Doom Review: Like Hell You Will

Nothing carries baggage quite like Doom, but id Software uses that baggage to beat a demon to death. Our review.

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The prospect of reimagining Doom left id Software stuck between a rock and a hard place. From the departure of notable principals like John Romero and John Carmack, to the tepid reception of Doom 3, this modern reboot was rife with design challenges. Despite everything working against it, though, id somehow wriggled out of the corner it was backed into and did an admirable job blending new and classic design paradigms, creating one of the most exhilarating shooters in years.

Hell on Mars

Doom 2 fans should recognize this arrangement of enemies and terrain.

Doom's campaign begins in media res, without lengthy cutscenes or wordy dialogue to steep you in its premise. Your nameless protagonist begins strapped to a stone slab, breaks free of his bonds, and lets you get down to business bashing heads and busting caps, all in an effort to stem a deluge of Hellspawn spilling onto Mars.

Doom puts the pedal to the metal right away for a reason: every action at your disposal is designed to propel you forward. "Doomguy" smoothly hoists himself up walls and ledges. Deal enough damage to enemies and they'll begin to flash, signaling that they're susceptible to Glory Kills, gruesome executions that break open monsters to shower you in health power-ups like candy spewing from a piñata.

Glory Kills feed into momentum in other ways. You're invulnerable while performing them, buying precious seconds to catch your breath, and Glory Kills bequeath more power-ups depending on your health: the sorrier your condition, the more health you receive. It's a clever trick to incentivize playing aggressively rather than running away and cowering behind cover.

Upgrades for your weapons, suit, and maximum health, armor, and ammo play into Doom's constant push forward.

Doom's gunplay is just as varied. You find guns in a rough sequential order, but each serves a unique function in combat. The shotgun is fast and punchy, the rocket launcher is good for spreading damage around, and the Gauss cannon fires focused blasts of energy that will feel familiar to anyone homesick for the railgun from Quake 2 and 3.

Reloading? Not in this game. Reloading slows the pace, and Doom won't tolerate that.

The chainsaw, only useful against a select few monsters in older games, is one of Doom's most versatile armaments. Wielding it assures an instant and grisly kill, but bigger demons require more fuel than fodder like zombies and Imps. It's a cool twist that adds an extra layer of strategy to encounters by letting you keep the chainsaw in your back pocket (so to speak) for heavy hitters like Barons of Hell.

Doom's trademark map design is back, and a breath of fresh air in the FPS genre.

As an added bonus, enemies chewed up by your chainsaw dispense copious amounts of ammo—yet another way Doom facilitates nonstop action. Every individual gear and crank in this machine is built to accelerate the others, and when working in tandem the game itself becomes an unparalleled rush. 

Hell's Coming With Me

Progressive upgrades are Doom's one concession to new-school shooters. Weapons have modifications you have to unlock by searching out drones (and punching them in the face), and every mod comes with perks you open up by earning weapon points in combat. Challenges scattered throughout missions reward you with runes that augment passive abilities like expanding your pick-up radius for health and ammo drops; other items boost your maximum ammo, health, and armor, and still others let you tweak your suit to mitigate environment damage, switch guns faster, and shrug off blasts from explosive barrels.

All of these elements come together in Doom's classic level design. Environments are sprawling and multi-tiered, full of ledges, tunnels, and wide-open spaces. Such a huge variety in architecture means that you dictate the pace of encounters: what guns to use, and when, and where. On top of that, maps are riddled with optional side areas and secrets, and the game does an excellent job of breaking up the action just long enough to let you soak up each area's ambience and poke around.

Doom's story, given no more than a cursory paragraph in the original game's instruction manual, deserves a nod this time around. Although the beats are fairly standard, the presence of your character, the fear and awe he inspires amid Hell's ranks and the way his proclivity for violence informs his character arc, coalesces into the ultimate power fantasy--one that split my face in a big dopey grin every second I played.

Hit and Miss

Deathmatch circa Doom and Quake centered on learning a map's weapon layout and guarding coveted firearms. Territory control coupled with pixel-precision aiming separated great players from merely good. Unfortunately, Doom's multiplayer doesn't hold a candle to that brand of white-knuckled play. You choose a loadout of two weapons before a match, and while you can change loadouts each time you die, you're stuck with your chosen two. Only health and armor populate maps, and they're plentiful enough that there's no reason to plant your flag in any one spot to defend it.

As a result, maps boil down to two teams of players starting on opposite ends and hurtling toward one another like trains speeding along the same track, destined to collide in the middle over and over with little variation in how things play out. This problem is compounded by most weapons feeling weak: fan favorites like the rocket launcher don't pack enough of a punch, while others are vastly superior. Unless you're packing a Gauss rifle and a chaingun, you'll get shredded.

Doom's multiplayer is not terrible. It is insipid, an arrangement of modes and mechanics that feel copy-and-pasted from other multiplayer games. It doesn't feel like Doom, and comes across as derivative in the face of the perfectly balanced blend of new- and old-school of the campaign.

One of the more unique SnapMaps, this level asks you to carefully note details in each room, then test your memory by answering questions about them in the next chamber.

SnapMap is multiplayer's saving grace. Intuitive and powerful, SnapMap lets you build maps from scratch by dragging and dropping elements. A few keypresses cycles between blueprint-style layouts, shaded rectangles signifying rooms, and a first-person view where you can float around to see what your players will see, and more precisely plant items, rooms, and instruction sets. If building levels from scratch seems daunting, you can build on top of preset rooms, snapping new wings into place and installing your own monsters, weapons, power-ups, AI, and scripted events.

