Doom Warrior definitely talks a big game. Then again so do the liberal democrats, and look where that landed us?
Perhaps it’s a degree of world-weary cynicism this profession naturally instils in those who undertake it (if I were to write a memoir, it would be called “The Slow Death of Optimism”) but when a game from humble origins begins boasting features such as character progression with literally no end, allowing your character to become as powerful as you like, provided you’re willing to put the time in. But considering the way Doom Warrior actually plays, that’s about as exciting a prospect as being the smartest kid on the short bus. 
There’s clearly a lot of ambition here, which is always to be respected, but this is absolutely not what it says on the tin. Combat is much like the Infinity Blade games, but the animation and overall graphic appeal is much, much lower. Stationary, direction-based combat is understandable on a mobile platform. Never when you have a keyboard and mouse at your disposal. The “epic” battles Doom Warrior promises boil down to pressing arrow keys to take cursory swipes at your single opponent, using the WASD keys to block (more on that later) and occasionally lobbing a cheeky fireball at them if you’re feeling adventurous.
Unfortunately, there’s a limited range of animation at work, making it difficult to actually figure out where your attacker is swinging from, making blocking a needlessly challenging process. I guess that’s why Creaky Corpse decided to add prompts that actually tell you when to block and which button to press, which is somehow even worse. Admittedly I haven’t fiddled around in the settings much to see if it can be turned off, but the animation is so lacking in nuance between different attack directions that you come to rely on the prompts as a crutch – which can make even the toughest battles a process of prompt-block-jab. As such, Doom Warrior is more a game of time and money as opposed to actual skill and knowledge.
As for the so-called PvP – in the game’s arenas you’ll match your character up against other people also dawdling in the same area. But they’re not “live” fights, as such – you’re simply going up against someone else’s character controlled by the computer, simply with the benefits of whatever stats, boosts and gear the player has equipped them with. You can and will be attacked with incredible frequency when you’re offline, leading to scores of condescending “You were killed by ‘TwatDestroyer94’” messages in your inbox. It’s not PvP. It’s fighting another generic nob prettied up by another player. As I touched upon earlier, there’s very little skill involved.
Doom Warrior is, I presume, going to be free-to-play, and it’s adopted a mobile gaming freemium format which just fits incredibly awkwardly onto a desktop game. You have energy you have to expend to fight (I managed to clear the first arena and get a few scraps of new gear in about half an hour, depleting my energy reserve entirely) and once you’ve run out of that and your basic allowance of premium currency, you… just kinda have to stop playing, really. Imagine if Guild Wars 2 had some kind of timer on it and it just stopped working after an hour, and you had to wait for a while to get back into it. Probably good for maintaining some semblance of a social life, but the pay-for-play format just doesn’t work on the desktop. It’s a cumbersome process of logging in, spending all your energy, and then just buggering off for a while and doing other stuff until you have energy back.
That format works on smartphones and tablets. Drop in, drop out, at the end of your shift or after a night’s sleep. But on a full-fledged PC game it just feels wrong, and stops Doom Warrior from gaining any real momentum. It’s an aggressive, blue-balling way of trying to make a profit, and what really bites about Doom Warrior is the actual content behind that paywall isn’t really that fun. The idea of spending more than £5 on it makes me feel physically ill. I don’t mind paying actual money for cool vanity items or temporary experience boosts, but paying for the privilege of a couple of extra fights? Not my cup of tea, and I doubt it’ll wash down well with the majority of sane RPG fans.
For a game called Doom Warrior it sure is timid and underwhelming. It’s difficult to tell if there’s any potential lurking beneath its unappealing nature, but for mindless, momentary fun, it might be worth a look. If they made the blocking just a little less procedural and eased up on the freemium side of things, it could definitely be a solid little time waster. Free to play, maybe, but at what cost? “Oh, we don’t want your money – we’ll just keep chipping away at your soul…”
Checkout Doom Warrior for yourself – http://www.doomwarrior.com/
You must be logged in to post a comment.