Game On: ‘Mighty Doom’ for old-school experiences

A franchise, that has lasted the test of time and has gained new followers with its successful 2016 reboot and 2020 sequel

Hyderabad: When it comes to shooters, Doom is iconic. A franchise, that has lasted the test of time and has gained new followers with its successful 2016 reboot and 2020 sequel.

With Mighty Doom, Bethesda is trying to adapt some of that FPS magic to mobile phones and free-to-play (F2P) gaming. However, lost in this translation is Doom’s iconic first-person perspective as the top-down (portrait style) action here is more in line with DemonStar and Galaga than something you would find in FPS games.

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Despite the loss of the FPS view, I quite enjoyed this version of the game. So much so, that the first time I launched it, I played it for nearly four hours straight! The gameplay here is smooth and simple, the slayer (the protagonist) fires bullets continuously and the player’s job is to aim, maneuver, and dodge.

Each time you clear levels, the game offers you boosts to choose from, the boosts stack up on each other, and this means that with enough number of boosts you could be unstoppable. My go to combination was to stack up bounce, ricochet, spread shot, and twin shot – the room would convert into an unending Tetris/Table Tennis match.

Mighty Doom’s strength lies in its wonderful design of enemies, there is always enough variety in the regular missions and the way the bosses are designed is simply top-notch. The game had bonus levels for Easter and they too had their unique bunny style enemies to combat against. I looked forward to the boss fights every time I played as I hoped to encounter new abilities. This is a game that requires improvisation above all else.

However, despite its strengths the game lacks variety in the weapons it offers to its player, the primary rifle for example, remains the same no matter how many levels I clear. Secondly, the game has too many ads, in its early launch days the implementation of the ads was so buggy that there was no way to stop watching them apart from restarting the game. The experience left me so hassled that I would do anything to avoid the ads, for a franchise like Doom and a developer like Bethesda ad-based content unlocks seem an unnecessary move.

Worthy of recommendation, if not for the ads. A great game for fans of old-school experiences like DemonStar or Galaga.