Doom Eternal (2020)

I forgot how smooth and high-performing games by id are. The control in DE is sharp, the graphics eye-popping and the environments grand at times.

While I had a couple of technical mishaps where certain keys wouldn't register until I reloaded a checkpoint, overall the experience has been visceral and adrenaline-filled.

The varied weapons, upgrades and mods make this re-playable for people who are really into shooters, but I've had my fill for the next couple of years, at least. The story is wonky and ridiculous, but it generally stays out of the way. A very well-done game, even if I don't indulge in the multiplayer aspect

Few games feature cover art that exemplifies their gameplay quite so aptly as Doom Eternal's does. While playing through the campaign, I often felt as though I were wading through a chaotic storm of demons scrambling to rip me limb from limb. They are utterly relentless and the constant management of health, armor, and ammo lends most encounters a frenzied feel that I often caught myself wanting more of as I went about my day. Even having just finished up the campaign, I'm not yet sure I've had enough of it.

As someone who used to play a lot of FPS games but has since moved away from them for the most part and is now fairly rusty, Eternal's standard difficulty (Hurt Me Plenty) offered a good amount of challenge and only rarely felt frustrating. The game also runs buttery smooth on my PC even at high settings which is more a testament to its optimization than the power of my build. It looks fantastic all throughout, featuring a very cool "cybernetic demonic" art style which feels like a nice evolution of what I saw back when I played Doom (2016).

The developers clearly understood that people are here for the adrenaline that the combat brings and not too much else. It's evident from the relatively quick pacing of the cutscenes and the ever present option to skip them should you wish to. I never skip cutscenes on a first playthrough of a game, but even still I did have to hold myself back from pressing that button on a few occasions not because the story was bad but because I was itching to get back to the action.

The above is not to imply that those devs didn't push beyond the minimum expectations though-- far from it. Eternal features a surprising quantity of lore for its demons and the world they come from accessible through collectibles you pick up in each level. There are also cute little figurines to discover which unlock 3D models to look at in your base alongside music tracks from past games and a slew of awesome skins for the Slayer and his gun arsenal. I fully intend to go back through and collect all the stuff I missed because of how much fun it is to do so. The game provides more than ample upgrades to make sure you can find these secrets, which is appreciated.

If I had to leverage a major criticism against the game, it'd be the platforming segments. It's admirable of the team to want to add in some stuff that isn't "go here, shoot demons" to keep things fresh, but first person platforming just really isn't great. These weren't terrible but only served to highlight that while the Slayer is fast and mobile, this isn't a platforming game. Even with the green lights often guiding the way forward, platforming bits often left me unsure of where I was expected to go or how to get there. Missing jumps never felt like a skill issue so much as a lack of understanding of exactly what the game expected of me. This hurt the pacing of some missions, unfortunately.

I wasn't too hyped for the next game before, but I sure as hell am now. This was a blast to play and I hope I can look forward to more of the utter chaos that I got here when it comes out.

liked: the game is very dynamic, you're in constant movement and it did NOT make me dizzy/nauseated, the various weapons are all fun to use and everything about the game, from the menus, to leveling up abilities, to killing enemies has a punch that gets me very excited. fun gory animations.

disliked: i feel like the soundtrack couldve been a little more intense :/

bottom line: good stress relief. i did not finish because i am bad at the platforming aspect of this game n then got distracted by diablo or something.

This is the most important shooter to be released since Halo back in 2001. It's the culmination of everything learned from developing and play testing shooters since the original release of Doom in 1993. It's fast paced. Challenging. Cathartic. Engaging. Robust. Fair. FUN! O and gory. So so gory.

The only other game/s I have played that have challenged me to this level while being equally enjoyable and fair would be any entry in the Soulsborne franchise (excluding Dark Souls 2). This game respects you and clearly a ton of heart went into this entry of a beloved franchise. As cynical and pessimistic as I can be around AAA games, I'm always pleasantly surprised when proven wrong. Case in point with Doom Eternal.

What makes this game work so well? It's a hard thing to quantify despite the game play being simple on a high level. You shoot the Demons until they explode. That's it. Sometimes you need to find a key or pull a switch, but that feels more like flavor and a throw back to old school Doom. The devs aptly designed each level to create a constant sense of forward momentum. There is some backtracking, but it's kept light and is usually optional if you're a completionist wanting to find every secret.

