Game Design | Stirring Storm

Industry Insights – Ken Levine on ‘Narrative Lego’ [GDC 2014]

Posted on December 17, 2018 by Stoyan Stoyanov

Intro

In this entry to my Industry Insights we’re treated to an interesting theoretical proposal by acclaimed Creative Director/Writer Ken Levine a veteran of the industry known for his work on the critically acclaimed Thief, System Shock and Bioshock series.

As a disclaimer – I will inject some of my own interpretation and expansion of the ideas, as this is unavoidable. For the full, original, unaltered content refer to the sources, listed at the end.

Summary

The talk exists more as a starting point for a creative discussion on potential future dynamic narrative systems amongst developers, rather than a pitch for a finished design idea. As such, Mr. Levine is very careful to note that this is NOT the design for a specific game, a product pitch or a specific development plan.

So why attempt it?

He discovered that the linear model locks you into always going bigger and bigger and outdoing yourself
This gets exponentially more costly time and budget wise
You work years and years on a project, ship it, people play through the 12 or so hours of content and that’s it gone – there is no continuous engagement
Linearity also puts boundaries between developers and the audience
- For example, conceits such as the iconic “Would you kindly” only work once
It also stems from Ken Levine’s inherent love for systemic games – he grew up playing Civilization games & XCOM

The System – What it is

So, what is this magical dynamic narrative system? I will call it the “Passions Project” and the reason why will become clear as it is laid out in the following text.

It is essentially an attempt to start the conversation on the idea of building a player driven replayable narrative gameplay system.

Below follows a breakdown of some of the key pillars of design behind the proposed system, grouped loosely into sections:

Negatives of Linear Narrative

Expensive to make – bespoke, setpiece-centric experience
Pieces don’t speak to each other
- Nothing in the beginning of Bioshock: Infinite speaks to the ending – not on a systems level
- As opposed to something like Civilization where the “player narrative” is heavily dictated and affected meaningfully by their choices throughout
Branching exists, but with limited states and interactions
- Can be very expansive but always inherently limited
Doesn’t fully embrace the unique power of games
- Namely – replayable and player-driven
Can only add ON, not add IN
There is naturally a lot of really great work out there (Witcher etc.) but he is seeking a fundamentally different approach

The Traditional Approach to AI

One of the common questions that come up from people unfamiliar with the games industry is “when will game AI pass the Turing test” a question that is fundamentally flawed according to Mr. Levine due to the following faults of Game AI:

Simulates a person, not a character
Everybody on the planet is bad at that
A truly robust solution lies beyond any technology or creative horizon
Overly ambitious leads to failure
Easy to give up and never even try

Physics Wasn’t Built in a Day

It began with simple things – 2D circles, rectangles, 3D Spheres, then moved onto ragdolls, cloth, fluids…
Gradual improvement.
People weren’t expecting perfection from the start, they knew you had to start somewhere.
The key was to know not to model everything – instead focusing on a limited set of believable and impactful things.
This same logic can be followed for procedural characters – don’t try and model everything.

The Opportunity

The concept and goal is t create a narratively driven narrative system where:

narrative elements are non-linear and interact with each other
All narrative elements trigger off PLAYER action
Such triggers are generally TRANSPARENT to the player

The Passions System

The core idea of this (somewhat unfocused) section of the talk is to give a practical abstract example of how such a system might work in an actual product.

The setup is simple – 4 villages, each with their own tribe. Within those exist numerous generic NPC’s but the key focus is on 5 “Stars” – or notable major players. The number is purposefully low as we don’t want to overwhelm the player.

Passions

It is with these Stars that the system really starts to take form. Their overall state and opinion of you is affected by what he refers to as “Passions”. These are the defining traits of each of them, which are systematic variables that are a systematic representation of an actual personality.

Each action in the world will influence each of these Passions for every major NPC and as a result, if done well and granular/reactive enough, you’d end up with a mostly dynamic narrative structure.

Or in simpler terms – the first of its kind truly systemic narrative. By ensuring that dialogue and events in the world are tied to them you’d (in theory) end up with nearly infinite narrative opportunities, entirely based on each player’s countless individual choices.

