Doom

DOOM (2016) aimed every mechanic and presentation choice at one vision. The vision was "push forward combat": rapid movement, pouncing on enemies to gain health and demons that flee from you all push the player to charge in like a predator.

The heavy metal soundtrack, violent animations and the Doom Slayer's design reinforce the same feeling. Mark Brown: "every feature pushes you to race towards enemies like an unstoppable predator."

DOOM 2016 lets players choose their own approach to each enemy mix. Distinct weapons and monsters encourage preferences and priorities without one correct solution, so interlocking questions keep the player thinking rather than following a script.

It is described as chaotic combat chess.

Doom's dodging works because shooting is all players think about. Rollerdrome used DOOM 2016 as its combat reference, but combining its arena combat with Tony Hawk's skating produced "an overwhelming mess" that was impossible to learn.

Roll7 simplified both halves, automating forward movement and adding auto-aim and a reflex slow mo, because a player juggling both systems cannot track everything a pure shooter asks.

DOOM 2016 lets players choose their own approach to each enemy mix. Distinct weapons and monsters encourage preferences and priorities without one correct solution, so interlocking questions keep the player thinking rather than following a script.

It is described as chaotic combat chess.

The Summoner is a good early target but can safely wait. DOOM 2016's Summoner spawns weaker minions, so players can ignore it for a while without being overwhelmed, keeping the priority question open.

DOOM Eternal's Buff Totem and Archvile continuously spawn super-powered demons, so they simply must become priority one and the choice disappears.

Higher max ammo kept resource pressure from dominating. DOOM 2016 had higher max ammo than DOOM Eternal, which cut it and required regular flame belch use for armour.

In Eternal, players can find themselves "spending more time patching up your resources than slaying demons"; the balance between combat questions matters as much as each one.

Skill menus slow a lightning quick game like Doom. Skill menus pull players out of the world and kill pacing, and it is questionable whether Doom needed a skill tree at all.

Alternatives: Downwell flashes three upgrade choices between levels, and Red Dead Redemption 2 unlocks skills automatically as you play.

Doom's deuteranopia mode simulates colourblindness instead of helping. The mode just shows what the game looks like with that deficiency, which is the opposite of the goal.

Colourblind settings should "simply help players to clearly see vital bits of information" rather than change how the whole world looks.

Unbroken high intensity combat exhausted even a fan of it. Mark Brown loved Doom's combat, calling it some of the best shooter combat in years, but never finished the game because long stretches of high intensity fighting got tiring.

It also had less novelty than Titanfall 2. "the pacing is way off with long stretches of high intensity combat that gets pretty exhausting."

Glory kills made aggression the most rewarding choice. A glory kill kills instantly, costs no ammo and showers the player with health, so players race headfirst toward demons.

This overrides years of FPS habit of hiding behind cover by making the intended style also the efficient one.

id made enemies hold ground so players would push forward. Early builds had enemies that chased the player down, and players instantly started backing up. id changed enemies to hold their ground more so the player does the pushing.

Director Marty Stratton: "We'd end up in these situations where you would instantly start backing up."

Melee ties together combat, health, movement and even doors. Doom (2016) orbits around melee: it is central to combat, gives you health, ties into movement and opens doors, much like Samus shooting doors in Metroid.

Mark Brown cites it as a non-Nintendo example of putting play first: "Doom might be the most Nintendo game that Nintendo would never, ever make."