A-Z of Steam: Doom (2016) - Pure PC FPS Gaming!

Doom was one of my favourite childhood toys. Doom 3 was the first time I had a game that run woefully on the same computer that I played Doom on. Doom 3 made me upgrade my computer. The 2016 reboot of Doom was a phenomenal time to be alive - an excellently optimised computer game (yes, computer game!) where you couldn't tell whether or not PC was the lead development platform because it was just so damn well optimised, slick, and amazing from every technical standpoint.

It's a solid engine, and an even more solid shooter.

Doom games never really quite get around their pushing the boundaries of technical limitations, and the 2016 instalment was no slouch. It could run on almost anything, and when you threw good hardware at it, it was a slick, responsive experience, up there with the best engines of all time, like the Quake 3 engine.

Playing Doom again on a high refresh rate monitor is exactly everything I expected it to be. Fast, visceral combat that is satisfying, gory, and punchy.

There's some criticisms to make of the 2016 reboot - in that its not the original game - it shows off vast outdoor levels and not the cramped corridors that I remember so fondly from Doom and Doom 3.

With these outdoor levels (and the indoor spaces you later progress to) - Doom gives you a whole lot of Arena based combat that reminds me of the fantastic game Painkiller, but with weapons that are not quite as satisfying as what they were in painkiller.

All the Doom tropes are present though, and the shotgun is satisfying as it always is, and always will be. It is a Doom game, after all.

It is an action game, through and through. The horror is the horror that you get from a B-Grade movie, with excessive blood and demon guts belched out through gaping, ephemeral holes in your foes.

This is a fantastic FPS experience, and if you haven't already played it, do it.

There's even an arcade mode where you can speed run and score as high as you can for the glory of the leader board. There's lots of depth beyond the single player experience... the only downside is that I do not agree with many of commercial decisions made by the publisher of this game - namely DRM and licencing arrangements, mod lock downs, etc.

Even with all that - just go and get Doom, go and find a decent gaming rig, and go and relive your child hood, hauntingly thrust into modernity through technological witchcraft.