Thoughts on Doom Multiplayer Open Beta

[NOTE: I was gonna put pictures in this one, but whenever I tried screencapping the game, the screencap would glitch out and the game didn't let me record with either FRAPS or Shadowplay for whatever reason. Therefore, in protest, I'm only attaching the cover of the original Doom and the Internet Explorer logo.]

First thought: if you are going to release an open beta for the multiplayer, try to make sure your servers aren't down more often than they're up for a region with a high consumer base. Second thought: if you are going to release an open beta for the multiplayer, do try to make matchmaking take less than fifteen minutes to give players a match. To be fair to Bethesda though, once I was connected to a game, I managed to play for an hour and a half straight with no hiccups of any sort. The connection was smooth, only a couple of players with Russian letters in their Steam names glitched around a bit and there was never more than two minutes wait between matches. But then, when I tried logging in the next day, I only got the "Dedicated servers aren't available at this time" message which is like someone inviting you to taste a sample of their murder cake and then saying "Oh, sorry, I've run out of murder cake, but I assure you it was lovely."

Playing this open beta has really reminded me of Quake 3 and the original Unreal Tournament, both in good and bad ways. Movement is amazing - you run at the speed of a high-end mobility scooter, you can double-jump and your space marine grabs any ledges you're facing. This makes for a run'n'gun rather than a hide'n'snipe style of gameplay which remains fun even when you're not doing very well. There are jump pads and portals that can transport you around the map even quicker and for just over 90 minutes, the two available maps didn't get boring. Most of the weapons have a second firing function rather than an iron-sight, with a couple of long-range exceptions - the sniper and assault rifles. The gunplay feels inconsistent and thanks to the damage numbers popping up I have no idea how to successfully hit someone with a rocket. See, the description promised an AOE but unless I hit someone directly or detonated the rocket mid-air near them, no numbers would fly above their heads. The maps are littered with health and ammo pickups, some armour pickups are around and there are two or three super-weapons and demon tokens which brings me nicely onto 'new things'.

As much as it's Doom of old, it's Doom of today and we're all doomed to fit into arbitrary classes with limited loadouts and 'well done' bonuses and Team matches with no real rewards or punishments for winning. The beta is everything I hate about modern multiplayer shooters. The two available game modes are Team Deathmatch and Warpath. Warpath is an interesting spin on Domination, where you score points by being in control of a territory, except in Doom the territory is mobile. The trouble with all that is the fact I just didn't care whether I won or lost. Because it doesn't matter, does it? As long as you as an individual do well, you will level up and get more fun toys to play with. Win or lose, it doesn't affect your KDR, it won't level you down, you won't be punished for not helping your weaker teammates. There is no team spirit either, although the games I played were a lot more organised and coherent than some of the ones I've seen and the headless chicken tactic was in the minority. Regardless, how well I did, or anyone else for that matter, seem to largely depend on luck.

My second best game occurred when I happened upon the demon token and became a Revenant demon able to fly and shoot rockets at will. Cool for me, not so much for anyone in my path. The previous eight or so matches I was killed time and again by these bastards so it was fun to try it out and I must admit that it's an interesting concept but it needs some work. The demon token can really swing the momentum of a match and my favourite moment so far was during a Warpath match when my team was down 230-120 with 250 being the winning score and one of my teammates got the token and started obliterating the enemy. The token only lasts a set amount of time and if the demon is killed it becomes a token exclusively for the opposing team before greying out and being anyone's pickup again. So my entire team crowded around our demon and protected him while he waged mayhem and we ended up winning 250-230 in the end and as the demon's top bodyguard, I somehow amassed the most points.

So yes, the game can be fun, but the other six or eight matches I played weren't interesting at all, if anything they were frustrating as I was trying to figure out how I was dying. It's easy to get swarmed and it's easy to miss shots and even melee attacks and it's easy to die several times in quick succession and stop caring altogether. Although it is almost as easy to grab a few decent pickups, obliterate several enemies in a row and feel like the king of multiplayer. Seconds before someone blows your dome off with the SUPER SHOTGUN.

The trouble I had coming into the game is that I quickly realised several of the players had extensive experience with the maps and the guns, beyond what numbers like 11 or 15 might suggest (although, to reach a level 15 in an open beta that's been running for about a week you've got to be pretty obsessive, I guess) and whenever the "demon token in..." message popped up, players were already there. I could barely turn a corner without a shotgun or a sniper shot heading my way. I randomly blew up in one evening more times than I've farted all year.

