Doom 2016 was a massively successful fps game, a combination of new and old elements that jump-started the fps industry, in my opinion anyway. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so cheap indie games like Monument are more flattering than intellectually bankrupt. It does take a deal more modeling and design to emulate a style like Doom 2016, it's not one of those 90's raycasted games. Demons and double-shotguns never get old, so I made the small financial risk of buying Monument, the price alone warrants some subdued optimism. A game that costs about a Canadian Toonie doesn't have to be the Citizen Kane of the fps genre, but it has to be something, just what that something is takes a full campaign playthrough to discern, so here's Monument.
First attempt at the game on Hard and I autosaved into an inescapable deathloop, so restarting on normal had me beating th game in seventy minutes, shorter than most games, most b-movies even. I'm spoiled by high-quality boomer shooters like Dusk, so I was a little surprised that there were no other episodes post bossfight, though not disappointed, I got what I paid for content wise. Being such a short game means there's not less need for things like cutscenes or text blurbs of story, though it's awkward calling the main character "Monument Guy". The lack of enemy variety or even a reload animations is tolerable for the length of this short game. There's a kind of mercy to short games, the flawed elements have less time to grate on the players nerves and nobody likes a padded runtime.
Monument's gameplay is the bare minimum for an fps game, it consists of the typical running and gunning through corridors and searching for keycards. Demons will ambush, often from behind and I'd call this a cheap tactic to boost difficulty, but old greats like Serious Sam did the same thing, it's a similarly simple game, though a lot better. The typical rifle, shotgun, sniper and plasma guns make their obligatory appearance, but it's the teleporter gun that adds the only elements of originality to Monument, the teleporter projectile played a big role in the final level and bossfight, where outrunning the behemoth would be impossible without it. Before I know it the game had ended and I got the answer to the burning question of just how good or bad the game could be. For a couple of bucks I got a little over an hour of fps gameplay, no more, no less.
My recommendation here is that while Monument is cheap, you'd be better off saving that cash for something like the real Doom 2016 on sale, or Doom 1994 with any assortment of mods or wads, you'd have a lot more fun in Brutal Doom than this game, that's for sure. That's advice that I could have taken, but I'm a glutton for punishment. Speaking of punishment, watch me blast through more budget and triple-a games alike, Comrades.
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