Well, after watching the two gameplay showcases a few times, I have pretty mixed feelings. The choreographed demonstration played with a controller gives little insight on what actual gameplay, especially with mouse and keyboard, will be like.

All aspects of the game have some obvious rough edges, but the game isn't coming out for at LEAST another year. E3 and alpha footage of Doom3 was far inferior to the final product, could be the same case with this.


PROS

-Gore looks cool

-Seem to have good intentions


CONS (Visuals)

-Art direction in general feels generic, flat or lacking any real flavor.

-Enemies aren't very distinguishable from one another. The game as a whole seems to be using fairly muted base colors (though lots of them) with bright, more saturated accents on key things (enemies, doors). If they're gonna go this route they should make the most of it. For example, the cacodemon could benefit from a glowing eye and mouth (like in the original doom), this would help it stand out against the world.

-Continuing that train of thought, monster sounds seem both artistically uninspired and mechanically useless as they lack definition from each other.

-The music is cool, but inappropriate for this game. I was hoping this was "dev music", stand-in tunes for E3. Toward the end of the Hell gameplay the music was obviously of the same batch that was used in the teaser trailer that came out last year. This makes me feel like they've already chosen to go with this composer and musical direction :/

-The quasi-diegetic ui is pretty meh. Id rather have unique, distinguishable items rather than a generic blue holographic tag on them that was pulled right out of dead space (worked well in that game, not so much here).

-Happy to see the SS, but again, weapon design feels uninspired and unnecessarily constrained to realism. "realism" is already out the window, you have a lot of creative room before things start to become painfully improbable. But even then, it's doom. I'd like see more exploration and play within the doom universe to come up with more unique and interesting art.

-On that note, Hell was pitifully bland and generic.

-Cyberdemon design in particular was not appealing.

-The visual fidelity in general looks almost last-gen. This is surprising. I feel like this is what it would look like on all low settings.


CONS (Gameplay)

-Doom made you feel strong and in control by way of powerful weapons and enhanced mobility (speed, in this case). Doom4 is attempting that same sensation of control via mobility but the "realistic" aesthetics requires reduced movement speed so they have doublejump and grappling/mantling to make up for it. IMO, this could work, but grappling/mantling would almost always have to be an integral part of gamepley with levels being built to maximize use of that mechanic. Otherwise, if it's not constantly in use you simply have slow movement speed with occasional, clumsy and ultimately irrelevant bursts of mobility.

-too slow of a tempo, not enough enemy numbers and variation per encounter.

-Enemies seem pretty static and stupid. I would like to see more movement and interactivity.

-I feel like finishing moves break the flow of play and would quickly grow tiresome.

-Health drops from enemies. They'll go all out arcady in this area but wont speed the player up or give us more interesting/whimsical visuals? ok.

-Levels feel very flat and lacking interesting enemy positioning. Looked very linear with occasional scripted arenas *cough*HL2*cough*. I think a more open and interconnected floor plan similar to that of older fps games would a) be more fun to navigate, b) would utilize grappling/mantling and double jump, and c) be more visually compelling.

-Fuck that weapon wheel.

-Nearly pausing time when selecting weapons is unnecessary hand-holding and takes away from the challenge of playing the game.

Meh, there were a couple other things that struck me as odd, but I'm reminding myself they still have a year of dev ahead of them. It feels like they're trying to make a game that gives the impression of fast paced, challenging combat while still remaining accessible to the consumer base, particularly the console market. I don't think that can be pulled off. I hope it congeals into something fun. I'm still cautiously optimistic, though now more emephasis on the caution. 

To me it looks like it might be fun. That's all. 

Yeah Killpixel, your pros and cons list shows mixed feelings for sure. 

Based on all we've seen so far, none of us have any idea whether it's going to be any good or not. There's nothing in those videos that's so heinous that it can't be forgiven if the game has good, interesting level design. I'm talking about level design that balances combat with rewarding, non-linear exploration with great replay value and satisfying, non-trivial environmental interac- sorry I've got to stop myself right there, it's hard to type when I'm laughing this much... 

level design that balances combat with rewarding, non-linear exploration with great replay value and satisfying, non-trivial environmental interac-

Not even I am expecting that from 2010's id. 

the original doom fanbase are all in the 30s and 40s now, aw hell some could be into their 50s if they were playing doom2 at 30yo.

many don't play games like they're 15 anymore, pumped up on energy drink sinking hours and hours into a lightning fast game that would make a normal person dizzy in a few minutes. they just don't want to realise it.

maybe, secretly, id know that, so they'll never return to the extreme fast pace of doom. the old skool can't handle it. the new skool of console gamers can't either because they don't have the mouse/kb. 

