Doom has moved on. Id Software's new take on its old classic once again straddles a fault-line between the partly colonised surface of Mars and a rollicking Death Metal album cover version of Hell, all goat motifs and bubbling plumes of gore. But each chapter does feature a secret area modelled on one of the original Doom or Doom 2's maps, nestled inside this assured, muscular reboot like a vestigial organ.
Venturing into them prompts confused emotions. The whirling volcanic beauty of id Tech 6 evaporates and you are bathed in the harsh, static glare of forgotten pixels. Walls lose their sheen. Shadows harden into blades. Barrels flatten to muddy thumbprints. Lava flows are reduced to flickering mosaics. At first it's as charming as finding a long-lost comic book underneath your bed, but you are an intruder here, able to jump and climb (blasphemy!) where the original Doom's marine could only sprint and strafe, the sumptuous 3D gun in your hand rudely interrupting the illusion of having travelled back to 1993.
This is an all-new Doom, and it turns out we should be thankful for that. If id's reboot has spent nearly a decade languishing in limbo, the single player offers up little evidence of all that strife and sorrow. This is one of the most generous and frenetic shooter campaigns in years, a blend of cleverly layered arena battles and exploration spiced with free-running that owes as much to Quake, Painkiller and Metroid Prime as it does the false partitions and keycards of the original game.
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