Base game review
The first of the two DLC campaigns for DOOM Eternal that serve as the conclusion not just for Eternal, but to this modern era of DOOM’s story that began with DOOM 2016. Eternal was a game that pushed its mechanics and overall scale to astronomical levels. With Part One of The Ancient Gods (TAG for short), iD Software aims to push things even further. Despite their efforts, I’m a little bit mixed on their attempt to do so. While I ultimately believe the good things about TAG1 outweighs the bad, the things that are bad can lead to some degree of frustration that dampers the enjoyment.
While the DOOM Slayer might have put a stop to the Khan Makyr and halted the demonic invasion of Earth, his work isn’t done. With the Khan Makyr gone, Hell’s forces have taken over her homeworld of Urdak, and with the planet’s resources in their control, they now have the means to invade and conquer all of reality. With the help of Samuel Hayden and the UAC, the DOOM Slayer sets out to find the Seraphim, an ally from his past that can provide him the means to return to Urdak, so that he can finally end the demons once and for all.
The Ancient Gods continues the base game’s storytelling approach, meaning it still lacks a lot of context in regards to what’s going on. You do get the gist of what’s happening, but there are a lot of terms that can be difficult to keep up with and aren’t explained very well. That being said, it’s a DOOM game, so you really only need to know the bare minimum when it comes to story anyway.
The DLC comes with three additional levels: UAC Atlantica Facility, The Blood Swamps, and The Holt. These levels have some of the most intense combat encounters in the game (outside of the Master Levels, which are re-worked levels from the base game made to be even more challenging). After its original release, TAG1 was actually updated in order to reduce its overall difficulty, and even with the changes made, these levels will still give you a run for your money.
Atlantica is without a doubt my favorite level in the DLC and possibly the entire game, depending on how my replay of Ancient Gods Part 2 goes. The design of its combat arenas is excellent, memorable and feels like a very natural progression from the level of difficulty you experience at the end of the base game. They’re wide, with a lot of room to run around in. The Marauder controversy after the base game’s release had been going on for a while at this point, so when you get towards the end of the level and you have to fight two of them at the same time, it very much feels like the devs are paying attention to what fans were saying at this time, and that they trusted them to be able to overcome these enemies.
Atlantica also introduces a new environmental hazard: Turrets. These are mystical eyeballs sitting on top of a podium that shoot energy blasts at Doomguy from their position. You can’t get too close to them, otherwise the eyeball will retreat into the podium. They need to be destroyed using fast and powerful long distance projectiles like the Quick-Scope mod for the Heavy Assault Rifle, or a shot from the Arbalest. While these can initially be annoying, they’re pretty easy to take out once you’ve memorized their locations and gotten your aim up to snuff in order to take them out quickly.
The Blood Swamps are next, and for the most part, it’s a very strong level, with some of the most intense combat arenas in the game. It’s actually kind of flooring seeing the amount of super heavy demons the game throws at you during combat encounters, but it’s also really thrilling stepping up and taking them all on. This level also introduces a new enemy: The Spirit. The Spirit is a ghost demon that possesses another demon on the field, increasing that demon’s damage, speed, and resilience, making them a lot harder to kill and evade. After killing the possessed demon, the Spirit will exit that demon’s body, where it’ll be stunned for a moment, before it begins to possess another demon. The only way to kill a Spirit is to use the Microwave Beam mod for the Plasma Rifle, which shoots out a beam that holds demons in place before causing them to explode after a period of time. I don’t really like this new demon very much, and encounters with it really got on my nerves.
The Spirit feels like it was made solely for giving the Microwave Beam an actual purpose. Prior to the DLC’s release, the Microwave Beam was widely regarded as one of the least useful weapon mods in the game. It’s a slow method of killing demons, and using it hinder’s Doomguy’s movement, making him a sitting duck. Since combat in Eternal is designed around you constantly moving, this mod is inherently antithetical to that idea, so being forced to use it here kind of sucks, especially given how intense the combat arenas are. When the Spirit possesses a Hell Knight or a Baron of Hell, then it will hound you, and seeing either of those demons charging at you with their increased speed is genuinely terrifying. Furthermore, killing a possessed demon doesn’t mean it’s over, as you now have to use the Microwave Beam to finish off the Spirit, or risk it possessing another demon.
The Spirit might be a bit less frustrating on lower difficulties, I decided to play through this on Nightmare, the game’s hardest difficulty, since I’ve played Eternal so many times and wanted a challenge in order to keep my adrenaline up. On Nightmare though, the Spirit is a major threat even if it possesses fodder demons simply because of how much stronger the buff makes them. This is what makes the Spirit impossible to ignore, and why trying to kill it is so frustrating. If you end up killing the possessed demon in the wrong place at the wrong time, there’s nothing you can do about the Spirit without risking all of the other demons jumping your ass. Even if it seems like you’re okay to take it out with the Microwave Beam, another demon or a projectile might swoop in outta nowhere and take you out. There might be some strategy I’m not familiar with that makes the Spirit easier to kill, but I don’t know for sure. All I know is that I never really found a consistent and clear cut way of killing it, and a lot of my deaths came from trying to safely get rid of this god damned poltergeist.
Finally, there’s The Holt. The Holt is without a doubt my least favorite level in the DLC, and most likely the entire game as well. I really hate how The Holt’s combat arenas are designed. The arenas are usually multilayered and claustrophobic structures with tunnels that obfuscate demons and make it hard to keep track of who is on the screen and where they’re at. It also has what I feel to be the most extremely forgettable and boring music in the game. The Holt also introduces one more new series of enemies: the Blood Makyrs, and I’m not a fan of these guys either. They are flying, angel-like beings that protect themselves with an impenetrable shield of energy while shooting their own projectiles at you with their spears. They also have a melee attack they can perform that halts your momentum if you get too close to them. They’re completely invincible until they use a specific attack that causes them to drop their shield, after which, they can only be killed with a precise headshot from the Arbalest or the Quick-Scope for the Heavy Assault Rifle.
My dislike for the Blood Makyrs is partially a skill issue, while also tying in to why I dislike The Holt’s combat arena designs so much. Because of the design of these combat arenas, trying to get an accurate shot at a Blood Makyr when it drops its shield is a lot harder than it otherwise would be. This might have been the intention, but either way, it makes trying to kill it very aggravating. Once again, a lot of my deaths came from me missing their head and getting blown up by their attacks, or getting killed by other demons because I was focusing too hard trying to aim at them.
Despite being DLC levels, the team at iD spared no expense making them visually on par with the levels from the base game. Each level has a distinct look, feel, and atmosphere, thanks to their unique color palettes and themes. Atlantica is basically a giant oil rig out in the ocean with a lot of blues and stunning looking water and waves, The Blood Swamps are tinted in a sickening green shade with a lot of gas and fog, and The Holt has a reddish-purple color palette symbolizing the former paradise of Urdak’s fall to the demons. Much like the rest of the game, each level’s environments are absolutely stunning and have breathtaking scale to them.
I mentioned in my review of the base game that there was some behind the scenes issues regarding Mick Gordon, the composer for Eternal and DOOM 2016’s highly acclaimed soundtracks, that I didn’t have time to get into because of the review’s length. During Eternal’s development, Mick had to put the game’s score together under completely obscene degrees of crunch, and in the end, wasn’t even paid for a good chunk of his work. When Bethesda promised an official release of the soundtrack, Mick wasn’t consulted, and that soundtrack release was put together by an audio engineer who, with all due respect, didn’t do a very good job. The sound quality of Eternal’s formally released OST isn’t the best, and the music doesn’t sound quite as full as it did in 2016 OST release. After DOOM Eternal came out, Mick Gordon parted ways with iD Software. After Mick’s departure was made public, Marty Stratton, iD Software’s executive producer and the man responsible for Mick’s poor treatment, took to social media to slander Mick, calling him overly demanding and difficult to work with, and he used the power of NDAs to besmirch Mick’s name while he was unable to say a word in his defense. Years later, after those NDAs had expired, Mick Gordon was finally able to publicly defend himself with an extremely long blog post containing irrefutable evidence regarding how he had been treated during his time at iD Software. The fallout between Mick and iD Software is ultimately, very sad, as it was clear that Mick loved working on DOOM. I said it in my base review, and I’ll say it again here: Marty Stratton is a piece of shit, and the fact that he continues to work at iD Software today is disgusting.
With the departure of Mick Gordon, Andrew Hulshult was brought on board to compose the music for both parts of The Ancient Gods. Hulshult is an extremely respectable and skilled metal musician, and is well-known amongst the boomer shooter scene for his love of DOOM and other older shooter franchises. He did the music for modern day boomer shooter indie titles, such as Dusk and Amid Evil. He was the perfect person to replace Mick Gordon, and while I wouldn’t say that his work surpasses the base game’s soundtrack, his skills do shine here. Atlantica and the Blood Swamps’ music is very, very good, with a lot of heavy, yet catchy riffs that capture the game’s aggression and other-worldly feel. The Holt, like I previously said, is unfortunately rather lacking. There isn’t much guitar at all, and it's mostly just forgettable atmospheric bass and electronic noise, which adds further to the disdain I have for that level.
Part One of The Ancient Gods is a decent start to the conclusion of modern DOOM’s story. While it begins with a huge bang and some of the best content Eternal has to offer, as it goes on and the game experiments a bit more with enemy and level design, it unfortunately produces some mixed results that involve a lot of frustrating moments that detract from it a bit. I do think that the highs outweigh the lows though, and that it’s still worth a playthrough. I just don’t recommend playing through it on Nightmare difficulty like I did, unless you’re a completionist that really wants to master the game.
The first of the two DLC campaigns for DOOM Eternal that serve as the conclusion not just for Eternal, but to this modern era of DOOM’s story that began with DOOM 2016. Eternal was a game that pushed its mechanics and overall scale to astronomical levels. With Part One of The Ancient Gods (TAG for short), iD Software aims to push things even further. Despite their efforts, I’m a little bit mixed on their attempt to do so. While I ultimately believe the good things about TAG1 outweighs the bad, the things that are bad can lead to some degree of frustration that dampers the enjoyment.
While the DOOM Slayer might have put a stop to the Khan Makyr and halted the demonic invasion of Earth, his work isn’t done. With the Khan Makyr gone, Hell’s forces have taken over her homeworld of Urdak, and with the planet’s resources in their control, they now have the means to invade and conquer all of reality. With the help of Samuel Hayden and the UAC, the DOOM Slayer sets out to find the Seraphim, an ally from his past that can provide him the means to return to Urdak, so that he can finally end the demons once and for all.
The Ancient Gods continues the base game’s storytelling approach, meaning it still lacks a lot of context in regards to what’s going on. You do get the gist of what’s happening, but there are a lot of terms that can be difficult to keep up with and aren’t explained very well. That being said, it’s a DOOM game, so you really only need to know the bare minimum when it comes to story anyway.
The DLC comes with three additional levels: UAC Atlantica Facility, The Blood Swamps, and The Holt. These levels have some of the most intense combat encounters in the game (outside of the Master Levels, which are re-worked levels from the base game made to be even more challenging). After its original release, TAG1 was actually updated in order to reduce its overall difficulty, and even with the changes made, these levels will still give you a run for your money.