The sheer amount of gameplay possibilities SnapMap puts at your fingertips is staggering. I've played Horde-style modes, raced other players to collect rings and cross a finish line in a map reminiscent of Sonic 2's bonus stages, fought in an arena based on WWE's Elimination Chamber match, where opponents enter the fray at timed intervals, and play a memory game by walking through doors signifying right and wrong answers.

From memory games to classic-style deathmatch, SnapMap is a bottomless well of creative content. It remains to be seen how far down to Doom's roots it will let the community tear, however, given that the tool is steeped in the base game's conceits. Its longevity hinges on how deeply the community invests in spicing up ways to play.

Big Freakin' Game

That a first-person shooter like Doom exists in 2016 is shocking. Its levels are vast and intricately designed, its gameplay diverse and joyful, its toolset robust. Multiplayer is its weak link, but the adaptability of SnapMap is more than enough to offset that.

While other first-person shooters have stepped forward to challenge convention in recent years, none carry the clout and cachet of Doom. For id Software to overcome the challenges specific to its history and craft a shooter that flies in the face of convention marks Doom as nothing short of a triumph—and, one hopes, a sign that change is in the air for a genre in desperate need of it.

The king is dead. Long live the king.

This review is based on a PC download code provided by the publisher. Doom is available in retail and digital stores for $59.99. The game is rated M.

Long Reads Editor

David L. Craddock writes fiction, nonfiction, and grocery lists. He is the author of the Stay Awhile and Listen series, and the Gairden Chronicles series of fantasy novels for young adults. Outside of writing, he enjoys playing Mario, Zelda, and Dark Souls games, and will be happy to discuss at length the myriad reasons why Dark Souls 2 is the best in the series. Follow him online at davidlcraddock.com and @davidlcraddock.

Review for
Doom 2016
9
Pros
  • Dynamic combat scenarios
  • Wide range of strategic and balanced weapons
  • Progression systems that enhance rather than inhibit momentum
  • Complex level design
  • SnapMap tool is robust and easy to use
Cons
  • Derivative multiplayer
  • SnapMap may be limited by how much community invests in it
From The Chatty
  • reply
    May 17, 2016 1:05 PM

    David Craddock posted a new article, Doom Review: Like Hell You Will

    • reply
      May 17, 2016 1:13 PM

      Aw yeah! 9 out of 10!!!

    • reply
      May 17, 2016 1:17 PM

      That's right, keep giving me reasons to justify buying it :)

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      May 17, 2016 1:25 PM

      Quake 2 MP sucked out of the box, too, but they patched it to where it was a great MP experience.

      I'm not saying that it'll happen here, but maybe....hopefully...

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        May 17, 2016 1:29 PM

        That is a really good point. I think this game may have been the first Shacknews 10/10 with a more robust multiplayer offering. Either way, it 0wns!

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          May 17, 2016 1:51 PM

          I wonder this also with the multiplayer... How likely is it that they could mod it or patch it to have more of the single-player element in the multiplayer? I mean could third parties mod the game to bring a whole new multiplayer to it? That would be interesting to say the least!

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        May 17, 2016 1:34 PM

        I really hope a creative community grows around SnapMap. I think it has incredible potential and could balance out the eSports MP in that game.

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          May 17, 2016 7:55 PM

          Lol no. Snapmap is an extremely simplistic map maker that allows 4 different wall textures. You can't add in rocket jumping or change the 2 weapon limit.

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            May 18, 2016 12:20 AM

            It's not ideal, but the fact that you can logic your way around the 2 weapon limit suggests that snapmap isn't nearly as simplistic and limited as you're claiming.

            https://www.doomworld.com/vb/snapmap/87972-you-can-have-more-than-2-weapons-in-snapmap/

            I'm willing to bet rocket jumping wouldn't be all that difficult to add as well if you really wanted to.

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              May 18, 2016 12:22 AM

              Also, the first snapmap I played was a singleplayer farming simulator with a merchant, demon raising, crop harvesting, and a dungeon crawl. So you can absolutely do interesting weird things with it and I also hope a community grows around it. Would I prefer more proper modding? Of course, but snapmap is an interesting approach and I'm curious to see where it ends up.

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        May 17, 2016 2:03 PM

        But it was never as good as Quake.

        I have serious doubts that the MP portion will get greatly improved. I really wish the same sentiment that made the SP portion amazing was present at all in the MP design.

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          May 17, 2016 2:26 PM

          I agree, there was zero incentive to switch from quakeworld to quake 2 and even after they fixed that turd it was mostly mods that were the draw not the base game.

          This mp is doa on the pc. Maybe on console people will play it but as you say, its doubtful.

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            May 17, 2016 7:12 PM

            Railgun was incentive. Better maps too imho but I played them both a lot until q3 was released.

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        May 17, 2016 2:21 PM

        Honestly. I don't even care. I bought it solely for the campaign. Overwatch will meet my multiplayer needs anyway.

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        May 17, 2016 3:00 PM

        Vanilla Q2 was never as good as QW or Q3. Q2 was saved by mods

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          May 17, 2016 3:10 PM

          Pretty much all they need to do is mod rocket arena with all weapons unlocked, tweak the weapon dmg to match Q3 and I'm in

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            May 17, 2016 3:31 PM

            And match single player movement, totally

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            May 17, 2016 7:53 PM

            But how will they sell weapons and demon tune unlocks? Remember AAA games must now make all design choices based around freemium iOS games.