Specifics

I have purposefully avoided diving into the specifics of Mr. Levine’s examples – not only because they are bog standard fantasy fare of orcs, elves and such – but also because I recommend viewing it in detail on your own. However, I believe that the above is a reasonable summary of the core concept and should be enough to decide whether or not the talk is worth your time.

Personal Opinion

This last section doesn’t really contain any additional content but is rather my take on the idea, being primarily a gameplay/systems designer. As Mr. Levine himself admits, he is not a technical man, and as such this is more of an artist’s vision of how it would work. It focuses overtly on the end result and the magical possibility space it affords, rather than on the actual systems of it (as charming as the graphics may be).

That being said, I think it is a very important step forward for the medium and I am glad that it was brought up as a discussion. He is very much right that it is a broken, inherently flawed system – every first iteration of something truly new is. However, only by trying (and ultimately failing) will we ever improve and I believe that this is a very powerful concept that is very much investing the time and effort into.

For investigations like these, I’d look at older systemic games like the clunky RPG series Gothic or even the Nemesis system in the Shadow of Mordor games. I think even those rudimentary implementations show the true power of something like this. Perhaps a truly systemically driven narrative is impossible but I do believe that you can shift the balance heavily towards it – and end up with a truly special product.

As such, I am incredibly interested to see the development in this and wouldn’t mind giving it a shot myself, if I ever one day end up in the position to work in Mr. Levine’s team – as it seems like he would benefit from some help on implementation 😉

Sources

YouTube

Industry Insights – Classic Game Postmortem: Deus Ex [GDC 2017]

Posted on September 10, 2018 by Stoyan Stoyanov

Intro

In this article of my Industry Insights series I will be looking at a very exciting 2017 talk from Warren Spector who is going to go over some key development insights from the development of one of gaming’s biggest classics – the original Deus Ex (2000), which incidentally is one of my all time favourite games. He goes over how the whole inspiration behind the game was to have a cohesive thread of meaning interwoven throughout the development. This, while primarily a narrative conceit, is what helped drive the choices in the game and ultimately creating one of the best immersive sims of all time. Keeping with the spirit of this series, I will do my best to be as brief and concise as possible, hard as that may be for me.

As a disclaimer – I will inject some of my own interpretation and expansion of the ideas, as this is unavoidable. For the full picture, always refer to the sources, listed at the end.

Summary

This talk focuses goes over a lot of key aspects of the development of Deus Ex and its hour long runtime is far too loaded with development gems for me to truly summarize it.

As such, I will focus on the advice given by Warren that could be applied to most developer’s projects. It is broken down loosely into 9 “guiding design questions” (with example answers) as follows:

What’s the core idea?
1. Elevator pitch
2. Example from Deus Ex – “The real world role playing game where players tell their own stories”
3. Doesn’t need to be too descriptive or unique but should contain the core & soul of the game
Why do this game?
1. Why? – a simple but incredibly difficult question to answer – think of all angles from creative to business ones
2. Is it gonna be a hit? – artistic expression is great but so is being able to survive
3. Is it something you burn to make? – game development is hard, really hard so if you’re going to make something you best be sure your heart and soul are really into it otherwise you will easily burn out and creativity will be stifled (for reference, most of the mobile market)
What are the development challenges?
1. Hard is good, impossible isn’t
2. It’s good to push to break new ground and do something unique or challenging but it should also be at least remotely feasible. Don’t try and make an MMO with 10 people or tackle a huge technical challenge if you are a fledgling development studio/team
How well-suited to a game is it?
1. “Doing” is better than “Being”
2. Think of the verbs and exploration of spaces
3. What might be an awesome concept in your head might end up better as a book, movie or another kind of more static media format
4. Games are interactive – use that to its advantage, make games in which it is fun to do things and have spaces that are enjoyable to traverse, explore and interact with
What’s the fantasy?
1. Is it being a badass? Very charming? Unique situation?
2. What is going to captivate player’s imaginations
3. Example from Deus Ex: “You’re a James Bond figure who is equally good at sneaking, fighting and charming”
What are the verbs?
1. Sneaking, doing, talking, fighting etc.
2. As popular as walking sims and narrative games are, try and utilize the interactivity of games as a medium to its fullest
Has anyone done this before?
1. If so – what can you learn from them? Do your research.
2. If not – What does that tell us? Is it just a bad idea, or was it simply not feasible before due to other factors (technological etc.)
What’s the one thing?
1. What is the one thing that hasn’t been done before
2. You need this unique defining feature that will surprise players (personal addendum – it could also be doing something others have done before but doing it better than ever – though this is a bold approach – not every game can be Spiderman [2018])
3. Example from Deus Ex: unique combination of genres and player freedom
Do you have something to say?
1. Is there a meaning behind the game, a message?
2. Deus Ex was heavily loaded with messages about technology, the future of mankind and the power of governments and corporations
3. (personal addendum) Not every game needs to have a profound message, but having something to say is always important