Atlantica is without a doubt my favorite level in the DLC and possibly the entire game, depending on how my replay of Ancient Gods Part 2 goes. The design of its combat arenas is excellent, memorable and feels like a very natural progression from the level of difficulty you experience at the end of the base game. They’re wide, with a lot of room to run around in. The Marauder controversy after the base game’s release had been going on for a while at this point, so when you get towards the end of the level and you have to fight two of them at the same time, it very much feels like the devs are paying attention to what fans were saying at this time, and that they trusted them to be able to overcome these enemies.
Atlantica also introduces a new environmental hazard: Turrets. These are mystical eyeballs sitting on top of a podium that shoot energy blasts at Doomguy from their position. You can’t get too close to them, otherwise the eyeball will retreat into the podium. They need to be destroyed using fast and powerful long distance projectiles like the Quick-Scope mod for the Heavy Assault Rifle, or a shot from the Arbalest. While these can initially be annoying, they’re pretty easy to take out once you’ve memorized their locations and gotten your aim up to snuff in order to take them out quickly.
The Blood Swamps are next, and for the most part, it’s a very strong level, with some of the most intense combat arenas in the game. It’s actually kind of flooring seeing the amount of super heavy demons the game throws at you during combat encounters, but it’s also really thrilling stepping up and taking them all on. This level also introduces a new enemy: The Spirit. The Spirit is a ghost demon that possesses another demon on the field, increasing that demon’s damage, speed, and resilience, making them a lot harder to kill and evade. After killing the possessed demon, the Spirit will exit that demon’s body, where it’ll be stunned for a moment, before it begins to possess another demon. The only way to kill a Spirit is to use the Microwave Beam mod for the Plasma Rifle, which shoots out a beam that holds demons in place before causing them to explode after a period of time. I don’t really like this new demon very much, and encounters with it really got on my nerves.
The Spirit feels like it was made solely for giving the Microwave Beam an actual purpose. Prior to the DLC’s release, the Microwave Beam was widely regarded as one of the least useful weapon mods in the game. It’s a slow method of killing demons, and using it hinder’s Doomguy’s movement, making him a sitting duck. Since combat in Eternal is designed around you constantly moving, this mod is inherently antithetical to that idea, so being forced to use it here kind of sucks, especially given how intense the combat arenas are. When the Spirit possesses a Hell Knight or a Baron of Hell, then it will hound you, and seeing either of those demons charging at you with their increased speed is genuinely terrifying. Furthermore, killing a possessed demon doesn’t mean it’s over, as you now have to use the Microwave Beam to finish off the Spirit, or risk it possessing another demon.
The Spirit might be a bit less frustrating on lower difficulties, I decided to play through this on Nightmare, the game’s hardest difficulty, since I’ve played Eternal so many times and wanted a challenge in order to keep my adrenaline up. On Nightmare though, the Spirit is a major threat even if it possesses fodder demons simply because of how much stronger the buff makes them. This is what makes the Spirit impossible to ignore, and why trying to kill it is so frustrating. If you end up killing the possessed demon in the wrong place at the wrong time, there’s nothing you can do about the Spirit without risking all of the other demons jumping your ass. Even if it seems like you’re okay to take it out with the Microwave Beam, another demon or a projectile might swoop in outta nowhere and take you out. There might be some strategy I’m not familiar with that makes the Spirit easier to kill, but I don’t know for sure. All I know is that I never really found a consistent and clear cut way of killing it, and a lot of my deaths came from trying to safely get rid of this god damned poltergeist.
Finally, there’s The Holt. The Holt is without a doubt my least favorite level in the DLC, and most likely the entire game as well. I really hate how The Holt’s combat arenas are designed. The arenas are usually multilayered and claustrophobic structures with tunnels that obfuscate demons and make it hard to keep track of who is on the screen and where they’re at. It also has what I feel to be the most extremely forgettable and boring music in the game. The Holt also introduces one more new series of enemies: the Blood Makyrs, and I’m not a fan of these guys either. They are flying, angel-like beings that protect themselves with an impenetrable shield of energy while shooting their own projectiles at you with their spears. They also have a melee attack they can perform that halts your momentum if you get too close to them. They’re completely invincible until they use a specific attack that causes them to drop their shield, after which, they can only be killed with a precise headshot from the Arbalest or the Quick-Scope for the Heavy Assault Rifle.
My dislike for the Blood Makyrs is partially a skill issue, while also tying in to why I dislike The Holt’s combat arena designs so much. Because of the design of these combat arenas, trying to get an accurate shot at a Blood Makyr when it drops its shield is a lot harder than it otherwise would be. This might have been the intention, but either way, it makes trying to kill it very aggravating. Once again, a lot of my deaths came from me missing their head and getting blown up by their attacks, or getting killed by other demons because I was focusing too hard trying to aim at them.
Despite being DLC levels, the team at iD spared no expense making them visually on par with the levels from the base game. Each level has a distinct look, feel, and atmosphere, thanks to their unique color palettes and themes. Atlantica is basically a giant oil rig out in the ocean with a lot of blues and stunning looking water and waves, The Blood Swamps are tinted in a sickening green shade with a lot of gas and fog, and The Holt has a reddish-purple color palette symbolizing the former paradise of Urdak’s fall to the demons. Much like the rest of the game, each level’s environments are absolutely stunning and have breathtaking scale to them.
I mentioned in my review of the base game that there was some behind the scenes issues regarding Mick Gordon, the composer for Eternal and DOOM 2016’s highly acclaimed soundtracks, that I didn’t have time to get into because of the review’s length. During Eternal’s development, Mick had to put the game’s score together under completely obscene degrees of crunch, and in the end, wasn’t even paid for a good chunk of his work. When Bethesda promised an official release of the soundtrack, Mick wasn’t consulted, and that soundtrack release was put together by an audio engineer who, with all due respect, didn’t do a very good job. The sound quality of Eternal’s formally released OST isn’t the best, and the music doesn’t sound quite as full as it did in 2016 OST release. After DOOM Eternal came out, Mick Gordon parted ways with iD Software. After Mick’s departure was made public, Marty Stratton, iD Software’s executive producer and the man responsible for Mick’s poor treatment, took to social media to slander Mick, calling him overly demanding and difficult to work with, and he used the power of NDAs to besmirch Mick’s name while he was unable to say a word in his defense. Years later, after those NDAs had expired, Mick Gordon was finally able to publicly defend himself with an extremely long blog post containing irrefutable evidence regarding how he had been treated during his time at iD Software. The fallout between Mick and iD Software is ultimately, very sad, as it was clear that Mick loved working on DOOM. I said it in my base review, and I’ll say it again here: Marty Stratton is a piece of shit, and the fact that he continues to work at iD Software today is disgusting.
With the departure of Mick Gordon, Andrew Hulshult was brought on board to compose the music for both parts of The Ancient Gods. Hulshult is an extremely respectable and skilled metal musician, and is well-known amongst the boomer shooter scene for his love of DOOM and other older shooter franchises. He did the music for modern day boomer shooter indie titles, such as Dusk and Amid Evil. He was the perfect person to replace Mick Gordon, and while I wouldn’t say that his work surpasses the base game’s soundtrack, his skills do shine here. Atlantica and the Blood Swamps’ music is very, very good, with a lot of heavy, yet catchy riffs that capture the game’s aggression and other-worldly feel. The Holt, like I previously said, is unfortunately rather lacking. There isn’t much guitar at all, and it's mostly just forgettable atmospheric bass and electronic noise, which adds further to the disdain I have for that level.
Part One of The Ancient Gods is a decent start to the conclusion of modern DOOM’s story. While it begins with a huge bang and some of the best content Eternal has to offer, as it goes on and the game experiments a bit more with enemy and level design, it unfortunately produces some mixed results that involve a lot of frustrating moments that detract from it a bit. I do think that the highs outweigh the lows though, and that it’s still worth a playthrough. I just don’t recommend playing through it on Nightmare difficulty like I did, unless you’re a completionist that really wants to master the game.
Thinking about this DLC a while later and I've realized another reason I'm in love with Hugo's series of ridiculously stupid maximalist shit. I want to back up a bit though to last year when I made one of my earliest reviews for the base game. During that time I was already able to break Eternal into molecular elements and profusely praise the game design from this sectioned-off viewpoint, but now I look upon it feeling like it's an incomplete picture.
Part of that has to do that soon following Doom Eternal, I played a lot of games and read a lot of material that ended up shaping my writing, changed my views on thinking about art, and drew me more to the aesthetic and author side of things. I don't think my core tastes have changed a huge amount, but it's opened doors for a lot of things.
Basically this is a long-winded explanation to say that I've come up with another way of saying Doom Eternal is still the bee's knees, and a lot of it has to do with how The Ancient Gods showcases the maximalism and goes several degrees beyond. The way I'd describe it is that Hugo Martin is the western equivalent to the Ninja Gaiden Itagaki, with a crazy love for major fuck-you mechanics and forcing the player into ridiculous zen states of high octane action. That aesthetic bleeds over to most enemy encounters in TAG, where it'll throw TWO possessed cyberdemons and say "deal with this bitch" while simultaneously not giving you enough BFG ammo to say fuck you back because Hugo Martin has stopped giving you mercy. I'd argue this was still present in the original game, but it's fair to say that a lot of it was masked in having to meet to an overbearingly huge playerbase that needed every weakness spelt out to them, a lot of accessible changes that ironically made the game more explicit and overwhelming in terms of information. It ended up backfiring to a point that a lot of people's coloration of the game is pushed into how it "forces you to optimize to very puzzle block in hole" strategies. So it's refreshing that TAG1 just doubles down on the brutal side, to points of such stress that I had to take several several breaks before I could finish it on Nightmare, and the final boss itself took me a solid hour to complete. If you still find the idea of having to use specific weapons in the balancing act to take out certain enemies and manage certain encounters then you will find TAG1 even more against you. And I'm very glad for it. I very much hope TAG2 keeps this up, and that the finality of Doom Eternal becomes the tower of masochism and extremist energy that I love it for.
Also in case I wasn't clear, I think the idea of the combat being one-note busywork is really stupid for reasons that I could make a whole essay on that may/may not include Sekiro, some metaphor about ham, and some document about player expression. I will save you all some headache.
Part of that has to do that soon following Doom Eternal, I played a lot of games and read a lot of material that ended up shaping my writing, changed my views on thinking about art, and drew me more to the aesthetic and author side of things. I don't think my core tastes have changed a huge amount, but it's opened doors for a lot of things.