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          May 17, 2016 7:58 PM

          But to give credit to id, they shipped the game with full real mod support with an sdk and level editor I believe about a week or two after release. Loki CTF isn't doable with snapmap.

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        May 17, 2016 5:16 PM

        [deleted]

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        May 17, 2016 7:51 PM

        Tom Brady sucked with an injured knee, Tim Tebow sucked. Doom multiplayer isn't getting fixed.

    • reply
      May 17, 2016 1:33 PM

      In Metacritic terms that review feels like about a 60.

      • reply
        May 17, 2016 2:14 PM

        SP is a solid 15/10, which offsets the 5/10 MP.

        • reply
          May 17, 2016 2:24 PM

          Yeah thats fair, single player is a.home run.

    • reply
      May 17, 2016 1:37 PM

      [deleted]

    • reply
      May 17, 2016 1:38 PM

      Very nice report! Excellent job, great writing.

      Oh, and I agree, Doom is pretty good too.

    • reply
      May 17, 2016 2:10 PM

      I like the review, but given your Con SnapMap bulletpoint, I don't know if "Multiplayer is its weak link, but the adaptability of SnapMap is more than enough to offset that." really rings true.
      I'm not saying I think either point is false, I'm just saying the two of them sort of oppose each other.

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        May 17, 2016 2:39 PM

        I can see how that statement might be confusing. We try to keep the pros and cons snappy, since they're meant to be taken collectively as a summary of the review, but what I meant was that SnapMap's depth makes up the BASE multiplayer mode's lack thereof.

    • reply
      May 17, 2016 2:11 PM

      [deleted]

    • reply
      May 17, 2016 2:21 PM

      Doom is a rebuttal to almost every major (single player) first person shooter design trend since, what, Half-Life 2? Maybe even Half-Life itself.

    • reply
      May 17, 2016 2:28 PM

      Haha, love the title Mr. Craddock

      • reply
        May 17, 2016 2:38 PM

        I give Steve Watts (SporkyReeve) full credit. ;) I originally had something dumb because I suck at naming things.

        • reply
          May 17, 2016 9:14 PM

          It can be so hard to write clever headlines. But some people make it look so easy.

    • reply
      May 17, 2016 2:46 PM

      Damn, between this and hearing rudds talk about it on the Bombcast I feel like I'm really being pushed over the top to buy this game for full price while I don't really have time for gaming! I'm still playing through both originals in Brutal DOOM when I get free moments!

      • reply
        May 17, 2016 2:50 PM

        Stay strong. This game clearly falls in the get it on sale for $15 next year during a sale (or in two years for $10 with DLC included) category from what I am reading. It doesn't matter how good SP is if it is just SP. It will go on sale eventually and you'll have the benefit of patches to stop crashing.

        Only miss out on raving about it in threads.

        • reply
          May 17, 2016 2:53 PM

          [deleted]

          • reply
            May 17, 2016 2:57 PM

            To the contrary, this review made me want to try it...just not now. It is an economic choice.

            • reply
              May 17, 2016 4:18 PM

              [deleted]

              • reply
                May 17, 2016 4:22 PM

                I am down on nostalgia games being this messianic thing about how games are meant to be when it is clearly targeted at 30 somethings. Craddocks review here made me believe there is something more here than a really shiny version of the same thing again.

                That doesn’t change my usual way of buying these games. I bought Bioshock this way and I adore that game. Then I proceeded to buy the next two Bioshocks the same way.

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                  May 17, 2016 4:28 PM

                  My original intro was longer, and went into how id was in a "damned if they do, damned if they don't" situation: they couldn't make a carbon copy of the original Doom because that design doesn't have legs in 2016, but long-time fans wouldn't let them get away with cloning a COD or Battlefield campaign, either. What they came up with struck a perfect balance between the two paradigms, and is really a unique beast.

                  I think it's worth $60, but as someone who also tends to wait for sales due to budgetary reasons, even for games I really want, I get where you're coming from.

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                    May 17, 2016 4:33 PM

                    As someone who reads about DOOM but hasn't played it, I would say that your review also convinced me that this was more than DOOM 3 again. I wouldn’t have been interested if it was that sort of thing. But, being a person who doesn't play DOOM, it still falls pretty low on my priorities. (I mean I am still hoping to someday get both new wolfensteins as a package in the $10 range.) I support developers at full price, just for games I am more passionate about that have an MP component.

                    • reply
                      May 17, 2016 4:38 PM

                      Makes sense to me. I fall on the single-player side of the fence: I could never touch another multiplayer game and be happy. Games have always been my "me" time, a hobby where I only have to deal with people if and when I want to, so I put more emphasis on strong campaigns and other SP components.

                • reply
                  May 17, 2016 7:49 PM

                  That's fine...not everyone buys on release day. I do generally (or soon afterwards) and have a shit load of games on Steam (1572 according to the little games tab under my library)...but games are pretty much my big hobby (I preordered both an Oculus and a Vive and I own a consolized Neo Geo MVS along with all the current consoles...and I'm probably going to pick up a 1080 GTX to replace my 980 GTX if one of the cards out there come with a DVI port that supports analog so I can plug my CRT into it with a DVI to VGA adapter). That said, most people aren't crazy like me and its not a problem to make the choice to wait...I know a lot of people who do that and I do it with stuff that I don't need or want to play *right now* (the most recent Cities Skylines was an example of that because I knew it would be a while before I got around to playing it...and I still haven't touched it).

