I love Doom Eternal so playing the two DLC was an easy decision for me, I will review both here. I know for some Eternal relies too heavily on gameplay mechanics rather than free creative combat. The Ancient Gods DLC doubles down on the mechanic focus offering even more enemy types that have to be fought with certain attacks and even newly introduced weapons to further the sort of meta game of managing your health, armor, ammo in the midst of unrelenting attack. So if you loved Doom Eternal you are probably going to love Ancient Gods, I did. If you didn’t like Eternal for the above reasons well don’t even bother.
The best thing about the DLC is how it caters the combat to experienced players as they know you will have every weapon and skill unlocked. Levels have more environmental hazards, for instance some places add totems that give enemies infinite life until you find them. A bunch of new enemies that require new very specific strategies to beat are introduced. I loved how disruptive some of these are, in the middle of a battle having to switch to a chain gun to blow up some shields while everyone else is firing on you is thrilling. There were a few too many enemies that required the zoom in rifle scope though, in a game as hectic as this, stopping to aim seems counter intuitive, so way too many new enemies required you to do that. That’s really my only gripe with the new enemies though, to me it just added to controlled chaos of the action.
This DLC is long too, together they form what could be a new game, like a 7-9 hour game. It’s almost all new locations, so many new mechanics, new bosses, this is seriously one of the best DLC expansions I have ever played. It further expands on what I loved about Doom Eternal and it remains easily the best modern FPS game I’ve played.
Overall score: 9.3
The best thing about the DLC is how it caters the combat to experienced players as they know you will have every weapon and skill unlocked. Levels have more environmental hazards, for instance some places add totems that give enemies infinite life until you find them. A bunch of new enemies that require new very specific strategies to beat are introduced. I loved how disruptive some of these are, in the middle of a battle having to switch to a chain gun to blow up some shields while everyone else is firing on you is thrilling. There were a few too many enemies that required the zoom in rifle scope though, in a game as hectic as this, stopping to aim seems counter intuitive, so way too many new enemies required you to do that. That’s really my only gripe with the new enemies though, to me it just added to controlled chaos of the action.
This DLC is long too, together they form what could be a new game, like a 7-9 hour game. It’s almost all new locations, so many new mechanics, new bosses, this is seriously one of the best DLC expansions I have ever played. It further expands on what I loved about Doom Eternal and it remains easily the best modern FPS game I’ve played.
Overall score: 9.3