In conclusion, this is an excellent talk that I HIGHLY recommend watching in full but if you don’t – keep in mind the above list is, as always, one approach to looking at Game Design and is naturally not suited to all development scales and aims. Nevertheless, it is always important to keep asking yourself questions as you design something and when someone with such a pedigree speaks – you listen.

I also recommend the excellent and thought-provoking Deck of Lenses by Jesse Schell – the companion to the equally useful The Art of Game Design book. It is essentially a deck of cards containing various guiding questions that aim to break your design down to bits. If it survives, you have a solid idea 😛

Sources

YouTube

GDC Vault

Industry Insights – Made out of Meat: Health Systems in Video Games [GDC 2016]

Posted on September 3, 2018 by Stoyan Stoyanov

Intro

In this first article from my new Industry Insights series I will be looking at a 2016 talk from Catacomb Kids creator Tyriq Plummer. Keeping with the spirit of this series, I will do my best to be as brief and concise as possible, hard as that may be for me.

As a disclaimer – I will inject some of my own interpretation and expansion of the ideas, as this is unavoidable. For the full picture, always refer to the sources, listed at the end.

Summary

The concept of the talk is to have a frank discussion about health systems in video games. One of the first points raised is that if your character can be replaced by a ball, then you’re probably working with a very high level of abstraction.

People are sacks of meat, after all – the author states in a very HK-47-esque twist.

This statement echoes throughout the talk as developers are urged to think of reinforcing a more authentic and engaging player experience – not just with narrative and aesthetic conceits but also through gameplay and mechanics.

Dwarf Fortress is cited as an interesting example – it’s stupidly in depth damage and affliction mechanics making it possible for people to get sick or get crippled and a hundred other cases that enhance its emergent gameplay. This is of course a very extreme example, that while great in that particular case for enhancing player engagement, is obviously not exactly well suited for wide scale application.

A potential middle ground is to have a sectional damage system – splitting the player into “chunks” as to better simulate a living being. An overall health total can result in a death state past a certain margin but getting to that point can happen through multiple different afflictions. Perhaps these could also change gameplay – could you still use a shield if your left arm was lobbed off?

Thing to keep in mind when designing a more engaging or authentic (not realistic!!) health system is to consider how real human beings work. We can recover from small and large ailments but it takes us time (and resources).

Simulation – defines as employing the rules of the game to work with the representation accurately. A balancing act between Abstraction, Simplification and Simulation.

Aftermath – once the damage is done and time has passed, how do you recover from it? Play around with this. Doesn’t have to be as boring or as linear as most “one solution solves all” implementations currently out there

Active healing – do thing, get better. Besides small animations there is rarely waiting in games – especially meaningfully done. Think of resting in D&D or Banner Saga. Try and tie multiple mechanics to it, to transform it into a unique action, rather than an annoying chore.

In summary – be mindful of your character, how they work and how they might hurt. We are but meat, after all.

Sources

YouTube

GDC Vault

Timely Thoughts – Just Cause 3

Posted on July 18, 2018 by Stoyan Stoyanov

This is the first in a series of focused opinion pieces on games aiming to eschew the oft lamented and reviled (with good reason) review format that has plagued the interactive medium since its inception. Given the recent announcement of Just Cause 4 and the lukewarm reaction to it – this seems like as good a time as any to reopen the wound.

Pretense translation: I am too disorganized to create a more structured review format and I’d rather faff about with big words and rant about my stance on key elements 😛

As any questionably written piece on the internet, we begin with everyone’s favourite bit. Unnecessary and overdrawn exposition.