Basically this is a long-winded explanation to say that I've come up with another way of saying Doom Eternal is still the bee's knees, and a lot of it has to do with how The Ancient Gods showcases the maximalism and goes several degrees beyond. The way I'd describe it is that Hugo Martin is the western equivalent to the Ninja Gaiden Itagaki, with a crazy love for major fuck-you mechanics and forcing the player into ridiculous zen states of high octane action. That aesthetic bleeds over to most enemy encounters in TAG, where it'll throw TWO possessed cyberdemons and say "deal with this bitch" while simultaneously not giving you enough BFG ammo to say fuck you back because Hugo Martin has stopped giving you mercy. I'd argue this was still present in the original game, but it's fair to say that a lot of it was masked in having to meet to an overbearingly huge playerbase that needed every weakness spelt out to them, a lot of accessible changes that ironically made the game more explicit and overwhelming in terms of information. It ended up backfiring to a point that a lot of people's coloration of the game is pushed into how it "forces you to optimize to very puzzle block in hole" strategies. So it's refreshing that TAG1 just doubles down on the brutal side, to points of such stress that I had to take several several breaks before I could finish it on Nightmare, and the final boss itself took me a solid hour to complete. If you still find the idea of having to use specific weapons in the balancing act to take out certain enemies and manage certain encounters then you will find TAG1 even more against you. And I'm very glad for it. I very much hope TAG2 keeps this up, and that the finality of Doom Eternal becomes the tower of masochism and extremist energy that I love it for.
Also in case I wasn't clear, I think the idea of the combat being one-note busywork is really stupid for reasons that I could make a whole essay on that may/may not include Sekiro, some metaphor about ham, and some document about player expression. I will save you all some headache.
dlc infernal da porra, tem 5x mais inimigos pra enfrentar além dos tipos novos que são insuportáveis, level design meio confuso tbm, de resto a história é legal e o personagem já vem totalmente upado e com tudo liberado desde o início
68
The Ancient Gods – Part One is more of the same. It doesn’t add too much new content other than a few levels and a couple of new enemies— which are all fairly annoying to fight. They come across as too gimmicky, with most of them being centered around you waiting to shoot them; the spirit in particular is really frustrating and doesn’t mesh well with the gameplay that the base game set out to make.
This DLC adds three new levels which all take you to unique environments separate from the base game, and they’re all mostly cool! but the first one is easily my favourite. It’s giving Kamino vibes and I love it for that, it’s also stunning because of the rain effects, making it the best-looking level in the game by far. It obviously helps that the layout is great too— having a strong emphasis on platforming and getting around the oil rig; I also noticed how narrow a lot of the rooms and areas are, adding to the difficulty aspect because you can’t dodge as easily, which forces you to be more precise with your shooting and movement. It’s definitely the most unique of the bunch.
The second level was when I started to find the DLC a bit repetitive. It wasn’t trying to do anything new, and with a game like DOOM Eternal… that’s a very bad thing. The base game was constantly adding new mechanics and enemies throughout every single level, which is a huge reason as to why it was so well paced and enjoyable; and The Ancient Gods – Part One does the exact opposite of this, they don’t add much of anything, and even drag out the fights. This doesn’t make much sense when you really think about it, I know they wanted to make the DLC more difficult, but prolonging the fights is a bad way of doing it. A better way of increasing the difficulty would’ve been through level design and enemy variety— which the first level excelled at as I’ve already pointed out. The boss fight in the second level wasn’t great either, it’s literally the turret enemy except it sometimes teleports around— it’s lackluster and incredibly easy (even on nightmare).
The third level was also eh. Nothing is able to beat the first level’s visual fidelity and immaculate design; I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if The Ancient Gods – Part Two doesn’t live up to it. The best thing about the third level is the boss fight, which is miles better than the previous one, and is actually hard (although not that hard on nightmare).
I know most of this review has been me hating on it, but I honestly still really enjoyed it for what it was, which is just more DOOM Eternal; and that in of itself will always be good fun. Extra points for having the “intern” give a doomguy reference.
DLC's - Ranked
2020 - Ranked
The Ancient Gods – Part One is more of the same. It doesn’t add too much new content other than a few levels and a couple of new enemies— which are all fairly annoying to fight. They come across as too gimmicky, with most of them being centered around you waiting to shoot them; the spirit in particular is really frustrating and doesn’t mesh well with the gameplay that the base game set out to make.
This DLC adds three new levels which all take you to unique environments separate from the base game, and they’re all mostly cool! but the first one is easily my favourite. It’s giving Kamino vibes and I love it for that, it’s also stunning because of the rain effects, making it the best-looking level in the game by far. It obviously helps that the layout is great too— having a strong emphasis on platforming and getting around the oil rig; I also noticed how narrow a lot of the rooms and areas are, adding to the difficulty aspect because you can’t dodge as easily, which forces you to be more precise with your shooting and movement. It’s definitely the most unique of the bunch.
The second level was when I started to find the DLC a bit repetitive. It wasn’t trying to do anything new, and with a game like DOOM Eternal… that’s a very bad thing. The base game was constantly adding new mechanics and enemies throughout every single level, which is a huge reason as to why it was so well paced and enjoyable; and The Ancient Gods – Part One does the exact opposite of this, they don’t add much of anything, and even drag out the fights. This doesn’t make much sense when you really think about it, I know they wanted to make the DLC more difficult, but prolonging the fights is a bad way of doing it. A better way of increasing the difficulty would’ve been through level design and enemy variety— which the first level excelled at as I’ve already pointed out. The boss fight in the second level wasn’t great either, it’s literally the turret enemy except it sometimes teleports around— it’s lackluster and incredibly easy (even on nightmare).
The third level was also eh. Nothing is able to beat the first level’s visual fidelity and immaculate design; I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if The Ancient Gods – Part Two doesn’t live up to it. The best thing about the third level is the boss fight, which is miles better than the previous one, and is actually hard (although not that hard on nightmare).
I know most of this review has been me hating on it, but I honestly still really enjoyed it for what it was, which is just more DOOM Eternal; and that in of itself will always be good fun. Extra points for having the “intern” give a doomguy reference.
DLC's - Ranked
2020 - Ranked
What the fuck Id? Lmao. Borderline masoquism. This dlc feels like Doomguy doing 500 jumping jacks on your balls. I mean, if you're into that I don't judge, but I was slowly playing this between college exams whenever I found the free time, and it certainly felt like more work. Painful. Hope the next part is not as ball busting. Recommended if you're a freakazoid git-gudder though.
★★ – Bad, but playable ❌
Oh yeah, if you didn't learn to quick-switch in the base campaign, do yourself a favor and learn for this dlc because it is impossible without it.
★★ – Bad, but playable ❌
Oh yeah, if you didn't learn to quick-switch in the base campaign, do yourself a favor and learn for this dlc because it is impossible without it.
que negocio entendiante, ele so triplica os monstros e começa coloca marauder a cada dez passos.
o modo enjoa mt rapido pq ele não adiciona nada pro level designe a te pior o que eu disse sobre loop enjoativo.
desculpa mas n vou jogar a dlc 2 não.
o modo enjoa mt rapido pq ele não adiciona nada pro level designe a te pior o que eu disse sobre loop enjoativo.
desculpa mas n vou jogar a dlc 2 não.
It's pretty much just more Doom, but this time some disgusting mouth breathing gremlin got into the Dev room and made it ball bustlingly hard.
.......................................................... I kinda liked it.
.......................................................... I kinda liked it.
El primer DLC de DOOM Eternal: The Ancient Gods, es en pocas palabras, más DOOM Eternal. Por un lado me parece una expansión muy acertada: enfocándose en lo que mejor sabe hacer el juego, que es su combate. Por otro, siento que pierde una capa que a mi parecer hacía muy interesante a Eternal: su sistema de progresión. Al no tener realmente mucho a dónde ir como personaje, Doom Slayer es casi literalmente un Dios (sin contar los desarrollos de la historia), y en esa línea, el juego empieza donde terminas con Eternal: teniendo todas las mejoras posibles. Esto hace que la poca exploración que tenía Eternal se vea incluso más reducida en esta expansión. Aún hay desafíos y otras cosas, pero pierden sentido pues no aportan realmente a nada más que a ... desbloquear... skins. The Ancient Gods entonces se convierte en una galería de matanza pasando de arena en arena, recordando un poco más al flujo presente en DOOM 2016.
Siempre me cuesta trabajo valorar un DLC, y más cuando está dividido en dos partes, así que esta entrada se queda sin valoración. Solo diré que aunque me parece que no es tan sustancial, aún así recomiendo esta pieza de DOOM aunque solo sea por jugar a todas las entregas de DOOM al 100%.
Siempre me cuesta trabajo valorar un DLC, y más cuando está dividido en dos partes, así que esta entrada se queda sin valoración. Solo diré que aunque me parece que no es tan sustancial, aún así recomiendo esta pieza de DOOM aunque solo sea por jugar a todas las entregas de DOOM al 100%.
bro i held out on playing this because I saw mixed reviews and then just never got around to it. But this shit slaps so hard. Three long levels that are just really good and jam packed with difficult fights and also some cool story. I love Urdak so I was happy to go back there as well. I played this all basically in one sitting. I was expecting the DLC levels to kinda just be like Master Levels, but they add lots of new stuff so it warrants being a DLC.
Amazing expansion to an already amazing game. More cool levels with cool new things. What more could you want!
Amazing expansion to an already amazing game. More cool levels with cool new things. What more could you want!
When I started this DLC I thought for sure I’d never beat it: the first encounters crushed me harder than anything in the (already difficult) base-game, but I brute forced it. By the time I reached end of the first trial in the swamp, I was so overwhelmed I put it down for months.
But I picked it up again,
and I learned to dance.
But I picked it up again,
and I learned to dance.
This review contains spoilers
It's an amazing but flawed dlc.
The 3 areas are all fantastic, they look gorgeous, have fun platforming sections and the combat arenas are well designed like in the main game.
The fights were much tougher than in the main game(on UV) but remained fun. They gave me that visceral feeling only the slayer gates and a couple of battles in the last sections of the game could provide in the main campaign so that's a plus. I personally love the marauders so seeing 2 of them at the same time, one buffed by a totem and one buffed by a spirit was great but my condolences go to the poor souls who hate this enemy.
Also the last slayer gate is absolutely insane and I fully adore it
The ost was good and fitted well with the gameplay, nothing all that worth noting tho outside of the one in holt
The new runes feel a bit tacked on but a good addition either way
The story was pretty good, I liked the twist of samuel being the seraphim and the lore was interesting as it was in the main game but the intern is a purely cringe-inducing character
Now with the new enemies I am pretty mixed, the turrets are fine, don't love them but don't hate them either. It's a solid ambient enemy.
The spirits are cool but I hate that they give such a massive amount of hp to the enemy that they posses. I have 2 times where it became annoying and just plain bad. When it possesed a tyrant and in the final boss(will talk about this later). "Yea bro, just give to an enemy that already has a huge hp pool a lot more so you'll shoot at it for 2 minutes straight lmao" which makes this the more boring part in the whole dlc.
The invisible whiplashes are awful and have no point in even existing
The blood maykrs are actually really great. They are like the maykr drones but are actually more than much a moving stack of ammo. I liked the high risk high reward strategy that they have by shooting them in the head right when they launch an attack to get a bunch of goodies.
The booses are not as good as in the main game, the trial of maligog is decent but not all that impressive.
Samus is a mixed boss. The 2 times you fight him alone are good but when he summons spirit possesed enemies the fun and enjoyment I had with him left my body. It's uninteresting and frustrating to fight 2 enemies you already killed a million times with bloated hp bars and more speed. Doesn't hold a candle to khan mayrk or icon of sin.
