Eternal Doom

Sun 22 Mar 2020, 12:49

I've been anticipating Doom Eternal for years now and it's finally here. I was so excited to play it I used a New Zealand VPN to fool Steam into thinking it was the 20th so I could play it one day earlier.

And Doom Eternal, or as I prefer to call it: Eternal Doom (it flows alot better doesn't it?) is awesome. You really realize how bad most other modern games are when you play this.

And it's funny because I didn't really know how they would top Doom 2016, but in retrospect, 2016 is a pretty bad game. I love Eternal much more in every aspect. 2016 was fun towards the end I remember, but the beginning of it is so slow and boring. Eternal is chaos and fun right from the start.

2016 was very dark and black in most areas and you could barely see anything. Eternal is very bright and colorful and pretty.

So can I say anything bad about it? Yes, absolutely.

The music is still kind of hit and miss. I like most of the songs that are heavy metal'ish, but then there are still some dubsteppy songs that were more common in the 2016 game. I don't like those.
Platforming is also very hit and miss. Sometimes it's fun and you're zooming all over the place and feel awesome. Other times you're like "where the hell am I supposed to go?" and "damn I double tapped the boost button and missed the thing". It got frustrating some times. Luckily the game doesn't punish you very hard for falling, you just lose 10 HP and get to try again immediately.
The Marauder enemy is awful. He is like Father Gascoigne from Bloodborne. He even sounds similar. All other enemies you can just pump bullets into and they will eventually die. But this Marauder guy you need to time your shots carefully and watch his every move. He really breaks the flow of the game. As a boss fight I didn't mind him but towards the end of the game he becomes a "regular" enemy and it got annoying.

Example of bad platforming area.

But apart from that, I can't really think of anything to complain.

Instead, let me talk about some things I really like (some of these are gonna be repeats from above):

It's fast paced
It's neon colorful and bright
All weapons feel good. I still prefer the Super Shotgun but no weapon felt like "aww, I gotta use this crap now"
The secrets. I love the toys and the vinyl albums.
Very minor thing, but I love that secrets and 1UPS are literally floating ? symbols and 1UP icons. Very retro feeling.
The Doomguy's mancave is awesome. So much stuff to find and see in there.
Game loads absurdly fast on a SSD
There are alot of graphics settings and a great dynamic resolution slider. I wish all games were like this.

The game will look like a Switch port, but you can get those really high framerates.

Example of one of those very cute vinyl albums you can find.

Finally, some neutral thoughts, neither positive or bad:

People complain about running low on ammo all the time. It is true you don't have infinite ammo and you will run out, but I really didn't think it was an issue. Whenever I ran out I seemed to find a mob I could chainsaw and get ammo back.
I really don't see how you can play this game with a controller, but maybe you can? I feel like there was so much flicking, 360s and precision aiming that I was really happy I was playing it on PC with a mouse and keyboard. I'm gonna try it with a controller someday.
There are a lot of tutorials and enemy tips popping up which breaks the flow. I didn't really mind this. I was always very appreciative to find out how to to kill an boss so I don't have to stumble around trying to figure it out.

If you'd like a video review, I'll vouch for LGR's. I watched it before I played the game and I got excited:

As he says: ARGH, Doom Eternal. This game f*ing rules!

I agree.