If anyone wants to coach me or knows an actually fun multiplayer shooter, let me know. For now, I remain sceptical and Doom is doing nothing to alleviate my scepticism.

Remember Me

Remember Me is a game I’ve had my eye on since the second trailer. Having seen its fluid and diverse combat, the game had my curiosity. After an hour’s trial, it had my attention (I watched Django Unchained again recently). It’s a decent game with all the ingredients of a great one.

The game has “TWIST!!!” written all over it; literally, Nilin is even twisting on the front cover to see you staring at her arse. Speaking of which, I played Beyond: Two Souls right after this and it was quite unnerving to suddenly control a character with such an extreme lack of buttocks. There’s a fat (ha! Paradox) chance Ellen Page is related to Nathan Drake. Remember Me’s story is also a little similar to Drake, it’s bound to destruction. Not just the environment, but characters too; you’ll be lucky (or thick) to play through the game without cringing. “This little red riding hood has a basket full of kick-ass!” is a genuine line of genuine dialogue genuinely said out loud by a genuine posh English woman. As I mention the posh voice, it is unsuitable for the character but by the time she says her first real sentence your belief will be suspended higher than the bridge in San Francisco. The story is interesting and neatly put together, if a little badly written. However,  the game doesn’t outstay its welcome by dragging for 40+ hours, it’s straight to the point if you don’t include the intervals where Nilin debates whether her actions are right. Such discussions are futile soliloquies since she does everything she’s told (what a rebel, I guess conformism is the new rebellion) and the player has basically no say. I was faced with the old existential quandary of ‘Nilin, wat r u doin? Nilin stahp.’  

The game is set in a world where Paris has fallen and risen as Neo Paris and where memories have become a commodity. It seems that everybody has a Sensen - a floating icon at the back of their neck that stores their memory - and nobody keeps pets except for robot servants. I haven’t found any confirmation that the Sensen service required a maintenance fee but in some ways it would seem so. People whose Sensens deteriorate become ghoulish creatures unable to form sentences or say anything positive, which is a bit of a downer. They also happen to be feral, which is sad but it gives you license to beat what’s left of a living shit in them. The world is well designed but not as interactive as it appears. There are hundreds of shops you can’t use and bars you can’t drink at. It does however paint a picture of a city that was very much alive until recently. What is left of it alive is the cast of fairly diverse characters, the most intriguing of which, Tommy Super Scarface (not actual name), doesn’t get explored. 

The entire world has a strong feel of 'under-budget' and the finished product looks more AA than AAA in certain cases. It seems to me that there was meant to be an open-world aspect to this game with its many shops and potential vendors but what we're left with in the end are just long corridors with a few secrets, much in Uncharted's vein. This could've been a thriving world exploring the growing rift between the ruling and working classes in the modern world. It could've highlighted the fact that the working classes are given many advanced commodities for their work but that only serves the ruling classes to keep them on a shorter leash. We could've explored just how important memory is to us as humans and how far people might go to keep it - becoming homeless, wearing found clothes and eating basically garbage, all in a quest to remain human. Instead we have a zombie-and-cop beat 'em up with a nice background. 

Every character has a distinct cyberpunk style with a distinct mix of denim and leather. I find Nilin’s design particularly intriguing. Nilin is an attractive, strong-willed, middle-class, mixed-race woman with a white father and a black mother and able to handle herself in a fight. Until you add that she has a scar on her face, you might as well be describing Aveline from Assassin’s Creed 3: Liberation, which was also written by a Frenchman. Nilin’s features are sharp and unforgiving but also feminine and warm. She has a tight frame but an unmistakably female bottom; her sharp face is capped off by big blue eyes. Nilin is a future tramp’s Lara Croft. Your enemies consist of several varieties of robots, Gollums and Judge Dredds. The last ones come equipped with shields, batons, electric suits and a helicopter. The Gollums come in three varieties: regular Gollum, lanky telekinetic Gollum and Uruk-Hai Gollum. The robots are flying and exploding, with the latter being male (which is another quasi-feminist point scored by the game). All of these enemies have different behavioural pattern and ways of being defeated which keeps the combat fairly fresh and intetesting. Some of the Gollums are invisible in the dark and others climb walls, meaning the combat gains another dimension, however repetitive and limited it may be.  