Overall would highly recommend desipite my compaints, if you enjoyed the campaign and are ready for the unrelenting difficulty of this dlc
The 3 areas are all fantastic, they look gorgeous, have fun platforming sections and the combat arenas are well designed like in the main game.
The fights were much tougher than in the main game(on UV) but remained fun. They gave me that visceral feeling only the slayer gates and a couple of battles in the last sections of the game could provide in the main campaign so that's a plus. I personally love the marauders so seeing 2 of them at the same time, one buffed by a totem and one buffed by a spirit was great but my condolences go to the poor souls who hate this enemy.
Also the last slayer gate is absolutely insane and I fully adore it
The ost was good and fitted well with the gameplay, nothing all that worth noting tho outside of the one in holt
The new runes feel a bit tacked on but a good addition either way
The story was pretty good, I liked the twist of samuel being the seraphim and the lore was interesting as it was in the main game but the intern is a purely cringe-inducing character
Now with the new enemies I am pretty mixed, the turrets are fine, don't love them but don't hate them either. It's a solid ambient enemy.
The spirits are cool but I hate that they give such a massive amount of hp to the enemy that they posses. I have 2 times where it became annoying and just plain bad. When it possesed a tyrant and in the final boss(will talk about this later). "Yea bro, just give to an enemy that already has a huge hp pool a lot more so you'll shoot at it for 2 minutes straight lmao" which makes this the more boring part in the whole dlc.
The invisible whiplashes are awful and have no point in even existing
The blood maykrs are actually really great. They are like the maykr drones but are actually more than much a moving stack of ammo. I liked the high risk high reward strategy that they have by shooting them in the head right when they launch an attack to get a bunch of goodies.
The booses are not as good as in the main game, the trial of maligog is decent but not all that impressive.
Samus is a mixed boss. The 2 times you fight him alone are good but when he summons spirit possesed enemies the fun and enjoyment I had with him left my body. It's uninteresting and frustrating to fight 2 enemies you already killed a million times with bloated hp bars and more speed. Doesn't hold a candle to khan mayrk or icon of sin.
Overall would highly recommend desipite my compaints, if you enjoyed the campaign and are ready for the unrelenting difficulty of this dlc
This just didn't do it for me, which is unfortunate because I love Doom Eternal and replayed it just to prep for this. The DLC leans too heavily on just throwing more enemies at you more frequently, instead of adding something new to the level design. The new enemy types are extremely annoying - when the combat is this fast paced, I don't want to slow down to aim at an eyeball, or roleplay as a ghostbuster with the spirit. I had the same complaint with marauders in the base game - they hurt the flow of the game by forcing you to slow down and also just use 1-2 specific weapons.
I don't think I'll be playing Part Two.
I don't think I'll be playing Part Two.
Nice little expansion for Eternal, story is still as confusing as the normal game and wish it was more like 2016 and wasn't there but that gameplay is as good as ever
I have developed arthritis
This and part 2 saved Doom Eternal. It went from a very okay sequel to stellar. The plot hooks actually became really cool, the combat is balls to the wall, and the levels are amazing. I had more fun in these than the base game.
A rehabilitation of DOOM Eternal that does away with the stupid "the demons ask you respect their pronouns" jokes, demolishes the castle of funko pops, wipes away the allusions to your little brother's collection of nazi viking black metal records and instead chooses to go full Plutonia by making almost every room into a maximal Video Game combat encounter with little requirement for coherence in-between. Amps up the self-aware dumb and the feckless fun in so many ways, best exemplified in stuff like the Marauder getting silly little tweety birds above his head and a new enemy type that makes you do some Ghostbusters shit. It's cute!
Reluctantly played on Ultra-Violence, and I think calling the gameplay here "sweaty" would be an understatement - I literally had to plan scratching my nose and blinking around the iframes of certain animations... And I kinda loved it? Game-cocaine in its purest uncut form, a brilliant realisation of oldDOOM's slaughtermaps for the modern age that makes me wish this thing had the support of proper modding tools. One of only a handful of modern era video games I can think of that is capable of inducing the oft-coveted "flow state" that Pro Gamers aspire to, a game of DDR where you're stamping on necks.
My only real problem with the game is the things it does when you're coming down from the combat high. We've known since the days of Super Mario Sunshine that platforming puzzles that require a fly-by introduction of their layout are doomed to frustration and failure, and TAG1 throws in a lot of them to pad for time and exposition. Nothing that'll rip and tear your hair out, but has anyone ever seriously wanted to do timed parkour in a DOOM game?? C'mon... Stick to diagonal running please Doomguy. Anyway, it's just kinda funny to think that Satan (seriously id please just use Christian names for your bad guys, it's badass that you get codec calls from God in this one) designed the inner sanctums of Hell with a 1990s assumption that Doomguy can't jump, only for him to rock up in 2020 with two airdashes and a booster lol
The story is the usual "whatever" bullshit that we've come to expect from the nuDoom franchise, but I did kinda appreciate that they finally got rid of that robot fella and replaced him with a dweeby keyboard warrior who insists on calling the Slayer "Doomguy". Representation matters!
Reluctantly played on Ultra-Violence, and I think calling the gameplay here "sweaty" would be an understatement - I literally had to plan scratching my nose and blinking around the iframes of certain animations... And I kinda loved it? Game-cocaine in its purest uncut form, a brilliant realisation of oldDOOM's slaughtermaps for the modern age that makes me wish this thing had the support of proper modding tools. One of only a handful of modern era video games I can think of that is capable of inducing the oft-coveted "flow state" that Pro Gamers aspire to, a game of DDR where you're stamping on necks.
My only real problem with the game is the things it does when you're coming down from the combat high. We've known since the days of Super Mario Sunshine that platforming puzzles that require a fly-by introduction of their layout are doomed to frustration and failure, and TAG1 throws in a lot of them to pad for time and exposition. Nothing that'll rip and tear your hair out, but has anyone ever seriously wanted to do timed parkour in a DOOM game?? C'mon... Stick to diagonal running please Doomguy. Anyway, it's just kinda funny to think that Satan (seriously id please just use Christian names for your bad guys, it's badass that you get codec calls from God in this one) designed the inner sanctums of Hell with a 1990s assumption that Doomguy can't jump, only for him to rock up in 2020 with two airdashes and a booster lol
The story is the usual "whatever" bullshit that we've come to expect from the nuDoom franchise, but I did kinda appreciate that they finally got rid of that robot fella and replaced him with a dweeby keyboard warrior who insists on calling the Slayer "Doomguy". Representation matters!
People weren't kidding when they said it was hard, made it through on Ultra Violence only after 200 deaths but that's because I'm too stubborn on not changing the difficulty. I think it's a personal reminder I should try playing more for fun and not to kill myself over a challenge, as it only soured my experience with Doom Eternal.
I did enjoy all the new environments, they continue to go all out on the detail of these levels.
The only real bug I met was I couldn't get to the final secret encounter. That was frustrating after completing all the others and reading I would have to replay the entire level again just to get it to trigger. No thanks.
I did enjoy all the new environments, they continue to go all out on the detail of these levels.
The only real bug I met was I couldn't get to the final secret encounter. That was frustrating after completing all the others and reading I would have to replay the entire level again just to get it to trigger. No thanks.
The new DLC is good. It shows some glimpses of Doom Eternal's true potential whereas the main campaign was tame in comparison, the same way that Plutonia started going all out with the (new) enemies in Doom 2. Here you start fully upgraded, so there are no RPG systems and trawling through pause menus to fuck with the pacing. You don't get the Crucible either (you left it in the Icon of Simp's head at the end of the base campaign), so now you have to actually engage with Archviles and Tyrants in earnest instead of using your delete button (although the BFG still exists and the Ice Bomb and Lock-on Burst deletes them about as easily, but oh well).
The first level in the DLC, the UAC Oil Rig, is the most straightforward of the bunch, and mostly exists to serve as a warm-up for those who haven't played DE in a while. The encounters here start to ask much more out of you: Cyber-Mancubi start appearing as often as regular Mancubi, Barons start appearing on the regular, Carcasses and Shieldguys feel like they are in every encounter. Superheavies just start appearing even in the small corridors inbetween the arenas. But more importantly, the arenas get a lot more cramped. You don't get as much room to run/dash circles around enemies, environmental hazards such as electrified floors appear more frequently, and heavy demons are able to more effectively pressure you now that you have less space to work with. Hell, the second Marauder fight in this level takes place in a janitor closet. A trend that will be more apparent in the later levels is that the outer rims of the arena now tend to provide less sightlines on the center of the arena (where most of the enemies and fodder are). So whereas in the base campaign you could often peck away at enemies from the outer rims of the arena, now you have to move towards the center if you want to find fodder to GK/Chainsaw and don't want to deal with a surprise Hell Knight around the corner.
There is only one new enemy type introduced in this level (not counting the shark) in the form of the Turret. It's an Ambient Enemy that serves to be a nuisance, but not necessarily in a good way. Much like the Tentacles you can only damage it when it pops up, and it pops down when you hit it/when you're too close to it/when you look at it too long. It takes at least two high-power shots to kill (like a Precision Bolt or a Ballista shot), so you'll inevitably be forced to wait for it to pop back up. The underlying idea behind this design is that because the Turret itself isn't a major threat and because you usually have ten other more threatening demons to worry about, you're better off focusing your attention on them instead of waiting for this lowly Turret to pop back up. But usually you can find a safe moment where you can focus on the Turret, and eventually can do nothing but wait to kill it, which isn't very engaging. It would be nice if there was a way to immediately bait them into popping up, or if they could be instantly destroyed with a Blood Punch regardless of their state.
One rather annoying thing about this level is the underwater swimming sections, which are just a waste of time and involve even less player interaction than the platforming sections. Doomguy's oxygen is suddenly limited now (lol) and you have to get a wetsuit to breathe underwater, which is just a repurposed radsuit. At least the radsuit offered interesting possibilities by creating a limit to how long you could stay on acid floors without taking damage (even though the base campaign never really tried to play more with this idea in big encounters), but the wetsuit has no such flexibility unless underwater combat ever becomes a thing.
The second level, the Blood Swamps, is where shit gets real. First you get these plants everywhere that detonate after a second or two if you get near them, and leave behind some acid on the floor that damages and slows you down; making you stay airborne and move around more. The second is that there's now cloaked Whiplashes and GIANT Tentacles. Whiplashes aren't as threatening as they were at first if you know how to quickswap a little, so cloaking them so they can sneak into your face does help make them more threatening. Giant Tentacles are just scaled-up Tentacles, but it does fill an extra role in the bestiary by being able to prevent you from safely approaching a much larger area. The third is gimmicks, lots of gimmicks. And That's A Good Thing! I've always argued that nuDoom and Eternal should have employed way more gimmicks for their arenas, because it allows arenas to be more distinct. The new Doom games cannot create variety through different monster placement and level layout to the same extent that the old Doom games could, because the enemy AI in the new Dooms is simply too chaotic and unpredictable to create handcrafted levels around without the enemies doing something you never intended. In old Doom the levels had to compensate for the simple AI, and in the new Dooms it's sort of the other way around. Obviously the arenas in the new Doom games aren't literally copypasted. Elements like heavy demon placement, how much fodder demons there are to farm resources off, and the layout of the arena do affect how you play, but not necessarily in a noticeable way. If you can get by in an arena fight using roughly the same strategy of the last arena, it can't help but feel repetitive.
