Doom Comes to Xbox as Developer_Direct ’25 Heralds a Coming Dark Age

My wife and I spent the last week cat-sitting for some friends, so unfortunately, I was unable to hop behind the keyboard as quickly as I wanted to in order to gather my thoughts about the latest Xbox Developer_Direct when it happened. Well, better late than never, yeah?

In case you missed it, here’s the video in full.

Things started off hot with a mystery reveal: A brand-new Ninja Gaiden game from the fine folks over at Tecmo!

I’ve had a… sort of touch-and-go relationship with the Ninja Gaiden franchise. I loved and owned the first two NES games, complete in box (until they were discarded behind my back), but only rented the third one, which failed to win me over due to its localized changes (limited continues were the dealbreaker there). I really dug Ryu’s new look when I found out that was supposed to be him in the Dead Or Alive games, and he instantly became one of my mains off of that.

And then they built a new series around this new Ryu! But it didn’t quite manage to grab me. But I did like the demo I played of Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword for the Nintendo DS! But never wound up getting it, for no particular reason.

I’ve long wanted to see a new Ninja Gaiden based in the NES continuity (or not, but it’d be nice) that was to those games what Symphony of the Night was to Castlevania, another similar series in that time period — a “Metroidvania,” basically. I don’t know if Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound will be that game, but I hope to check it out, either way.

Oh, and I enjoyed the OVA, too.

So, yeah. I generally like Ninja Gaiden, enough for news to usually grab my interest.

Now, being a sequel to the “new” (a term I use loosely, as it’s just two months shy of being legally able to drink in the States) Ninja Gaiden games, I didn’t think much of this at first…

But then, at 1:07, another logo popped up: PlatinumGames.

Now we’re talking about a whole new ballgame. While the previous entries didn’t do much for me, chiefly from a gameplay perspective, I love a good chunk of PlatinumGames’ output: the Bayonetta series, Transformers: Devastation, and even Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan, to name a few (with others I own and still need to try in my backlog).

So if this winds up being a new Ninja Gaiden that plays comparably to those? I’m completely on board.

Oh, and before they moved on to other games, they shadow-dropped an Unreal Engine remake of Ninja Gaiden II Black on Game Pass. I only tried out the first and third entries… maybe this one’s worth a look?

Next up was South of Midnight. I said this about it upon its reveal last year:

This one intrigues me. In particular, the almost claymation-like feel the cutscenes evoke. And the Cajun setting has my eye, too.

It’s not a whole lot for me to invest in, but enough to make me keep a further eye on it.

The needle hasn’t really moved on this once since. And if I’m being honest, it was probably the third or fourth most-interesting game to me in this lineup, if I had to rank them.

The bottom of the list — which is no indication of quality or anything, mind you — would be the next game, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. With a few rare exceptions — usually involving mascot characters making the leap from another genre — turn-based role playing video games just aren’t really much my thing. That’s it. Everything else about this looks really well done and put together. I could probably say the same thing about, I don’t know, Madden or something, but it’s just not my jam.

Just for contrast, my wife — a big RPG player and co-host of the Axe of the Blood God podcast — is really interested in it.

Finally, we come to the main event — a game which grabbed my attention and would not let it go, so much so that I named an article about five different games for it alone:

Now look, I’m not a huge first-person shooter guy… but that mostly comes down to me not coming around to them until I played Halo Infinite. Now I feel like I missed out on a lot, and that includes pretty much every Doom since the Super NES (yeah, I know) and Nintendo 64 ones.

And this one… well, it’s really speaking to me. Textbook “You had my curiosity, now you have my interest” case here.

It’s apparently a prequel to the other recent Doom titles, which seems to make it a good place to hop on, I think. Kind of like how Yakuza 0 was the first entry to come out after I decided “Yes, yes, I must find out more about this series” after encountering characters from it in Project X Zone 2. Only this isn’t wooing me by virtue of cameo appearances in another game I like, but entirely on its own merits.

A mix of sci-fi and fantasy? Always loved that. Giant robots? You know I love that. A “fire-breathing, Gatling-gun-toting cybernetic dragon”? Hell, I was doing that over 25 years ago! I am all over that!

…okay, so mine actually spewed acid. Still close enough.

Oh, and that whole chainsaw-shield thing is pretty wicked, too. I’m curious to see how it stacks up to Master Chief’s grappling hook.

Suffice to say, I’m really, really looking forward to this one.

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What about you, though? Did anything grab your attention at the Xbox Developer_Direct? Tell me all about it in the comments below! I’d love to hear what you have to say.

Thanks for reading!