The Doom community regularly sees new faces, and they're not in their 30s. They're teenagers, looking for a fun game, and sometimes one of them hears about Doom and really gives it a go. And they love it. I feel old in half the Doom discussions I stumble across, so, it isn't just an old man's game. 

This looked reasonably brutal and visceral, but not that hectic. It looks like they are balancing out modern styles with action-orientated gameplay a bit better than Doom3, but it's still not the old skool pace.

The question is, will that happen again?? Painkiller - okay, but meh. Serious Sam - seriously toss. WOFLTNO - too hitscanny. Devs seem to either struggle getting the horde/pace balanced right with actually being an appealing game, or don't have the inclination to try (sorry, may not make sense, not fully caffeinated yet). 

The thing is, it doesn't SEEM like it should be hard to arrive at a good base for a working formula fairly quickly. Seriously, start with this list of traits for your enemies:

- fast/slow
- hit scan/projectile (also fast/slow)
- large/small
- land based/flying

Mix and match, generate about 8 combos of those things and you should have a recipe for a Doom-like tactical experience.

But everyone defaults to "slow, hit scan, small, land based". Humans in other words. 

And their idea of enemy variety is pistol vs rifle, or "Oh, hey, this one has a rocket launcher!" 

at least for sp?

I think there is a good argument that most are designed for a one off 'experience' only. Hence all the overscripted stuff, animations or otherwise.

Most people I know these days only playtrhough the sp part of a modern fps once. Then move on to another game or only play mp. 

Not in my experience. It takes so much effort to create the worlds that adding side paths or optional objectives for future discovery isn't realistic.

They try to add replayability through scoring systems or other things that players don't really care about.

I've replayed Fallout 3 and New Vegas several times because every single time, I found something totally new I never saw before... 

so then really are game mechanics at the forefront or again things that go to the one off experience? I would say the latter.

Fallout etc I guess they are more RPS/FPS like Deus Ex no? 

Maybe they are counting on mapping for Doom4 SP replayability ?
Hoping they offer more mapping possibilities than Snapmap or that it allows more than prefab usage... 

This feels like very mass market easily accessible stuff. Designed to sell in droves. I suspect that the SP campaign won't have much replayability at all. The community and map making tool will be the focus of its replayability.

I will be interested in seeing how in depth they make the scripting tools though. That is what will make or break this I think. If some interesting or novel mechanics can be implemented into the game by the community then we might see it take off. 

because people are able to look past graphical or environmental "limitations" for novelty. (see minecraft) 

It's a bit of a vicious cycle. There's nothing to gain from a replay, so they don't, so levels with replay value get lower priority, so players don't bother replaying...

I get that games have become Hit It and Quit It. But that sucks. Unfortunately the answer always seems to be leaderboards or grinding. Which still suck. 

And on the other side you have games like Hotline: Miami where replaying is everything.

I wonder if DOOOOM will even have end level statistics and secrets. 

Although I don't like that melee takes longer than shooting - from a mechanics standpoint that makes no sense.

And yeah... where are the projectiles... 

Don't the imps shoot fireballs, the revs ants rockets and the mancubi plasma? Not to overly defend it, but to me it didn't look as bad as it's made out to be by some. What annoyed me most was the boring environments. Those looked pretty generic, but with a level editor like snapmap, the components have to be generic to fit together. I guess what they're trying to do is accommodate casual misdeed and mappers who can't spend a year on each map? 

Fucking autocorrect. 

Not misdeeds. 

Motherfuckers 

I doubt the levels in the single player campaign were slammed together with slapmap.

I think slapmap's just a cool toy for whipping something up quick and sharing it online for likes and upvotes. 

I like "casual misdeeds", I think we should accommodate as many of those as possible.