Which brings me grammatically incorrectly onto my next paragraph:  gameplay. Here’s where I really sell the game to you (you’re welcome, Capcom). Gameplay is where Remember Me shines the brightest and stands out the most. To begin with, there’s a bit of walking and running away between cut-scenes, after which the player gets to meet the best main feature nominee – combat. The combat is something between the Arkham series and Lollipop Chainsaw with a neat touch of Godhand. As you progress the story, you unlock template combos where you can slot your custom attacks known as Pressens. There are only five combos in total but the attacks come in four categories which still allows for some creativity. Firstly, you have your power Pressens which deal the most damage and if used in succession allow you to use a finishing move on some enemies or break the guard of others. Then, there are healing Pressens which recover health with each successful hit. Later on, you discover cooldown Pressens that speed up the cooldown of special abilities. And last but by far not least, you’ll come across chain Pressens. These take the effect of the preceding Pressen and double it. The later in the combo a Pressen is slotted and the more of the same category before it, the stronger its effects. The combos can be customised mid-combat allowing for flexible tactics as you alter your attacks’ effects on the fly dependent on your needs. While in combat, you also have the ability to dodge and continue your current combo input after dodging successfully because Nilin is such an artful dancer. There is a timing display at the bottom of the screen to guide you through your heavy hitting as button mashing won’t work, although I found that as much as looking at it helps with the timing, it’s too easy to lose sight of the battlefield. In practice, the combat is fluid, fast-paced and balanced (and fucking awesome). You unlock a number of special abilities to go with your Pressen combos which include a timed Logic Bomb, Fury which gives Nilin super strength but disables combos, a robot possession ability, a stun attack that reveals invisible enemies and invisibility that allows you to insta-kill one enemy. To balance against these, some enemies are immune to the stun and the abilities have various cooldown periods. There are, of course, boss fights and it wouldn’t be a triple-A title without quick time events and so each boss fight culminates in one – press X to kick Kid Xmas in the nuts, press Triangle to shove your nuts in his face, press O to fart in his ear (I only wish).

In between all the fighting, you get to meet the extras. There is actually a fair bit of platforming which falls somewhere between the Assassin’s Creed and the Uncharted type. All climbable ledges are clearly signed so you don’t get lost and other than the unchallenging scripted jumps there are billboards that turn and throw you down so you have to start over. Despite the free-running system’s apparent rigidness and lack of freedom, it is still possible to fall to your death if you try hard enough. Holding the platforming by the hand is Metal Gear Solid style sneaking where you run around freely just out of enemy’s sight, though the enemy is a bunch of automated sentries. There’s a below-Uncharted level of puzzling to be done here and there as well. The turn on electricity to walk through a puddle kind of puzzling. Which I suppose is just a couple of pegs below Capcom’s famed find a triangular object for a triangular keyhole type of puzzling.

And now for the best supporting feature nominee: memory manipulation. First and foremost, Nilin is able to claim others’ memories to help her on her quest to save the world, or at least what’s left of Neo-Paris. This allows her to play remembrances and follow the memory owner’s footsteps. You can’t just steal anybody’s memory, mind you; it’s a set piece which happens at predetermined stages of the game. This could’ve been an immensely interesting feature if it was implemented into organic gameplay but alas, it is not. The other, more interesting and inventive, memory manipulation feature is the star of the show (much like Dr Schultz in Django). At four points in the game you have the opportunity, or duty even, to remix people’s memories and alter their entire world view and personality. Again, it’s a feature that could’ve revolutionised gaming if it fit organically into gameplay but it only occurs at four set times in the game. Nilin is able to watch her victim’s memory and change small details with major repercussions. This serves as part of the game’s social commentary, suggesting that was one to alter a fine detail in an accident, blame could easily be shifted. A lot of the alterations you can make in the remixes have little or no impact, in fact most of them don’t mean much by themselves, but pick the right combination of memory bugs and you can bend your victim to your (the writers’) will.

Is Remember Me a great game? Did it ever stand a chance of being a great game? It’s not quite Arkham Asylum or Uncharted but it’s better than most of the shit that’s out there. It’s one I’ll remember fondly and hope somebody expands on its ideas.

Remember Me is: waking up hung-over and watching a video of yourself giving a heartfelt drunken speech and then doing some amazing acrobatics/10