So I finally played Doom Eternal...

[MFG38]

...and boy, do I have a lot to say about it. So, what follows here is a series of assorted thoughts on Doom Eternal from someone who finally had the chance to play it following a PC upgrade and just beat it for the first time.

 

VISUALS / ART DIRECTION

 

• The environments are a definite highlight of the game. Big, sprawling, filled to the brim with detail - all the while being rendered at average framerates of ~200fps on High graphics preset on an RTX 3060. So many gorgeous vistas you could just stop to admire for a few minutes (or hours).
• A lot of the demon designs I enjoyed looking at, but some of them felt a tiny bit weird to the point of almost making the art direction feel inconsistent. Namely the Carcass. Granted, demons with cybernetics have been a thing in Doom ever since 1993, but the Carcass looks more like a Quake 4 Strogg reject than a soldier of Hell's army. Additionally, the Cacodemon and Hell Knight - two of only a few demon designs I noticed were kept from DOOM '16 - feel ever so slightly out of place among the more classically inspired designs. I wasn't a big fan of the recreations of the classic designs either back when the game was first revealed, but oddly enough, I've grown rather fond of them after seeing gameplay footage and, now, playing the game for myself. Either way, to sum up, the demon designs feel inconsistent when it comes to their art direction.
• The "destructible demons" mechanic is admittedly cool as shit. Seeing parts of the demons' skin melting/ripping off is an awesomely grotesque detail that makes the guns feel that much more satisfying to use. I approve of it.

 

MUSIC / SOUND DESIGN

 

• While the soundtrack is absolutely awesome with no weak tracks IMO, "The Only Thing They Fear Is You" felt oddly out of place in the combat encounters it played in. It's an awesome track, make no mistake, but I didn't think it really complemented the areas where it played.
• Sound design is also great all around... with the exception of the "pop" sound effect that plays on occasion. Yes, Doom Eternal is more cartoony and less gritty than its predecessor, but that's taking it to the point of being too cartoony. It just didn't sound right.

 

GAMEPLAY

 

• Oh boy, here's the big one... Guess I'll start with the aspect of gameplay I enjoyed the least: the combat. I can understand that id wanted to up the challenge from DOOM '16, but they seriously overdid it with the combat loop. All of the extra abilities that they added here only complicate it needlessly, to the point of making it downright unenjoyable. It's way too heavy on the resource management. I can't begin to describe how frustrated I became with the combat towards the end of the game, with the frankly exaggerated emphasis on regular usage of all of your equipment. It turns the combat into the FPS equivalent of a game of chess and fails to accommodate more casual players.
• The addition (or expansion, I guess) of platforming elements was something I rather enjoyed. They provided a nice break from the combat, with the Double Jump and Dash proving quite essential in order to conquer them. That said, some of the platforming challenges did feel like they tended towards trial and error. On occasion, you have to be very quick to scan your surroundings and make your next move on a split-second's notice, lest you fall to your not-exactly-death. One platforming section in Urdak proved especially annoying, with having to jump off a wall onto a monkey bar that was almost right next to it. Even with the air control rune, the laws of the physics of the jump were not on my side, causing me to undershoot it, and I fell down enough times to almost lose an Extra Life.
• While I was initially skeptical about the Extra Life mechanic, I have to admit that it does provide a good amount of fluidity to the overall gameplay (if "fluidity" is the right term). It's nice respawning right in the middle of a combat encounter (as long as you have the Extra Life to spare) instead of having to restart from a checkpoint whenever you die, especially with how frustratingly hard some of the battles get. Taras Nabad springs to mind as a particularly frustrating level in regards to its combat encounters - geez, talk about a difficulty spike.
• The exploration aspect of the gameplay is just as fun as it was in DOOM '16. There are just so many nooks and crannies with secrets hidden in them, and wandering around the levels in search of them - and subsequently, discovering them - is a joy. Some of the secrets do get pretty obtuse, but that doesn't detract from the joy of searching for them by any means.
• Fuck the Marauder. 'Nuff said.
• Also, fuck Buff Totems. 'Nuff said.

