I played most of the game on borderless windowed, and when I switched back to fullscreen it stopped doing the loading lockup after beating a level in mission select. Still needs to be patched, the game has too many loading lockups and crashes.
I finished it though, so:
-Double jump is good and more games should have it.
-Length and difficulty were just right.
-Boss fights were alright, though
went on a little too long. Boring, bullet sponge bosses are too common in FPS (Shadow Warrior), and while Doom doesn't do anything particularly great with its bosses, they're all at least good.
-Praetor upgrades weren't very interesting. Though it does mean Doomguy starts off strong rather than beginning the game completely gimped, I feel like maybe there should have been some better abilities in there rather than passive upgrades you don't need at all.
-UAC design is pretty good. Not really a distinct identity for each area, but some of them look really good. Hell areas seem uninspired.
The main thing I noticed about the game is that it kind of feels more like Quake than Doom. In Doom, every weapon other than the pistol has a use all the way through the game. Each enemy is susceptible to certain attacks, and you count out the damage you're doing so you know just when an enemy is going to die and when to switch weapons. There's a very methodical way of approaching each fight. In this game, fights are messy and frantic. You never stop moving, new enemies are constantly appearing, you have no idea if that's the same imp you saw 30 seconds ago. You're constantly running and jumping in circles shooting at everything in sight. And as such, it feels like the weapons and enemies lack identity. They're all just various means of dealing damage to the enemies or to the player. Shoot the shotgun's secondary fire, immediately switch to rocket launcher, secondary fire, switch to Gauss Cannon and finish them off with secondary fire. Enemies are constantly spawning and some of them have so much health that it kind of turns into a battle of attrition, where you simply spam your strongest attacks until enemies stop spawning. There's no methodical whittling down of a distinct group of enemies as in the best parts of Doom I, II, and various mods, you simply keep jumping and shooting until the fight is over.
And while that's fine on its own, it misses what one of the best parts of Doom is and why maps coming out for them still feel fresh 20 years later. I get that it's also partially a technical limitation; we can't have huge arenas that segue into each other with 30 enemies onscreen at once. And while I'd say Doom paces its arenas in a much more enjoyable way than say, Serious Sam, it still comes out feeling messy and repetitive. Even if it's still fun thanks to the movement and the feel of the weapons.