But here you've got gimmicks that affect how you have to strategize on a macro-level. So you get fog that doesn't let you see more than five feet ahead of you, making long-range weapons unreliable and having you try and get the high ground (by Meathook-jumping) so you can see clearly above the fog, all while the high ground is littered with the aforementioned plants. So you get a section that passively damages you unless you stay in the protective bubble of a wolf familiar, all while enemies come from every direction to invade your tiny safe space, especially demons like Shieldguys, Pinkies and Barons that are a massive pain to deal with in close quarters. There is also a section with a Buff Totem that is locked until you kill a buffed Marauder. I honestly wish arenas would more regularly use Buff Totems in this fashion where you are forced to fight buffed enemies, instead of how they're normally used, where on your first try you ignore all the enemies and are looking around the arena to find the damn thing, and on subsequent attempts you just beeline towards wherever the Buff Totem is.
The biggest gamechanger so far is the Spirit. It's the Summoner from nuDoom, except now it possesses enemies, which: gives them massive damage resistances, makes them immune to any kind of faltering or Ice Bombs, buffs their movement and attack speed, and removes their weak points. What's great about Spirits is how they allow the entire enemy roster to be recontextualized into essentially new enemies. Possessed Arachnotrons force you to deal with their turret and make you rely more on the arena layout to break line of sight and avoid having to play Touhou with it. Possessed Hell Knights and Barons of Hell will simply deal unavoidable damage if you do not keep your distance at all times. Possessed Tyrants and Pain Elementals are the closest thing DE has to a Chaingunner. Fighting these makes you realize just how easy you had it up until now by being able to control enemies with falters and destroying their weak points, so enemies that can ignore all of your bullshit really pushes you to improve your fundamentals, and allows other nuisance enemies like Carcasses and Shieldguys to be even more relevant threats.
The only way to kill a Spirit is to kill its host and then lock it down with the Microwave Beam. If you don't kill it in time, it will possess another nearby enemy and make you go through the same dance all over again. Having an enemy only be killable with one weapon is particular is certainly controversial, especially if it's the weapon that most considered to be the worst in the game, but I think in this case it is a net positive and not just a matter of color-coding to force variety. While you use the Microwave Beam you are slowed down, which makes you extra vulnerable to enemies around you--especially melee-focused enemies. This forces you to ask whether finishing off the possessed demon in this time and position is a good idea, and whether you shouldn't first create a situation where you can take care of the Spirit without getting interrupted. The other aspect is that it makes you be more mindful of your cell ammo in particular, because by the time the Spirit pops up you want to have enough juice in the can to take care of it in one cycle before it possesses something else and makes you go through the whole dance again. So now you have to be more careful about using the Ballista in your quickswap combos. These dynamics wouldn't be as present if you could just shoot down the Spirit with any weapon while being able to move freely and not having to worry as much about ammo. Paradoxically, limiting you to one weapon in this case results in more interesting gameplay than if you could use anything.
However, I do have one issue with this implementation of Spirits, which is that it puts a ceiling on how many possessed enemies you could reasonably deal with at once. Enemies being able to spawn pre-possessed allows for way more variation in level design, but because you have to make yourself vulnerable with the Microwave Beam to kill the Spirits, you can only have so many possessed enemies at once before things become bullshit overwhelming, whereas without the need to microwave Spirits the level designers could be a lot more flexible in this regard. And because you can only have so many Spirits at once, you probably don't want to waste them on fodder demons, even though there is some potential in having to fight larger groups of possessed fodder demons.
The third level, The Holt, is less overtly gimmicky, but it still has enough in terms of unorthodox surprises and set-ups to keep things fresh, such as an arena interspersed with pylons that damage you if you touch them, an arena where the floor is lava and you're surrounded by flying enemies, and a fight against a possessed Tyrant which is a MAJOR pain since you only get 1 (one) respawning fodder enemy to work with. That's a common theme with The Holt, where a large part of the difficulty stems that there's way less fodder spawns for you to farm resources off, as opposed to the UAC Oil Rig where fodder would often clump together for you to easily ignite and detonate into a flaming ball of +100 armor. It means you can't rely on your generic fallback strategies as much and have to be more mindful of doing unnecessarily risky shit. The lack of fodder to Chainsaw for ammo is compensated for with the presence of Makyr Drones. Speaking of, on launch shooting their head wouldn't drop any health, but only ammo. But id later "fixed" this to drop both. I find this unfortunate, because it does away with the dynamics of 'do I headshot them for ammo or do I set up a Glory Kill for health' and keeping them alive as floating ammo packs for when you really need it, whereas in a level with a draught of fodder and health items, going for a Makyr Drone's head is not even a question.
This level also introduces the Blood Makyr, which is basically a Turret that can fly around, except it fires damaging AoE zones that also slow you down, so it's more of a relevant threat. It's invulnerable to everything until it attacks, so damaging it again involves more waiting. At least it dies in one shot to the head instead of two. Like I said before, I could tolerate them more if there was a way to sidestep their immunity by playing proactively, such as being able to bait them into dropping their guard (f.e. by deploying a mod that slows you down like Mobile Turret or Auto-Fire and then quickswapping to a weapon that can oneshot them) or by hitting them with a fully charged Destroyer Blade or something. That said, I do like having a supporting enemy that you simply cannot swat away in the middle of a fight while there's more threatening enemies around. I just wish dealing with it wasn't largely outside the player's control.
The boss fight against Samur is the best in the game, the best in the franchise, and honestly one of the best of the genre (an admittedly low bar), for it is one of the few FPS bosses I can describe with full confidence as being truly... average. What makes it so average is that it actually tests you on your mastery over the core gameplay instead of forcing a different and more limited playstyle on you at the eleventh hour. So the boss fight heavily relies on spawning in regular demons to pressure you from multiple directions and lock you in, and the boss actually challenges your aim by constantly zipping around every which way. The constant teleporting also has the added benefit on making the Lock-on Burst unreliable, so you can't rely on that crutch for this fight. This is in stark contrast to the Khan Makyr fight where you could just spam Lock-on Burst or your other favourite weapon at a static target, the waiting game that is the Gladiator fight, or the clusterfuck that is the Icon of Sin. That said, the first three phases of the fight are a total doozy.
The first phase doesn't have many heavy adds (or many adds at all) to keep you on your toes, and Samur isn't that big of a threat himself with his easily avoidable projectile spread, so you can get away with just focusing down Samur for most of the fight. Samur does spawn Eyes that move in a fixed path and deal damage if you're nearby, which are neat and make focusing down Samur a bit more complicated, but unfortunately he only spawns these when you get him down to about 50% health, so you won't notice their presence that much for this phase. The second phase has Samur become invincible and make you fight a Possessed Mancubus and Hell Knight at once, but this phase is hamstrung by the fact that there's a pillar in the middle of the arena which you can use to break line of sight between you and the Possessed Mancubus while you go deal with the Possessed Hell Knight first, so you're not even really fighting both at once. The third phase certainly has the setup to be good, the problem is that the Cacodemons don't spawn in at a fast enough rate/high enough amount to really put pressure on the limited amount of space you now have.
The fourth phase is when things actually start getting good. It's a repeat of the first phase, except now you have lasers slowly combing over the arena to give you a macro-level threat to keep in mind, there's a constantly respawning Blood Makyr to complicate things further, and the new layout of the arena is more vertical in a way that no longer gives you a clear oversight over the whole arena, which makes getting a line of sight on a speedy Samur way more difficult. Because of the raised platforms you also have less space to deal with Samur's attacks without falling to the bottom where the Blood Makyr and the rest of the adds are. The fifth phase now has you deal with a Possessed Pain Elemental and Possessed Dread Knight on top of a Blood Makyr, which is something that cost me a good half hour to beat. You really have to try this without crutches like superweapons or the Lock-on Burst to appreciate how intense this phase can get. A Possessed Pain Elemental is ridiculously accurate while the Dread Knight is being ridiculously aggressive, and all the while you're trying to find an opportunity where you can take care of the Spirit without the other Possessed enemy interfering. It really shows the potential of having to deal with multiple Possessed enemies, but I suppose we'll see more of that in TAG2.
I suppose having to predominantly fight minions in a boss fight instead of the boss itself may not be thematically satisfying, but for a game that's all about fighting multiple enemies at once it is only logical to incorporate this into your boss design. That said, I would have preferred there to be one last phase where you fight against Samur himself instead of more minions.
Overall, the DLC was great and highlights that there's still plenty of potential to be had in Doom Eternal's formula. I'm looking forward to TAG 2.
The first level in the DLC, the UAC Oil Rig, is the most straightforward of the bunch, and mostly exists to serve as a warm-up for those who haven't played DE in a while. The encounters here start to ask much more out of you: Cyber-Mancubi start appearing as often as regular Mancubi, Barons start appearing on the regular, Carcasses and Shieldguys feel like they are in every encounter. Superheavies just start appearing even in the small corridors inbetween the arenas. But more importantly, the arenas get a lot more cramped. You don't get as much room to run/dash circles around enemies, environmental hazards such as electrified floors appear more frequently, and heavy demons are able to more effectively pressure you now that you have less space to work with. Hell, the second Marauder fight in this level takes place in a janitor closet. A trend that will be more apparent in the later levels is that the outer rims of the arena now tend to provide less sightlines on the center of the arena (where most of the enemies and fodder are). So whereas in the base campaign you could often peck away at enemies from the outer rims of the arena, now you have to move towards the center if you want to find fodder to GK/Chainsaw and don't want to deal with a surprise Hell Knight around the corner.
There is only one new enemy type introduced in this level (not counting the shark) in the form of the Turret. It's an Ambient Enemy that serves to be a nuisance, but not necessarily in a good way. Much like the Tentacles you can only damage it when it pops up, and it pops down when you hit it/when you're too close to it/when you look at it too long. It takes at least two high-power shots to kill (like a Precision Bolt or a Ballista shot), so you'll inevitably be forced to wait for it to pop back up. The underlying idea behind this design is that because the Turret itself isn't a major threat and because you usually have ten other more threatening demons to worry about, you're better off focusing your attention on them instead of waiting for this lowly Turret to pop back up. But usually you can find a safe moment where you can focus on the Turret, and eventually can do nothing but wait to kill it, which isn't very engaging. It would be nice if there was a way to immediately bait them into popping up, or if they could be instantly destroyed with a Blood Punch regardless of their state.
One rather annoying thing about this level is the underwater swimming sections, which are just a waste of time and involve even less player interaction than the platforming sections. Doomguy's oxygen is suddenly limited now (lol) and you have to get a wetsuit to breathe underwater, which is just a repurposed radsuit. At least the radsuit offered interesting possibilities by creating a limit to how long you could stay on acid floors without taking damage (even though the base campaign never really tried to play more with this idea in big encounters), but the wetsuit has no such flexibility unless underwater combat ever becomes a thing.
