Doom Eternal (2020)

Doom Eternal brings in some new gameplay ideas. You don't get much ammo, so you end up using the chainsaw a lot to get more. When you kill enemies with it, they drop different types of ammo in a colorful way. You also need to do special moves on enemies to heal and get armor. While doing these moves, you can't be hurt, which makes you feel invincible for a bit.

The game also gives you "extra lives," but you don't get to choose when to use them. This can be annoying because you might not want to use them when the game decides.

As you play more, you get into the game and collect all the secrets, even building a super powerful weapon called the Unmaykr. The bosses, like Khan Maykr, are unique but follow a specific pattern to beat.

One annoying enemy is the Marauder because it has a move that makes it hard to hit.

The final boss, the Icon of Sin, is exciting but can be confusing because the screen flashes a lot.

You can upgrade your weapons, health, armor, and ammo capacity in the game. There are also special abilities you can unlock and armor upgrades that help you find items.

The game throws a lot at you, like special keys and challenges, which can feel overwhelming.

The story starts with a strange shift from technology to the occult, but some parts are fun and funny. One episode, where Doomguy blows up Mars and catapults himself through the hole, is a blast.

The game looks great and is a rare single-player shooter these days. However, it tries to get more money from you with online features and DLCs that lock hints behind a paywall. You might need to block these online features in your firewall to enjoy the game fully.

Ever since I gave DOOM 2016 a try, I’ve become a fan of the DOOM franchise, even going back to play the original release. I found DOOM Eternal on sale and decided to see how the sequel to 2016 plays.

I was a little concerned when first starting up Eternal, because it throws you to a main menu that has a lot of the modern AAA game trappings; Season charts, DLC ads, customizable gamer tags. It felt more commercial than I remember 2016 being. There’s a much more arcadey feel to Eternal vs 2016.

Eternal has a lot of the same gameplay philosophy as DOOM 2016. You have to always be moving and always be shooting. They do up the challenge for this sequel. Some game series you can jump in where ever, but not here. DOOM 2016 feels like the tutorial to Eternal. Your ammo capacity is seriously sparse compared to 2016, which encourages you to either switch weapons or use your chainsaw to regain ammo. There’s a bigger emphasis on support weapons here. Your chainsaw is used to cut ammo of demons and your flamethrower is used to refill your armor. As someone who usually sticks to just blasting away with the primary guns, I had to consciously remember to also use my flamethrower during battles.

And where in 2016, I saved my chainsaw for “get outta jail free” moments, here in Eternal I was constantly using it to cut up zombies & imps for ammo. You always have one charge for your chainsaw which allows it to cut lower level demons, but the bigger baddies require 3 charges. I often found myself with 2 charges on my chainsaw and I hated having to waste it on a low tier demon when I was hoping to find a third charge. I think they should’ve stacked the demon tier list more; I feel like Revenants & Prowlers would be perfect demons to require only 2 charges on the chainsaw to cut up.

A lot of the 2016 weapons return with some newer mechanics. The plasma rifle got a glow up from 2016 and I found it was one of my workhorse weapons. It’s overheat blast along with the shotgun with the sticky bomb attachment got me through most levels. A lot of the other weapons I used very conditionally. The rocket launcher was for Doom Hunters’ rocket sled, the chaingun was for the charging hulk demons, and the super shotgun was for Pinkies and Marauders. I feel like they wanted you to use the super shotgun as a main weapon, it comes with a grapple hook for traversal even, but when you can only carry 20 shells the Super Shotgun burns through ammo in about 5 minutes. The BFG was my last resort weapon, but it didn’t one hit kill every demon on screen like I expected it to.

Eternal introduces a lot of new demons that need killing along with a few that come over from 2016. The Cyber Demon returns but looks more like his original DOOM counterpart than the 2016 version. The bigger demons have weakpoints now that you can target to remove their deadlier attacks and deal extra damage. Boss demons show up as regular demons in the last few levels. In DOOM 2016, even towards the end, it felt like Doomguy was still the danger, with Eternal, I felt like the demons had Doomguy on the back foot most the time. The Pinkies gave me trouble, trying to jump over them to hit their exposed backs proved tricky, the Carcass demons were just annoying with the shields they constantly throw up. The two demons I hated the most were Archvilles and Marauders. For me, Archvilles have too much health for what they are. Their Summoner version in 2016 is what I saved chainsaw fuel for, but I can’t do that here. Between the Archville’s high health, fire shield, and the high level demons it spawns in, being able to do any worthwhile damage to him before I was chased off by the other demons was nigh impossible. He was a prime target for the BFG or later the Crucible Blade.