Our tale begins with Just Cause 2. More specifically the freely available demo (remember when those were industry practice?) that I downloaded on a whim for the PS3. The demo was very clever in its simplicity. It offered a basic mission structure, sure, but at it’s core it was a chunk of the world – a veritable playground. Here’s a part of the map- go crazy in it. Have fun. Blow everything up.

I vividly remember my first two passing thoughts upon booting it up for the first time.

Man, this actually doesn’t look that great, especially the UI
Wow, these controls are very floaty and the shooting is kind of unpleasant

Yep. Not exactly love at first sight. Yet that unassuming game with it’s unashamed lust for explosions and chaos won my heart. That demo is to this day my most replayed piece of content (rivaled only by classics such as HoMM III, AoE II or the original Deus Ex). I must’ve “beaten” it over 10 times before finally succumbing and buying the full title. An impressive feat for my (even more so than now) financially limited self.

Just Cause 2 – A tropical paradise

The big open world. The freedom of movement. The speed, leniency and sheer amount of action. They were all serviceable individually but together they sang. A beautiful and energetic song of destruction and energy to rival Vivaldi. Despite the questionable plot, nonexistent mission variety and identical settlements peppered throughout the map I couldn’t stop. After several months of dedicated play it became the first (and to this day only) open world game that I have reached 100% completion in. It was the right product, at the right time, with the right balance of core ingredients.

With that said… what went so wrong with the next installment?

On paper it’s a textbook sequel – bigger and better in every way. A larger world, sharper graphics, enhanced physics, improved combat even a slight bump of the narrative budget. Yet for all its beautiful Mediterranean sights and outlandish arsenal Just Cause 3 can’t help but feel like a notable step down.

The expanded arsenal, boosted variety can’t help it from feeling like it has lost its soul. That elusive, intangible thing that so many developers desperately chase after. That perfect blend of intent, unified vision, mechanical execution and polish.

In the beginning, everything seems great. It stumbles through rudimentary control introduction but you grit your teeth and push onwards through this sadly accepted status quo in larger games. The wingsuit is a very logical and much appreciated addition to the already stellar traversal that the series was known for. The improved visuals make a pretty noticeable difference in the gameplay of a game so focused on spectacle. Each broken tower topples dramatically, lighting up the forest with fancy and questionably violent explosions. The improved gunplay makes mowing down soldiers almost fun, compared to the nuisance and chore that it devolved to in the original (though the shooting is still highly floaty and imprecise – a necessary evil, perhaps, given the breakneck speed at which the action takes place). the controls of Rico are also more natural and intuitive bolstered by much smoother animations/responsiveness, resulting in less cases of you awkwardly dangling from the odd bit geometry like some misguided nocturnal nature experiment gone wrong.

Sadly that initial joy and optimism quickly gets crippled by two key problems.

Big bad fault number 1: The progression.

One of the worst opening sequences for a game all about freedom and exploration

When people think of Skyrim do you think they vividly remember the horridly overdraw and cripplingly lacking in player agency introduction? Or do they remember exploring a vast and endlessly intriguing world at their own pace? When they remember Breath of the Wild and The Witcher 3 do they remember being sucked into an organic and emergent world or an engrossing narrative or do they think of tutorial text prompts and walking slowly from step to step?

I think we all know the answer to that (deliberately) loaded question.

The first thing you do when you wake up in DOOM is break the shackles of awful railroaded sequences and gun down demons in a gory celebration of player agency

There is a reason why 2016’s DOOM begins by speeding through the tutorial. The very first thing you do in the game immediately after your character wakes up is take control and gun down a demon. For a game where the vast majority of your time and enjoyment will be spent slaughtering the endless hordes of hell it is fitting and welcomed. The developers know what you came for. You know what you came for. Even the game’s protagonist knows exactly what you are after. And the game gives it to you. And it feels oh so good.

In as stark a contrast as can be the bombastic and liberating Just Cause 3 begins… heavily scripted. Then you are let loose on this beautiful (if somewhat less immediately striking than the tropical setting of its predecessor) coastal area. And immediately you feel the opposite of the freedom and power touted so prominently on the game box & promotional materials. Boldly lettered promises of the Michael Bay-esque content are strewn across videos and posters and yet… here you are, with a measly chunk of your arsenal and most of your skills locked behind an inherently flawed progression system.

