggests that it's a sort of prequel to DOOM II: Hell on Earth.
The game distinguished itself upon release by being a very fast, brutal game. The antithesis of the sort of plodding cover shooters that were en vogue last gen, DOOM is a game where you will die if you are timid. The best defense is a good offense, and nowhere is that more true than in this game, where you best chance of survival is usually to charge into the fray and start gunning down demons like a maniac. That doesn't mean you don't take note of your environments, of course. There are a variety of ways in which you can minimize damage from large groups of enemies, and certain bosses pretty much require you to take cover behind buildings and walls, but, in general, I found that when I was sprinting around at full speed, shooting my enemies point blank with a shotgun, they often didn't even get a chance to damage me.
The narration screens in DOOM often opt for eye-bleedingly awful color combinations, for some reason, making all this damn text a bit difficult to read at times
The biggest downside of DOOM is the enemy variety. For a game where you kill demons, there just aren't a whole lot of different ones here. You have a couple of demon types that look like generic soldier dudes, complete with guns. You have Cacodemons, which are like giant floating balls that spit fireballs at you. You have Imps, which... shoot fireballs at you. There are normal pink demons which aren't really much of a threat, because they can only hurt you if you let them get right up in your face. There's also an invisible variation of this enemy, although their outlines are clear enough that they're still easy to avoid and kill. Finally, there are Lost Souls, which are flaming skulls that flying around and try to bite you.
Considering the saminess of the attacks patterns and enemy types, there isn't a lot of strategy involved in this game, and you can pretty much mindlessly run around shooting everything without much of a concern. The game is challenging (on higher difficulties, which I played on... starting with Hurt Me Plenty, and then the one above it), but mostly for reasons that I think weaken the game as an experience.
The few bosses there are seem kind of weaksauce as well. The Barons of Hell... throw green fireballs at you instead of normal ones. They deal a lot more damage, but they're not tremendously harder to avoid. The primary annoyance of this enemy is how long it takes to kill one with normal weapons. The Cyberdemon is better insofar as he actually has a unique attack, which is... to spam rockets the instant he sees you. This means, antithetical to the rest of the game, you'll need to slow down to a crawl, hug buildings, and take potshots at this annoying dude until he dies, which takes a while. The Spiderdemon is even worse in this regard, because, while you can avoid the Cyberdemon's rockets, the Spiderdemon's chaingun attack is pretty much impossible to dodge if you're exposed. So... again, hugging the walls and taking potshots around corners until he's dead. DOOM is at its absolute worst combat-wise when you're fighting these things. Unlike the rest of the game, speed and ferocity are punished.
The level design in this game... a lot of people like it, but I didn't really take to it. The early levels are manageable mazes, but I disliked the game's tactic of having walls randomly open up behind my character and being hit with a barrage of enemy projectiles all at one. The secrets are mostly mindless, and often involve running around hugging the walls of the UAC facility, trying to find random locations that'll open up and reveal bonus resources. The puzzles throughout are also a bit braindead, and involve a lot of running back and forth between areas to hit switches.
Later in the game (particularly episode 4), the level design breaks down, as it relies on bizarrely uneven floor space, poison/lava floors, and enemy ambushes to increases the difficulty. Perhaps this is meant to reflect the character's increasing closeness to demons and Hell, although I didn't really appreciate the design cheapness in many sections.
I alluded to this just a moment ago, but in lieu of actual enemy variety, the game likes to throw giant hordes of demons at you to freak you out, sometimes trapping you in rooms without warning. Of course, there's little in the way of space or objects to interact with, so, more often than not, it just becomes a matter of whether you have the ammo to mow down the enemies quickly enough because they can gang up and kill you (there's no jumping in the console versions of this game, so it's not like you jump over enemies when their sprites are hogging the screen around you.
One really high point of this conversion, as of the latest patch, is the framerate. While I'm not sure how helpful it actually is, since I believe the enemy animations are still animated at 35fps, the general feel of the game has been boosted to 60fps, giving movement that lovely, butter smooth feel that games with higher framerates tend to have.