The second level, the Blood Swamps, is where shit gets real. First you get these plants everywhere that detonate after a second or two if you get near them, and leave behind some acid on the floor that damages and slows you down; making you stay airborne and move around more. The second is that there's now cloaked Whiplashes and GIANT Tentacles. Whiplashes aren't as threatening as they were at first if you know how to quickswap a little, so cloaking them so they can sneak into your face does help make them more threatening. Giant Tentacles are just scaled-up Tentacles, but it does fill an extra role in the bestiary by being able to prevent you from safely approaching a much larger area. The third is gimmicks, lots of gimmicks. And That's A Good Thing! I've always argued that nuDoom and Eternal should have employed way more gimmicks for their arenas, because it allows arenas to be more distinct. The new Doom games cannot create variety through different monster placement and level layout to the same extent that the old Doom games could, because the enemy AI in the new Dooms is simply too chaotic and unpredictable to create handcrafted levels around without the enemies doing something you never intended. In old Doom the levels had to compensate for the simple AI, and in the new Dooms it's sort of the other way around. Obviously the arenas in the new Doom games aren't literally copypasted. Elements like heavy demon placement, how much fodder demons there are to farm resources off, and the layout of the arena do affect how you play, but not necessarily in a noticeable way. If you can get by in an arena fight using roughly the same strategy of the last arena, it can't help but feel repetitive.
But here you've got gimmicks that affect how you have to strategize on a macro-level. So you get fog that doesn't let you see more than five feet ahead of you, making long-range weapons unreliable and having you try and get the high ground (by Meathook-jumping) so you can see clearly above the fog, all while the high ground is littered with the aforementioned plants. So you get a section that passively damages you unless you stay in the protective bubble of a wolf familiar, all while enemies come from every direction to invade your tiny safe space, especially demons like Shieldguys, Pinkies and Barons that are a massive pain to deal with in close quarters. There is also a section with a Buff Totem that is locked until you kill a buffed Marauder. I honestly wish arenas would more regularly use Buff Totems in this fashion where you are forced to fight buffed enemies, instead of how they're normally used, where on your first try you ignore all the enemies and are looking around the arena to find the damn thing, and on subsequent attempts you just beeline towards wherever the Buff Totem is.
The biggest gamechanger so far is the Spirit. It's the Summoner from nuDoom, except now it possesses enemies, which: gives them massive damage resistances, makes them immune to any kind of faltering or Ice Bombs, buffs their movement and attack speed, and removes their weak points. What's great about Spirits is how they allow the entire enemy roster to be recontextualized into essentially new enemies. Possessed Arachnotrons force you to deal with their turret and make you rely more on the arena layout to break line of sight and avoid having to play Touhou with it. Possessed Hell Knights and Barons of Hell will simply deal unavoidable damage if you do not keep your distance at all times. Possessed Tyrants and Pain Elementals are the closest thing DE has to a Chaingunner. Fighting these makes you realize just how easy you had it up until now by being able to control enemies with falters and destroying their weak points, so enemies that can ignore all of your bullshit really pushes you to improve your fundamentals, and allows other nuisance enemies like Carcasses and Shieldguys to be even more relevant threats.
The only way to kill a Spirit is to kill its host and then lock it down with the Microwave Beam. If you don't kill it in time, it will possess another nearby enemy and make you go through the same dance all over again. Having an enemy only be killable with one weapon is particular is certainly controversial, especially if it's the weapon that most considered to be the worst in the game, but I think in this case it is a net positive and not just a matter of color-coding to force variety. While you use the Microwave Beam you are slowed down, which makes you extra vulnerable to enemies around you--especially melee-focused enemies. This forces you to ask whether finishing off the possessed demon in this time and position is a good idea, and whether you shouldn't first create a situation where you can take care of the Spirit without getting interrupted. The other aspect is that it makes you be more mindful of your cell ammo in particular, because by the time the Spirit pops up you want to have enough juice in the can to take care of it in one cycle before it possesses something else and makes you go through the whole dance again. So now you have to be more careful about using the Ballista in your quickswap combos. These dynamics wouldn't be as present if you could just shoot down the Spirit with any weapon while being able to move freely and not having to worry as much about ammo. Paradoxically, limiting you to one weapon in this case results in more interesting gameplay than if you could use anything.
However, I do have one issue with this implementation of Spirits, which is that it puts a ceiling on how many possessed enemies you could reasonably deal with at once. Enemies being able to spawn pre-possessed allows for way more variation in level design, but because you have to make yourself vulnerable with the Microwave Beam to kill the Spirits, you can only have so many possessed enemies at once before things become bullshit overwhelming, whereas without the need to microwave Spirits the level designers could be a lot more flexible in this regard. And because you can only have so many Spirits at once, you probably don't want to waste them on fodder demons, even though there is some potential in having to fight larger groups of possessed fodder demons.
The third level, The Holt, is less overtly gimmicky, but it still has enough in terms of unorthodox surprises and set-ups to keep things fresh, such as an arena interspersed with pylons that damage you if you touch them, an arena where the floor is lava and you're surrounded by flying enemies, and a fight against a possessed Tyrant which is a MAJOR pain since you only get 1 (one) respawning fodder enemy to work with. That's a common theme with The Holt, where a large part of the difficulty stems that there's way less fodder spawns for you to farm resources off, as opposed to the UAC Oil Rig where fodder would often clump together for you to easily ignite and detonate into a flaming ball of +100 armor. It means you can't rely on your generic fallback strategies as much and have to be more mindful of doing unnecessarily risky shit. The lack of fodder to Chainsaw for ammo is compensated for with the presence of Makyr Drones. Speaking of, on launch shooting their head wouldn't drop any health, but only ammo. But id later "fixed" this to drop both. I find this unfortunate, because it does away with the dynamics of 'do I headshot them for ammo or do I set up a Glory Kill for health' and keeping them alive as floating ammo packs for when you really need it, whereas in a level with a draught of fodder and health items, going for a Makyr Drone's head is not even a question.
This level also introduces the Blood Makyr, which is basically a Turret that can fly around, except it fires damaging AoE zones that also slow you down, so it's more of a relevant threat. It's invulnerable to everything until it attacks, so damaging it again involves more waiting. At least it dies in one shot to the head instead of two. Like I said before, I could tolerate them more if there was a way to sidestep their immunity by playing proactively, such as being able to bait them into dropping their guard (f.e. by deploying a mod that slows you down like Mobile Turret or Auto-Fire and then quickswapping to a weapon that can oneshot them) or by hitting them with a fully charged Destroyer Blade or something. That said, I do like having a supporting enemy that you simply cannot swat away in the middle of a fight while there's more threatening enemies around. I just wish dealing with it wasn't largely outside the player's control.
The boss fight against Samur is the best in the game, the best in the franchise, and honestly one of the best of the genre (an admittedly low bar), for it is one of the few FPS bosses I can describe with full confidence as being truly... average. What makes it so average is that it actually tests you on your mastery over the core gameplay instead of forcing a different and more limited playstyle on you at the eleventh hour. So the boss fight heavily relies on spawning in regular demons to pressure you from multiple directions and lock you in, and the boss actually challenges your aim by constantly zipping around every which way. The constant teleporting also has the added benefit on making the Lock-on Burst unreliable, so you can't rely on that crutch for this fight. This is in stark contrast to the Khan Makyr fight where you could just spam Lock-on Burst or your other favourite weapon at a static target, the waiting game that is the Gladiator fight, or the clusterfuck that is the Icon of Sin. That said, the first three phases of the fight are a total doozy.
The first phase doesn't have many heavy adds (or many adds at all) to keep you on your toes, and Samur isn't that big of a threat himself with his easily avoidable projectile spread, so you can get away with just focusing down Samur for most of the fight. Samur does spawn Eyes that move in a fixed path and deal damage if you're nearby, which are neat and make focusing down Samur a bit more complicated, but unfortunately he only spawns these when you get him down to about 50% health, so you won't notice their presence that much for this phase. The second phase has Samur become invincible and make you fight a Possessed Mancubus and Hell Knight at once, but this phase is hamstrung by the fact that there's a pillar in the middle of the arena which you can use to break line of sight between you and the Possessed Mancubus while you go deal with the Possessed Hell Knight first, so you're not even really fighting both at once. The third phase certainly has the setup to be good, the problem is that the Cacodemons don't spawn in at a fast enough rate/high enough amount to really put pressure on the limited amount of space you now have.
The fourth phase is when things actually start getting good. It's a repeat of the first phase, except now you have lasers slowly combing over the arena to give you a macro-level threat to keep in mind, there's a constantly respawning Blood Makyr to complicate things further, and the new layout of the arena is more vertical in a way that no longer gives you a clear oversight over the whole arena, which makes getting a line of sight on a speedy Samur way more difficult. Because of the raised platforms you also have less space to deal with Samur's attacks without falling to the bottom where the Blood Makyr and the rest of the adds are. The fifth phase now has you deal with a Possessed Pain Elemental and Possessed Dread Knight on top of a Blood Makyr, which is something that cost me a good half hour to beat. You really have to try this without crutches like superweapons or the Lock-on Burst to appreciate how intense this phase can get. A Possessed Pain Elemental is ridiculously accurate while the Dread Knight is being ridiculously aggressive, and all the while you're trying to find an opportunity where you can take care of the Spirit without the other Possessed enemy interfering. It really shows the potential of having to deal with multiple Possessed enemies, but I suppose we'll see more of that in TAG2.
I suppose having to predominantly fight minions in a boss fight instead of the boss itself may not be thematically satisfying, but for a game that's all about fighting multiple enemies at once it is only logical to incorporate this into your boss design. That said, I would have preferred there to be one last phase where you fight against Samur himself instead of more minions.
Overall, the DLC was great and highlights that there's still plenty of potential to be had in Doom Eternal's formula. I'm looking forward to TAG 2.
this DLC is a Refinery of Doom Eternal's enemies and Unruly Evil mechanics. A lot of the punches pulled from the original campaign are now punching you in full as you fight through the Halls of the Damned and climb up the Fortress of Mystery, trying not to turn into a Human BBQ. The ghost enemies are new and difficult but the way you deal with them is Dead Simple. It's a perfect dance where you feel you are in Nirvana, and after the Doom Eternal story, you think you are in control. But once you see two marauders, you know they Gotcha!
Because the designers don't have to hold back, every encounter is like an Inferno of Blood. Very difficult and fun, a lot of Tricks and Traps in the levels make it fun even when you're not fighting. I just hope part two will not be Even Simpler.
Because the designers don't have to hold back, every encounter is like an Inferno of Blood. Very difficult and fun, a lot of Tricks and Traps in the levels make it fun even when you're not fighting. I just hope part two will not be Even Simpler.
"is it over yet?" Is the phrase that kept going through my head. Things feel dragged out. There are interesting ideas here, but overall this was tedious past the first level. I had missed the crucible not because of the ability to instantly remove a threat but just for the sake of being able to speed up the encounters. Every archvile and spirit didn't didn't make think "oh what an interesting challenge" it made me think "boy this is gonna take some time". Maybe I will enjoy it more on the replay now that I'm familiar with it, but this was kind of a miserable slog, while the base game to me feels masterful.
id made an entirely new enemy just to get people to actually use the stupid microwave beam mod.
