What is this gun I see before me…

Because Bethesda Softworks didn’t make a final version of its new Doom reboot available to press before today’s release, we won’t have a full review ready for a little while. But we’ve spent most of the day diving into the game, so we thought we’d give readers who just can’t wait some early impressions based on our first few hours playing on the PC, which encompass the game’s first three loosely defined “levels.”

Even this early in the game, Doom takes pains to force your attention on its backstory, told mainly through holographic projections, video screens, and the occasional environmental detail on a corpse. So far, it’s unclear why so much effort needs to be spent explaining a story that boils down to “demon-possessed workers in a Martian facility want to kill their un-possessed co-workers and roam around.” The few identifiable characters have so far failed to make any impact except as plot devices. I think Doom would have been better stuffing all of this plot into optional reading rather than cut scenes.

At least the story scenes are relatively short, letting you get to the action quickly. Basic movement is sufficiently zippy (at a smooth framerate on our GTX 980 rig), with the kind of instant acceleration and never-tiring speed you’d expect from the Doom series. There’s also a nice floaty jump that comes with the ability to make a quick and handy automatic clamber up the side of ledges. This is a big help in navigating levels that so far make strong use of the third dimension, often forcing you to look up or squeeze down through a tunnel. A rotatable 3D map in the menu screen helps in finding your way around, but after a while I wanted a mini-map on the HUD for more immediate orientation.