DOOM Eternal - Official

The game is complete garbage and utter disappointment. All the jumping is annoying and doesn't belong in doom game.
 
The game is complete garbage and utter disappointment. All the jumping is annoying and doesn't belong in doom game.

Everyone has their own opinion, but...

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The game is good but not as great as 2016. Two steps forward and one step back it seems.

The game's story is now up front and center compared to 2016's which did indeed have a story but following it was more organic and paying attention to it was far more optional. The story this time around feels like it throws you in mid-way. When I first started the game it felt like I skipped ahead several stages in the plot. Compare that to 2016's beginning which had an excellent start, brought you up to pace quickly and organically and then got out of your way. 2016 simply didn't shove tutorials in your face as much. Learn through doing, not by being told. Eternal's tutorials weren't bad as I did help me figure things out but mostly got in my way. I do like that they are there and if I felt like I needed them, I could view them through the codex. In Eternal they tap the breaks on the game play too much.

The core game play I'd say has actually been improved but how it evolves doesn't have the same polish to its pacing as 2016 did. Combat is nothing sort of a rush but once you get the hang of it, you'll figure out the repeating pattern for survival: fodder demons are quick health refill and ammo pinatas. Run around avoiding the bigger demons collecting health and ammo to make another damage run. Dash, the meat hook on the super shotgun and the shoulder cannon all arrive early in the game. Considering how much you start to rely on them later, this makes the beginning of the game feel harder than it should be yet at the same time it feels like the game should simultaneously spread out these power ups in the game. The pacing and how levels are designs to incorporate these upgrades just feels off compared to 2016.

The level design this time around feels more like Quake than Doom. Not that that is a bad thing as everything is detailed, looks great and mostly well laid out. The big nitpick I have here is the amount of invisible walls thrown into areas, especially around platforming areas. Often I find myself jumping to an area where I think I can go to either hit an invisible wall mid-air or 'land' on what appears to be solid, nonhazardous ground that insta kills me. The more contemporary way of dealing this would be to make those surfaces slanted and slick where you fall naturally to your death. For a game that has such freedom of movement, it seems cheesy that this is how the designers restrict it to keep players on a relatively linear path. There didn't seem to be much with respect to branching paths at all to get to a destination. During the game you don't feel it as much as you are move-move-move-move but you can see it a bit having gone through the stage and looking at the automap.

Difficulty is where it should be. Playing smart is just as important has having fast reflexes. You will get beat down an inch from death frequently but there is often a means to quickly recover near by. Don't stop moving. I can't be too generous here as there does see to be scarcity with ammo. The chain saw does respawn one charge over time but I've found myself stuck with just a heavy demon that'd require three charges to finish them off with the chain saw and no ammo. It was a stand off that shouldn't happen in the design. Something is broken in the design if I can hit a dead end like that. Even in the original Doom, I could at leash attempt suicide by punching a cyber demon to death if that's all I had left but I can't here. Speaking of cyber demons, the classic design seen in the game has been renamed the tyrant which is kinda lame. I guess the boss from the 2016 is now 'the official' cyber demon.

Controls are tight and responsive but I'm wondering if this should have been the game to migrate toward ESDF over WASD as the defZault. There is a lot you have at your finger tips that you need quickly.

This game is beautiful but also designed to run fast on pretty much any modern hardware. Nothing but compliments here on Doom Eternal. Just need nVidia and AMD to push out new cards to get that super ideal combination or for the bleeding edge to step up to 8K.

Snap map is gone. I didn't have the time to tinker with it much in 2016 but I did enjoy some of the most creative things that users created with. It will be missed.

The music is even better this time around. I need to pick up the official sound track when it comes out as it is amaze-balls once again.

It is worth picking up if you like 2016 but this isn't going to win anyone who didn't like it before over.
 
So I finished Doom Eternal completely including the DLCs... and ooooh man. This very well could be the greatest shooter I've ever played. And it's odd I am saying that because I hated Doom Eternal the first two times I tried to start to play it. I didn't like being forced to play the game the way they wanted me to, I thought there was too much jumping, too much platforming, and I felt they went overboard with all the variations in upgrades and enemy types with how certain guns only kill certain demons better... I thought 2016 was better, and frankly I was totally wrong. Once I gave in to the playstyle of Eternal I couldn't stop. The frantic jumping non-stop, moving, switching weapons, using the abilities to clear enemies out was insanely addicting. Like I loved it so much that I went back to play a new playthrough of Doom 2016 again since it's been a couple years since I played that and Eternal has completely shattered that game to me. It's still decent, but the formula for Eternal is so perfected, so engaging, and so fast-paced that you need to stay on your toes at all times that going back to a game where there is a crouch button and a pistol feels like a dozen steps backwards.

The story is okay, but it never took away from the gameplay... the shooting is so god damn good in Eternal that as I said to a buddy yesterday after I beat it that the only problem I had with Doom Eternal by the time I was done with it was that there wasn't more Doom Eternal to play. I am sure I will go back and play the game again on harder difficulties in the future, and I found virtually every cheat you can use in the game so that should add some replayability. But god damn was Eternal good... the graphics, music, the gameplay, and just everything was fucking awesome.
 
