You know... I'm going to re-write this... because my feelings are changing as I reflect on that session.
Just played an hour or so of the Doom open beta.
Thoughts...
It's refreshing to play an arena style shooter like this again. I got into a rocket dueling groove that I haven't felt since the late 90's. I liked how streamlined it felt. Although it really didn't feel reminiscent of a Doom game at all.
On the other hand, the pace was a little slow. The movement lacked a feeling of momentum that was essential to earlier arena shooters. Rocket jumping didn't seem to work. Turning into a revenant was kinda dumb, and felt like it spoiled the action more than anything. Lack of mobility + weapons being balanced all to equal utility meant that there was no metagame to compete for a good map control rhythm, which is what the old classic deathmatch games were all about.
But why did I stop playing after only an hour? Well, the first 45 min or so were great. I was put right into a server that played really smooth. Then I took a break to check out character customization, because I was getting loaded with unlockable junk while playing. Wanted to see what it was. Then I tried to get back into the game, and I was put on 3 unplayably laggy servers in a row. No server browser available. All I could do was keep hitting getting assigned a game and hoping for the best over and over, which is not fucking cool. If there's no servers available with good pings, let me see that fact for myself. Don't make me waste 15 minutes rolling the dice. And this is why PC gamers fucking hate consoles and their shitty ports.
And... I don't know about the single-player... I'm still disappointed with the art direction.
If the game planned to have good modding support, I would be all about it. Fans would fix this up in no time. But there's a lot of claims out there that the built in level editor, Snap Map, will be the full extent of modding available. If anything kills the game's success, that will be it. And I have a feeling the extent of the game's success will be limited to early interest from console kids who don't know any better.