Day 1 thoughts (PS4 version)

[Koko Ricky]

Began my game on "Hurt Me Plenty," and I have to say it makes me smile that something as basic as the difficulty level names were brought back. It was overwhelming for the first few minutes, because I suddenly had to translate 20+ years of keyboard and mouse to a control pad. It honestly didn't take long to get used to moving and aiming this way, and by the end of my session it was downright intuitive. Running and aiming upward, circle strafing and strafe jumping can all be performed with ease.

The environments varied quite a bit, even though I only got through the first few missions. I really enjoyed going outside and taking in the Martian landscape. Much of what I experienced felt like a super-enhanced version of Doom 3 with the best elements from the other releases, including Doom 64 (mostly in terms of lighting and immersion). Combat is extremely satisfying and you can play the way you want; as in the original Doom, you can keep your distance and constantly take cover, or you can get right up in their faces and risk it all.

The way health ramps up and down is wild. You can go form full health to almost nothing in just a couple of hits, but a quick glory kill can save your ass. It makes for extremely intense gunfights. The enemies are more aggressive than I was expecting and they don't fuck around, the imps in particular. I was surprised that I encountered a hell knight so early in the game and he's goddamn intimidating. Holy shit.

Visuals are some of the best I've seen from the current console gen. Yeah, there's screen tearing, just a little bit of texture/lighting goofing, and enemies vaporize after a few moments, but the overall look is extremely professional, overflowing with detail and atmospheric lighting. When you first get a chance to go outside and look at the Martian surface, it looks a lot like a 3D view of the classic intermission screen. In fact, you get to see something that is very much in that vain between missions and it really made me smile. Truly, it is a Doom game.

Except for one thing. And it's not a huge problem, but it has gotten my attention. I asked my friend what he thought of the game from watching me play (he was only interested in spectating), and he felt that Doom '16 was too linear, and he prefers more open environments. I wasn't sure how to feel about that, because I had been assuming the maps were fairly non-linear. But it made me realize that, at least so far, gameplay has been almost entirely driven by sticking you in an arena and closing it off. It's fun, yeah, but I'm hoping this isn't setting the stage for the entire game.

[LANEGRACABRA]

I've been playing on hurt me plenty as well. It's still really hard at times for me on PS4 controller. More than one pinky at a time is a real bitch. The cyberdemon fight wore me down, after beating it I felt I need to take a longer break. I think I've spent over 10 hours on the game now, got to Titan's realm.

I have to admit, because my low skill level with console FPS I sometimes turtle like a bitch, waiting and baiting in bottlenecks. I've died ALOT, but it's still really fun because there's no single way to handle the fights.

I also can't seem to get hold of changing weapons rapidly. Tapping R1 is fluent for changing between two weapons but the pulling the stick to a certain direction and tapping doesnt work as good as was advertised.