 

MISCELLANEOUS STUFF

 

• Yes, Samuel, I know the Icon of Sin needs to be destroyed ASAP. You don't need to repeat it half a dozen goddamn times.
• What's the point of making the BFG ammo capacity so high if firing the thing consumes half of it anyway? It doesn't even share its ammo pool with any other weapon (except maybe the Unmaykr, which I didn't unlock in my playthrough, so I can't confirm). Just drop the ammo capacity to 2 and make firing the BFG consume 1 ammo instead of 30. Makes much more sense to me.

[AtimZarr1]

Nice review. I do agree that Doom Eternal's gameplay design somewhat leaves casual players behind. For a singleplayer game, there's a considerable skill gap between someone who plays Doom Eternal "like a regular game" and someone who optimizes use of all the abilities / weapon combos. All the extra abilities and mechanics and their synergies with your guns begin to make more sense the longer you play. I remember at launch thinking that Blood Punch was superfluous and that the Equipment abilities could've been baked into the weapon mods, but after playing for so long, I've developed an appreciation for all these mechanics being their own thing to the point that I'm unsure how I'll feel playing a Doom Eternal sequel without those added gameplay elements.

 

3 hours ago, MFG38 said:

It doesn't even share its ammo pool with any other weapon (except maybe the Unmaykr, which I didn't unlock in my playthrough, so I can't confirm).

 

The BFG does share ammo with the Unmaykr, which doesn't matter much because the BFG is significantly more efficient with its ammo usage and the Unmaykr gets unused as a result.

[Chezza]

Yup your thoughts are essentially the common ones for all new Eternal players haha.

 

As AtimZarr1 said, it seems balanced and designed around veteran players. It all really really does come together well when you play a few runs of the campaign and DLCs.

[chemo]

I don't think the emphasis on such a wide variety of abilities is as bad as you make it out to be. On my initial playthrough done on Ultra-Violence difficulty, I rarely used things like the Blood Punch, grenades, or Flame Belch and I don't remember my death count being all that high. They did, however, raise the skill ceiling significantly and gave the game much greater longevity as a result because I keep wanting to find ways to improve and develop new techniques.

 

I think gameplay-focused titles are at their best when they encourage further experimentation and cultivation of skill on subsequent playthroughs. While DOOM 2016 is still fun, it feels like a "one and done" type of deal when compared to DOOM Eternal. I didn't get nearly as much value out of replays from that game.

Edited August 22, 2021 by chemo

[Agent Slacker]

It's funny you bring up chess, the guys at id described this game as "combat chess", because it almost requires constant resource management. If you're like me and have spent over 150+ hours on the game across 2 different platforms, things like that just become second nature; I never worry about ammo because I'm switching weapons out like a crack addled spider monkey, and I'm also paying attention to sound cues that tell me a weapon is running out of ammo. It's the most engaging shooter I've played in a while, a game that forces me to pay attention, and that's probably why I've invested more time into it compared to other recent games (I should really finish Bloodstained one of these days).

[Teo Slayer]

Good job, I can't afford it since my Laptop can't run games like DOOM Eternal

[whatup876]

Found a channel that does analysis on Doom Eternal stuff, if this helps.

[KubaloBlackMT]

On 8/21/2021 at 1:01 PM, MFG38 said:

A lot of the demon designs I enjoyed looking at, but some of them felt a tiny bit weird to the point of almost making the art direction feel inconsistent. Namely the Carcass. Granted, demons with cybernetics have been a thing in Doom ever since 1993, but the Carcass looks more like a Quake 4 Strogg reject than a soldier of Hell's army.

I think the Carcass actually fits pretty well, reminds me of Doom 2's sort of monsters with the grotesque faces and all, like the Mancubus and Archvile. Feels like a Gregor Punchatz creation to me. It's even got nipples like the Mancubus

These aren't the original Mancubus and Spiderdemon models but they still have the grotesque face the original ones did have.