Is he worried about spoilers or something to the extent that he's trying to not say anything specific about the game?
 
"Given the scope of the game itself, what it has is still responsive, and the flow of movement is acceptable."
What isn't responsive!? What FPS game is there that isn't responsive? How is the flow of movement acceptable? What would a bad example of either of these things look like? I'm sure this looks real fucking clear in his head, but I have literally no idea what this means. If anyone has any clue what responsive is supposed to mean, please tell me. I hear it all the time and it is one of the biggest buzzwords.
 
Previous Doom games had character progression in the form of picking up new guns. Yeah, Doom's introduction of points you invest into things is weird. However I'd like it if he mentioned what the upgrades actually do. If he laid out how the upgrade system worked before spouting an opinion on it then this wouldn't come across so weirdly. Instead he waits until after he's given an opinion on it to explain the stuff you actually collect. I don't really disagree with his opinion here, the upgrade system was pretty crazy and out of place, but holy shit he could have presented this in a more straightforward manner. For all he likes complaining about the game making things convoluted, he could stand to make his review's structure less convoluted too.
 
Also his choice of footage is terrible here too. He could show the menus, he could show more about the upgrades, but he doesn't. I showed the pathologic video to Joseph Anderson after I was done with it and he pointed out how around the 30 minute mark this guy starts talking about the landmarks and lay of the town, but doesn't show it onscreen, instead choosing to show some random dialogue footage. In this Doom review, he similarly goes to seemingly the least effort possible to pair video with the concepts he's actually talking about.
 
I don't want to get into disagreeing with him over the weapon balance, but I'm glad he talked about it at all. This feels like the first part of the review that is actually trying to make a specific claim about something.
 
"Some guns remain fun to shoot, but others become shockingly terrible pea-shooters." "The plasma gun also feels very unsatisfying to me despite being heavily based on the DOOM 3 plasma gun, which is the one gun from that game that I actually enjoyed."
This is terrible layman language. It doesn't mean anything. He could stand to elaborate a lot more on these points and avoid making these sort of vague assessments about whether the guns are fun or satisfying or not.
 
"With enough damage, enemies will stagger, and if you’re stupid, they’ll glow bright orange too."
They glow orange when you're in activation range to melee them, and blue when outside that range, idiot.
 
"These animations try very hard to be satisfying, but they don’t often work out."
SATISFYING. There's that buzzword again.
 
"They remove you from the combat itself temporarily, and they give you a small window when no other enemy will try to harm you. They’re very gory and well animated, just like everything else in the game, really, but because they don’t involve any real interaction with monsters, they have no substantial effect."
Okay, think of it like this. Imagine if, the instant you pressed the button, that the game just jumped instantly to the monster being dead, instead of playing that animation. The actual thing going on here is, press button, monster dead, monster explodes into treats. Since no interaction can occur in the middle, the middle effectively doesn't happen for all intents and purposes. Now ask yourself, is this okay? Is this objectionable? Do we gain or lose something by having this? Then, after you've answered those questions, ask: Is having a short non-interactive animation here a pain and inconvenience?
 
The dude is looking at this whole thing as, "Before, you could melee enemies and it didn't involve stupid canned animations, and now we have this horrific non-interactive thing instead of this more complex interaction" and ignoring that melee serves a TOTALLY DIFFERENT PURPOSE in Doom 4. It is literally an entirely different option from what it used to be for the most part. They shouldn't be compared because they're not the same damn thing. Super Bunnyhop recognized this. Shit, even Campster recognized this. The new Glory Kill melee system is a totally different option with a totally different effect on how the entire game plays. It creates a new dynamic for how enemies are dealt with, encouraging aggressive play, while allowing a steady stream of damage to the player.
 
