Hey Fluent! I can understand your reservations with this after looking at video clips. I thought the glory kills stuff looked far to gamey and immersion breaking in the clips for example (and they bugged me when I first started playing it as well), but in the videos you don't get the sense of the control you have over when to use them them… and judging this becomes important, because you need to be close range to use glory kills but getting a successful one boosts health. It's a cool risk/reward thing that won't come across well in videos.
While I appreciate them trying something new with this system, it really doesn't interest me much. Risk/reward can be cool, but in the context of having to get closer to enemies to kill them, not all that interesting to me.
Are there still very well-hidden blue/silver spheres to find that boost health immensely?
It is different to all the previous Dooms, but for me they nailed the speed and the risk assessment when you have loads of different creatures on the screen. And it turns out that shooting demons in the face with a double barrelled shotgun never gets old.
I could say the same about any of the originals I mentioned. It's still satisfying as heck to blast enemies with the double barrelled shotgun in the originals. Always has been.
As for speed and risk assessment, well, it looks almost a little *too* hectic for me. The originals can get really crazy at times, but they have a great pace.
The new one looks like Doom on speed in comparison.
The level design is a bit mixed. The early levels are claustrophobic in a Doom 3 kinda way (not so good in my opinion), the later levels open up into the big arena bits you mention but also with key-hunting etc. There are loads of secrets - I barely found any of them in my play through, so there's no doubt loads of things I missed.
Well, the levels I personally sat through and watched (and there were several), were, in my opinion, severely lacking to put it nicely.
I'm not a fan of many of the arena-style bits I saw, with monsters constantly spawning all over. Nor did I find any of the traditional space station levels very engaging at all.
The hell levels did not look nearly as good to me as the originals. Not even close. I mean, nostalgia or not, the original Doom games, to me, had incredible level design for the most part. Brilliant. That's why I still play them to this day, and even play fan-modded levels.
I mean, go back and explore some of the Hell levels from those games. A good majority of them, if not damn near all of them, are simply amazing.
I am glad to hear they have a lot of secrets. Are there secret walls? Timing puzzles? Multiple exits in some levels that lead to secret levels?
If you liked Dooms 1-3, I suspect you might enjoy this as well if you gave it a go. If the videos are really not selling it to you, maybe wait a couple of years and pick it up in a bargain bin… it might be a nice surprise.