Doom Gameplay Revealed at Quakecon 2014

Well, it's official, I was one of the lucky few who got to see the Exclusive "Doom" Reveal yesterday at Quakecon 2014! And yes, you heard that right, the title is indeed DOOM and not Doom 4 and there are no subtitles either. The Doom Team spoke of wanting to simply keep it, well, simple... And I agree with their KISS philosophy with approaching Doom.  It seems we are far enough departed from the Original Doom that using this naming convention was all-in-all appropriate.

As for the Details...

Well, unfortunately we won't be able to provide any footage (see the 1st Reveal Trailer here) nor screens since there was a STRICT "no recording devices policy" in effect as this was a special gift to those in attendance at Quakecon here and it was a pulse pounding gift in a number of areas.  The Doom Team said one of their focuses was to return to the true nature of Doom and make it a non-stop action oriented FPS in that demons come at you from every angle and you don't really have time to hide and count your blessings. This reined true in the Doom Gameplay Demo that was shown.

Mars & The Ambience of Hell

Within the Demo, two Doom levels were shown and the game does indeed begin on MARS... and for the most part, it looked like a much higher end version of Doom 3 in terms of graphics.  The details and shadows were perfect and the ambience in the air was there. If there was a fault however, the darkness that was present in prior Doom games seemed to be a bit absent so you could see Demons coming at you from a mile away although this could simply be that they aren't finished with the lighting and wanted to show something that could be seen in greater detail by the audience. Although within the 2nd level of the Doom Demo Reveal was a nice stroll outside the Mars base which kept the atmosphere spooky and the same ambient effects seem to be intact from Doom 3 in which I loved. Upon re-entry, various bones and blood were splattered and hung about in past grotesque Doom game fashion. So hopefully this will be the case in most levels of the new Doom when the lighting is corrected.

Oh, and one of the LARGEST points they stuck with was a one man army fighting the Hordes of Hell... Yes, the demons are indeed from Hell and not some mutant movie edition variety so rest easy there Doom fans. ;)

Pulse Pounding & The Guns

Back to the pulse pounding nature of the demo... It was a non-stop mowing down of low-mid level Hell demons for the most part with weapons like the Shotgun, Double Barrel Shotgun, Rocket Launcher, Plasma Gun and even the Chainsaw saw some action. The shotgun seemed the least effective and was a bit different than what I remember while I was most impressed with the chainsaw and Plasma gun as they were designed quite well, especially the chainsaw as it ripped through various demons. And speaking of ripping through Demons, it would literally cut them in half in slow bloodlust fashion!

Melee Mayhem

Other interesting facets were the immense number of melee combos your Marine can now employ as he was consistently ripping the jaws off of demons or even punching straight through them. This is probably the highlight of the demo itself in that the blood was beyond R-rated one could argue! You could literally see the internal organs pop and bone structure tear apart as your Marine ripped through them.

Strong Multiplayer?

Nothing much was said other than the Multiplayer would be "strong" and be true to the original Deathmatch.

Final Thoughts

The Doom reveal riveting, from being beat to death with your own arms (arms ripped off by the Revenant demon to end reveal level 1) to the non-stop action sequences with guns that seemed true to the original, I'd say this game has elements of both Classic Doom and Doom 3 which might be the best marriage one could hope for? It defiantly left my jaw dropping and various encores of standing applause from everyone in attendance!

Stay tuned for screens and more to come in the near future.  For now, I'd keep a lot of attention on the Doom site for a possible Doom Beta launch. Oh, btw, I will reveal that this bad boy made an appearance at the end. ;)