Everyone knows about the Marauders’ reputation. They only have a short window of vulnerability and have a wide selection of heavy hitting attacks. The worst for me was the stupid ghost dogs they summon. That dog will relentlessly chase you and distract you with its bites. I had trouble hitting them because they are small compared to most demons and quick. If they removed the Marauder’s ghost dog and made him more of a glass cannon, I think the “limited window of attack time” could’ve worked. Between the strategy in hitting demon weakpoints and managing your resources, there’s a noticeable attempt to make DOOM firefights more tactical. I think they went overboard though, possibly in fear of DOOM Eternal being called “Just more DOOM 2016”. It took that dumb fun of just blasting demons down a notch.

On top of combat, they’ve also expanded the exploration gameplay with a lot of platforming. It’s a bit weird to imagine Doomguy scurrying around rock walls and going through what is basically a Crash Bandicoot or Mario level. There’re even the swinging fire chains that are straight out of Bower’s Castle. They aren’t the worse and offer a nice break between the intense combat encounters. Collectibles return in the shape of cheat chode disks, Funko Pops of the demons, and soundtrack records. You can unlock custom marine armors at your hub, the Fortress of Doom. Yeah, apparently Doomguy now has some type of JLA Watchtower type space base he uses to watch over Earth from.

DOOM has always played into being a power fantasy, but I think Eternal’s story leans too hard into that. For me, the power fantasy worked best when Doomguy’s work was treated like a blue-collar job. Just a guy who’s an expert in his field with a job to do. With Doom Eternal, everyone talks about Doomguy as the mythical chosen one that men want to be and women want to be with. It’s the catch 22 of power fantasies, the more you lean into it the more it comes off a bit tryhard.

The story of Doom 2016 worked due to the brilliance in it’s simplicity. You march through a base to stop a Hell outbreak. In Eternal, you are bouncing all over the galaxy and even travel to “Heaven”. There’s all this backstory that the secondary characters have to do the heavy lifting in explaining since Doomguy is silent. Bouncing to different planets isn’t terrible, it keeps environments fresh, but the story has gotten a lot more space opera since 2016. Samuel Hayden returns and seems to know more than he lets on, VEGA has some random line at the end where he declares himself “the Father”.

There’s also a more comedic tone. Cacaodemons burping after swallowing a grenade is funny, but the UAC holograms that in 2016 gave out believable company notices that had a sinister tinge, now are comedically evil. Also there’s this weird political correctness joke where they don’t call them “demons” but the “mortally challenged”. Even the resistance radio refers to them as such? DOOM demons strike me as more of a Mongol horde that just conquer through force not through subterfuge & diplomacy.

The worlds and demons all look great. Many returning demons got a facelift, like the Cyber Mancubus, and there's a neat feature where as you shoot them, the demons start to fall apart. You can tell the distinct styles of the Hell worlds, Earth, and the Sentinel worlds, though I wish the Earth levels had some design to key you into where you were in the world, like the Statue of Liberty or Big Ben. There’s lots of cool background scenes with giant demons walking around. You crawl across the corpse of a giant demon at least twice and there’s the wreckage of an old mech suit. The music is a lot more bumping this time. There’s still plenty of techno tracks that would fit into the original DOOM soundtrack, but there’s a heavier metal influence in the soundtrack. Killing demons and sick guitar rifts just go together.

All in all, DOOM Eternal feels like it’s trying too hard to feel like more than just an expansion to 2016. There’s a lot of new features that overcomplicate the simple act of demon killing & some of the late game encounters feel almost unfair. I can respect their want to innovate on the formula, but I think they got carried away. Still I enjoyed most of my time with Eternal, mostly in the mid game area, after I got all the weapons, but before I had to routinely deal with Marauders.