A system that was supposed to give players choice, incentive and variety – ends up being a grindy mess

Even at first glance the inherent problem is apparent – a lot of your core functions are locked behind arbitrary gated progression systems. I understand the need to pad out and stretch content as well as the choice to push players towards the numerous side activities in order to unlock more content, however this is not the way to do it.

Additional content should enhance the core experience, not detract from it. Players should be encouraged and should want to actively seek out and take part in bonus activities – usually because of the promise of non-essential but nevertheless tantalizing extra rewards. Be that lore for the lore buffs, extra XP to help ease the difficulty curve, bonus weapons/vehicles/gear that fit in the “fun/experimental” archetype or just valuable story content a la Witcher!

In the case of a game like Just Cause 3 where these side activities basically amount to little more than randomly generated or loosely cobbled together filler content in the form of time trials and races (not really helped by the purposefully floaty driving, which is really fun during chaotic action but endlessly infuriating when you are trying to optimize a route) Ever tried to drive a sports car on butter? Or fly a plane with your feet? Explode from a gentle breeze? Fear not for Just Cause 3’s race events will fulfill these unrequited fantasies of yours.

To make matters worse, beyond locking away many of the absolute core parts of your skillset (the progression system should’ve only been there to add variety/offer different playstyles, it should never hamper a starting player in a way that makes them feel the “real” game doesn’t start till tens of hours in – it didn’t work for FF XIII and it sure as hell didn’t age gracefully) the system is also agonizingly slow.

So not only are fundamental pieces needed to enjoy playing the game fully stowed away in some obfuscated menu but you also need to grind receptive and derivative events endlessly. Well, at least the payoff is worth it. After all that grinding and content gating it is finally time to unleash hell and have fun the way only Just Cause can…

Right?

The game continues to take a nose dive

Big bad fault number 2: Core gameplay loop

Here it is. The main event. The meat. The heart and soul of this game. All the gorgeous scenery, all the stupid progression mechanics, all the loosely cobbled together narrative thread – all exist as setup for the core gameplay loop. The thing Just Cause was always known for. The reason that even to this day, years after it’s release, there are still gifs and videos constantly circulating of Just Cause 2 and all the outrageous and silly situations you can get yourself into.

If there’s one thing this series always excelled in, it was bombastic action. It is part of this games core essence even down to the unashamedly cheesy title. Yet… for all its improvements on paper Just Cause 3 somehow left everyone less entertained than it’s predecessor. It is easy to dismiss this as franchise fatigue but that would be an oversimplification and a pretty big leap, considering JC1 was a niche title so in reality this is only the second effective installment – and a highly anticipated one to boot. So what happened then? Where in the transition from concept to execution did the magic get lost?

The answer is multi-fold an complex and as such could deserve an entire paper. Instead, I will attempt to untangle the giant web of elements that caused all this woe best I can and lay them out briefly.

Like any playground it’s only as interesting as the stage. Super Mario Odyssey may been a whiteboxed clump of planes and cubes but it hardly would’ve garnered as positive a critical reception without it’s vibrant and excellently designed level layouts. Red Faction Guerilla had a destruction system so fun and impressive that it was “remarstered” in 2018 yet for all that fun the empty and repetitive red planet wore down most players early on into the experience.

A joy to traverse but ultimately dull and lacking world cripple JC3

Just Cause 3 suffers greatly from this. While the map is notably better looking, the lighting is less dynamic and more flat, creating this lifeless and overblown feeling of the entire world. The map lacks the diverse biomes of the previous title (because if any game warrants a desert, next to snow, next to a tropical island it’s one with this name). The villages and settlements have a little bit more variety but sadly that quickly fades. The only marked improvement are the military bases that this time escalate and clearly condone increasingly elaborate approach tactics – a very welcomed change. Even vehicles somehow manage to look less detailed and interesting at times.

So you’re stuck in this weirdly lit endless expanse of fields and samey villages. Gone are the lavish cities, the mile high club, the time bubble island or any of the other highlights. With these “key locations” missing the world of Just Cause 3 quickly becomes a homogenized mess in the palyer’s mind, nullifying all the effort put into creating it by the code team.

