The word that comes to mind when I think of Doom Eternal is arrogance. It's very harsh of me to call this game arrogant, but it just comes across to me so smug, egotistical and, well, arrogant.
The obvious arrogant thing in this game is the writing. I'll admit, I chuckled at the "mortally challenged" line in that E3 gameplay trailer way back when. A little close to the bone, but sure. Turns out the Doom Eternal writing staff found this like to be absolutely gut-bustingly hilarious, with this ok joke getting stretched and dropped all over the place. And then the game throws and incredibly awkward line using the suffix "trans" and "cleansed" in the same sentence and I'm just knocked for six. Bethesda is certainly a big enough company to hire cultural advisors for things like this. Probably would have helped make the game funnier too tbh.
Doom Eternal feels like it's written by egotistical frat boys during their weekly tabletop 40k "no-girls-allowed" RPG sesh. This also stretches to the plot, which feels like they skipped the follow-up to Doom 4 and filled it with their own "epic" demonic headcannon. It's a confusing experience, largely because all the additional content required to really grasp what you're looking at is so tedious and unengaging. Great, a tiny banal codex entry, whose text lives in a window with a residency to the right of my screen. And you also get rid of the picture when I try to read them. It's shit, don't care if it's secretly "good" or something.
Now of course, “Story in a game is like story in a porn movie", so how good is the porn? It's alright. I find it flawed by the same arrogance that permeates through this game. The game has a strict ammo economy, encouraging the player to swap weapon and use all the tools at their disposal. That's a good thing? Not really, since the more a player goes through your game, the more they're going to explore all these parts of their kit. You don't need to strong-arm players who just want to blast dudes with a Super Shotgun into playing "correctly" like this. But the guns feel good, the game is fast, there's almost too much stuff but that's the point etc etc.
All this stuff is then paired with all the stuff the enemies can do. The variety is really good, great at swarming and jumping into an arena and going to town is fantastic. My biggest issue with the enemies is that they are bit "Simon Says". Shoot the grenade into the Cacodemon's mouth to instantly kill it. Don't even need to wait for it to open it's mouth, it just swallows that thing up from wherever. It's got a neat animation, that gets really tired. So, I tried to not use the "Simon Says" technique and the Cacodemon now takes forever to kill. That thing is gonna eat machine gun bullets all day. Or, I could just use one shotgun ammo to kill it instantly. It's constraining and the game feels like it wants me to play it exactly how it wants me to.
This is getting real rambly, so let's wrap up with some bullet points on bits:
- The Fortress of Doom is cool, but also needlessly huge. Why are the vinyl you collect framed on walls all over and not in a jukebox next to the area where you start? Why is the sigh "Ripatorium" located all the way down there?
- The Fortress of Doom is also chock full of those progression points. Boy do I love progression points. Love the game feeling like ass for the first 4 hours before I get enough progression points. Sure is great how that issue I have with the ammo economy vanishes if you max out the ammo upgrade huh
- Music is fine. The BFG 10,000 is firing one is good.
- I couldn't tell you if the Archville is a good enemy since I just save the oneshot weapons for it.
- The Maruader is ok, but once figured out is tedious
- The gladiator boss rules, the rest suck.
- Nice art direction.
- Platforming sucks. Really sucks. Super sucks. Why bother with this as my downtime.
- I played with a pad. It was shit. Why it doesn't support gyro aim I do not know.
- Combat would probably be better with a M+KB, but if I could run this I could also run HYPER DEMON. And also my PC can run Ultrakill.
To conclude...
DOOM 4 (2016) is fantastic. It's a game that needed to prove itself. To revive a franchise and prove naysayers wrong. Doom 5 (Eternal) is a showy, arrogant, self-absorbed victory lap.
The obvious arrogant thing in this game is the writing. I'll admit, I chuckled at the "mortally challenged" line in that E3 gameplay trailer way back when. A little close to the bone, but sure. Turns out the Doom Eternal writing staff found this like to be absolutely gut-bustingly hilarious, with this ok joke getting stretched and dropped all over the place. And then the game throws and incredibly awkward line using the suffix "trans" and "cleansed" in the same sentence and I'm just knocked for six. Bethesda is certainly a big enough company to hire cultural advisors for things like this. Probably would have helped make the game funnier too tbh.
Doom Eternal feels like it's written by egotistical frat boys during their weekly tabletop 40k "no-girls-allowed" RPG sesh. This also stretches to the plot, which feels like they skipped the follow-up to Doom 4 and filled it with their own "epic" demonic headcannon. It's a confusing experience, largely because all the additional content required to really grasp what you're looking at is so tedious and unengaging. Great, a tiny banal codex entry, whose text lives in a window with a residency to the right of my screen. And you also get rid of the picture when I try to read them. It's shit, don't care if it's secretly "good" or something.
Now of course, “Story in a game is like story in a porn movie", so how good is the porn? It's alright. I find it flawed by the same arrogance that permeates through this game. The game has a strict ammo economy, encouraging the player to swap weapon and use all the tools at their disposal. That's a good thing? Not really, since the more a player goes through your game, the more they're going to explore all these parts of their kit. You don't need to strong-arm players who just want to blast dudes with a Super Shotgun into playing "correctly" like this. But the guns feel good, the game is fast, there's almost too much stuff but that's the point etc etc.
All this stuff is then paired with all the stuff the enemies can do. The variety is really good, great at swarming and jumping into an arena and going to town is fantastic. My biggest issue with the enemies is that they are bit "Simon Says". Shoot the grenade into the Cacodemon's mouth to instantly kill it. Don't even need to wait for it to open it's mouth, it just swallows that thing up from wherever. It's got a neat animation, that gets really tired. So, I tried to not use the "Simon Says" technique and the Cacodemon now takes forever to kill. That thing is gonna eat machine gun bullets all day. Or, I could just use one shotgun ammo to kill it instantly. It's constraining and the game feels like it wants me to play it exactly how it wants me to.
This is getting real rambly, so let's wrap up with some bullet points on bits:
- The Fortress of Doom is cool, but also needlessly huge. Why are the vinyl you collect framed on walls all over and not in a jukebox next to the area where you start? Why is the sigh "Ripatorium" located all the way down there?
- The Fortress of Doom is also chock full of those progression points. Boy do I love progression points. Love the game feeling like ass for the first 4 hours before I get enough progression points. Sure is great how that issue I have with the ammo economy vanishes if you max out the ammo upgrade huh
- Music is fine. The BFG 10,000 is firing one is good.
- I couldn't tell you if the Archville is a good enemy since I just save the oneshot weapons for it.
- The Maruader is ok, but once figured out is tedious
- The gladiator boss rules, the rest suck.
- Nice art direction.
- Platforming sucks. Really sucks. Super sucks. Why bother with this as my downtime.
- I played with a pad. It was shit. Why it doesn't support gyro aim I do not know.
- Combat would probably be better with a M+KB, but if I could run this I could also run HYPER DEMON. And also my PC can run Ultrakill.
To conclude...
DOOM 4 (2016) is fantastic. It's a game that needed to prove itself. To revive a franchise and prove naysayers wrong. Doom 5 (Eternal) is a showy, arrogant, self-absorbed victory lap.