Otherwise, this release was patched to correct image quality issues and deliver a really authentic DOOM experience.
But what would an discussion of DOOM be without focusing on the weapons available to the player, especially given the game's laser focus on demon-killing action? The arsenal isn't terribly diverse by modern standards, but it was a massive selection of weapons in a game released almost 27 years ago. You start off with the pistol, which... sucks. Thankfully, if you like to poke around, it's not long before you stumble across your first shotgun, which has much more of a visceral feel to it. And, considering how accurate it is even at long distances, it's usually my weapon of choice in this game. Over the course of the game, you gain access to the chaingun, which uses pistol ammunition, but fires at an incredibly high rate, making it ideal for taking down mobs of weaker enemies, the plasma gun, which is possibly one of the most powerful weapons in the game at both close and long range, the rocket launcher, which... has some uses against bosses, or in LARGE arenas, but makes it so easy for the players to damage themselves accidentally by standing too close to the target of their aggression, and the BFG9000 (which, yes, very famously stands for "Big F***ing Gun"), a hyper-powerful nuke of a weapon that is unfortunately so slow to fire and cumbersome to use in general that, more often than not, I just ended up ignoring it.
Melee-wise, you can get a chainsaw, which is cooler than it sounds, because you REALLY want to keep your distance from most of these enemies. You can also punch demons, but, really, don't. It's neither satisfying nor effective, and is only a last resort when you find yourself out of ammunition.
The 'feel' of the controls in this Nintendo Switch Lite playthrough were my biggest issue with the game. I don't know how much of this is the Switch Lite having thumbsticks utterly unsuited to games involving aiming and how much of it is my long-standing issue with playing shooters on consoles in general, but I generally found it really difficult to precisely aim at enemies as quickly as I needed to. After trying out a source port on my PC to compare the feel, the difference was astounding. Playing this with the stick felt sort of akin to being bundled up in a straight-jacket.
Thankfully, for people who do like to play shooters on consoles, aiming is far easier in DOOM thanks to the complete lack of Y-axis control. This game was originally designed to be played with just keyboards, so if you have an enemy lined up on your X-axis, you'll hit them, even if they're at a radically different elevation to you. It takes a bit of getting used to if you only have experience with most modern shooters, but it does lead to very fast, fluid, satisfying carnage with a minimum of aiming needed.
I also love how fast you can blow through rooms and even entire levels by holding down the run button. With the right guns, this can lead to lightning-fast gameplay that's really cool in the moment.
Conclusion
Despite all of my complaints about the game, I actually really enjoyed it, and think that it has aged rather well, all things being equal. Despite seeming very basic and rudimentary now, the game was visionary at the time, and light-years ahead of the competition in many respects. Playing it entirely on a handheld device was pretty neat, but I do think that perhaps other platforms might be more ideal to experience this game. Certainly PC, where the mouse gives the player absurdly fast control over where they're aiming, but perhaps, if the thumbstick aiming feels more accurate, on PS4 and Xbox One as well. 6/10 for me, although there is no way to attach a number to just how influential this game was.
Ya know I have DOOM for PS1 (Which is actually a mix of DOOM 1, DOOM 2 and some brand new levels) and I've played it a number of times over the years... But I've never actually got all that far in it at all to be honest.
Nothing wrong with it and I certainly didn't hate it or anything. Just never fully commited to playing it fully for some reason.
DOOM 2016 was the first DOOM I actually played all the way through (Which I think you'll quite like if only thanks to more modern design choices (though levels can still get a bit labyrinthine at times)).
Actually playing DOOM PS1 properly might be just the thing for me to do for a breather (amongst a few other smaller games) after I finish off Divinity.
Your review is great as always @Ralizah and I can certainly agree with a number of points you said from what I remember about some of the design... even if it was made 26 years ago now!
... I also did not know about the rabbit thing. That's totally 100% canon in my head now that the Doomguy is supernatural John Wick 😂
-EDIT- Nice assortment of screenshots too! Even the red text on the beige background one... Though it is eyebleedingly awful to try and read! 😅
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