        • reply
          May 17, 2016 2:53 PM

          Very true. That's probably my plan because when I play for the first time I'll probably want to go nuts and put in some several-hour days like in times of old.

          I guess breaking it up doesn't bother me as much with brutal doom since I'm replaying something familiar.

          Like I think i want to play DOOM before Witcher 3 or fallout 4 (which admittedly will take way more time).

        • reply
          May 17, 2016 2:55 PM

          Did you read my review? Have you played the game?

          • reply
            May 17, 2016 2:56 PM

            It's a good review.

          • reply
            May 17, 2016 2:57 PM

            I read your review and you make it sound awesome. That doesn't change my math. Games without MP get to wait until they are patched and on sale. That's just how it works in my budget. I said nothing about the quality of the game.

        • reply
          May 17, 2016 2:58 PM

          [deleted]

          • reply
            May 17, 2016 2:59 PM

            What am I wrong about? If it only has SP aspects it can wait.

            $15 is actually a high value in my system. That's what I bought the Mass Effect games for because I really wanted to play them. Without an MP element to make playing it urgent, I am just being prudent.

        • reply
          May 17, 2016 3:01 PM

          How is it that I disagree with just about everything you post? No one is this horrible unless it's on purpose.

          • reply
            May 17, 2016 3:04 PM

            He's really a special snowflake. And not the cute kind of special

        • reply
          May 17, 2016 3:05 PM

          I think the clarification needed here is that the game clearly falls in YOUR get it on sale for $15 next year during a sale category. I assume you are not ascribing a prescriptive value to it, but your own personal estimation. In such a case, you are free to wait for the sale, but I'm sure you can understand why it's worth full price for many other people.

          Like you, I'm going to wait for a sale, probably $30, only because I have a number of other games I'm playing right now, and I simply don't have time to play Doom at the moment.

          • reply
            May 17, 2016 4:00 PM

            Right yeah, I guess my $15 amount is making people mad. I should have just said get it on deep sale later. I don't mean to demean the quality of work or production value. This is just my personal budgetary feeling on SP games.

            • reply
              May 17, 2016 4:46 PM

              So you didn't know ahead of time what kind of reaction your post was going to get?

        • reply
          May 17, 2016 3:27 PM

          This game clearly falls into "get it now because you're missing out on great fun" category unless you hate video games.

          • reply
            May 17, 2016 3:59 PM

            My Steam backlog says I like videogames and buying them apparently.

        • reply
          May 17, 2016 4:14 PM

          Look at how wrong you are!

        • reply
          May 17, 2016 4:16 PM

          Ugh man... Just... UGH.

        • reply
          May 17, 2016 4:18 PM

          [deleted]

        • reply
          May 17, 2016 4:21 PM

          Why are you so incredibly contrary about EVERYTHING?

          • reply
            May 17, 2016 4:27 PM

            Funny story, the person I was responding to agreed with my sentiment and understood the post for what it was.

            • reply
              May 17, 2016 4:30 PM

              He only agreed that he may wait to buy it. he didn't agree that the game is only worth 10 dollars because it only has great SP, which is an entirely misguided idea.

              • reply
                May 17, 2016 4:34 PM

                That the game + dlc in two years is worth $10.

                The two years part is pretty important. (Depends on the quality of the DLC if it will get that low).

                • reply
                  May 17, 2016 4:49 PM

                  You know exactly why I called you a contrarian.

                  "This game clearly falls in the get it on sale for $15 next year during a sale category"

                  You hate this game for some reason. I can't quite figure out why.

              • reply
                May 17, 2016 4:47 PM

                [deleted]

        • reply
          May 17, 2016 7:11 PM

          you're a lawyer right?

        • reply
          May 17, 2016 7:34 PM

          Shut the fuck up, goddamned you are the fucking worst

        • reply
          May 17, 2016 8:35 PM

          [deleted]

      • reply
        May 17, 2016 4:44 PM

        You can fin it for under $40 on the gray market.

        • reply
          May 17, 2016 5:06 PM

          I have a big steam wallet balance from gift cards and stuff. That's the only way I'd be buying it.

    • reply
      May 17, 2016 2:48 PM

      This game needs a SP expansion pack and FFA multiplayer mode

      • reply
        May 17, 2016 2:54 PM

        I'm almost positive the former is on the way, and hopefully the latter too.

      • reply
        May 17, 2016 3:24 PM

        The game does end on something of a cliffhanger, there will certainly be DLC

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        May 17, 2016 5:58 PM

        I too miss FFA. I've only played a little mp but didn't find it be as bad as many made it out to be. Unlimited weapons and FFA would be a huge bonus for me personally.

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        May 17, 2016 7:32 PM

        Can't you do 4 player FFA with all weapons (not the 2 gun limit) with the snapmap stuff? You can even increase the player speed and all that. I swore they showed that off in one of their streams.

        • reply
          May 17, 2016 7:51 PM

          I wonder if you can enable strafe jumping in snap map too...I seem to remember there being an option for that somewhere.

