Doom’s latest announcement and the upcoming Superbowl 50 have converged to mean that Conan O’Brien’s clueless gamer, which always stars a pair of American football stars just before the Big Game, this week featured id’s upcoming hyper-gore demon-killing simulator. Given they had an actual playable build of the single-player campaign, it shows some unique footage between the shots of Conan telling jokes, Marshawn Lynch popping off and id executive producer Marty Stratton standing at the back laughing.
The superbowl, or the best FPS games ever? Perhaps both, you two-monitored fiend.
I’ll warn you now, it is mostly a video focused on comedy and interaction between people, rather than the game itself, and they aren’t exactly experienced game demoers, but there is some new stuff in here:
Those worried that Doom wouldn’t be following standard 21st century videogame practice of including a database of enemies and items have nothing to fear, as that Codex entry appearing demonstrates. There’s also some challenge pop-ups on the side there, likely linked into the Doom progression system that was revealed in GameInformer last month. Plus: glory kills. Missed one on the Revenant there, but I’m all for chopping a Hell Knight’s leg off and then his head in half. Stupid meat-walls.
Conan’s reaction to everything might have been the most interesting. He clearly wasn’t prepared for the level of violence involved – it makes me wonder if we’re in for another round of newspaper ‘exposés’ on the horrifying violence of videogames. I’ll be honest, Doom is definitely a step above what we’re used to, not least because of the fidelity upgrade from the last time something so specifically featured stylish death as a reward: Bulletstorm. I’m looking forward to it, and don’t think it’s a problem so long as the game is rated properly when you consider that none of the targets are actually human. I’d say something like The Walking Dead is way above it, or the opening sequence involving that poor fellow’s eyesocket in Bioshock Infinite.
Plus, anything that makes Marshawn Lynch jump out of his seat is probably worth playing. Game’s out, as Conan says, on May 13th. Here’s the campaign trailer from yesterday, along with some thoughts on what the pre-order hack modules might entail.