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Review after rolling credits on the single player campaign. I ripped and tore until it was done and it took me about 12 hours. I did not check out the multiplayer but I did play arcade mode some. TLDR, this is a return to DOOM's roots and its a blast to play!

But that may not be what you are wondering about. Dark Age just came out (I am in 2025) and you may be trying to figure out if you should get this one or Eternal or Dark Ages. I can't speak for Dark Ages, but I am playing Eternal now. And they are just different games. Eternal is like this game but with a lot of things turned up to 11, but that is not always a good thing. I think that Eternal is a bit more silly; there are more movement abilities, neon ammo exploding out of enemies, and a less grounded story. To put it in terms of 80's action movies, this DOOM is like Aliens and DOOM Eternal is like Commando. Eternal is more multiplayer focused if you are into that. If you play one of these games you will likely want to play the other one.

So about me, DOOM 2 was the first actual computer game that I bought with my own hard earned cash from my swanky job as a subway sandwich artist in the 90's. I had played Wolf3D and the original DOOM a bit so yeah, I was totally radical. DOOM 2 was a great kick in the teeth. It was fast, brutal, and a lot of fun.

Since then FPS' have evolved though Unreal, Quake, Halo, COD, Destiny, and everything else so that things slowed down a bit. Now it is a lot of peeking from behind cover and hiding until your health comes back. It is refreshing to play a game again where that doesn't happen. You don't take cover, the demons take cover from you. You are bouncing off the walls, flicking rocket launchers and shotguns at them so fast that they can't keep up. This game is a survival horror from the demon's perspective, with you hunting them down and them telling their little demon babies horror stories about you. It is awesome, and I think that this game is a big part of why the boomer shooter genre exists now.

All of that comes out well in the Arcade mode, which is just self contained levels with a score total. You go in and ruin a small city of demon's day as fast as possible. For me if this game has legs it will be that.

The campaign is pretty good too. Story wise I felt like it took a bunch from Dead Space 2. But then I realized that's backwards. This game is the basic plot of DOOM and Dead Space took inspiration from that. My main gripe with the campaign is that they gate some of the things that make this game fast and fun behind armor and weapon upgrades. At the start it feels a little slow and clunky in the campaign because of that decision.

So in conclusion, yeah this game is great. The campaign is about 12ish hours long. There are huge windy campaign maps with a ton of secrets and collectibles hidden in them. It also has multiplayer which I did not check out. And the arcade mode is a ton of fun. And if you are reading this it is probably on sale.