The demo featured a single multiplayer map, named Heatwave, but it's a tight, workable location for the six-on-six setup. It's pure team deathmatch laid out over a hellish foundry replete with lava pits, jump boosters, and a bevy of multilayered, overlapping catwalks. The area is littered with opportunities to both get the drop on the other team and slap your forehead after jumping into the fire.

It feels very much like a Doom 3 multiplayer map, but it moves at the much-increased speed of Doom 2. It plays far faster than I was expecting, in fact, thanks in part to a compacted mix of open spaces and tight corridors. The setting lends a very particular slant to the interpersonal encounters, fraught battles that ended up being relatively protracted by modern shooter standards.

In other shooters, you might be killed instantly by a sniper shot from across the map or melee'd from behind into an undignified death. In the new Doom, those kinds of situations were more often the opening move in a terse, five-second chess game, albeit with rockets instead of rooks.

The movement system is more robust than you might remember if you haven’t played a 'classic' id shooter in a while. The game felt like a Quake match taken down a few dozen notches. Twitch shooting skills can save you, but making yourself harder to hit by moving around like a caffeinated hummingbird is the key to success. The focus on constant movement fills combat with a great sense of scope, as you know that both you and your errant shots are filling the space.

The new traversal scheme, which allows for grabbing edges and climbing up to a higher surface, actually opened me up to an incredible sequence of events. Facing down another player, I was hopping around and blasting rockets until I accidentally mantled up a catwalk, grabbing a bar and pulling myself up until I was 20 feet above. I saw my crimson foe below, apparently confused at my disappearance, and I brought him to a most delectable end.