Doom (2016)

I think this game can be summed up pretty well by the first two story sequences. It opens up with our protagonist, Doom Guy, ripping off his chains, ripping apart some demons, etc. It quickly moves on to Some Guy trying to exposit the plot at you, only for Doom Guy to smash the monitor he's on. When I first saw this sequence I was like, "oh shit, are they seriously going to do an entire game where the protagonist is actively ignoring the plot?" (aka the least ludonarrative dissonant game of all time). Mere hours later the game seals you into a room where you can't shoot anything, and proceeds to have Plot Guy exposit the story to you anyway. I felt betrayed. Was this even the same game? Did they add the intro at the last minute of development? This gap in aspirations to reality kind of describes the whole game.

While there are probably only 5 of these exposition sequences in the whole game and their length is pretty short, it sure as heck wasn't the game I was imagining where NPCs spend the entire run time desperately pleading with the protagonist to stop smashing things- leaving the player to piece together what the plot even was with scraps of dialog. The same theme applies to the level design where they try to evoke the original Doom, without necessarily going all the way back to labyrinth mazes. Yet I would describe exploration in this game as.. unpleasant. But I also can't quite pinpoint what my brain found so bad about it. So I'm just going to put a list of my theories here instead:

• Most of the levels are linear, with secrets branching off the main path at random. But these levels are also way longer (and slower to move in) than an original Doom level, so this creates an unpleasant routine of "clear area, check map for unexplored rooms" with each chunk of the map because it's way too much of a hassle to backtrack (if the game even lets you), and you rarely get a sense of "there must be a secret here" just from looking at an area.
• There are a few levels that are less linear that use a pattern of "central room that branches out into many other rooms, unlocking in a linear fashion". These are also unpleasant to explore because the game does a poor job of giving areas distinct landmarks- while some individual rooms might be distinct, their connecting hallways/entrances are just copy paste repetitions. The quest compass diminishes the impact of this for the main route, but trying to find secrets in these places involves a lot of running in circles.
• Modern game visuals are ridiculously detailed, and this game doesn't use the modern technique of glowing interactive objects (or the older technique of "brighter palette") for secrets. This turns finding them into a really annoying version of a "spot the difference" book. There were numerous cases where I simply did not notice an openable hatch or an open air vent that I had passed by 6 times already, just because there's so much detail in every room. It honestly gave me a new appreciation for why so many new games have so much glowing crap in them?
• The original Doom's level design is incredibly historically important for establishing the art of complex levels in the following years of PC games (until the original xbox killed the tradition). You don't get Thief without Doom. But it's also very much a primordial version of the art. Maybe sliding along walls hitting the use key looking for secret doors isn't great design by itself? While they definitely didn't copy those ethos entirely, maybe they went a little too far back. Or not far enough. I haven't played the original in so long I can't really say for sure.

 The game is divided between these exploration sections, and what amounts to combat arenas. You get sealed in a wide open room (with various goodies/hazards), monsters continually spawn, and when you kill enough waves you get to move on. This is where the game is more effective at reimagining the original game. Rather than modern regenerating health, you have to melee near death demons to get more health. Rather than modern infinite ammo, you have to use your chainsaw (which has ammo of its own) to restore your ammo. Rather than the modern 2 guns, you get the full suite of over 9 weapons (and while some are definitely more useful than others, the game does a reasonable job of making you switch to different ones for different enemies). No reloading, demon projectiles are slow enough to dodge. It's pretty fun. But it also kind of devolves into the following pattern:

• Dump all of your heavy weapon ammo into the biggest demons
• Chainsaw a weak monster (since you get full ammo, but use less chainsaw ammo)
• Repeat
• (Occasionally use weaker weapons to clear out small demons)
• (Occasionally save powerup for later waves)
• (Occasionally use BFG to clear mass waves (I actually think the game wants you to use it way more than I did because I didn't realize what BFG ammo looked like until a loading tip told me in the final level))

It's admittedly pretty ballsy that the game actually doesn't have a single scripted setpiece gimmick moment (even the few bosses are just fairly traditional boss patterns). The purity of gameplay is remarkable. But it's also hard not to feel like they just stretched out an arcade game into a different structure. It's also only roughly 10hrs long, because even they knew the core of it couldn't last much longer (to its credit, it's one of the few games where I think the end is the best part). I come away from it feeling like I played a prototype more than a game, I guess? I respect the purity, but something was missing. Maybe I wouldn't have even noticed if the other parts were just as good as the combat.