One of the biggest surprises in 2016 was just how good DOOM was. Indeed, there was actually a plethora of reasons to be hesitant about the game's launch. However, as we now know, those reasons of worry were ultimately futile, as the game came out and cemented itself as one of the best shooters of the year. But before DOOM, id Software was actually working on DOOM 4, which as you may know, eventually got canned by publisher Bethesda in the middle of development. And according to Bethesda's Vice President in Marketing and Public Relation, Pete Hines, the decision was the right one, as the game simply wasn't shaping up.

When speaking to Xbox: The Official Magazine -- published by GamesRadar+ -- Pete Hines said the following in regard to the cancellation:

"With Doom it was a tipping point that we reached where we looked at it and said, 'This game is not hitting the marks it needs to hit.' And it wasn’t just Bethesda, it was id coming to us and saying, “It’s not that it’s not a good game or an okay game, but it’s just not Doom. It’s veered from the things that we think Doom should be about.” And again, it’s not like we were happy about it! We essentially cancelled a game. That’s what we did. We cancelled a thing that people had spent a long time working on and we’d spent a lot of money to get to that point and then we cancelled it and basically started over. Which is never easy to do. But it was because we believed in and agreed with the notion of: if this is going to be a success, if it’s going to be worth all this time and effort, then it has to be the right thing, executed the right way."

Personally, I don't how good Doom 4 was going to be (obviously), but what I do know is id Software knocked it out of the park with its second attempt. "DOOM is back," is never something I thought I would be saying in 2016. But I did -- throughout almost the entire campaign. But not during the multiplayer. No, definitely not during the multiplayer.

In other related news, DOOM won the category of "Best Shooter" and "Biggest Shocker" for DualShocker's Game of the Year Awards for 2016. You can read the full list of winners here.