I put this off for what feels like forever because both of what i've heard of from teh game and videos watching it being played. It's just one of those games you kinda have difficulty wrapping your head around. But, having played the main game (i'm 75% through the first DLC) I have to say that this is one of the best FPS games i've played in quite some time, maybe since Half-Life 2. It truly does something different and it does it well. There are a lot of things about the game that drove me nuts and annoyed me... the way you have so many strange jumping puzzles or timed puzzles, or the way the beginning of the game requires you to unlock upgrades and 'level up' struck me as weird, but at the end of the day, it all really does come together and once you FINALLY figure out how Doom Eternal works, its extremely addictive and gratifying.

TL;DR if you like the FPS genre this is a must play. I say that as someone who came in with a bad attitude and almost put it down.

I appreciated this game for what it was. I enjoyed dipping my toe into a more modern version of Doom.

I really liked the balance of pressing forward with the glory kills to get health and the chainsaw kills to get ammo. The entire thing, despite being gory and bloody as all hell (see what I did there), was a nice dance between the things you needed to do.

I played for several hours and started to fall off as things started to get too complex and I wasn't looking forward to playing more (which is often why I end a game). I want to play a game that I want to play, not one I feel like I need to finish to say I finished it.

Overall, it was good, but just not great enough too hook my interest.

~David.

Incredible Medium post by Mick Gordon regarding all the circumstances surrounding the Doom Eternal soundtrack.

Marty Stratton, @idSoftware Studio Director, lied about Eternal's OST events in a Reddit post that used disinformation to blame me entirely for its failure

Later, he offered me a six-figure sum to never speak about it

The truth is more important.https://t.co/zSNo2QG1mI

— Mick Gordon (@Mick_Gordon) November 9, 2022

All I can say is thank god I've now finished Doom Eternal. Even on easy difficulty I found it so stressful. DOOM (2016) was fun and provided fast-paced action alongside an amazing soundtrack. Doom Eternal adds loads more mechanics as well as really patchy platforming, they were just a massive pain.

I know this is me just getting old and grumpy but I could tell this game was targeted at a modern day audience with shiny neon colours and the ability to buy skins etc. That just made me roll my eyes and reminded me this is not the Doom I grew up with and loved. There are some cool nods to the original game like the super shotgun, returning enemies and the original marine suit.

Later in the game there were a few puzzle sections which I quite enjoyed as it broke away from the typical, here is a room, here are loads of demons, fight demons, next room….rinse and repeat. There is plentiful supply of secret rooms to find and I found some of them fun to look for but ultimately I gave up quite quickly towards the end and just ploughed through.Even the sections where you could initiate a timed challenge I thought “na, cannot be arsed with that”. My gaming style is about having fun and enjoying the journey, most of the time I cannot be bothered with challenging myself. As you may have already guessed I’m not a completionist earlier, nor am I a trophy hunter and I am glad I am not.

As many people have said they prefer the 2016 Doom over this and I agree. Doom 2016 added cool features and made it fun to dart around, shooting and getting glory kills but Doom Eternal just adds too many mechanics to the game to keep track of it all.

Playing Doom Eternal I could only do a mission at a time as I found it so mentally draining and stressful. I’m feeling drained thinking about it and tired writing this review

Note: This includes the DLC entries for The Ancient Gods Parts 1 and 2.

Doom Eternal seems like a rapid fire mess of blood and guts but has an incredibly sharp core, with a variety of weapons and systems that come together in a fast and challenging brawl.

After the events on Mars from the previous game, Hell has come to Earth - and Doomguy is ready to rumble. Featuring a much more ambitious plot that pits the Slayer against the priests of hell, the creators of heaven, and the Dark Lord himself, the player gets a chance to tear across the cosmos, through dimensions, and at least two instances of being shot out of a cannon. To those not a fan of storytelling, one can just ignore the plot and go to town on demons but it allows some gorgeous vistas of blood, fire, and some more traditionally beautiful places to add visual variety to the game.

