The Cyberdemon in Doom 1 and 2 is anything but slow-paced. It's one of the fastest monsters in the game with the Archvile. 

https://youtu.be/YznjAd9Duv8 

It's got to be the laziest cover in quite some time. 

Cover art is decided by the publisher right? Not the developers so I don't see why id should be taking the heat for it. 

Usually the publisher has their in house artists do the cover and promotional stuff based on developer assets, and they're usually laughably incompetent in comparison, but the publisher execs can't tell the difference.

The dev execs can though, and usually complain and reject the first handful of covers / icons / banners etc.

I doubt that a developer as prestigious as id didn't have a say here, even if it was just to challenge the low quality.

Maybe it got past just because of how unimportant covers actually are in this day and age. I suspect that it'll be replaced as well.

A random screenshot from the demo video with the original DOOM logo in front of it would look better. 

They should have re-created the original Doom cover but using the actual game renderer and assets. 

Exactly. The generic space marine on the cover is ... a questionable choice, at best. 

The dev execs can though, and usually complain and reject the first handful of covers / icons / banners etc.

Maybe they're too overworked with the game itself. 

It's up to the art director to make sure things like marketing materials and cover art and screenshots are all what they want to see.

Busy or not, the cover is the first thing a lot of people will see of your game. It requires a decent amount of thought and planning. 

I am not sure whether this is good or bad, but what I am sure is that the cover generates to my mind a kind of remarkable reminder of the former Doom cover (I am talking about the 90's Doom cover) in which the Marine was the central character...
... so maybe this was the desired effect. And honestly, being lazy in this case is not a argument against the game itself... it is sometimes more efficient to be lazy than failing with awesome trailers/covers/whatever that make the buyer thinking they'll have a jewel and that ultimately they acquired shit (example: Final Fantasy trailer vs ingame came to my mind at first...) 

Well, the art director getting a proper cover ready doesn't impede the team from making an awesome game. He's spending time doing that while the gameplay team is tuning shotgun damage and enemy AI. 

... and you are extrapolating too much so far ;)

Bad cover does not mean bad game, and it does not mean good game either. Same applies to good cover, which does not mean good or bad game...
You can even have mean cover with mean/bad/good game... etc... we are discussing about a "50 shades"-like of goodness/badness relation in between things that are purely subjective. 

Of course it doesn't. But marketing matters. 

... and regarding my professional experience... marketing sucks... 

I think the main problem is that this new Doomguy design is too generic. Had they used one of those updated classic enemies like the revenant or the baron of hell instead, the reaction would've been more positive.

The problem isn't the cover, it's the new Doomguy design. But I don't care much about that since he won't be very visible in the game. 

Not that it really matters but I agree. New Revenant would have been cool as he looks pretty fucking rad. 

Upon seeing the teaser trailer I was genuinely excited about the new logo reveal. In that trailer the logo is in darkness and is totally black, but it had rim lighting, so it was 3D. I thought that was a great tease. The reveal, however, was very disappointing. It is literally the closest it could be to plain text without actually being plain text.

The original is a very interesting and iconic logo: vivid complimentary colors and contrasting textures and patterns that tie directly into the theme of the game. It felt like an object, an ominous sign floating in space. The logo is evocative and achieved all this very elegantly, I feel most people would have made a busy mess.

That being said, I don't think this escaped the minds of the people at zenimax and id. Frankly, the people who care about the doom logo or cover art are not their target demographic. As bland and boring and, to some people, insulting as the new logo and cover art is, it is recognizable. It's recognizable as a video game, as a game with guns, a game you can buy your son/grandson. Consumers are busy, distracted people bombarded with logos and packaging every single second. It could be argued that a re-imagined classic logo and cover art could simply be too noisy/busy/detailed and render it unrecognizable to the general consumer. 

I've heard this argument before... it always seems a justification for blandness rather than a reason to do something cool.

The lettering of the original was kind of busy with those tech details, but it also had a guy stood on top of a mound of struggling demons shooting them.

That's a pretty striking image (no comments on the quality). 

It's marketing people who get final say on this. That's where the buck stops, not with the devs. If marketing says the font has to be plain white to stand out for dumb people in a shop window, then that's what they go for. Also, focus tests have shown people respond better to images of space marines holding guns and not demons so again that's what we get etc etc. 

I think they made the wrong decision. I think they could have done something very cool and ultimately iconic if they wanted to.

However, I can see how that argument would be compelling to a board of directors who want a return on the $XX,XXX,XXX they just dumped into a game. 

"Also, focus tests have shown people respond better to images of space marines holding guns and not demons so again that's what we get etc etc."

Annnnnd we're back to being skeptical about the game. If focus groups are driving box art and marketing campaigns, it's not a stretch to think they're also driving game design ... in which case, rekt. 

Are like Design Committees, but with even fewer designers involved. 

Maybe it's a planned decision for it to replicate Halo in order to pull those fans in, subconsciously.

You take Halo 2 shit brown background here
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/halo/images/0/0c/Halo_2_Anniversary_Promotional_cover.png/revision/latest?cb=20140711045030

then add Halo1 chef hovering over the logo
http://photos.imageevent.com/afap/wallpapers/videogaming/halo//Halo-Combat-Evolved-Cover-Art.jpg

And you got the doom4 cover. The armour is even the same with the big spikey thing on his left shoulder that isn't on the right. 

bad cover is highly suspicious. It clearly depicts what the developer priorities are.

In an ideal world, a new doom game would be a game made by a legendary and famous studio who already did more than enough money and so they can just release what the fuck they want. So you have a chance of actually having something fun and interesting. Instead, iD fucked up in the past and now I fear they will be playing as safe as possible. (It still irks me that the marine has to use a powersuit to do the impossible. To me the doom marine has to be an implausible and impossible hero, not a regular guy in a robot suit. but this is a very minor nit pick)

just played a bunch of doom wads and mods. I'm highly skeptical iD will be able to release something as fun and cool to play. I will still give this game the benefit of the doubt, but I wish at least the pinata effect can be switched off.

Also, I don't give a shit about takedowns as insta-kill moves, in the sense that even I find a certain degree of purism absolutely retarded. What I think absolutely put the balance at risk are the invicibility frames and the pinata effect (if they have enemies being pinatas, you can be pretty damn well sure they balanced the game around that so screw careful pick up placement and balance, they will still be around but it's not the same thing)

some of the leaked stuff seems encouraging and I have to say the weapons sound RIGHT 

If focus groups are driving box art and marketing campaigns, it's not a stretch to think they're also driving game design

I wouldn't go that far. By the way, there's nothing new about any of this. This is how it's always been done - Marketing/Publishing generally control the posters/adverts/trailers/box art/massive cardboard cutouts of the player character that you see in stores etc.