What elevates this level design philosophy to a next level is that it permeates through game play, meaning that even combat has a constant forward momentum to it. The game is designed to have you always moving and shooting. If you stop, you die. They give you abilities and environmental means to keep your momentum ever moving. You have a Scorpion chain on your super shotgun that allows you to latch onto an enemy and fly at them, only to explode them into a dozen pieces with a single shot. You have a dash, double jump, monkey bars to gain vertical, power ups, abilities to slow down time. Everything is designed to make you a force of orgiastic violence.

While the game play is simple on a high level, the devs give you so many options to express your destructive desires that it never becomes stale. They even add tactical elements to the game play, such as using your flamethrower for armor, chainsaw for ammo, glory kills for health, frag grenade for AOE damage or freezing grenade for crowd control. This creates a constant engagement from a string of endless micro decisions.

The DLC part one takes the challenge of the game play loop to an oppressive level. It will push you even further to the limits. My issue here is the level design feels more inconsistent and sometimes unfair compared to the base game. It never irked me enough to quit, but worth mentioning that sometimes it felt more masochistic than fair. DLC part two ended up being a let down for me with how much easier it was in comparison to the base game and part 1 of the DLC. Still, I don't regret playing either.

My only real criticism of the game is that every gun and firing mode doesn''t feel useful. For example, the remote detonating rocket launcher was just useless. The DLCs addressed this issue a bit, but with mixed results. There are enemies that are weak to the plasma rifle and regular shotgun. These were good ideas, though the execution did leave more to be desired. In my opinion, having more Demon variants with explicit weaknesses to different guns would have improved the game play by forcing you to react more and play tactically. As it stood the super shotgun and ballista were just so broken as a combo, there was little reason to use any other weapon (unless the aforementioned weapons were out of ammo).

If you've finished this review and still haven't played Doom Eternal, do yourself and favor and play the damn game.

I've never thought about myself as a good FPS player, not even a decent one. In fact, I bought this game thinking that the lowest difficulties could be indulgent enough for someone with my lack of talent and reflexes. But then something just starts growing inside, probably the combination of the music and the frantic pace in which everything's happening and at some point it happens. the muscles start to know what to do by themselves, fingers being young again and sharper than they have felt in years, the patterns start to appear and the aim goes smooth and naturally (or as smooth as possible when you're me) to the weak points, even changing weapons when required! It all becomes one: rip and tear until it's done.

It's probably this, a sensory overload, what makes this game so good. I wasn't able to play it for long periods but short bursts of 30-45' were enough to keep me motivated. The game is challenging so it's better to go to bed with a feeling of accomplishment: a new checkpoint, finally defeating the last gargoyle from that encounter and so on.

I have to say that playing it with a controller seems natural, controls are sharp and the weapon wheel works nicely after you get accustomed to. At no point I would have preferred to be playing with a mouse and keyboard instead of the pro controller but I'm not a FPS enthusiast so my opinion might be pretty wrong here haha.

Also, props to the developer team. I have to admit that I don't care about graphics most of the time but the game looks great and there's barely any frame drop in it.

A summary? I usually don't play the same game twice but I've just restarted it increasing the difficulty a bit. We'll see if the first run trained me to be up to the challenge.

Doom Eternal had me nearly breaking my controller but out of excitement and sheer godlike rage. There is never a dull moment and you have to constantly be on the move to survive.

Brilliant sequel to an already fantastic game - please don't play it for the plot. It's pure non-stop action.

The game forces you to come back from the dead several times to feel stronger than before and overcome your foes.

Normal difficulty itself is hard so be warned, it's not an easy ride but it'll never NOT be fun.

After the amazingly awesome Doom 2016, it actually really bums me out that this game did not click with me. It's bad enough that I bailed after about 5 hours (an easier decision to make when playing on Game Pass and not a purchased copy of the game). id is really on a bad roll with me lately -- first, Wolfenstein: Youngblood, and now this.

They just made too many changes to the Doom 2016 formula, and all of them were bad.

No longer can you have fun, blasting everything with your overpowered super shotgun. Doom Eternal now wants you to use only the "correct" prescribed guns on specific enemies. And you now need to aim for weak spots (which is harder than it should be on a gamepad) to effectively kill anything but the easiest grunts.

The added climbing, swinging, and platforming is decidedly not fun, and reaches into the bad place where Celeste lives for me. What makes the platforming particularly irritating is how it frequently wants you to blindly jump off a ledge, and hope you can figure out what you're supposed to do as you fall past the burning obstacles.

The upgrade system with its 5 different upgrade currencies is convoluted and not engaging.