      • reply
        May 18, 2016 1:48 AM

        FFA with static weapons around the map (no loadout bullshitfuckcocks)

        • reply
          May 18, 2016 2:03 AM

          This makes complete sense especially that there are many weapons/loadouts that are very weak and most people don't choose them but If you find them scattered around because you would want anything over the pistol that you start off with

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      May 17, 2016 2:54 PM

      Is there some collective project going on where people try to convert origin doom levels?

      I saw one of e1m2 but I wanted something more 1 to 1.

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        May 17, 2016 3:01 PM

        I imagine you'll see plenty of remade levels, but consider two points. First, early attempts will probably be subpar; the game is less than a week old, so map makers need more time to delve deeper into SnapMap to nail fine details. I played a version of E1M8 earlier that was E1M8 in name only.

        Second, for as great as Snap is, it lacks certain capabilities, at least as far as I can tell, that make releasing a packaged remake impossible. There's currently no way to make or distribute full campaigns, for instance. You'd have to track down and play levels individually, and that poses a problem because you obviously couldn't carry your weapons and health with you between levels. The onus of making sure players are armed appropriately for each level would be on map makers, and even then, being given the supplies you need isn't as fun as collecting them yourself and feeling the fear and tension that comes from just barely surviving one level and knowing you're starting the next with 10% health.

        • reply
          May 17, 2016 5:19 PM

          [deleted]

          • reply
            May 17, 2016 5:28 PM

            That might work, actually. I believe SnapMap imposes a limit on how many rooms and items you can insert into a map, similar to Super Mario Maker, but I'm not positive.

            CrustaR would be a good person to weigh in on the work involved in remaking Doom maps, and just how big they can get. He remade the game's first episode in Doom 3.

    • reply
      May 17, 2016 3:47 PM

      i like the title. nice work David.

    • reply
      May 17, 2016 4:19 PM

      [deleted]

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        May 17, 2016 5:10 PM

        Totally agree ^^^^ , awesome job David \m/ :) nice

    • reply
      May 17, 2016 4:28 PM

      Aw yiss, confirmation bias! This review lines up 100% with my views, so it's a perfect review of a great game!

    • reply
      May 17, 2016 5:29 PM

      nice review, David!!

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      May 17, 2016 5:41 PM

      no SLI no buy. dumbest shit ever. it could be the best thing since slice bread but, no sli support they can fuck off. never again will i buy a game day 1 unless it has support for things that should be included by default. refunded this stupid game through steam once i learned it wasn't using both my cards(3 minutes in the menu and it was uninstalled).

      • reply
        May 17, 2016 5:43 PM

        [deleted]

        • reply
          May 17, 2016 5:44 PM

          you and all the AI enemies in the single player? you must be really lonely.

      • reply
        May 17, 2016 5:44 PM

        But it plays fine on a single card so why? It's not their fault you bought two video cards..

        • reply
          May 17, 2016 5:45 PM

          i don't want "it plays fine" when i have two cards. i want "it plays fucking epic ultra wtf mode" when i own two cards. SLI should be standard requirement day 1 for ANY game let alone a AAA title. boneheaded to think i am unreasonable here.

          • reply
            May 17, 2016 5:53 PM

            Consider me boneheaded for thinking you are being a bit unreasonable then. SLI is hardly a standard hardware setup by any means. I'm so sorry the latest interesting AAA title doesn't cater to your particular hardware setup and the barrier to your enjoyment ends at one video card. I tried SLI years ago when it was still fairly new and gave it up because it wasn't worth the extra money versus performance gain.. Perhaps you can take some peace with that knowledge and be happier in the future?

            • reply
              May 17, 2016 6:01 PM

              SLI is not problematic by any means today(it was in the past when you had it). you get significant gains in performance that make more than worth it. especially when a development team hasn't bitched out and spends time to incorporate appropriate sli profiling. on top of this the pinnacle of a gaming rig today is quad-sli. so to dismiss sli as some one-off setup is silly.

              if anything the reason they didn't incorporate sli day 1 is because of consolization like most games that compromise when launched on PC and console platforms simultaneously.

              • reply
                May 17, 2016 8:42 PM

                What percentage of gamers run SLI, and what percentage of that run quad SLI? A tiny, tiny fraction, if even a percentage point or two.

                They didn't support it because it would have been dev time wasted on a feature that almost no one would have or could have used. It's in terms of development time and dollars versus return. Why focus (for launch) on a feature that a tiny fraction of the possible user base might have when you could spend that time working on things everyone will enjoy.

                Doom'll have SLI patched in shortly, so settle down man. It'll be okay. It has nothing to do with consoles, but the tiny fraction of SLI users.

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            May 17, 2016 5:56 PM

            no VR support? no fucking buy

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              May 17, 2016 6:02 PM

              because bleeding edge tech is even comparable. herp derp.

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                May 17, 2016 6:03 PM

                no teledildonics? no buy.

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                  May 17, 2016 6:26 PM

                  i need my teledildonics man! my girlfriend Jill gets tired after a while and sometimes she pisses me off so i have to choke her out and go all "the stranger" on everything.

              • reply
                May 17, 2016 6:09 PM

                There's a better argument for supporting VR than SLI. VR can at least be a technical and experiential showcase. SLI support requires extra effort, is boring, and impacts a tiny number of people.

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                  May 17, 2016 6:10 PM

                  awww aren't you cute. SLI is ancient tech that has only improved over time. when it was introduced, much like VR, it was ground breaking tech just like VR is today. nice try though.