Rico controls better than ever – but that does little to help the grind

So, the world is severely lacking – then maybe the skills will be fun enough to make up for it? Yes and no. On one hand, fully locked and loaded this Rico 2.0 is so much more pleasant to control and you can wreak havoc like never before thanks to generously expanded (or eliminated for explosives!) ammo counts and the wingsuit. On the other, it takes so long to get there that most players will burn out way before that – due to the already discussed godawful progression system. With no engaging narrative to pull you along it is easy to ask yourself the question – even if I do unlock it all, what’s the point? That’s a terrifying question for any developer to hear and it is one that crippled the title.

To make matters worse, the game suffered by a myriad of technical problems. It had memory leaks on PC, horrible CPU optimization, awful performance on consoles – dropping into sub 15fps category – unacceptable for this style of game and was overall a real performance hog for no overtly apparent reason.

And then came the DRM & Leaderboard integration. Just Cause 2 had one of the most successful mods (still has a higher playerbase than JC 1+2+3 combined) – a multiplayer mayhem of untold scale that allowed players to duke it out in its world. As such, it has been one of the most requested features of the franchise. The answer from the developer came with always on DRM that prompted a stable connection to authentications servers that would slow down the launch of the game to a crawl and might even prevent it from being playable altogether. All of this for a half baked leaderboard integration that allowed you to compare menial stats to people on your friends list as you played. To call it underwhelming would an understatement.

End Result

So, in conclusion, Just Cause 3 was on paper the sequel that everyone wanted yet a bland world, frustrating progression system, lack of meaningful progress and underwhelming graphics coupled with abysmal performance resulted in a very lukewarm reception and a massive drop of faith in the brand. As we look onto Just Cause 4 we can only hope that Avalanche has learned their lesson and will deliver a playground unshackled by common video game constraints and systems and silly things like “logic” or “justification”.

PS: Multiplayer pls without fps tanking from your fancy storm simulations kthnxbye

Timely Thoughts – Concept

Posted on March 9, 2017 by Stoyan Stoyanov

As any gamer over the years i have amassed a troubling amount of games in my backlog. As of this article the unplayed/unfinished games in my Steam library alone sit at a delightfully unnerving ~459. To solve this I have decided to combine two productive activities and I will seek to give my thoughts on and post about each game, in this way both generating regular content for the website and burning through my backlog. What could possibly go wrong.

Important to note is how I have avoided the dreaded word “review”. This is because I have yet to see a format for game scoring/reviewing that I like. Until I come up with something I will just give my overall thoughts on a product, trying not to follow the typical pattern of “classic game reviews” that is often too narrow-minded, categorized and dull to be of any use to a wildly varied interactive medium. It also fuels my false superiority complex. Woohoo. And don’t fret, the Arbitrary Game Score™ will still make an appearance.

Here are some numbers to illustrate just how bad the situation is. See that pretty banner on top of the article? Those are 56 games from my Steam library. Looks like a lot, doesn’t it? Well, with my current library size (which seems to grow every week), there are 8 more pages. Yeah… That’s not counting the 15 NDS roms, 8 Wii, 28 PS3 ,19 PS4, 13 PSP, 11 PSVita and god knows how many Android/iOS games in queue. It’s bad. it’s real bad.

Keeping the number-based reality check going, here are some images from two delightful websites.The first one being Steam Left – a service that gives you an approximate number of hours to beat all games in your library. In my case it was this:

Lovely. That’s for the bare bones main campaign completion btw.

The second website offers a more in-depth insight into how stupendously impulsive of a buyer your are. It’s called How Long To Beat Steam – and is linked to the How Long To Beat website, which offers pretty accurate community sourced playtimes – including completionist runs. The added details and accuracy make this one even scarier.

Right, then. Seems like this’ll be a fun ride. On a positive note, at least I won’t run out of content anytime soon. Without further ado – my first ever “review” Just Cause 3

DOOM : Oh, how delightfully wrong I was.

