DOOM

Relentless demon-slaying with sharp pacing and solid visuals

DOOM remains a blistering first-person shooter that understands intensity and restraint in equal measure. You awaken from a sealed sarcophagus on Mars and are immediately confronted by possessed crew and hulking demons, kicking off a campaign that blends ferocious firefights with moments of calculated exploration.

Combat is all about momentum and awareness. Ammunition is intentionally tight, so every shot counts and every encounter demands forethought. That scarcity encourages smart pathing through each map, nudging you to comb side corridors for supplies, secrets, and keycards that open new routes. It is an old-school loop that still feels sharp: dispatch a pack of horrors, then breathe for a moment while you scour a maintenance wing or lava-scarred outcrop for hidden rewards.

The levels stitch together industrial facilities with rocky, infernal zones, creating dense mazes of corridors, lifts, and chokepoints. Progress often hinges on finding colored access keys, with the yellow card showing up frequently as a gate to bigger arenas or tucked-away caches. The pacing is surprisingly generous for such a brutal setting, alternating full-throttle skirmishes with quieter navigation so the action never turns monotonous.

Visually, the game delivers solid graphics that reinforce its oppressive mood, from flickering machinery to ritual markings. That said, the art direction occasionally feels conservative. Given the subject matter, some environments and creature designs could have pushed further into the grotesque or imaginative. Multiplayer, meanwhile, is present but lacking a distinctive hook, coming across as functional rather than essential.

Even with those caveats, DOOM’s core is hard to resist. The gunplay is intelligent and exhilarating, the maps reward curiosity, and the overall cadence keeps you locked in from opening awakening to the final corridor sprint. If you crave a fierce, resource-aware shooter that respects exploration as much as brutality, this classic formula still hits like a sledgehammer.