Players take the role of an unnamed space marine, known as the "Doom Slayer", as he battles demonic forces within an energy-mining facility on Mars and in Hell.

The single-player campaign, graphics, soundtrack, and gameplay received considerable praise, whereas the multiplayer mode drew significant criticism.

It was the second best-selling video game in North America and the United Kingdom in the week of its release and sold over 500,000 copies for PCs by the end of May 2016.

[5] Gameplay consists of fast movement and frenetic combat against aggressive and mobile opponents, as well as exploration of the game's environments via double-jumps and ledge climbing.

[9][14] The single-player campaign has 13 levels,[15] which typically have multiple pathways and open areas for players to explore and find collectibles, secrets, and upgrades to their equipment.

[16] Throughout the campaign are Easter egg references to Commander Keen, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Fallout 4, Terminator 2, and the preceding Doom games.

[21] Gamemodes include a basic Team Deathmatch and variations thereof called Freeze Tag, in which defeated players are frozen in ice and may be revived by teammates,[22] and Soul Harvest, in which players must pick up "souls" dropped by slain opponents;[23] Warpath, a variation of King of the Hill in which the hill moves around the map;[24] Clan Arena, a team-based last man standing mode;[25] and Domination, in which teams must capture and hold three locations.

[4] Doom takes place on Mars, where the Union Aerospace Corporation (UAC) operates a facility to exploit an energy seeping from Hell, an alternate dimension populated by hostile lifeforms known as demons.

The facility is run by Samuel Hayden, a UAC scientist who transferred his consciousness to an android body after being afflicted with terminal brain cancer during the construction of the Argent Tower.

In addition to directing the energy extraction and refining process, Hayden organizes expeditions into Hell to retrieve captive demons and artifacts for study.

After clearing out the facility core and preventing a meltdown in its foundry, the Slayer pursues Pierce up the tower, along the way destroying infrastructure critical to the refinement of Argent energy despite Hayden's protests.

Hayden also tells the Slayer of the Helix Stone, an artifact used to study and harness Argent energy being housed in Pierce's office in the Lazarus Labs.

Entering the Lazarus Labs, the Slayer observes the Helix Stone and learns of the Well, where the portal is powered, and of the Crucible, a magical blade.

Entering the Well, the Slayer uses the Crucible to destroy the portal's power source and confronts Pierce, who is betrayed and transformed by the demons into the Spider Mastermind.

[50][51] In an interview by Nathan Grayson of Rock, Paper, Shotgun on August 6, 2013, Willits stated that there was no publicly available timeline for updates on Doom 4.

To incentivize player aggression, id rewarded use of the Glory Kill mechanic and chainsaw by replenishing resources and built the game's levels to encourage movement during combat.

[1][62] In his direction for Doom's story, Martin was inspired by action movies such as RoboCop (1987), Evil Dead 2 (1987),[65] and The Last Boyscout (1991),[66] and paintings by American artist Frank Frazetta.

[81] He designed several chains of effects units through which he passed sub-bass sine waves,[80][82] layered with white noise to make them audible on widely available speaker equipment.

[84] Gordon also included Easter eggs in the soundtrack; shortly after the game's release in May 2016, players discovered pentagrams and the number "666" hidden in the track "Cyberdemon" via spectrogram.

[87][88] Speaking to the Game Development Conference about composing Doom's soundtrack in 2017, Gordon revealed the presence of a reversed message, "Jesus loves you", in an unidentified track.

[93] A Nintendo Switch port developed by Panic Button was released on November 10, 2017,[94][95] without SnapMap because of storage constraints on the game cartridge.

[98][99][100] Bethesda partnered with Arrow Schmidt Peterson Motorsports for a special promotion in which Mikhail Aleshin drove a Doom-styled car at the Indianapolis 500 racing competition.

[133][134] Nathan Lawrence of IGN and Adam Smith of Rock, Paper, Shotgun also criticized the weapon loadouts and unfavorably compared the open beta to other shooters such as Halo, Quake 3, Unreal Tournament, and Call of Duty.

[156] Peter Brown of GameSpot praised single-player because he thought that the reboot captured the spirits of the older games, while refining them with modern elements.

[167] Polygon's Arthur Gies remarked positively upon the exploration for collectables and secrets, and their relevance to the new upgrade feature, but he was critical of instances where the game would lock away sections of a level without warning.

[152] Zack Furniss of Destructoid, originally skeptical about the "Glory Kill" mechanic, ultimately considered it to fit well in the flow of gameplay.

[143] Giant Bomb's Brad Shoemaker felt that the mechanic was "an essential part of the give-and-take of Doom's super fast combat".

[32][151][171] Matt Bertz of Game Informer commented upon the accessibility but criticized the lack of diverse settings and possible limitations when compared to a traditional community-based mod.

IGN's Joab Gilory described Doom as "a tale of two very different shooters", stating that multiplayer did not live up to the standard set by the single-player components and would not satisfy players.

Post-release analysis by id and the Doom playerbase showed a reliance on the Super Shotgun to the exclusion of all other weapons by a large segment of the game's players.