The UI also seems particularly cluttered and unreadable, especially on a TV 15 feet away.

You occasionally see shades of the superior 2016 Doom try to peek its head into the game, but it's always quickly smothered under the new layers of garbage they've thrown into the mix.

I absolutely cannot stand FPS games. I do not know what it is about them but they are not my thing. Maybe it is because of the countless hours of CSGO and COD I have played in my life. I probably burnt myself out on FPS games. However, the Doom games are a major exception. Doom 2016 was a great game and Doom Eternal improved on every aspect of the first. The different levels were much more diverse and colofurl than the first. It was nice not just being in a facility for almost the whole game. The platforming was massively improved from the first. I truly enjoyed platforming in first person for the first time ever. My biggest compaint from the first game was how it was very hard to determine where to go. This game completely fixed that. Never once was I lost even when going to explore different parts of the map. The last two levels of the game are incredible. After finishing the game, I went back immediatley and played those two levels again. This game is an absolute masterpiece and should without a doubt be in the running for 202o game of the year.

I almost forgot... the music fucking slaps.

I didn't think I was going to like Doom Eternal as much as 2016's, but I ended up loving it just as much, if not more! Simply put: This is just much MORE of what you got out of the first Doom, but it's bigger, larger, prettier and meatier.

Controls are tighter than ever, precision and agility is still essential, every single weapon feels brutal and tasty, level design is clever, enemy variety is still as good as in the first game, graphics are amazing, the pacing is brilliant and the soundtrack packs an even bigger punch than before. Everything just works amazingly well! Doom Eternal's gameplay is so well done, that makes its flaws feel very small. Hell, even the control scheme makes every mechanic seamless to use. And there are A LOT of mechanics to learn, use and master.

Everything feels much more epic and I think that this happened not only due to the precise and frantic gameplay, but also because of its new charm and aesthetic. Cutscenes are way more cinematic, Doomguy's portrayal is better, each level feels different, with beautiful/grotesque environments throughout the entire campaign, glory kills are satisfying to pull and the sense of scale in each of the 13 missions is incredible. Even the story is better. It's still forgettable and lacks character, but it's a bit more interesting than before, certainly weightier and perfectly fits with the context of... Well, Doomguy's endless demon killing spree!

Doom Eternal's flaws are almost the same as its predecessor. Since it got bigger and tried different things, some issues were a bit hard to ignore, despite the stunning time I had with it.

• Platforming moments felt clumsy and a bit out of place - Doom's gameplay is so polished, that when something goes wrong, it's very easy to notice. The platforming sections, for example, felt janky and kinda off.
• Some levels were VERY long - I like the larger nature of this game, but I prefer Doom 2016's more streamlined missions a lot more. They aren't SUBSTANTIALLY bigger, but they can get a little bit tiring.
• Collectibles/Secrets overdose - One of the things that I did not care for in Doom 2016 were its collectibles and secrets. Here, the feeling of completing a hidden challenge or finding a secret is nice, but they focused TOO MUCH on it. Everything is optional, but when your entire fortress is basically a collectible sanctuary, it's hard to ignore. I much rather focus on demon slaying.
• The Marauder - Fuck this guy. He is broken. ESPECIALLY on the hardest difficulties. Just nerf him or take him out, because he can EASILY disjunction your experience.

I HIGLY RECOMMEND Doom Eternal! Whether you played the first one or not, this game is fantastic!

Play it now, unless you have a problem with FPS games, blood or demons.

This definitely feels much harder than the original. This game is constantly overwhelming you with enemies, but it's satisfying when you come out the other end victorious. There were several times where I felt the game was throwing too much at me, and somehow I still made it through. It's a great feeling. The drawback to this is that I had no interest in doing challenge rooms. I attempted one early on in the game which suggested that I try doing it after I get more weapons to make it easier. I never went back to it because I didn't need any more challenge than what the main game was already throwing at me. Besides, why would you create a challenge room in the early game that would require weapons from the later game?

Between the action, there are really good platforming sections. I prefer this to having to search for keys in DOOM 2016. That killed the momentum of the game for me. The platforming here is a much more fun alternative that keeps you moving, and moving in this game feels good.

There are guns that you gain throughout the game. Most of them serve a function that can help take down specific enemy types which will lead to switching between multiple weapons during fights. I always liked this approach to shooters. It mixes in some tactics along with skilled aiming forcing you to learn your enemies. The game provides tips on what weapons to use for the heavier enemies, but there's still room to figure out your own way of doing things. In most shooters, you can stick to one guy the whole time as long as you have the ammo for it. Most of the weapons in Doom Eternal have attachments you can purchase and upgrade, and those can even serve a function for taking down specific enemy types.