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                    May 17, 2016 6:13 PM

                    It was pretty boring tech even when it was released. Higher framerate just isn't that exciting, especially for a game that already performs really well on a single card.

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                      May 17, 2016 6:13 PM

                      nope. wrong. just wrong in every way.

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                        May 17, 2016 6:17 PM

                        Keep telling yourself that. In the mean time, while you're raging about something hardly anyone cares about, I'm going to go play the best first-person shooter in years.

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                          May 17, 2016 6:20 PM

                          you think i am raging? like sitting here furious over this one video game? i love it.

                          i am happy to have my $60~ back in my bank account. very much a win for me. not missing anything by not playing 1 video game. lmao.

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                            May 17, 2016 7:03 PM

                            Not a huge fan of the medium, huh

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                              May 17, 2016 7:12 PM

                              son, when i was your age i had to walk 30 miles in a fucking blizzard to buy my first computer part. then i had to do it again and again and again. until, finally, my first computer was built. i only have 7 toes and 8 fingers.

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                                May 17, 2016 7:58 PM

                                Back in my day, we would play 1 game for 6 months. And that game could be 1/10 as good as the new Doom, and we LIKED it.

                                Dang kids today won't play an amazing game just because it doesn't support their particular, special idea of what a game "should" be. Wouldn't know a good game even if it released to both critical and community acclaim.

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                  May 17, 2016 6:18 PM

                  oh yeah...should i state that i don't find VR all that interesting for the purposes of entertainment and not really a positive that everyone believes it is? probably not. wouldn't want to upset too many nerds in one sub-thread....have to kind of pace myself i think.

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            May 17, 2016 6:03 PM

            Well it's only going to get worse, better prepare yourself.

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              May 17, 2016 6:03 PM

              prepare myself to save money? will do.

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                May 18, 2016 1:08 AM

                To continue to save that money in the coming year or two I would recommend that you not purchase a second card for SLI.

                Though SLI and Crossfire are great bullet points to convince people to buy a second card they won't get much practical use (performance/$) out of.

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            May 17, 2016 6:06 PM

            - If you don't have 6+GB cards it won't play in "fucking epic ultra wtf mode" anyway. Because textures.

            - They're adding SLI in a future patch.

            - The number of people who actually run SLI is minuscule. Even if every one of you boycotted the game it would be a tiny, tiny fraction of just PC sales, much less all sales total. As long as SLI is something that requires meaningful extra effort to make work, it's not going to be a high priority for developers.

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              May 17, 2016 6:07 PM

              yet i can only think of 2 games in the last month that didn't have SLI support day 1. this game...and FORZA...which isn't really worth mentioning as it was free.

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            May 17, 2016 6:09 PM

            [deleted]

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            May 17, 2016 7:14 PM

            You may not want to hear this, but SLI really isn't that good in general. You're much better off with one good card.

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              May 17, 2016 7:21 PM

              when the 1080's drop...then i think you'll be correct. with 4k and 100+hz AND ultra-wide displays(which mine is all of these things), right now, i don't think this holds true. and this hate(misunderstanding) of SLI is odd to me. my experience, thus far, has been really great. i have had no problems with any games so far. it's only now that two games i have wanted to play do not have SLI support in them on day 1. therefore, i will criticize them for it and be perfectly right in doing so. FORZA doesn't have SLI either and that game will not get played until it does....i want maximum eye sex and zero compromise. DOOM will someday have SLI as well and when that day comes i will buy it at a discount.

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              May 17, 2016 8:28 PM

              [deleted]

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                May 18, 2016 1:11 AM

                It is significantly less hassle these days, but gains are still pretty slim considering the amount of extra electricity and heat, and you still deal with many games that don't actually support it or support it in a flawed/inefficient manner.

                Yeah, it's cool when it works and you get an extra 35% performance or whatever, but... Ehhhhh.

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        May 17, 2016 6:03 PM

        [deleted]

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          May 17, 2016 6:05 PM

          i am rockin' 2x evga 970 ftw's hooked up to my X34 predator. only other card right now that would improve the situation would be a single 980ti...otherwise i got the next best thing. and since i have had this setup only one game had a legit SLI problem for me...battlefront...but, that was nvidia's fuck up with the drivers and were promptly fixed 2 days later.

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        May 17, 2016 6:19 PM

        People giving you shit but I agree it's frustrating seeing AAA titles ship without support. I used SLI for like 12 years and finally gave up on it and went to single card. Lately support for SLI seems to be on a downward trend, or Nvidia is simply too late to release a profile.

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          May 17, 2016 6:23 PM

          i honestly think they're moving to phase it out entirely. much like the 3d vision glasses. just kind of quietly kill the whole tech/product. they're moving heavily towards single card technology but, leave SLI for the option later in the event someone creates one of those $30k rigs.

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            May 17, 2016 6:35 PM

            SLI becomes astronomically harder to support as rendering tech gets more advanced. That's the reason you have more and more trouble with it as time goes on.

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              May 17, 2016 6:52 PM

              i feel like the peak of SLI was during the wave of triple screen gaming. same time as the 3D vision glasses were popular. ati's crossfire + eyefinity and was really cool. nvidia had 3d surround and was also amazing....dead space 2 was crazy awesome with triple screen + 3d.

              then the advent of the g-sync and freesync happened. this is where the future tech lies as they have indicated with the new "fast sync" they've got in the 1080.

              all that being said...SLI should be maintained until the new tech is matured more...games that don't include it at launch just equate to laziness. but, that's like just my opinion mannnnnn.