The player gains access to a handful of guns throughout the game with modifications to choose for each one, as well as a few rechargeable weapons for gaining resources. The player can run out of armor, ammo, and health rather quickly, making the mastery of each of these weapons essential. Flame a bunch of enemies (and later on grapple to them with a flaming shotgun hook), chainsaw for ammo (and aim for special weak points for some more goodies) and get delicious finisher kills to stay alive. Lock on rockets, grenade shots in mouths, precision sniping, plasma overload bursts - there's a lot of explosive tools that have their place in combat, which will involve a lot of moving around and a lot of desperate tactics to stay alive.

Knowing the demons that Doomguy will fight, desperate is the name of the game. Archdemons and Marauders with long range weaponry, aggressive Hell Knights and Dread Knights, towering Tyrants and Barons of Hell, and the toughest enemy in Doom proper, the Marauder. DLC later drops possessing Ghosts, Armored Barons, and other ghastly monsters in so many different combinations that you'll either be overflowing with righteous rage or nearly exhausted from all the carnage. Eternal also has plenty of secret collectibles/upgrades that are must haves for progression, but thankfully an early upgrade makes it very easy to track these down and find them.

As for the icing on the cake, the music is metal deliciousness, thumping beats and plenty of motivation to throw oneself at danger repeatedly. Loading checkpoints are fairly rapid (even on console) and performance is very optimized to make fights smooth and buttery.

Doom Eternal makes some bold and innovative gameplay decisions for doom (more movement, more story, more challenge) that might be off putting for people too comfortable with older Doom games but for those willing to learn and ready to submit to bloodshed, this game has teeth.

Today marks the 2nd year anniversary of one of my most beloved games of all time, DOOM Eternal. A game so good I got 3 copies. A game that changed how I looked at game design, seeing if devs push their players to play smarter for efficient play instead of being given efficiency. A straight up video game that takes risks in a scene of AAA games made for mass appeal, artificial garnering of praise, and greed. A game deliberately crafted to a tee with such passion and confidence. There are very few games that I love as much/more than DOOM Eternal (by that, I mean 2). I've been at this game since launch and I will never stop playing it. Bless id Software for making one of the greatest games that I have ever played.

We’ll hit a 2 year anniversary of this game this weekend, which is mostly remarkable since this and a certain Switch title felt like the big “start of Covid” games that we’d pass the stay-at-home time with, and… yeah… what an innocent time.

It’s hard to think of other recent games that are this genuinely divisive between the lovers and haters, and I can still see both perspectives, especially because outside this one, I don’t even like Doom games.

But for my money this is possibly the most fun shooter ever released, and my appreciation for it grows over time due to its memorability, and how I find myself just wanting to play other shooters like I played this one. Maybe time for a replay soon…

Xbox/PC GamesPass BUFFET #2: Doom Eternal

The quintessential 90's gaming love letter is back. It has skip class, talk back to your mom, smoke in the parking lot energy. It was triumphant in 2016 and continues to be a headbanging heavy metal album come to life.

If only I was as high octane as needed to properly hang out.

Being a new dad, I'm tuckered out by 9pm.

Erittäin menevää toimintaräiskettä tarjonnut Doom Eternal oli itselleni tämän legendaarisen pelisarjan ensimmäinen läpipeluu. Peli oli hyvin pelillinen peli, josta pidin kovasti ja pelaaminen oli pitkälti hauskaa koko läpipeluun ajan.

Menoa ryyditettiin koko ajan uusilla aseilla ja kyvyillä, joten peli ei koskaan mennyt tylsäksi. Tosin loppu jo tuntui hieman venytetyltä ja arvosana voisi olla tähden verran parempi jos pari tuntia olisi lätkäisty peliajasta pois. Osa kentistä tuntui olevan hieman liian pitkiä, ja olisin kaivannut peliltä parempaa rytmitystä.

Kaiken kaikkiaan kuitenkin pelaamisen arvoinen teos ja uudella PC:llä aika mukavan näköinenkin kokemus.

3/5 Hyvä

Read safely, spoilers are blurry. Image's descriptions may appear when you hover over images and may contain spoilers, beware.

Total time played: 25 hours

Difficulty: Hurt Me Plenty

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TL;DR

This has to be the best FPS I have ever played. Three aspects were the most stunning: graphics, the world full of an indomitable bestiary that awaits to be gored and the game mechanics, that bring back the fluid and rapid-paced gameplay of old school FPS's.