The music still great.

iD Software should probably go down as one of the best set of devs in history, because they have made a work so excellently crafted in its design and innovative in use of arena fps mechanics that it's easily the best game that has come out of this year so far as well as one of the best of all time. It manages to take every single lesson that needed to be learned from Doom 2016's failings and applied a perfect fix from a top-down level.

I've never played a singular fps that kept my adrenaline pumping at full blast for most of the way through, with encounter design so phenomenally set teeming with particular enemies that make true on its core gameplay loops. Doom Eternal juggles loops of resource management, enemy prioritization, and utilization of movement all intertwined to each individual enemy. From the Arachnotron, probably the best enemy of the lot that forces you to utilize its weak points while it dodges your fire and pressures you down, to the Cyber Mancubi, each enemy makes use of your weapon variety and asks for the best play you can muster especially on Nightmare difficulty (which I played on the whole way through). The waves are also set perfectly to where as you take heavy enemies down there's new challenges to surprise you, with especially the slayer gates and later levels showing the best of this wave design.

The weapon balance and depth is also excellent, with two alt fire mods you can swap with that each bring their own costs and benefits, as well as the resource grind constantly asking you to use your entire loadout. Good play isn't just tuned to dodging enemy fire and spacing yourself correctly, but also utilizing every single weapon to their fullest extent while keeping track of loot pinatas to keep yourself in the midst of carnage. You'll know when you're in the zone when you're hook jumping into the air and constantly keeping yourself up above them dashing and jumping as you pelt rocket damage down upon your foes. If you have a single thing not on cooldown you're not using everything that you have.

That's probably the most ridiculous component that iD managed to do, the huge complexity that the game slowly eases you in before letting you become a walking one man army of rip and tear. The pacing of unlocks is fine tuned to where you're always getting something new from level to level to play around with, with excellent tutorializing that makes sure you have the knowledge you need to play efficiently and work on mastering your kit.

Music and aesthetics are also fantastic, with every single level looking amazing compared to Doom 2016's mostly same-y color palette. This is probably Mick Gordon's best work too banging in the background, especially with its remixes of 2016's great hits and the final level keeping that blood pumping. Probably going to be listening to it long after I'm done replaying the game.

There are of course, some miscellaneous and weak components for a game so ambitious in its design and extremely accessible. The platforming serves as nice downtime to let your blood cool down, although some of it especially the swimming portions being kind of boring if not impeding on the nonstop joyride. Ideally I'd probably layer the mostly-and-intentionally-nonsensical codex-loaded story to be cutscenes between combat to give you downtime if you need it and allow them to be completely skippable, with some walking if out of dev time. Not that I don't appreciate some of the environments and sense of scale that you walk through, but one specific level i.e. Sentinel Prime seems almost like a weird pacebreaker that could've used way more over time development.

There's also some overtuning and balance issues in some places. The Marauder, while I can find him somewhat inoffensive, makes you play a different game. When you've killed all the rest of the heavies and he's the last one left, you play Sekiro and just time your shit to kill him. He's not an interesting enemy and I'd prefer better use of Archviles to force you into a "deal with this enemy while you fight the others" instead. Also some of the weak point exploits are too powerful, with Cacodemons especially taking one sticky or rocket to make them nothing. The bosses also ALL SUCK, and either need complete reworks or wayyyy more dev time to make them interesting and fun to fight. I give a pass to the Icon of Sin for being an amazing spectacle but even his fight is twice as long as it needed to be, serving as a bfg dump that's one phase too long.

Other combat issues: The BFG, Unmakyr, and Crucible are underdeveloped, although at least they're easily ignored. I can kinda get it with the BFG and Unmakyr, one's pretty much a get out of jail free card that requires no skill to use other than uhh don't hit a wall loser, and the other is a close range meltbox. I just wish the ammo was either one per level at MOST or in a different mode entirely (like a survival mode! they'd work like shmup bombs), because while they don't exactly make encounters entire jokes they do undercut the design by a significant margin. The crucible especially is probably the biggest disappointment. You have a whole level building up this sword that you craft over time, and all it does is IK for 3 pips, a get-this-heavy-off-me weapon with only one move. It could've been a way more fleshed out weapon with more utility and less breaking the game.

