Why I love... Doom's Glory Kills

It’s no guts, no glory – and no glory kills, no guts – in Doom’s brilliant reinvention of the melee kill.

- Alex Dale

Boot up your favorite first-person shooter and cycle through your arsenal. What’s the most powerful weapon you see? The AK-47? Nah. Rocket launcher? Close, but no frag. Pistol? Now you’re not even trying. Every FPS is balanced differently of course, but the odds are good that the most powerful tool at your disposal is actually mapped to the melee button.

Think about it. In, say, Call of Duty, while an enemy soldier can withstand a round or two of AK fire without suffering so much as a graze, one thwack with the butt of your rifle and he’s anybody’s. It’s an almost Herculean feat of logic-defiance, but one that’s true in almost every FPS series you care to mention.

And there’s a good reason for FPS designers making it pay to bring a knife to a gun fight. It’s the golden rule around which the entire flow of combat revolves: if close-quarters combat is deadly, players learn to keep a respectful distance from the enemy, engaging them from afar and taking every precaution to ensure they don’t get boxed in, or leave their blindside exposed for a sneaky melee kill.

But there’s an upside to this caution: the adrenaline rush that comes with making a beeline toward an unawares opponent, and keeping your fingers, toes and you-know-whats crossed that they don’t turn around before you can get within stabbing distance. The suddenness gives everything meaning. At once chastening and exhilarating, you can see why one-hit melee kills are so widely adopted by developers.

Death for glory