Doom needs no introduction. Ever since its initial release in 1993 it’s held a spot as one of the most well-known video game franchises in history. It defined and popularized the entire genre of first person shooters. For years after its release, the term “Doom clone” designated games of its genre purely due to its influence. Since then, Doom content has arrived in a great variety of forms and mediums—the franchise has seen its ups, and it has seen its downs.
But never has it been this adorable.
The Slayer Has Entered the Facility
Developed by Bethesda Softworks, Mighty Doom is a top-down auto-shooter. While it breaks away from the genre the franchise is most well-known for, the goal is nevertheless the same. Take control of Mini Slayer and mow down hordes of demons using a series of weapons and equipment of your choice. Since the title is only available on mobile devices, it of course borrows practices and design elements from games native to them, for better and for worse. So, is it worth your time?
Huge Guts
Mighty Doom made an odd decision with its graphics. The aesthetics are very cutesy and adorable, as if you made a game using exclusively Funko Pop figurines. Even the character you play as is called the Mini Slayer. That’s not to say the game strayed from its graphically violent roots—the mass massacre of demons still leaves behind satisfying stains of whatever color blood is your favorite. Beating a boss rewards you with a particularly violent animation of the Mini Slayer finishing them off. Each boss has its own such animation, and while it can get somewhat repetitive, it’s always a nice break of pace before you return to your shooting shenanigans.
The soundtrack is a mixture of metal and dubstep, and utilizes both new elements as well as melodies and motifs fans of the franchise will recognize. Combined with the sounds of the action, it accentuates the gameplay well. The sound mixing is great especially for a mobile game—neither the music, nor the constant shooting of guns and growling of demons overpower one-another.
The Slayer Has the BFG
Mighty Doom has two main gameplay sections. First, you have to deal with the phone RPG-style menu management. Collect idle rewards to gain resources. Open lockboxes to acquire weapons, armor and upgrade tokens, and equip them to increase your stats for the battles ahead. Spend your hard-earned resources to upgrade everything, including your slayer itself.
While armor pieces offer mostly passive bonuses like extra damage or critical hit chance, the weapons themselves vary greatly. True to its roots, Mighty Doom allows you to bring an entire arsenal of four different weapons into battle. One of each of a primary weapon, a secondary weapon, an ultimate weapon and a launcher.
Primary weapons are the bread and butter of your build, constantly shooting towards the nearest enemy. The secondary weapon is a powerful tool with a cooldown that also resets at the start of every room. Ultimate weapons need to be charged by killing enemies, and have devastating power that can clear entire rooms. Launchers are a supporting option that deal area damage every once in a while and apply some sort of detrimental effect to enemies hit. Each category has numerous options for you to choose from, ensuring that you can tailor your slayer to your specific blood-shedding needs.
Rip and Tear
Once you geared up, it’s time to set out. Mighty Doom has a rather extensive campaign consisting of nine chapters modeled after iconic locations from the franchise. Most chapters consist of 40 stages. Once you start a chapter, you spawn into the first stage. Mow down all the demons to progress to the next. Every fifth stage is a bonus room where a night sentinel offers you a little help, and every tenth is a boss room. Progressing through it all in one go is not as easy as it may seem at first: you will need all the upgrades you can get, especially for the later chapters.
As you progress through the rooms, you earn experience. Every time you level up, the game offers you a choice between three upgrades. These can range from simple health or damage boosts, through adding extra bullets to each shot of your weapon, to crazier things like giving bouncing bullets to your piercing gauss gun. Each weapon has its own set of possible upgrades, further distinguishing your options and justifying your choices.
The title offers a modest variety of enemies to fight. Each of them require a different approach, meaning you have to be on your toes at all times to not get caught out. Utilizing the environment is key to survival and success, especially on later stages. Killing an enemy sometimes staggers them instead. If you can get into melee range quickly, you can perform a glory kill, restoring some of your health. As the game has no health pick-ups, this is your main way to heal instead.
In addition to the campaign, Mighty Doom also offers limited time events. These are essentially daily challenges that offer bonus rewards. Sometimes they are also themed, like the Easter event featuring hordes of “zombunnies” at the time of this review’s writing. Completing them each day is a good way to stock up on the harder to earn resources required to upgrade your equipment.
The Cost of Progress
Being a mobile game, we do have to talk about the monetization of Mighty Doom. While there’s plenty to buy in the cash shop, they aren’t necessary for satisfying progress. You can earn a decent amount of lockboxes and resources through gameplay. You might have to repeat some stages in order to get to a power level where you can continue progressing, but as long as the game itself is fun, that shouldn’t be a problem, right?
Aside from crates and resources, you can also buy characters. You start with the Mini Slayer, but there are other slayers to play as, each with their own base stats, special abilities and of course cost. Most of them can only be bought for real money, and at first this concerned me. If the paid characters are too powerful compared to the free options, it could easily turn the game pay to win. However, after skimming through all the options, I have to say the contrary. The default Mini Slayer has one of the best special abilities in the game, and after leveling up your character and equipping it with gear, the difference in stats becomes minimal. The other options are only there to let you experiment with more specialized builds.
If you had to recreate the feeling of playing a Doom game on your phone, you probably couldn’t do better than Mighty Doom. Despite the genre switch-up, it does an exemplary job at capturing the meat of what makes these games so viscerally addictive. Both old fans and newcomers to the franchise will find something to enjoy here.
Rip and tear, slayers! Rip and tear, until it is done.
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