Terrific shooter that shows how confident id software is in their tech and design philosophy.
Mechanically I have very little to complain about. I feel like some of the weapon upgrades are little redundant (tho the only one I don't see the use case for is assault rifle micro missiles), and sword that marketing was so focused on is pretty meh in implementation. When it comes to enemies, the arch-vile felt pretty underused and didn't present an oh shit threat the way it did in OG Doom. But otherwise it's an incredible step up from the previous game and clear design inspiration and trend setter for all other shooters on the market.
Where id still needs to step up their game is level design. And I don't mean the arena layouts which were all pretty memorable and great, but even bigger linearity of the progression feels like quite a missed opportunity with how much freedom an increased emphasis on platforming and amazing map system could provide. Frustrating invisible walls restrict any creative solutions you could come up with in traversal challenges delineating one single path of level progression. I understand that focus tests might have established that complicated level design would probably be too much to handle for general gaming population on top of increased complexity of combat and traversal. I can not feel a little bit underwhelmed though that the game that amplifies the thrills of id shooter combat so well doesn't manage to recapture the excitement and reward of maze maneuvering from classic shooter games. The Foundry from 2016 is still the best level of nu-doom and it wasn't anything the average joe gamer couldn't handle so I hope for the third game they'll try to figure out how that design could be developed upon.
The game's still awesome tho and I might bump the score up to full 5 stars if DLCs manage to expand the strenghts of Eternal even further.
Mechanically I have very little to complain about. I feel like some of the weapon upgrades are little redundant (tho the only one I don't see the use case for is assault rifle micro missiles), and sword that marketing was so focused on is pretty meh in implementation. When it comes to enemies, the arch-vile felt pretty underused and didn't present an oh shit threat the way it did in OG Doom. But otherwise it's an incredible step up from the previous game and clear design inspiration and trend setter for all other shooters on the market.
Where id still needs to step up their game is level design. And I don't mean the arena layouts which were all pretty memorable and great, but even bigger linearity of the progression feels like quite a missed opportunity with how much freedom an increased emphasis on platforming and amazing map system could provide. Frustrating invisible walls restrict any creative solutions you could come up with in traversal challenges delineating one single path of level progression. I understand that focus tests might have established that complicated level design would probably be too much to handle for general gaming population on top of increased complexity of combat and traversal. I can not feel a little bit underwhelmed though that the game that amplifies the thrills of id shooter combat so well doesn't manage to recapture the excitement and reward of maze maneuvering from classic shooter games. The Foundry from 2016 is still the best level of nu-doom and it wasn't anything the average joe gamer couldn't handle so I hope for the third game they'll try to figure out how that design could be developed upon.
The game's still awesome tho and I might bump the score up to full 5 stars if DLCs manage to expand the strenghts of Eternal even further.