Holy shit getting those blue ghost guys is hard.
Anyway the additions are fun and all but honestly I mostly love this because it's more Eternal to play. It also doesn't have the "mortally challenged" HAHA FUNNI JOEK so that's a plus.
Anyway the additions are fun and all but honestly I mostly love this because it's more Eternal to play. It also doesn't have the "mortally challenged" HAHA FUNNI JOEK so that's a plus.
Finding it a bit hard to separate this and the base game in my mind, mainly because this largely plays and feels like the extended endgame that the base game kind of just didn't have. You basically get thrown back in with all the tools that you spend the base game getting, and get to use them for a few hours (with a couple of extra enemy mechanics to spice it up). It's fun.
I saw some people had some issues with the Spirit enemies, and I think they might be slightly disruptive to the combat loop but most of the time they work just fine, it's another High Value Target that you need to pay attention to. They're used moderately poorly at the end, because the arena that you're in just kind of has you fighting them with almost no other monsters to engage in the rest of the combat loop with, and it shows how much the game is built on that chaotic loop. It really needs there to be a lot of monsters trying to fuck you up, or it starts to feel weird.
This is also the point where the lore goes from really annoyingly bad to enlightened funny self-parody.
I saw some people had some issues with the Spirit enemies, and I think they might be slightly disruptive to the combat loop but most of the time they work just fine, it's another High Value Target that you need to pay attention to. They're used moderately poorly at the end, because the arena that you're in just kind of has you fighting them with almost no other monsters to engage in the rest of the combat loop with, and it shows how much the game is built on that chaotic loop. It really needs there to be a lot of monsters trying to fuck you up, or it starts to feel weird.
This is also the point where the lore goes from really annoyingly bad to enlightened funny self-parody.
The tightest most creative encounters in Eternal enhanced by some clapping level gimmicks and incredible art design. Blood Angels rule as reactive priority grabbing enemies and spirits are a neat curveball thrown to intensify encounters even further. The best form the new Doom series has ever been.
This review contains spoilers
There's not much I dislike about Doom Eternal, so when I drafted my review of it, I thought it would be easier to summarize my experience with the game by contrasting my original experience with it at launch, and replaying it nearly three years later.
Sure, Doom Eternal has problems. Every game has its problems. Every game is graded on a curve. I would look like an idiot if I gave the original Super Mario Bros. a low score and said something along the lines of, “I didn’t like the music, and the story is almost nonexistent”. Anyone who’s played Super Mario Bros. would tell me, okay man, maybe the music’s not your taste or whatever, but the story? Mario is about jumping over and on top of things, not a story-driven narrative adventure. That’s just one example, but you get what I’m saying, right? Any critic would or should judge a game on its own merits although, yeah, all critics strike from different angles and see different things, which is why critique can be such a difficult thing to approach; but in this one instance, I’d imagine people would be calling me names for trying to claim the original Super Mario Bros. is bad because of its story or lack thereof.
The story of Doom Eternal may not be its centerpiece, and I’m not even going to pull the Carmack quote (iykyk), but I remember even playing it for the first time, Doom Eternal felt so tonally inconsistent with Doom 2016 and, to be frank, with itself at some points.
The politically correct holograms are probably the best example of Eternal leaning too heavy into its silliness, and these are some of the only elements I still don’t like that much. A lot of the sillier things are the more videogamey things, the dumb stock “GULP” SFX that plays when you shoot a grenade into a Cacodemon’s mouth, or the cork pop sound that plays when you get a headshot, or the Marauder seeing stars when you blast him with your SSG or Ballista. It’s dumb, but it’s kinda fun, too. A lot of the dumb fun in 2016 was, for me, in how the game characterized the Doomslayer through his actions alone: breaking a computer when Samuel Hayden said something he didn’t like, or disobeying orders, or even creating a backup copy of VEGA - the helpful AI program who reappears in Eternal’s Fortress of Doom.
Doom Eternal doubles down on its tongue-in-cheekness, but then triples down on its lore, creating this almost quasi-Souls mythology which is drip fed via codex entries and the like. In 2016 you could safely ignore most of this background information because, I mean, come on, it’s Doom, baby! There was only ever one question in any player’s mind in Doom 2016 and that was, by and large, are we playing as the same Doomguy from the original Doom games? In short: yes, we are, but for some reason, Doom Eternal goes even further, maybe almost too far in a few places.
From my understanding, both Doom 1 and 2 are canon, as well as Doom 64 (which I haven’t played) and apparently a LOT happened between then and 2016, and even MORE happens between 2016 and Eternal, although this isn’t given much explanation. It’s weird then, that Doom Eternal still presents itself with the same handwave-y, “Oh, you know, uh… the Ancients, and the… artifacts, prophecy, or whatever,” just constant precision airstrikes of term-sodden, lorebabbling nothing. Apparently VEGA is also GOD who was brainwashed into THINKING he was an AI? At least id software gives you a skip button for cutscenes now, yeah? But the main problem isn’t just the borderline-incomprehensible narrative as much as it is the fact that Eternal posits, yes, Doomguy is really just a dude with, like, divine superpowers bestowed upon him by an alien cyborg half-angel-demon who just liked him that much. I’m oversimplifying things a little. You can just ignore all that and boil it down to the bare essentials, Doomguy knows what he's doing. While some people (i.e. I) interpreted Doomguy’s actions in 2016 as brute force and rebellion against the authority that allowed demons to invade in the first place, Doom Eternal instead frames Doomguy’s actions as all wholly intentional, galaxy-brain know-how from countless years of arcane experience which conveniently happens offscreen. All can be summarized as Doomguy deliberately disobeying [character], and [character] yelling at him, “You fool! Do you realize what you’ve done? Now [bad thing] will happen, and nobody can stop [bad thing]... except maybe you, Doomguy!”
All this is to say, wow, it’s not that I don’t care about the story in Doom Eternal, but this is the kind of story that makes me want to watch an hourlong YouTube lore analysis video or something, because really, I don’t want to hazard any kind of interpretation of the deliberately-obfuscated story bits as they become arbitrarily available to me during my playtime. I’m too busy killing demons!!!
But none of that really matters because, again, [Carmack Quote, IYKYK] and although I don’t always agree with [Carmack Quote, IYKYK], I believe that Doom is, at the very least, one applicable example of the truth behind that quote. Nobody plays Doom Eternal exclusively for the story (or at very least, I hope they don’t?) and it would be unfair to judge the game on the merits of its story alone. It would also be unfair to judge Doom Eternal on the merits of its platforming alone, but if I had to, I probably would judge it fairly harshly!
I didn’t mind the platforming bits in Doom Eternal on my first playthrough. In fact, I originally thought platforming was a nice change of pace between combat encounters. On my second playthrough, I thought, what exactly does this accomplish besides being a pacebreaker? There are some genuinely interesting obstacles here and there, but these are few and far between; mostly, it’s just making long jumps over bottomless pits (which don’t kill you outright like in 2016, which is good) which is a different variety of gameplay, sure, traversal puzzles always make for some serviceable pacebreakers, but there’s not any puzzle here at all, really. It’s not even a traversal puzzle, it’s just… traversal.
But again, this is hardly a point against Doom Eternal. These sections are short, forgettable, but more importantly, do not significantly hamper the experience overall.
Most of Doom Eternal zips by anyhow, lost in the constant stream of bloody, visceral murder. It shouldn’t come as a surprise then, that if I were to tell you something stupidly obvious, like “You know, if you just ignore the bad parts of Doom Eternal, it’s actually a perfect game,” because I’m sure you know this. If you ignore the bad parts of Doom Eternal, TAG1 is also a perfect DLC… almost.
It is nothing if not more Doom Eternal, except more difficult, with more enemies, and somehow condensed into only three levels. This was a super controversial DLC when it was first released, I remember my friends whispering horror stories of the legendary bullshit Hugo Martin filled TAG1 with. Now that I’ve come out on the other side of that dark tunnel, I definitely see why.
Again, I have only played this game on Ultraviolence, I know that Nightmare is the “true” difficulty for newDoom purists now but I simply decline. I will tackle Nightmare one day when I’m well and ready. Ultraviolence was and is enough for me.
TAG1 feels like a cruel and unusual joke from start to finish, and I do mean that admirably. It feels like an expansion on everything Doom Eternal set out to (and dare I say did) accomplish, as is evident because players start with literally everything unlocked. All weapon mods are maxed out from the jump. There’s nothing left for players to discover or upgrade (except for the purple perks I don’t remember what they’re called), and yet Doom Eternal has not finished evolving – this creates a lot of friction.
Your crucible is GONE. You are back to zero lives by default (although the DLC does introduce 2ups, which I could never figure out how to obtain). It was when I reached that one part (in the first level) where players are submerged and enter an underwater technobase that I realized Hugo Martin wanted my fucking head on a pike. Facing down two Marauders at once, I thought to myself, now I’ve finally entered the Big Boy Zone, no more baby crap!
I don’t remember dying a lot. In fact, I don’t think I died until the final boss which, to me, communicates that I’m at least proficient in Ultraviolence at this point. There aren't many new enemies, and the ones they introduce are a turret, an invisible whiplash, and a tentacle that is just… really big this time. The Spirits are actually interesting ideas for enemies, demanding priority over other enemies lest they possess another host. Do they elevate the DLC? Not really.
What elevates TAG1 is the ridiculous difficulty. TAG1 doubles down on every questionable design decision and demands mastery, no freebies, no half-hearted good-enoughs, just unmistakable comprehension of the available tools and their correct applications. Simple as.
Even so, all the little things pile up. The devil’s in the details, so to speak, and although I suspect I’ll return to TAG1 when I decide to replay Doom Eternal on Nightmare, I can at leasy say I’m both excited and anxious to return to the meat grinder once again. At the end of the day, it really is just more Doom Eternal, with all its quirks and many of its familiar flaws. Although id software has perfected Eternal’s combat, the only things holding back is… well, everything besides its combat (and art direction, and music…)
What I’m trying to say is, uh, the final boss was kinda whatever, and the platforming is still not so fun either, so I wouldn’t give it a 10. But it’s pretty close!
Sure, Doom Eternal has problems. Every game has its problems. Every game is graded on a curve. I would look like an idiot if I gave the original Super Mario Bros. a low score and said something along the lines of, “I didn’t like the music, and the story is almost nonexistent”. Anyone who’s played Super Mario Bros. would tell me, okay man, maybe the music’s not your taste or whatever, but the story? Mario is about jumping over and on top of things, not a story-driven narrative adventure. That’s just one example, but you get what I’m saying, right? Any critic would or should judge a game on its own merits although, yeah, all critics strike from different angles and see different things, which is why critique can be such a difficult thing to approach; but in this one instance, I’d imagine people would be calling me names for trying to claim the original Super Mario Bros. is bad because of its story or lack thereof.