At the end of the day though I can't deny that this is not only the best fps game I've played but maybe even my all time favorite action game. These issues are something I can tolerate on my own, and the game gives free reign to fine tune a lot of the elements yourself. It's ridiculously accessible. I look forward to the dlc, and I think the rest of this year nay the decade has a lot to live up to after this. (10/10)

Doom Eternal is a fantastic game that runs constant, challenging encounters at break-neck speeds. It is, unfortunately, not what I'm looking for in a FPS experience.

Doom Eternal is harder than Doom 2016. There are more mechanics, and those mechanics are crucial to success. You have three "resources" in the game: Armor, health, and ammo. Armor you gain from using the Flame Belcher item, health you gain from glory kills, and ammo you gain from chainsaw kills. If you don't get used to using these as often as you can, you're going to have a difficult experience.

It took me four levels to get the flow, the rhythm of the combat. Once I did the game became more enjoyable. However, the levels are an absolute slog. Levels are very long, and combat encounters, especially near the end of the game, are doubly so. Wave after wave of enemy will spawn in and after your 3rd wave you might begin to get bored. I did.

Certain enemies (Whiplash, sometimes Carcass, those goddamned Marauders) I found too aggravating to have fun against. You might say "git gud." I can't argue with that, only to say "I just don't have that kind of dedication in me right now." The boss fights aren't awful. I have a whole spiel about boss fights, and why they usually suck and are better off not existing, which I'm not going to go into now.

A quick note on jumping puzzles. They are OK. Some of them are frustrating. Some of them are fun. They balance out into be an OK experience overall. The penalties for dropping to your death are, thankfully, minimal. They are there. They won't hinder you much. Sometimes they can be a pain.

I very much appreciate that Doom Eternal doesn't drown you in story. Most of it is in collectibles that you can read, and are not necessary to do so. The really important stuff is told through short cutscenes, or in-game dialogue. They keep the pace frantic, and those cutscenes are often well-earned breaks from the combat.

I had my most fun with Doom Eternal putting on cheat codes and redoing levels with infinite ammo BFGs just to find collectibles. That says all you need to know about what I'm looking for in a game right now. It's not frenetic energy, it's exploration and experimentation, I suppose.

Look, Doom Eternal is a hell of a game. It's beautifully crafted and I genuinely do commend them for taking the gameplay in a different direction with the sort of combat puzzles crafted with the new equipment. There's a lot of people who think this is a 5-star game and I don't disagree with their feelings. But if I have to say, on a scale of 1-5, how much I enjoyed Doom Eternal, it is for sure a 3/5. Sometimes a 2/5, sometimes a 4/5, but most often a 3/5. It as good, bordering on OK, bordering on great.

"DOOM (2016)" was my Game of the Year back in 2016, it took a classic franchise and brought it into a modern era. It maintained the aggressive playstyle of the original 1993 game while also adding Glory Kills and a Djent/Industrial soundtrack. The main issue with that game was that it got a little bit repetitive and the multiplayer/snap maps were a bit of an after thought.

"DOOM Eternal" takes what I love about "DOOM (2016)" and improves upon it in everyway. Level design introduces more verticality thanks to the dashing/climbing segments in each level. Combat is as claustrophobic as ever, but with a bit of strategy added so that the player does not just rely on the Super Shotgun for the entire game. The game at the beginning does a great job at teaching the player not to rely on a single weapon by not having a lot of ammo capacity so that they learn to constantly rely on the other weapons as well as when to use the chainsaw on the Fodder demons for a clip restock.

The same philosophy is applied for when you need health or armor: Glory kills allow the players the opportunity to stock up on health while the new Flame Belch allows you to burn the demons which then turn into a fiery pinata that drops armor. Knowing when to use the flame belch, glory kill, and chainsaw are essential as they help the player stay alive while fighting the horde of hell. The collectables are abundant and their are a ton of easter eggs/fan service to previous id Software games.

The default controls are a bit weird on PC, but after remapping and adapting, you will killing demons fluently like water coming out of a facet. After playing the game on Ultra Violence, I feel like I could do a Nightmare playthrough since the controls have become implanted into my finger tips. The controller isn't bad either allowing for custom re-mapping (at least for the PC version), but like with "DOOM (2016)," I recommend playing this game with a keyboard.

This review is mainly for the campaign as I never had an interest in Battlemode. With better level designs, fluent combat, bad ass music from Mick Gordon, tight controls, and unlockables worth going out of your way to get, this game gets an ultimate recommendation from me. It is easily one of my favorite FPS games.