Doom 4 will have an open beta for its multiplayer component this weekend. You can download it now through steam to be ready.
I don’t expect too much, because the idea of a slow paced gamepad-friendly arena shooter with call of duty style loadouts sounds like a pretty severe perversion of what makes arena shooters good, but it looks like it’s interesting enough to give it a try to confirm that for myself.
I’ll organize some games for us on steam this weekend, so contact me if you’re interested.
The consensus from the closed beta seemed to be that it played like a combination of halo and quake. Does it looked slow-paced to you? It doesn’t to me, but I’m not big on multiplayer fps.
Slow paced for an arena shooter, sure. It seems like Call of Duty pace, more or less. Q3/UT have an effective movement rate of 2-3x as fast with much more complex environmental movement interactions. In comparison, this looks more like a slow slugfest.
There’s not really anything interesting about the game’s multiplayer. There’s nothing fundamentally broken about it - the movement and aiming work fine - but it’s far too simple for an arena shooter. Aside from a minor double jump ability with very limited air control, it feels like you’re playing call of duty with demons.
And that includes a really ill-considered loadout system. The primary weapons (rocket launcher, plasma rifle, lightning gun) are available to select two as a loadout. Thankfully it’s not as detailed as the COD loadouts you basically have 6 or 7 weapons and pick 2 - you don’t have to worry about unlocking every last sight or grip - but it’s just weird letting everyone spawn with whatever weapon they prefer, which will probably be the rocket launcher 90% of the time since it seems significantly better than every other weapon. There’s a small element of map control for weapons remaining as maps can have super overpowered weapons and power ups where you become a monster, but mostly you just start with whatever weapon you want. They retained a health and armor pickup system - I’m surprised they didn’t just use the wait to heal mechanic and fully COD-ize the game.
The ultra violence and gore showcased in the single player game isn’t really in there in the multiplayer, so it doesn’t even have value as a spectacle.
Just feels dumbed down and simplified where you wonder what’s the point. I’d probably pick it up for $5 if the MP game isn’t dead by then.
Oh, and the hack module component is really dumb. It feels like they just need to endlessly keep dropping little upgrades or consumables at the end of each round so there’s so much going +1 +1 +1 that people are dazzled by the progression or grinding or whatever the hell they want. They add a random element to unbalanced the game for no good reason.
On the plus side, the TTK feels pretty good. Could be higher, but it’s the one place where it doesn’t feel like a COD game. You don’t die instantly constantly. Warpath is a solid take on king of the hill.
Every preview I had seen referred to it as “really fast” so I was hoping it’d be more up to Q3/UT speed (wishing for Doom 1993 speed was probably too much, heh). So hearing you say it’s more like COD speed is pretty disappointing.
I tried logging in and it looks like they’re using my account name (which is my real name) as the screen name for the character, and I can’t change that. Not interested in sharing that with all the griefers in Christendom.
All games that run on steamworks will use your steam account in game. You can edit your profile name to appear as something other than your name.