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dkirschner's Doom Eternal (PC)

[December 31, 2020 04:25:36 PM]

Upon completing Doom Eternal, I opened my Steam wishlist and deleted all other FPS games (except Wolfenstein II). Why bother playing them? Doom Eternal is a masterpiece.

Playing immediately after Doom (2016), the game has noticeable differences. I admit to thinking this was more or less a standalone expansion, but it is a new game. Somehow, it's even faster than Doom and I got my ass handed to me on Normal. After a few levels of slogging through, I turned it down to Easy. I'm a little disappointed in myself for not properly learning to handle Normal difficulty, but I was on a time crunch (had to finish before tomorrow and not get charged for another month of Game Pass!). I'll work on mastery another time.

Doom Eternal did away with Doom's pointless (joke?) walk and crouch buttons. Now Shift is a dash and C attacks with your chainsaw. Appropriate. You instantly have double jump and quickly get double dash, which is useful for all the platforming that Doom Eternal introduces. I enjoyed the platforming. It looks cool, letting you take in the massive and detailed environments during the outdoor sections. It's also useful for finding secrets, of which there are many. And it gives you a breather between fights.

Combat in Doom Eternal is more of a rock-paper-scissors style than Doom, when you could effectively use any weapon against any enemy. I disliked this at first, but it grew on me. Enemies have weak points, armor, and certain weapons interact differently with them. For example, you can shoot off the Mancubus's arms and the Revenant's shoulder rocket launchers, making them much less dangerous. You can Blood Punch (a new melee ability) the Cybermancubus to destroy its armor or the tank guy to destroy its tank bottom. The plasma rifle eats through shields and will cause some of them to explode, dealing AoE damage. It's far more important now to cycle weapons, weapon mods, and special attacks.

You will die and run out of ammo far quicker in Doom Eternal, making upgrades and smart use of armor- and health-spewing abilities also more important. One new suit upgrade you get is a shoulder flamethrower, which ignites enemies and causes them to bleed armor pickups. Kill them while on fire and they drop a lot of armor. Later upgrades allow the flamethrower to quickly recharge, even more quickly if you kill an enemy that is on fire. I realized at some point that to play on higher difficulties, you need to constantly burn enemies and cycle through attacks that give you health and ammo. Easy is really forgiving, which allowed me less frustration and to experience the excellent story.

I alluded to the good story in Doom but Doom Eternal's is better still. I had no idea there was a story worth telling in the Doom universe, but damn if that wasn't a major driver of me looking everywhere for secrets. Finding and reading Codex entries was a great part of the game.

Unlike Doom, Eternal never got repetitive. It's a longer game by a decent chunk of time, and far more varied in its pacing and environments. Whereas I could predict what Doom would throw at me in its arenas, Eternal had me constantly guessing. And it threw more and more enemies at me, which is probably the one complaint I had while playing. Sometimes it's super overwhelming the amount of enemies. Sometimes they'll back you into a corner and you die because you can't jump away. Sometimes one will spawn right behind you and kill you. Sometimes you'll run out of ammo at a really bad time. I don't like that there isn't a lowly infinite ammo weapon like the pistol in Doom. Here, you have to wait for your grenade to recharge (which is unlikely to save you) or hope your Blood Punch is charged; otherwise, if you run out of ammo, you're out of luck. I mean, I understand that the game is hard and that you should learn to ration it and whatever, but it sucked to (especially early on) be put in situations that you couldn't wriggle out of.

There are, of course, new enemies, and they are doozies. The Marauder requires some Dark Souls-esque finesse in dodging and attacking when it flashes green. The Archvile (who was in old Doom games but not 2016) is back and troublesome. He buffs enemies (a new thing to deal with!), which makes them super fast and strong until you kill him. Bosses are even more epic, tough, and fun. I will very likely buy this on Steam and play it again, or play the expansions, and play online some. This is one of the best FPS games I've ever played. The last two I enjoyed nearly as much are Doom (last week...) and Titanfall 2. Top tier recommendation.