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So I finished Doom Eternal completely including the DLCs... and ooooh man. This very well could be the greatest shooter I've ever played. And it's odd I am saying that because I hated Doom Eternal the first two times I tried to start to play it. I didn't like being forced to play the game the way they wanted me too, I thought there was too much jumping, too much platforming, and I felt they went overboard with all the variations in upgrades and enemy types with how certain guns only kill certain demons better... I thought 2016 was better, and frankly I was totally wrong. Once I gave in to the playstyle of Eternal I couldn't stop. The frantic jumping non-stop, moving, switching weapons, using the abilities to clear enemies out was insanely addicting. Like I loved it so much that I went back to play a new playthrough of Doom 2016 again since it's been a couple years since I played that and Eternal has completely shattered that game to me. It's still decent, but formula for Eternal is so perfected, so engaging, and so fast-paced that you need to stay on your toes at all times that going back to a game where there is a crouch button and a pistol feels like a dozen steps backwards.

The story is okay, but it never took away from the gameplay... the shooting is so god damn good in Eternal that as I said to a buddy yesterday after I beat it that the only problem I had with Doom Eternal by the time I was done with it was that there wasn't more Doom Eternal to play. I am sure I will go back and play the game again on harder difficulties in the future, and I found virtually every cheat you can use in the game so that should add some replayability. But god damn was Eternal good... the graphics, music, the gameplay, and just everything was fucking awesome.
I try to say this everywhere that the first 2 or even 3 missions are still just the tutorial part of the game, and they're the hardest to get through from a gameplay perspective. Once you're past that, though, you'll realize that the designers really paced the opening parts of the game extremely well as you find that you have subconsciously gotten into the ballet when things get really intense and find yourself enjoying it a lot.
 
I try to say this everywhere that the first 2 or even 3 missions are still just the tutorial part of the game, and they're the hardest to get through from a gameplay perspective. Once you're past that, though, you'll realize that the designers really paced the opening parts of the game extremely well as you find that you have subconsciously gotten into the ballet when things get really intense and find yourself enjoying it a lot.

I don't like being forced into a playstyle, and that was what turned a lot of people didn't like. The platforming and climbing stuff didn't bother me. It was the formula of having to follow x them y then z, rinse, repeat. And always while having almost no fuel in the saw. If you wanted to play sawguy, well, you were SOL.
 
I don't like being forced into a playstyle, and that was what turned a lot of people didn't like. The platforming and climbing stuff didn't bother me. It was the formula of having to follow x them y then z, rinse, repeat. And always while having almost no fuel in the saw. If you wanted to play sawguy, well, you were SOL.
There is nothing stopping you from playing the game how you like. Watch some glitchless speedruns to see people are cycling through the same weapons they did in 2016. The weak points and whatnot just add an additional layer of strategy to the game that I find quite welcome for casual playthroughs.

And it's a game. You have to adapt and play within the game mechanics present, so every game released is "forcing" you into a playstyle. I don't understand why this argument suddenly appeared with this game and not others in the past when there is not even a rigid system involved in Eternal.
 
There is nothing stopping you from playing the game how you like. Watch some glitchless speedruns to see people are cycling through the same weapons they did in 2016. The weak points and whatnot just add an additional layer of strategy to the game that I find quite welcome for casual playthroughs.

And it's a game. You have to adapt and play within the game mechanics present, so every game released is "forcing" you into a playstyle. I don't understand why this argument suddenly appeared with this game and not others in the past when there is not even a rigid system involved in Eternal.

There is totally a system involved in Eternal, just as there is in 2016.
If you don't saw and glorykill, you don't have ammo, and armor, and fuel for the saw to do the thing you need for the other things. It's literally cyclical gameplay. You literally cannot advance in the game without following the formula. 2016 is more forgiving in this, allowing fans of the original games more leeway in the playstyle. Eternal is far far less forgiving in this.

I'm not discounting the game. It is a well made game, that is extremely optimized. The gameplay itself though, just doesn't support multiple playstyles. In the games of old you could speed through for time, you could take your time for map clears and secret rooms, etc...maybe I'm just getting old. DooM was one of the first PC games I ever played, along with Fisher-Price Bowling, Sim City 2000, and Heretic.
 
There are lots of ways to play Doom Eternal. Doom 2016 is just a weaker game if you play it now, nowhere near as action packed.

Just look at this dude playing it.

 
I ended up playing this on PC when it hit Xbox Game Pass. I really didn't like it at first, but after 3 levels or so I was sucked in. Ended up getting all the secrets and like the poster above wanted more when it was over. Easily the best Doom game I've played.

I beat the 2016 Doom but it felt like a chore near the end of it, not so with Doom Eternal. It was kind of the opposite, Eternal felt a little like a chore in the beginning, but got better and better. Doom 2016 was great in the beginning and just got stale.
 
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