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                May 17, 2016 7:43 PM

                lol, laziness? You're out of your fucking mind. There's no market to sell games that support SLI as some sort of flagship feature. The only reason SLI exists is because video card manufacturers wanted to sell you another video card. No AAA dev on the planet is targeting an SLI system for anything other than some weird non-commercial tech-demo.

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                  May 17, 2016 8:33 PM

                  lol. this is golden. thank you.

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                    May 18, 2016 1:27 AM

                    Dopefish isn't wrong. Unless the rendering tech being used already supports multi-card setups or they're being paid by AMD/Nvidia to support it amongst other features, there's little reason for a developer to mess with it.

                    The install base for multi-card setups is miniscule and it makes testing even more of a nightmare than usual.

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              May 17, 2016 7:16 PM

              I thought DX12 was supposed to make stuff like SLI easier? Even allowing for cross brand AMD / Nvidia card SLI.

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            May 17, 2016 7:33 PM

            actually, i am wrong...they're not moving to phase it out at all. in fact, the new geforce 10 series cards(1070/1080) have a new SLI HB interface. it would appear nvidia has no intentions of ditching the technology and are improving upon it instead. EXCELLENT.

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          May 17, 2016 7:14 PM

          As games start doing more and more things on the GPU (compute, offscreen render targets, etc) managing that data across cards just gets harder and harder. Alternate frames are handled by each card, so you can imagine how generating data on one frame on the GPU for use in the next frame on the other GPU can be problematic, and it's something that developers don't really have much control over. We can mitigate it, but it's not really a solved problem. It should get "easier" with stuff like Vulkan allowing developers to manage multiple GPU's themselves rather than hoping against hope that the driver does things the way they want it to.

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            May 17, 2016 7:26 PM

            this is not 100% accurate any longer. that is one mode of SLI processing, yes. however, there are many methods to skin this cat. the technology has been improved greatly since the first/most popular idea of it(which, is what you described).

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Link_Interface
            http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/sli
            http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/introduction-to-sli-technology-guide#1

            it all depends on how someone goes about using the GPU scaling.

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              May 17, 2016 7:39 PM

              You have two actual developers telling you that it's becoming more difficult to support SLI and you're disregarding their points based on internet marketing.

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                May 17, 2016 8:04 PM

                shozo likes vehemently and dramatically wrong about things.

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                May 17, 2016 8:08 PM

                i am confused. does the website display job titles in some unknown dark corner i have not discovered? maybe i am blind. i don't know. but, i never assume anything on the internet nor am i clairvoyant in that i know what a random username on a webpage does for a living. i mean really dude?

                at any rate. if these developers are correct then ok. it is more difficult. spend more time on it and make it work. not going to sit here and have the excuse be "it's more difficult now" be the reason it doesn't get implemented. like i said. lazy.

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                  May 17, 2016 8:17 PM

                  Chromeshack colors developer names differently but does not indicate their specific expertise or position.

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                    May 17, 2016 8:18 PM

                    Also, it's all well and good for you to say they should spend more time on it, but you represent a vanishingly small segment of their audience, why should they expend more resources on you instead of bigger wins elsewhere?

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                      May 17, 2016 8:27 PM

                      because gpu scaling is not "vanishing" in any form of the word what-so-ever. that's why.

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                        May 17, 2016 8:30 PM

                        That isn't what I said. I said hat you represent a "vanishingly small" demographic, which means you don't represent enough people to cater to specifically.

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                  May 17, 2016 8:18 PM

                  spend more time on it so less than 1% of your 12 million player base can get 30% greater framerate, on top of the 100+fps they were already pushing? or so they can run your game in 4K? seriously dude, no. at no point does that make any economic sense at all. You are already in the top 1% of the 1% of users, and the game already runs magnificently on your machine. You don't get more dev time.

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                    May 17, 2016 8:21 PM

                    Besides which, spending more time on his pet issue means you spend less time on other, known bugs that your game is likely shipping with and those bugs are likely to affect lots more people in lots more significant ways. Then, if you follow his advice, he'll hit one of those otherwise fixed bugs and bitch about how lazy you are as a developer for not fixing this obvious bug.

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                      May 17, 2016 8:26 PM

                      im ok with a game being delayed to fix bugs and support the systems that will VERY LIKELY want to play the game. fucking dumb that games are not given more time to address things and be better overall. so glad that the bar is that low...no that's a lie..nevermind it is a sad state.

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                        May 17, 2016 8:33 PM

                        The reality of making games is that it's messy, there's no point at which everything is perfect, and you have to triage the issues you have until you arrive at a mostly acceptable launch. That means some things that frankly aren't very important, like SLI support, might slip into a post-release patch.

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                          May 17, 2016 8:34 PM

                          If you think you can do better, I invite you to try. Everyone would love a game to come out perfect but I'm willing to bet you'll hit the same issues everyone else has.

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                            May 17, 2016 8:36 PM

                            i sincerely doubt that. i won't be playing it until SLI is added. by that time the very same patch would likely address all the problems everyone else is having.

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                              May 17, 2016 9:53 PM

                              Prove me wrong then, but my own experience in the games industry and the experiences of others suggest that you're speaking from a position of ignorance.

