"The hunt begins."
--Announcer, Mighty Doom
For the first time (short of some obscure spin-off I never heard of), Doom now has an entry not played from the first-person perspective. Mighty Doom is far from conventional franchise presentation, and aside from the extreme repetition and large amounts of time required to progress without paying, this is a very competent translation of Doom from a first-person shooter to a top-down shooter with even more arcade elements. All the casual brutality of the 2016 and 2020 reboot games survives the transition, just with a more chibi art style. Glory kills, the basic environments of Doom and Doom Eternal, and weapons like the chaingun, crucible, and Unmakyr are all here. The now-typical trappings of mobile gaming, like sometimes very slow progression without giving in to microtransactions, are the worst parts, and the general quality of the core game itself is not to blame for this.
Production Values
The aesthetic is an altered version of the same one from Doom Eternal and its predecessor. Demons like the Cacodemon, locations like the disrupted streets of Earth, and items like the Gauss Canon are all here, replicated well in the new format. There are also still plenty of bloody decapitations, limb-ripping, and powerful blows from the Doom Slayer in close-up animations that showcase the chibi figures and the signature gore that has never had a "cuter" style than now. The look is utilized for the somewhat diverse landscapes pulled from the immediately prior games as well, just as static backgrounds.
Gameplay
From the first set of levels on Earth to the much more difficult missions that come later, Mighty Doom has players control the miniature Doom Slayer by looking down on the carnage. A floating virtual joystick on the middle or right side of the touch screen is how the Slayer is moved around. A set of digital buttons on the left side control the secondary weapon and special weapon, the former resetting for use every 10 seconds and the latter resetting when enough enemies are killed. It might have just been my aging phone, but these onscreen buttons were occasionally unresponsive, which forfeited heightened damage from the side weapons for about several moments at a time.
The primary weapon automatically fires as the Slayer faces nearby enemies by default. With aiming, the player does nothing. They only move the protagonist around. At first, the demons will be easy to kill with the starting weapon and equipment. By the time one is only a few chapters into the game, the challenge has increased sharply unless one pays to quickly obtain better items. Unlocking better firearms, secondaries, and equipment (like acid or grenade launchers) can be a very luck-based or drawn-out process without making microtransactions. Fortunately, there are opportunities to get more resources in alternate ways, such as a passive "mining" for coins around the universe by the supercomputer Vega that one can tap as often as every half hour.
Besides upgrading the damage or other functionality of armor, guns, and other items, coins can buy mastery levels. Masteries apply to all Doom Slayer versions, as there are multiple skins with their own unique passive skills, and they become more expensive with each purchase The player's level, such as 28 or 52, determines the maximum mastery level available. In the main chapter runs, which consist of anywhere from 20-40 individual levels, there are additional level ups that last only as long as that round does. Killing demons triggers this leveling, earning a choice from bonuses like tri-shots or additional splash damage. Each weapon can be permanently upgraded as well. In fact, if a more powerful version of an item comes along, you can recycle all currency and item upgrade units spent on the weaker iteration to reallocate them.
Story
There is scarcely a clear plot other than the Doom Slayer moving from the demon-infested streets of Earth to Nekroval and eventually to Mars, with some additional locations in between. Combat and slow but steady upgrades to health and damage output are the core of the game. Ironically, Mighty Doom follows the most story-heavy console Doom game yet with a very bare narrative at best.
Intellectual Content
There is some mild strategizing that can be engaged in, from the selection of level-up upgrades within individual runs to deciding how to kill clusters of demons swarming around you (it can be very challenging while grinding to secure upgrade parts and currency). This is by no means a philosophically explicit game. Given its aim, this is fine. As I have affirmed before, while a deep thematic side always benefits a game, film, or show, there can still be technical excellence/competence of other kinds even if the philosophical aspects are squandered or intentionally minimized--everything is philosophical, so this can never actually be eliminated, but it can be de-emphasized or trivially presented to the point of having an incredibly minor presence.
Conclusion
Mighty Doom is not at all a bad game simply because of the sudden deviation from the franchise's core style, the mere presence of microtransactions, and the sporadic difficulty increases that require grinding to overcome. It is actually very strong for the alternate type of game that it is. The mobile platform and the different presentation contribute to a novel Doom experience that honors elements of the reboot games, from the violence to the arsenal to the enemy design. Without paying money, one can clear the entire game even if it takes much longer. The recent and even older console games are indeed better because they have more diverse environmental exploration and, in the 2016 and 2020 titles, grander boss fights and (for Doom Eternal, at least) more developed plots, and Mighty Doom still reflects much of these other games.
Content:
1. Violence: For a chibi, top-down mobile game, Mighty Doom has a lot of blood and body parts when some enemies are ripped apart in glory kills, particularly after boss fights when larger enemies have their limbs or heads removed.
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