Tanako
1 review liked by Tanako
Doom Eternal
2020
I just finished playing DOOM Eternal for the second time as of writing this review, the first time in Jan 2021 and the second time in Jan 2022, this time on ultra violence difficulty.
DOOM Eternal is mostly talked about in relation to its predecessor - Doom 2016, and this is for I believe good reason. Eternal is significantly more confident in its game design than 2016. Where 2016 felt like it was holding back in places to still conform to "modern FPS" design, Eternal boldly steps into a whole new paradigm of FPS-character action game hybrid, despite the designers knowing that this new approach would alienate some people, and it did, but if you get used to the game and understand what it wants out of you, Eternal becomes an engrossing power fantasy that is one of the best FPSes out there for putting me into the kind of flow state zone that I usually have to play shmups and rhythm games for.
Doom 2016 had quite a lot of mechanical complexity in its own right - especially compared to most other FPSes of its time, but at its core 2016 was about circlestrafing and shooting at things until they die. Of course movement and shooting are still essential parts of Eternal's gameplay loop, but new strategies of constant resource management and countering enemy weaknesses with specific weapons or abilities like the blood punch take precedent, especially later on when the game (successfully) tries to overwhelm you with fighting many types of heavy and super heavy demon at once, each with different weaknesses that need to prioritised, all while your key resources (health, armour and ammo) are draining.
The main way in which the game forces you to take this "character action" approach seriously is by severely limiting the amount of ammo you'll have for your weapons at any given time. Even when you have the ammo capacity maxed out through upgrades you'll struggle to be shooting for more than 30 seconds before needing to chainsaw a fodder demon to refresh your supply. This approach is I believe the main aspect of this new gameplay style that puts people off and I can understand that, but I am not one of these people. The new design paradigm is executed with such confidence that I can't help but love it, even if the implementation is obviously far from perfect. Honestly, if I went back to Doom 2016, that game would probably feel slow and stale in comparison, especially in the unskippable cutscene heavy early levels.
This makes it unfortunate that there are other aspects of Eternal where I think Id dropped the ball, and hard in areas that Doom 2016 nailed. The UI looks like an unfinished placeholder and is a significant downgrade imo, and the whole game is tainted with an EP1K G4M3R aesthetic that is just obnoxious, especially in the main menu you have to see every time you start up the game. Seriously, that shit looks like a parody but it's real somehow.
This ties in to the (downgraded) sense of place and atmosphere compared to Doom 2016. Doom 2016 took place on mars and sometimes hell in a pulpy, but dark and relatively grounded setting that you could get immersed in, with a story based around just a handful of characters and an interesting allegory for environmental exploitation and corporate greed. Moments of humour in 2016 were mostly subtle and didn't clash with the tone the game was trying to set.
In comparison, Doom Eternal is a convoluted mess of hopping across tons of worlds and dimensions, with an "epic" multidimensional lore covering tens of characters and many civilisations, none of which can be fleshed out in the slightest during the game's roughly 10-12 hour campaign length. What I'm trying to say is that I appreciate the attempt from Id, but I don't care about the "multiversal" lore they tried to craft here or whatever. And oh boy, even ignoring the... interesting political implications, the "mortally challenged" jokes which one of the writers must have found to be the funniest joke in existence got old. Fast. It just feels like the gameplay team improved between Doom 2016 and Eternal but the writing team contracted brainworms sometime in the middle.
Despite all this, Doom Eternal is still legit, and once you're in the zone I'd still rather play this over Doom 2016 even though I wish they stuck more to the kind of tone and writing of that game here. Now, once I'm feeling spiritually prepared, it's time to get my arse handed to me by the master levels and Ancient Gods DLCs.
DOOM Eternal is mostly talked about in relation to its predecessor - Doom 2016, and this is for I believe good reason. Eternal is significantly more confident in its game design than 2016. Where 2016 felt like it was holding back in places to still conform to "modern FPS" design, Eternal boldly steps into a whole new paradigm of FPS-character action game hybrid, despite the designers knowing that this new approach would alienate some people, and it did, but if you get used to the game and understand what it wants out of you, Eternal becomes an engrossing power fantasy that is one of the best FPSes out there for putting me into the kind of flow state zone that I usually have to play shmups and rhythm games for.
Doom 2016 had quite a lot of mechanical complexity in its own right - especially compared to most other FPSes of its time, but at its core 2016 was about circlestrafing and shooting at things until they die. Of course movement and shooting are still essential parts of Eternal's gameplay loop, but new strategies of constant resource management and countering enemy weaknesses with specific weapons or abilities like the blood punch take precedent, especially later on when the game (successfully) tries to overwhelm you with fighting many types of heavy and super heavy demon at once, each with different weaknesses that need to prioritised, all while your key resources (health, armour and ammo) are draining.
The main way in which the game forces you to take this "character action" approach seriously is by severely limiting the amount of ammo you'll have for your weapons at any given time. Even when you have the ammo capacity maxed out through upgrades you'll struggle to be shooting for more than 30 seconds before needing to chainsaw a fodder demon to refresh your supply. This approach is I believe the main aspect of this new gameplay style that puts people off and I can understand that, but I am not one of these people. The new design paradigm is executed with such confidence that I can't help but love it, even if the implementation is obviously far from perfect. Honestly, if I went back to Doom 2016, that game would probably feel slow and stale in comparison, especially in the unskippable cutscene heavy early levels.
This makes it unfortunate that there are other aspects of Eternal where I think Id dropped the ball, and hard in areas that Doom 2016 nailed. The UI looks like an unfinished placeholder and is a significant downgrade imo, and the whole game is tainted with an EP1K G4M3R aesthetic that is just obnoxious, especially in the main menu you have to see every time you start up the game. Seriously, that shit looks like a parody but it's real somehow.
This ties in to the (downgraded) sense of place and atmosphere compared to Doom 2016. Doom 2016 took place on mars and sometimes hell in a pulpy, but dark and relatively grounded setting that you could get immersed in, with a story based around just a handful of characters and an interesting allegory for environmental exploitation and corporate greed. Moments of humour in 2016 were mostly subtle and didn't clash with the tone the game was trying to set.
In comparison, Doom Eternal is a convoluted mess of hopping across tons of worlds and dimensions, with an "epic" multidimensional lore covering tens of characters and many civilisations, none of which can be fleshed out in the slightest during the game's roughly 10-12 hour campaign length. What I'm trying to say is that I appreciate the attempt from Id, but I don't care about the "multiversal" lore they tried to craft here or whatever. And oh boy, even ignoring the... interesting political implications, the "mortally challenged" jokes which one of the writers must have found to be the funniest joke in existence got old. Fast. It just feels like the gameplay team improved between Doom 2016 and Eternal but the writing team contracted brainworms sometime in the middle.
Despite all this, Doom Eternal is still legit, and once you're in the zone I'd still rather play this over Doom 2016 even though I wish they stuck more to the kind of tone and writing of that game here. Now, once I'm feeling spiritually prepared, it's time to get my arse handed to me by the master levels and Ancient Gods DLCs.