The story of Doom Eternal may not be its centerpiece, and I’m not even going to pull the Carmack quote (iykyk), but I remember even playing it for the first time, Doom Eternal felt so tonally inconsistent with Doom 2016 and, to be frank, with itself at some points.
The politically correct holograms are probably the best example of Eternal leaning too heavy into its silliness, and these are some of the only elements I still don’t like that much. A lot of the sillier things are the more videogamey things, the dumb stock “GULP” SFX that plays when you shoot a grenade into a Cacodemon’s mouth, or the cork pop sound that plays when you get a headshot, or the Marauder seeing stars when you blast him with your SSG or Ballista. It’s dumb, but it’s kinda fun, too. A lot of the dumb fun in 2016 was, for me, in how the game characterized the Doomslayer through his actions alone: breaking a computer when Samuel Hayden said something he didn’t like, or disobeying orders, or even creating a backup copy of VEGA - the helpful AI program who reappears in Eternal’s Fortress of Doom.
Doom Eternal doubles down on its tongue-in-cheekness, but then triples down on its lore, creating this almost quasi-Souls mythology which is drip fed via codex entries and the like. In 2016 you could safely ignore most of this background information because, I mean, come on, it’s Doom, baby! There was only ever one question in any player’s mind in Doom 2016 and that was, by and large, are we playing as the same Doomguy from the original Doom games? In short: yes, we are, but for some reason, Doom Eternal goes even further, maybe almost too far in a few places.
From my understanding, both Doom 1 and 2 are canon, as well as Doom 64 (which I haven’t played) and apparently a LOT happened between then and 2016, and even MORE happens between 2016 and Eternal, although this isn’t given much explanation. It’s weird then, that Doom Eternal still presents itself with the same handwave-y, “Oh, you know, uh… the Ancients, and the… artifacts, prophecy, or whatever,” just constant precision airstrikes of term-sodden, lorebabbling nothing. Apparently VEGA is also GOD who was brainwashed into THINKING he was an AI? At least id software gives you a skip button for cutscenes now, yeah? But the main problem isn’t just the borderline-incomprehensible narrative as much as it is the fact that Eternal posits, yes, Doomguy is really just a dude with, like, divine superpowers bestowed upon him by an alien cyborg half-angel-demon who just liked him that much. I’m oversimplifying things a little. You can just ignore all that and boil it down to the bare essentials, Doomguy knows what he's doing. While some people (i.e. I) interpreted Doomguy’s actions in 2016 as brute force and rebellion against the authority that allowed demons to invade in the first place, Doom Eternal instead frames Doomguy’s actions as all wholly intentional, galaxy-brain know-how from countless years of arcane experience which conveniently happens offscreen. All can be summarized as Doomguy deliberately disobeying [character], and [character] yelling at him, “You fool! Do you realize what you’ve done? Now [bad thing] will happen, and nobody can stop [bad thing]... except maybe you, Doomguy!”
All this is to say, wow, it’s not that I don’t care about the story in Doom Eternal, but this is the kind of story that makes me want to watch an hourlong YouTube lore analysis video or something, because really, I don’t want to hazard any kind of interpretation of the deliberately-obfuscated story bits as they become arbitrarily available to me during my playtime. I’m too busy killing demons!!!
But none of that really matters because, again, [Carmack Quote, IYKYK] and although I don’t always agree with [Carmack Quote, IYKYK], I believe that Doom is, at the very least, one applicable example of the truth behind that quote. Nobody plays Doom Eternal exclusively for the story (or at very least, I hope they don’t?) and it would be unfair to judge the game on the merits of its story alone. It would also be unfair to judge Doom Eternal on the merits of its platforming alone, but if I had to, I probably would judge it fairly harshly!
I didn’t mind the platforming bits in Doom Eternal on my first playthrough. In fact, I originally thought platforming was a nice change of pace between combat encounters. On my second playthrough, I thought, what exactly does this accomplish besides being a pacebreaker? There are some genuinely interesting obstacles here and there, but these are few and far between; mostly, it’s just making long jumps over bottomless pits (which don’t kill you outright like in 2016, which is good) which is a different variety of gameplay, sure, traversal puzzles always make for some serviceable pacebreakers, but there’s not any puzzle here at all, really. It’s not even a traversal puzzle, it’s just… traversal.
But again, this is hardly a point against Doom Eternal. These sections are short, forgettable, but more importantly, do not significantly hamper the experience overall.
Most of Doom Eternal zips by anyhow, lost in the constant stream of bloody, visceral murder. It shouldn’t come as a surprise then, that if I were to tell you something stupidly obvious, like “You know, if you just ignore the bad parts of Doom Eternal, it’s actually a perfect game,” because I’m sure you know this. If you ignore the bad parts of Doom Eternal, TAG1 is also a perfect DLC… almost.
It is nothing if not more Doom Eternal, except more difficult, with more enemies, and somehow condensed into only three levels. This was a super controversial DLC when it was first released, I remember my friends whispering horror stories of the legendary bullshit Hugo Martin filled TAG1 with. Now that I’ve come out on the other side of that dark tunnel, I definitely see why.
Again, I have only played this game on Ultraviolence, I know that Nightmare is the “true” difficulty for newDoom purists now but I simply decline. I will tackle Nightmare one day when I’m well and ready. Ultraviolence was and is enough for me.
TAG1 feels like a cruel and unusual joke from start to finish, and I do mean that admirably. It feels like an expansion on everything Doom Eternal set out to (and dare I say did) accomplish, as is evident because players start with literally everything unlocked. All weapon mods are maxed out from the jump. There’s nothing left for players to discover or upgrade (except for the purple perks I don’t remember what they’re called), and yet Doom Eternal has not finished evolving – this creates a lot of friction.
Your crucible is GONE. You are back to zero lives by default (although the DLC does introduce 2ups, which I could never figure out how to obtain). It was when I reached that one part (in the first level) where players are submerged and enter an underwater technobase that I realized Hugo Martin wanted my fucking head on a pike. Facing down two Marauders at once, I thought to myself, now I’ve finally entered the Big Boy Zone, no more baby crap!
I don’t remember dying a lot. In fact, I don’t think I died until the final boss which, to me, communicates that I’m at least proficient in Ultraviolence at this point. There aren't many new enemies, and the ones they introduce are a turret, an invisible whiplash, and a tentacle that is just… really big this time. The Spirits are actually interesting ideas for enemies, demanding priority over other enemies lest they possess another host. Do they elevate the DLC? Not really.
What elevates TAG1 is the ridiculous difficulty. TAG1 doubles down on every questionable design decision and demands mastery, no freebies, no half-hearted good-enoughs, just unmistakable comprehension of the available tools and their correct applications. Simple as.
Even so, all the little things pile up. The devil’s in the details, so to speak, and although I suspect I’ll return to TAG1 when I decide to replay Doom Eternal on Nightmare, I can at leasy say I’m both excited and anxious to return to the meat grinder once again. At the end of the day, it really is just more Doom Eternal, with all its quirks and many of its familiar flaws. Although id software has perfected Eternal’s combat, the only things holding back is… well, everything besides its combat (and art direction, and music…)
What I’m trying to say is, uh, the final boss was kinda whatever, and the platforming is still not so fun either, so I wouldn’t give it a 10. But it’s pretty close!
if thought the main campaign was hard...
AHAHAHAAAAAAA
AHAHAHAAAAAAA
DOOM Eternal: The Ancient Gods - Part One is the first DLC expansion to the first-person shooter Doom Eternal developed by Id released in 2020. A very short yet difficult expansion to the base game that manages to ramp up the difficulty and adds some new enemy types and locations with very few flaws and complaints.
The Ancient Gods - Part One manages to expand on the game in several ways with the level design and encounter design being some of the hardest in the game as if the difficulty kept scaling up after the final level of Doom Eternal base game. The new enemy types also make you rethink on how to fight certain demons and feels more punishing than before if you screw up. Platforming albeit simple is still pretty nice here and still feels like a good reprieve from the usual encounters.
Sadly there are some things that get downgraded here starting with the music which is no longer composed by Mick Gordon and you can really notice the downgrade since it didn't feel as impact as the previous soundtrack and felt more like background music as opposed to the music being a full part of the experience. There are some encounters here that felt not difficult but tedious but these encounters far and few between. The story here is sort of give or take and attempts to tie up some loose ends but it comes off a bit convoluted.
This DLC overall is a decent expansion albeit short and in the end of the day, it's more Doom Eternal which I think few would be against. I only paid 5 bucks for this DLC and I think that's a good price for it so wait for a sale for this one unless you really want more Doom Eternal and have the base game already. The challenge is very welcome and also recommended thematic and gameplay wise to play it after beating Doom Eternal where you should have mastered some of the elements of the gameplay loop.
The Ancient Gods - Part One manages to expand on the game in several ways with the level design and encounter design being some of the hardest in the game as if the difficulty kept scaling up after the final level of Doom Eternal base game. The new enemy types also make you rethink on how to fight certain demons and feels more punishing than before if you screw up. Platforming albeit simple is still pretty nice here and still feels like a good reprieve from the usual encounters.
Sadly there are some things that get downgraded here starting with the music which is no longer composed by Mick Gordon and you can really notice the downgrade since it didn't feel as impact as the previous soundtrack and felt more like background music as opposed to the music being a full part of the experience. There are some encounters here that felt not difficult but tedious but these encounters far and few between. The story here is sort of give or take and attempts to tie up some loose ends but it comes off a bit convoluted.
This DLC overall is a decent expansion albeit short and in the end of the day, it's more Doom Eternal which I think few would be against. I only paid 5 bucks for this DLC and I think that's a good price for it so wait for a sale for this one unless you really want more Doom Eternal and have the base game already. The challenge is very welcome and also recommended thematic and gameplay wise to play it after beating Doom Eternal where you should have mastered some of the elements of the gameplay loop.
This review contains spoilers
Some of the most demonic (lol) combat enounters I've ever seen in a singleplayer FPS, requires paying full attention to your entire arsenal, all your resources and ability cooldowns in almost every single fight. I actually don't think this is that difficult, but if you aren't constantly paying full attention to your surroundings and your abilites you will get annihilated.
Also it's kinda funny that God and Satan are now part of the story in Doom (Call them 'The Dark Lord' and 'The Father' all you want no one is buying it.) Not really a fan of how Samuel Hayden ends up in this game, kinda seems like his big reveal ended up removing all his interesting character and personality traits.
Still, I think this is a great companion to the base game, both in terms of story and gameplay. Hopefully it sticks the landing.
Also it's kinda funny that God and Satan are now part of the story in Doom (Call them 'The Dark Lord' and 'The Father' all you want no one is buying it.) Not really a fan of how Samuel Hayden ends up in this game, kinda seems like his big reveal ended up removing all his interesting character and personality traits.
Still, I think this is a great companion to the base game, both in terms of story and gameplay. Hopefully it sticks the landing.
A decent expansion. Story feels mostly like set up for the next part. The difficulty is definitely turned up from main game.
Base game: Hard but fun
Ancient Gods Part 1: Hard but NOT FUN
fuck this game
Ancient Gods Part 1: Hard but NOT FUN
fuck this game