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PROS

• Visual details are stunning. The environmental atmosphere is extremely well-crafted. The level design is on top. Efforts put on the details of surfaces, on structures and architecture are admirable. Demon bosses feel dangerous and imposing, the character design is fascinating.
• The arsenal is refreshing, including a BFG (BIG FUCKING GUN!!!) and an assortment of weapon mods and masteries to get.
• Collectibles are cleverly designed. They allow the player to have better skills and do better at feeling powerful and killing. Secret encounters as well as Slayer Gates are engaging and sometimes surprisingly difficult to win. Toy collectibles are fun to get and look at. They are well designed, they should be actual toys!
• The story is okay, it might not be the most interesting narrative-wise, but it keeps up with gamers' expectations. The codex helps the player to keep up to know his surroundings, the specifics of the demons he has encountered and his arsenal.
• The gameplay is fluid, quick-paced and adaptable. Gameplay mechanics are brilliant.
• The cosmetic modifications vary from weapon's skins to Doomguy's skins. And yes, you can get the Classic Marine uniform! (and it's so fucking cool!)

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CONS

• The difficulty might get overwhelming for some players. You have to know how to balance your tactics to have enough ammo, deal enough damage and stop dying.
• A long enough session of Doom: Eternal might leave you with a headache. There's a need for "decompressing" after 2~3 hours of gaming inside this demon packed world.
• Multiplayer feels unbalanced and should not be what you're after when buying Doom: Eternal.

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COOL SHOTS

Sample of the environment: Bodies suffering everywhere

A slayer gate with Doomguy in Classic Marine Uniform

Doomguy kicking some asses

Sample of nice architecture, gates in Helland gothic columns

Gates when entering Hell

Doomguy's set up back at home

Doomguy getting some hate from a demon

Doomguy looking badass in Classic Marine Uniform

Whole cities ripped apart by demons

Cool red UI theme and Doomguy in Crimson uniform

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I'm happy to have paid a full buck for the Deluxe version of the game, not necessarily because of the extra contents, but because it deserves it. And also, this will be the last work from Stephen Ash that humanity will have, so let him be Eternal!

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Going after the platinum trophy for this game in the coming days!

Not a jab at Animal Crossing. Just a funny haha. But Doom Eternal is utterly fantastic (and I hope AN:NH is as well for you Switch owners, don't have one unfortunately).

Doom 2016 focused on speed so well, but Doom Eternal made 2016's sense of mobility feel like shit(okay. not really, but you get what I mean). You are constantly dashing around, swinging around monkey bars while you switch for the perfect weapon to kill demons with, popping demons' head like you're opening a bottle of champagne. One of the enemies is literally champagne once you pop open their heads and health and ammo are spouting out of their heads, it's hilarious. While you are shooting demons, you're switching weapons, mods, and the chainsaw like it's second nature. Playing this on PC with a mouse and keyboard felt like a dream to me as I was constantly hitting headshots and hitting flickshots on weakpoints. You're thinking, "what am I low on? What should I get more of?" as you glory kill, set demons on fire, and rip and tear. Once you get used to all of the mechanics, you feel like a god.

And the easter eggs. Where do I begin with them? Click on the blurred text if you want to know the easter eggs. Daisy, Doomguy's rabbit, appears in every level. You can completely play the original 2 Doom games along with Doom 64 if you preorder Eternal.There are heads of Dopefish from Commander Keen. The Unmayker was a powerful weapon that was cut from the original games but now appears here if you have all of the Empyrean Keys. After a fan made DOOT. iD made a Revenant skin based off the meme. There is so much fanservice for those who LOVE iD Software that it made me really respect iD Software as one of the GOATS.

Doom Eternal is my favorite FPS(not favorite shooter, that's RE4) and is in my top 10. It's a ballet of bullets and jumping while still not being as difficult as your average bullet hell. I feel like I shouldn't give this a rating because all this "review" is is rambling about how much testosterone and dopamine were building up in me because of this game, but I will. I will make another review that is more in depth when I feel like getting around to it. Play it. Play it. PLEASE PLAY IT.

NOT FINAL RATING: 10/10

P.S. Please stay after the credits, it's worth it.