And that's the NIGHTMARE playthrough of DOOM complete.
A few final thoughts, comments, and observations from three back-to-back single player campaign playthroughs, starting from HURT ME PLENTY, to ULTRA VIOLENCE, and finally to NIGHTMARE. (Total playtime, 75 hours, and that's without so much as even
looking at the multiplayer.)
Overall of course, it's a truly magnificent videogame and I would recommend it without hesitation to anyone who likes to enjoy themselves doing things that are fun - an absolutely solid 10/10 is my score for this.
Minor niggles that had shaken themselves out by the end of playthrough three are just that, fairly minor, but I'll list them anyway - these apply specifically to NIGHTMARE.
#1 The 'hell level' arena fights can be annoying because they're designed to be authentically 'hellish', which means little outcrops of rock and uneven surfaces and stuff like that all over the place. (We all know that's what hell will be like, right? Slightly sub-standard on grounds maintenace) What this means in reality is that in the middle of the world's most hectic demonic firefight, your unbelievably kick-ass marine who ten seconds ago had stuffed a terrifying demon's head up its own arsehole, suddenly stops moving because of a slightly uneven pavement, which is all the time it takes for a Hell Knight to stamp on your head (dead), or a Pinky to ram you to death (dead), or a ranged charged shot from a Mancubus to kill you (dead), and so on.
The lovely sleek mars station style levels suffer from this a lot less, although they still have their moments. This is the only one thing I would pick up on as where the level design gets in the way of the game.
#2 To compensate for how unbelievably awesome you are by the end of the game, the last two levels in particular (Vega Control Centre and Argent D'Nur), just chuck fucking EVERYTHING at you and LOTS OF EVERYTHING. There are five fights in particular, the one where you have to destroy the four cooling circuits for Vega, the one after that at the 'train station' before you go up to the top, and then on Argent D'Nur itself the three main wraith fights.
I tried to work through these methodically, but in the end just cheesed the fuck out of them with the BFG and/or Berserk/quad powerups. It turns out that the AMMO BOOST rune, when upgraded, which says that demons 'sometimes' drop BFG ammo, actually then drop it reasonably generously. I don't mean enough for you to chain fire the BFG at will, but more than you might imagine to be the case, so that you can pace the fight around a pretty consistent number of BFG shots (i.e. 3 that you (hopefully) have onboard as ammo, 1 or 2 in the arena, and most importantly an extra couple that you can almost certainly get demons to drop.)
Maybe that's how it's supposed to be on Nightmare, that your normal weapons aren't up to the job so you need to go MEGA CHAINSAW AND MEGA BFG and work through the fights on that basis, but it felt a bit cheesy to me. (Even on Ultra Violence I'd kind of been priding myself on using the chainsaw and BFG as little as possible, if at all.)
#3 Many of the weapons are flat-out underpowered and not much use. The fully upgraded super shotgun remains arguably the best weapon right through to the end of the game. This isn't a 'bad' thing as such, but it's just kind of super shotgun for close up, gauss cannon for at range.
#4 The checkpointing can be occasionally intrusive and irritating, it mostly gets it right and is generous in the main, but there are a few outrider situations where it drops the ball and has you repeating the same section/actions too many times.
#5 I'm not entirely sure the boss fights really fit, they don't stick out like a sore thumb as they did in Deus Ex Human Revolution, but they didn't add much to the mix either IMO. (None of them caused a huge amount of trouble either, even on Nightmare.)
These are very small blotches on an otherwise impeccable landscape - awesome game, loved it to pieces. Roll on single player DLC or a sequel, I'll be all over either like a cheap suit.
Everything about it is so well crafted, like the way the end credits are synced in with the music and the graphics tie in with the roles of the peoples' names onscreen.
The only sad thing now is that there is no more DOOM to play.
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Strangest thing that happened - Doing the RICH GET RICHER rune trial on my first attempt on NIGHTMARE. I really can't explain this as it was hard enough on Hurt Me Plenty, let alone Ultra Violence. I can only think that on Nightmare I went in with no expectations whatsoever other than dying horribly, so was almost just riffing, trying to get a feel for how it'd pan out so playing it kind of not caring how well I did or not, and then all of a sudden I realised I was close to doing it, and then did it. Very odd. And then for afters the Saving Throw rune trial only took me two attempts on Nightmare.
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