• Privacy policy
  • T&C’s
  • FAQ
  • Meet the Team
  • About The London Economic
  • Advertise
TLE ONLINE SHOP!
NEWSLETTER
SUPPORT THE LONDON ECONOMIC
  • TLE
  • News
  • Politics
  • Opinion
  • Business
  • Sport
  • Entertainment
  • Film
  • Food
  • Lifestyle
  • Property
  • Travel
  • Tech/Auto
No Result
View All Result
The London Economic
  • TLE
  • News
  • Politics
  • Opinion
  • Business
  • Sport
  • Entertainment
  • Film
  • Food
  • Lifestyle
  • Property
  • Travel
  • Tech/Auto
No Result
View All Result
The London Economic
No Result
View All Result
Home Tech and Auto Games

The Best Game of 2016

It’s mid-December and we’re up to our necks in Listmas. Look at your social feeds. Everyone from the loftiest critic to your grandmother is blurting their Top 5s all over our screens to the point of meaninglessness. Still, they’re fun, aren’t they? And when it comes to videogames in 2016 we were spoiled for awesome […]

Grant Bailey by Grant Bailey
December 12, 2016
in Games

It’s mid-December and we’re up to our necks in Listmas. Look at your social feeds. Everyone from the loftiest critic to your grandmother is blurting their Top 5s all over our screens to the point of meaninglessness.

Still, they’re fun, aren’t they? And when it comes to videogames in 2016 we were spoiled for awesome releases. This year saw long-anticipated projects burst into life in the form of Final Fantasy XV and The Last Guardian. Uncharted 4 closed out Nathan Drake’s tale in a pristine display of cinematic storytelling and dizzying poly-counts (Goddamn! Look at those textures!) and Hitman showed us that there’s life in the series yet under a new episodic structure. Firewatch was a quiet masterpiece, Overwatch was this year’s breakout multiplayer success and Battlefield 1 brought the mud and blood of the First World War into the livingrooms of smack-talking 11-year-olds everywhere.

2016 was a great year for videogames. It was a very, very bad year for the demon hordes of Mars.

Like a Baron of Hell emerging from a viscera-drenched penta-portal, the DOOM Marine returned in a hail of power chords and charred guts. id Software took their most celebrated franchise, prettied up its dormant Praetor Suit and pumped it full of particle effects and TITAN, then unleashed all its throwback flavour on new hardware. It was chaotic, beautiful, and the best fun you could find in gaming this year.

There is story to be found if you want it (energy crisis + evil conglomerate = portal to Hell?), secrets to find and a surprisingly open area to explore, but DOOM’s strength lies in its aggressively pure combat. Less evocative of original Doom titles and closer to the frantic arenas of Quake, your Doomslayer can double jump, carry a suite of weapons and decimate the dripping masses with power-ups and modifiers. For the modern FPS fan used to iron sights, corridor crawls and chest-high walls, the shift in pace can be jarring. But once it clicks the flow of combat is incredibly satisfying.

As your Doom Guy levels up and the challenge mounts, the speed of combat and the sheer odds against you in the later areas requires mastery of DOOM’s systems. Enemies spawn, the verticality of the level is scaled and micro missiles and rounds find their targets. A disgustingly heavy industrial soundtrack kicks up in the carnage. Glowing enemies fall to brutal glory kills (crushed eyeballs, smashed skulls, wrenched jaws) which replenish a small portion of your health and ammo before heavier opposition warps in. A switch from dependable arms like the Plasma Rifle is required. The Chaingun spins up to cut through a wave of squashy Possessed, the Rocket Launcher turns demons to bloody squibs, and the Super Shotgun delivers the final gut-busting blow to a troublesome Mancubus. Boost pads give access to the highest platforms, sending Doom Guy airborne, pursued by terrifying orb-hurling beasts. Projectiles fly, grenades explode in a pop of limbs and smoke, but it isn’t over until the choke and cackle of a chainsaw finds the shoulder cavity of the final Hell Guard in a point blank fount of raging gore.

RelatedPosts

UK Government to Reduce Max Stakes at Fixed-Odds Betting Terminals

Brexit and collapse of high street shops blamed for slump in toy sales

EuroMillions.com offers new famous international games to its clients

Online gaming – and role of the UK economy

This is DOOM. And this is DOOM for 13 hours. From the moment the game starts DOOM is ON, and there is no other position on the dial. And while the experience may sound one-note, this is also DOOM’s greatest strength. No dilution, no down-time, just guns, demons and the madness that the combination of those two things inevitably brings.

And as much as DOOM seems ripe for the role, this isn’t a nostalgia trip. There will be some Member Berry-chugging Gen X-ers ready to beam at the lovingly recreated Cacodemon design as it belches towards them, and that’s cool, but I’m 25, and I was a Wolfenstein kid. My first encounter with the Doom series was Doom 3, and while that was a memorable gaming experience, DOOM is a distant relative of those exposition-loaded hallways and cheap jump-scares. What DOOM does capture is the frenetic and liberating gameplay of FPSs when the genre was still in its infancy, which is a wonderful thing to find amongst the stodgy ‘realism’ of modern shooters.

With 2016 tech flair and 1998 gameplay at its heart, DOOM isn’t flawless, but it’s fun as Hell, and probably the best game of the year.

Tags: featured
Support fearless, free, investigative journalism Support fearless, free, investigative journalism Support fearless, free, investigative journalism

Subscribe to our Newsletter

View our  Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions

Trending fromTLE

  • All
  • trending

What If We Got Rid Of Prisons?

Stress, fear and homelessness: The threat looming over families confronted with eviction

File photo dated 07/11/03 of a prison cell.

The Other Prison Pandemic

Latest from TLE

Image by AdobeStock

Weather forecast, alerts and UVB index for London, Wednesday 3 March 2021

Lucky Numbers and Horoscopes for today, 3 March 2021

Euro Millions results Tuesday 2nd March 2021

thunder ball results

Thunder Ball Results, Tuesday 2nd March 2021

About Us

TheLondonEconomic.com – Open, accessible and accountable news, sport, culture and lifestyle.

Read more

Address

The London Economic Newspaper Limited t/a TLE
Company number 09221879
International House,
24 Holborn Viaduct,
London EC1A 2BN,
United Kingdom

Contact

Editorial enquiries, please contact: jack@thelondoneconomic.com

Commercial enquiries, please contact: advertise@thelondoneconomic.com

SUPPORT

We do not charge or put articles behind a paywall. If you can, please show your appreciation for our free content by donating whatever you think is fair to help keep TLE growing and support real, independent, investigative journalism.

DONATE & SUPPORT

© 2019 thelondoneconomic.com - TLE, International House, 24 Holborn Viaduct, London EC1A 2BN. All Rights Reserved.




No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
  • Politics
  • Opinion
  • Business
  • Sport
  • Entertainment
  • Film
  • Lifestyle
  • Food
  • Property
  • Travel
  • Tech & Auto
  • About The London Economic
  • Meet the Team
  • Privacy policy

© 2019 thelondoneconomic.com - TLE, International House, 24 Holborn Viaduct, London EC1A 2BN. All Rights Reserved.