If it ain’t broke….don’t fix it.


Like I said: if it’s worked for you thus far, keep on keeping on…

With us being knee deep in the dead at this point, as we have ventured a fair distance into Doom: The Dark Ages DLC, Revelations, and have no doubt been stoked to go all “Eternal” on the hordes of the damned, there is a lot to be excited about thus far. For example, with the acquisition of the newly introduced weapon the Chain Spear, we are treated to a surge of freshly conjured memories of nostalgia with this games predecessor, as we remember swinging too and fro, raining down hell from above with the Meat Hook in Doom: Eternal. When one considers that we are able to enjoy this new mode of killing, while simultaneously enjoying the ability to swap on the fly between the spear and the Shield Saw, which sees us slam and jam our way through demon after demon, we have it made pretty good in Revelations, as we try to escape purgatory itself in our quest to devastate the nether realm and its hellish population.


Hey, they’re the ones who wanted to make this personal (R.I.P Daisy)

I do feel as if Revelations has a surprisingly reasonable pace to it, in a macro sense, which may be due to the notion that every minute feels as if you’re a slaughter train moving at the speed of light. To elaborate further; both of the first two ‘levels” are essentially just giving the player time to readjust to warming up to the Chain Spear, in shaking off the cobwebs of your latent Eternal instincts, which may have laid dormant at this point for years, and then also giving you time to balance out that new block of expertise and knowledge, by finding time to make room for both the spear and the Shield Saw in your murder repertoire, to see how to make both dynamics work, and which fits your vibe better, depending on the circumstance.


All of this does require a little leg work, of course

For me, I realized that as much as I missed swinging around like Spider-Man, blasting fools from on high and dropping down to chainsaw them as if a bladed dive bomber, the viscerality of the Saw Shield had given me such a sense of impact when I was going toe to toe with a group of baddies, that I did find myself leaning towards the Shield style more often than not. It could be I just haven’t put enough time into using the Spear to maximize its versatility, but the the Shield feels way more efficient, when combined with other close range maneuvers in getting the job done. As someone who is a big fan of speedrunning, maximizing the expediency is essential in getting the job done, combine this with a sense that the parry with the shield feels a bit more intuitive in terms of timing and hit box, and it was easy to almost become co-dependent on the god damn thing.


Ping ponging back and forth between the rip and tear and the slam and jam

Two elements I think help the Spear reach greater heights in some regard, and they are as follows, #1: the shield is not upgradable in the DLC, which means it is locked into its base form, giving the Spear a massive advantage in the end game, when you’ve unlocked all of the buffs for it, and #2: I’m super bias towards using the Super Shotgun, pretty much to the point of self-sabotage, as I know certain weapons have more advantage against other demons, and variety being the spice of life, there is a lot of room for personal improvement, when you start to consider the positive results of the Chain Shot, The Ravager, the Rocket Launcher, the Accelerater…all of which act as ranged weaponry, and would be much better fits in conjunction with the Spear, so I have no doubts that it ends up being an absolute beast when given the time and focus, to the point where the Shield looks quaint in comparison, but that still speaks to the level of competent design in play, where both a ridiculously simplistic weapon and an amazingly advanced alternative has all of these bells and whistles, with both still offer advantage and entertainment in equal measures on the battle field.

This town *is* big enough for the both of these weapons

That is always the trick with game balance, whether it be a shooter, fighting game, RPG, etc…you want to give the player options, just so they don’t necessarily feel shoehorned into using the exact same strategy over and over again, but inevitably, as a designer, you are going to create something that is inherently better than other options, and then it is your call as to how to moderate that, if you think it’s too powerful. One can limit ammo or charges available to use at any given time, cool down timers are always an option, maybe limit the element to only a time and place, make it so it only affects certain types of enemies, etc. I feel as if you don’t even have to go overboard, and a “good enough” mentality is a sweet spot, instead of obsessing over idealism, as the idealism involved shouldn’t be creating a perfect system with which you were just implement in creating, idealism should look like giving the player so many tools to enjoy themselves with, you almost issue them a challenge to find a way to not have fun, with all of the options at their disposal.


Sometimes it’s also great to go old school and just get hands on with it

Which is why, speaking of variety, I’m surprised that the DLC has no dragon or mech sequences to speak of. This could obviously be chalked up quite easily to story reasons (and just as easily circumvented in a number of ways in the same breath mind you, but I guess its easier to stay with “continuity”), and I’m wondering if id software didn’t include any because they take too much work; i.e. time and resource to craft from start to finish, or if they didn’t think it was worth it, because they were both sections that most people were kind of “meh” on during the vanilla version of Dark Ages? I thought in there sparing inclusion, they added some nice texture to the experience, but as I had made mention of in my review of The Dark Ages over a year ago, I think players are quite the sticklers for what “Doom” consists of in terms of relevant gameplay, and the series has always been so unabashedly straight forward in its unrelenting machinations of gunplay in its purest distillation, the mech and dragon sections may have represented a step too far, in trying to redefine what the Doom formula consists of. Granted, I haven’t beaten Revelations yet, so maybe I’m speaking too soon on the matter…but I doubt it. Fair enough, in any case.

Pic
How much do you think it cost them to build this?
50 dollar bills?

As I wrap up writing this part three of my Revelations coverage, I am reminded of just how much intuitive preferential treatment I tend to give the metaphysics of games, as instead of talking about story, setting, music, enemies, lore etc, I have spent the last thousand words writing about what is essentially how two different weapons work within the context of the game. Just goes to show you; where Doom shines, it shines on like a crazy diamond, which is business as usual.

Revelations business is demon killing, and business is good.

~Pashford.