"A notable side effect of the melee execution moves is the death of the chainsaw. It’s still there, but it is turned into an overpowered instant execution device. It was previously a powerful but highly situational tool, and id Software somehow managed both to nerf it and to overpower it."
And here's the part where he fucks up AGAIN. The chainsaw is, like melee glory kills, not the same thing it was before. It's so different in application that you can't compare it just because it looks the same. The chainsaw's purpose is not to give you "free kills" on powerful enemies. It's to GIVE YOU A WAY TO REFILL YOUR AMMO WHEN YOU DON'T HAVE ANY LEFT TO WEAKEN ENEMIES INTO A GLORY KILL STATE. This is important because of the arena structure of maps, you frequently end up in environments that do not contain enough ammo to kill everything in the room and are not allowed to progress until all the enemies are dead. Whereas in the original doom you never got locked into rooms, there was always enough ammo on the map to kill everything from a pistol start, and killing enemies was never required besides bosses. Also it kinda did give you free kills by stunning enemies as you deal damage to them in the original Doom. Though I admit there's obvious differences, like not pausing the game, which made it function differently in Doom 1, so other enemies could still threaten you. And you could willingly engage and disengage damage from the Doom 1 chainsaw, but I wouldn't expect this guy to ever be insightful enough to actually point all that out, it would require too much citing of actual things and not enough vague gesticulating.
 
Funny that he should bring up "creative, mind-bending, intelligent level design." then show a boxy room with a bunch of shallow alcoves with enemies in them. Doom 1 did way better than that. Level design in Doom 4 isn't great, it's passable for the subject matter, but this isn't telling me why Doom 1 level design was good at all, or why Doom 4's is lacking. At least he mentions that they lock you in arenas, that's a pretty basic thing to bring up. Also please stop saying skate park. Please.
 
Oh, so he does recognize that there's basically regenerating health. He fails to mention why it's there (because projectiles from enemies are way faster and there's poor audio cues warning you of enemies offscreen), only that a lot of enemies drop health now. So swing and a miss. Also he fails to mention that health drops are connected to glory killing, which requires you to get out of cover and actually attack enemies up close (and therefore, near other enemies) to get health. He seems to think that the reason enemies drop health is because it would look stupid having a ton of health kits around arenas, not thinking back to how common health kits were in the original Doom (about the same), and without realizing that it's a lot easier to take a lot more damage a lot more quickly in Doom 4, in ways that aren't always totally fair necessarily. Only one enemy in Doom1 had hitscan attacks, and it was the weakest enemy in the game. There's a lot more enemies with super fast projectiles, or outright hitscan attacks in Doom 4, and they do a lot more damage with a lot less warning. In Doom 1, you could beat basically any level without taking any damage (unless hazardous floors were involved). This means they could afford to place less health kits, which they did. Also sometimes even when your health is low, you get shitty health drops. It's partially randomized, and especially biased against regular kills.
 
Also seriously, how do you not notice that glory kills drop more health?
 
"But this system is still butt-ugly and takes a lot of satisfaction away from the violence. It’s harder to appreciate all the immaculately rendered entrails when there are so many glowing balls flying all over the place."
>satisfaction
This is stupid. This entire complaint is stupid. Who gives an actual fuck?
 
"This is the kind of mechanic that I wouldn’t expect to arise in a game with design similar to DOOM."
Here's the crux. He's looking at this too much like it's supposed to be another Doom game. It's a REALLY different game, in like, all respects. It's doing totally different things with its weapons, enemy design, movement, level design, health system. It's very much its own monster. Instead of evaluating Doom 4 on its own terms, he's seeing it all as old doom versus new doom. Classic design versus modern design. Yes, we totally lost the old style of design here. What we got is not really a Doom game in anything but name and theme. However, what we got is still an interesting and unique take on how a shooter can be structured, with a lot of unique game systems, and generally structurally sound combat. Is it an insult to the old style of Doom? Should it have been given the Doom name when it's so different structurally? I don't give a fuck. For all I care, this could literally be another DmC in terms of name and theme, and I am perfectly fine with it. Doom dies, this lives. Awesome. It's a shame the old style of design is gone, but someone else can go and revive that. We got something new and interesting this time.
 
Again, I've made it through 20 minutes of this review out of 29. I'm really fed up with it by this point. I'm not going to sit through the last part where he goes through boring comparisons of all the old monsters to all the new versions of them. Play both games, they're both really fun and different experiences. Don't watch this review, it's stupid.