Posted on May 30, 2016 by Stoyan Stoyanov

It is easy to get swept up in the hype surrounding game’s announcement. In fact, seeing as how E3 is right around the corner, it seems quite apt to talk a bit about it. Often times people are left stunned by pre-rendered trailers and proof of concept demo’s running on NASA hardware and scripted to the millimeter. Then, inevitably, the actual release comes around and the end product is severely underwhelming. Whether it is a minor visual downgrade (something almost entirely unavoidable when you’re presenting your game in front of the whole world at E3 and the release is a whole year away) or, even worse, cut content or entirely different gameplay. We’ve seen it time and time again with recent broken releases. From Watch Dogs, through Unity and even games like Far Cry: Primal, a lot of things were missing, not as advertised or simply did not work. Let’s not even mention the larger fiasco’s like Colonial Marines or the latest Batman game…

That, however, isn’t the topic of today’s post. Instead, it is the complete opposite. Once in a blue moon, when the stars align and god smiles upon the just we do get a miracle. A game that had looked so bad, so utterly devoid of what made the previous titles in the series tick, so generic and bland – turns out to be amazing. That’s right, we’re talking about the new DOOM.

As anyone who knows me can tell you, I was very skeptical towards DOOM ever since the initial trailer. As the first trailer finished, I could see how hyped everyone was, meanwhile all that was in my head were a myriad of different concerns – why are there so many QTE’s, why is the character so slow, why is it all so clunky, why is it so colourless. Then more and more gameplay videos popped up and that further cemented ym stance – this was not a true DOOM game. It was neither fast nor fun enough and seemed to be completely missing the point of the series. I was disappointed beyond belief. After the different but serviceable DOOM 3, id had killed the series. With the sour taste of RAGE still in my mouth, I just decided to accept the worst and carry on with my life. Then came the open beta and I hated it. At this point there was little to no doubt in my mind that DOOM would be terrible. Silly taunts? Ugly skins? QTE’s? What is this game? What have you done to one of the grandfather’s of the genre?! Once again, I held my opinion that Shadow Warrior 2 would be more of a DOOM game than the new DOOM. After all, it was fast, silly, violent and undeniably fun – everything that old shooters stood for.

Oh, how wrong I was.

Then, the release date came. And the reviews. At the time of this rambling rant DOOM has a very respectable Metacritic of 85 on PC with a user score of 8.2 (!). Naturally, I was highly skeptical. However, as time passed more and more respected reviewers and critics that I followed were heaping praise after praise upon the game. Everyone who played it, loved it. Sure, the multiplayer was lackluster and not everyone’s cup of tea but apparently the campaign was stellar. I couldn’t believe it. So I played the game. Oh my god. What. Have. They. Done.

Everything was so perfect. The game skipped boring tutorials and exposition and thrust you straight into the action. The lore and story were there if you cared for it, but doomguy certainly didn’t and neither did most people. The game was brutal, fast and visceral. The gunplay was sublime. The movement speed had been nearly doubled since initial demonstrations. The QTE’s were faster and (almost) entirely bearable. The health system actually made sense. Weapons didn’t have to reload. The levels were sprawling, multi-level mazes that brought back memories of a time when a level wasn’t just a straight line with several side paths for collectables.

I don’t know if it was the negative press, the bad consumer reactions or what but id turned around the game. Everything that was criticized int he original showing had been removed, revamped or improved. The game was a joy to play. I hadn’t felt such unbridled joy at the realization that a game is actually good since the last Wolfenstein (which is actually frighteningly similar in terms of expected quality vs end result). In fact, I might go as far as to say that this game is better than the last Wolfenstein. The gameplay surely is. And this is coming from someone who hated the game down to its core. I think every developer should take note, since this game is one of the best examples in recent times of altering a product in accordance to palter feedback and delivering an amazing end result. Well done, id software, you proved me wrong.

As it stands, 2016’s DOOM went from one of my least anticipated and almost hated titles to one of my favourite shooters of the last 5 years. To anyone who has doubts about this game, don’t. Id have done it and I can’t wait to see where the series goes next. DOOM is back, baby.

PS: Now with Wolfenstein, Shadow Warrior and DOOM back in full force, what’s next. Hexen? A proper Duke Nukem game? Please, please, please may this bring back a revival of old-school shooters.