So, I finally played and beat DOOM (2016) (Gaming)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Wednesday, January 11, 2017, 13:11 (2873 days ago) @ Kermit

Glad to hear you enjoyed it so much! I just picked it up myself. Doom and Titanfall 2 both get thrown around as examples of "the return of smart design & mechanics to the FPS genre in 2016" (- I'm paraphrasing, but it's a sentiment I've heard quite a few times from various critics and outlets). Hopefully we're seeing the start of a trend. I wouldn't expect most games to live up to Doom or Titanfall 2's quality bar, but maybe we'll at least see some more inventiveness across the board. The amount of attention given to the "Effect & Cause" mission in T2 alone shows that gamers are craving it.

On a semi-related note, I just started playing Gears of War 4 and I'm surprised by how much I'm enjoying it so far. It certainly isn't anything groundbreaking so far (I'm only a couple hours in), but the basic Gears mechanics are still rock solid, and it plays better than the countless 3rd-person cover shooter clones that have come along since the original Gears. There's also something to the design style of the world and gear and characters I enjoy playing in. Plus I'm having fun with the characters & story more than I thought I would. I doubt there's anything here that would convert people who haven't enjoyed Gears of War in the past, but anyone who was a fan in the past might want to check it out. Strong follow up so far.

Just finished it. Don't want to poison the well (and if you don't want to have your perceptions colored stop reading NOW), but I felt the same way early on and ended up feeling disappointed. Gears has always provided a decent co-op experience (the first gears broke ground in that area), but there are some difficulty spikes later that soured the game for me and my co-op buddy. I felt the need to confer with youtube at several points to get past chokepoints. For all the polish, there were also some glaring problems in different areas (like sound design) e.g. the final boss, for all his bluster, is apparently mute.

A good game, but I'm not motivated to play again except maybe as part of a co-op night.

So I just finished it last night. Thoroughly enjoyed the campaign from a gameplay point of view. I didn't run into the difficulty spikes that you mentioned, but I was playing on Normal (I typically play Gears games on Hardcore). I did notice the sound issues. Definitely a bit rough around the edges there. I was pleasantly surprised by how good the story was in some ways, but struggled with it on others. All in all, it got me excited for the franchise in a way that I didn't expect it to, so I'd say they did right by Gears :)