Reposting my posts here from the flop thread because I'm really interested in what you guys think
Post 1
I just finished the game and I can understand why is it flopping in some ways as I also have mixed feelings.
The main problem is the lack of innovation.
The game is awesome, it's Doom from id, of course it is. If you love the franchise, you will love this as well.
But this is mostly the same game from 2016, from almost 10 years ago, with reused animations, gameplay mechanics, etc. At that time that game was (and still is) one of the best games ever. Insane nextgen visuals, with top of the industry animations, it felt new and unique gameplay wise. A huge jump from lastgen games in every sense. Eternal was also awesome and they went even further on the same console gen but I hated the immersion breaking floating gamey looking powerups, secrets etc. And I thought they got enough criticsm for this but no, they doubled down with this bullshit in Dark Ages and the crazy contrasting colors are insanely immersion breaking for the ammo, the enemy projectiles, etc., they look horrible with the otherwise awesome artstyle a design. I don't know why couldn't they have at least provided an option to tone these down…
So here we have Dark Ages which is a current gen exclusive game, yet it barely if it even looks better than the previous game from 5 years ago. This f'n raytracing feels like one of the biggest gimmicks ever and it should have been left to nextgen because we are not there yet and it is laughable what it provides for such a huge performance cost. I don't care how big an achievement it is for developers because I'm a gamer who is just looking at the visuals and not checking the code behind them.
id could have been the dev team who could have melted our faces and provide a real jump in visuals but like others before them, they went this way resulting in visuals that could pass as a ps4 game on pics. Yes, the physics are cool, that's true. But it was not worth it. This is not what we expect from id.
They should have used the available resources in other ways and blow away the industry with a similar game that Doom 2016 was at its time. This is no different than for example CoD or Assassin's Creed. But they don't take 5 years between instalments. The formula is a bit tired now and it also lacks the technical jump that we expect from id. It also lacks the polish the previous games had, I remember reading from others that it's a bit like it was made by the B team and this is what I felt sometimes as well.
And for all the above, the game became maybe one of most expensive games ever to buy. With almost nothing on the physical disc at all. And making it available on gamepass day one, basically making sure it flops. Yes, I know all these are on Microsoft and how much they suck, but I'm sad they did this with one of my favorite devs.
Despite all the above, as I said, the game is awesome, most of the levels are really cool, except a couple of levels (like the forest) that seemed like filler, but there are some insanely good ones, like the last one. I hope this is not the end for id but Doom should go for a rest and they should reinvent it to have the deserved acclaim again. Until then they should reboot Quake because the snippets we saw from that in this game were really cool.
I want to highlight again, that the game is awesome despite all this, but I wanted more from it.
Post 2
After writing this post, I wanted to check out how it feels playing Doom 2016 after Dark Ages, and wtf, I'm speechless. First of all, I honestly think it looks better than Dark Ages. The graphics are clean, this shitty noisiness and flickering everywhere in Dark Ages is nowhere to be found in Doom 2016. And this is not even a native PS5 game, it only got a PS4 Pro patch (higher res). Sorry, raytracing in its current form is a big scam from a user standpoint.
But the gameplay is also somehow better, it's more "up close and personal" fighting with the demons, all of them are an enemy you have to fight, not just some cannon fodder that fall into pieces just by looking at them. I don't know, the whole game is just more immersive. And despite this, you still feel like a demon killing machine.
Somehow the levels also feel like more handcrafted than in Dark Ages. Everything feels insanely coherent.
It's still a 10/10 game for me after all these years. And based on this, Dark Ages can't be more than an 8 if I'm generous.
