Doom feels like a fragmented franchise. – From /r/Doom

I’ve been doing a Doom marathon this year in honor of The Dark Ages (and as an excuse to finally play Eternal’s DLCs), and it’s been a wild ride. I loved Doom 1 to death, the gunplay, the atmosphere, everything about it just clicked.And I was so hooked on Doom 2 at first with the double-barrel shotgun and all the new enemies. But somewhere halfway through, the level design just stopped being fun to push through. Doom 64 had great atmosphere but didn’t keep me engaged, and Doom 3 felt more like a horror experiment than actual Doom. Now I’m back on Doom 2016 and replaying it, and it honestly feels like this is the point where the franchise finally figured itself out.

The crazy part is I actually love the lore across all these games. The Sentinels, the Father, Davoth, the corruption of the Khan Maykr, all of it. But unlike other big franchises (Resident Evil, Final Fantasy, Yakuza), Doom feels fragmented, like a series that spent decades throwing experiments at the wall before finally realizing what it wants to be. That history makes the Slayer saga hit harder, but it’s also sad that Doom didn’t really become “Doom” until 2016.