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                        May 18, 2016 1:14 AM

                        Supporting SLI isn't really "fixing bugs", though. It's working around stupid shit not working like you would expect with ridiculous hacks. Like I said, game devs really don't have much control over how things work under SLI. There is no API for ensuring resources are in sync between cards, so we just fiddle with the things that aren't working like they should until you get something resembling what your desired output would be.

                        Realistically, SLI at this point is mostly a marketing ploy to get people to purchase two cards instead of just one. Like dopefish said, the SLI market is tiny and getting things to work with it can be a huge pain in the ass. For the most part, it's just not worth the development cost if things are broken. You can spend weeks trying to re-architect things to mask the problems and the "fixes" are usually to the detriment of performance and maintainable code.

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              May 17, 2016 11:05 PM

              SLI was vastly simpler to handle when it was still D3D9. With the advent of D3D11 you have things where you can use compute to generate pretty much anything on the GPU and the CPU side of things really doesn't need to know about it. It only gets worse for SLI with D3D12, too.

              Things just get ridiculously hard to manage at the driver level when you can have multiple threads generate commands for the GPU and populating resources via compute (don't forget to mix in async compute as well). So you're asynchronously populating resources while also trying to manage more than one frame in flight on both GPU's that are working with those same resources. SLI is a fucking nightmare the way it's set up right now.

              I really like the way Vulkan is set up, where it lets you enumerate multiple GPU's and use them however you want (I can't remember if D3D12 is the same). It's just a matter of time before someone comes out with some middleware that treats multiple GPU's like we treat multiple CPU's right now and you just create a bunch of GPU jobs that get distributed across the available hardware.

              But alternate frame rendering (AFR) is just a mess given the direction the API's have taken. It made sense at one point but not so much anymore.

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        May 17, 2016 7:19 PM

        Unless you are running 3 monitors it won't even matter. It runs like butter on just one 970

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          May 17, 2016 7:22 PM

          3440x1440 @ 100Hz on 100% Ultra settings? i think not.

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        May 17, 2016 7:25 PM

        wonder what the replies would be like if valcan_s posted this

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          May 17, 2016 7:41 PM

          valcan's not so negative and the handful of times he's posted some ridiculous opinion that applies to almost no one, people have reacted similarly.

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          May 17, 2016 9:20 PM

          valcan_s recognizes that his rig is an edge case.

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        May 18, 2016 12:13 AM

        I have thought SLI is a last decade thing.

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      May 17, 2016 6:20 PM

      guarding covered firearms


      Coveted?

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        May 17, 2016 8:00 PM

        Fixed! Thanks.

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          May 17, 2016 8:01 PM

          There was one more little rinky-dink thing toward the end that I didn't note, because pedantry. =(

          Nice review!

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            May 17, 2016 8:03 PM

            Haha, don't worry about it. I'm not shy about admitting I make flubs, and I appreciate being (politely) informed of them so I can patch em up. :)

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              May 17, 2016 8:17 PM

              In that case...

              and come across as derivative


              Shouldn't that be "comes across" since we're referring to the MP as a singular whole?

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                May 17, 2016 8:18 PM

                Indeed! My computer's off, so I'll fix this tomorrow. Thanks!

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                  May 17, 2016 8:24 PM

                  Just kidding, I fixed it now because I couldn't go to sleep with this hanging over me, lol. Thanks again!

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                    May 17, 2016 8:30 PM

                    Ha ha! I'm just jelly you're living the writing dream. =)

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      May 17, 2016 6:39 PM

      [deleted]

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        May 17, 2016 8:00 PM

        I don't even know what this means.

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          May 17, 2016 8:26 PM

          [deleted]

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            May 17, 2016 8:37 PM

            Gotcha. :)

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            May 17, 2016 8:41 PM

            "Riff raff"

            Two frequent posters. One suggesting people hold off the current hype if they are cash strapped buy it later on sale since the MP is nothing special and it will certainly come down in price. Another saying he wouldn't buy it without SLI support.

            Riff raff!!!!!

            Or the echo chamber having their way with whatever they could possibly find to pile on. One of those.

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          May 17, 2016 8:34 PM

          "Front pagers" coming in and trashing up the comments? I dunno.

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      May 17, 2016 8:15 PM

      Did you see the physics effects?!?

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      May 17, 2016 8:24 PM

      As David's debut review (at least for several years) I wanted to chime in and say I'm really happy with how this turned out. David is a great writer and this was a tough assignment, given the legacy of the series and the connection it has to a lot of our audience. But I think he really got across both the evocative feeling of playing it and how its gameplay systems complement each other.

      I know I already complimented you privately, David, but I thought I'd give you an extra pat on the back publicly. GG.

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      May 17, 2016 11:40 PM

      What a strange review. "Insipid, derivative" DM, yet the game is a reimagined "triumph." Um, yeah: you don't get to be triumphantly, insipidly derivative while reimagining as you loot other games for ideas. Oh, and cut-and-paste generic instalevels are its saving grace? Everyone's a designer now, is he?

      What's left of id is Bethesda's red-headed stepchild from hell. RIP.

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      May 18, 2016 2:14 AM

      Great review! Just an aside, is anyone else disappointed that all the DLC is going to be for multiplayer/snapmap? I would be SO down for more singleplayer levels. The campaign is simply sublime! Maybe they'll do a standalone/expansion release unrelated to the season pass next year?

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