Do you prefer Doom 2016 or Doom Eternal?

I like the gameplay of Eternal much more than 2016, especially after going back and revisiting 2016. However, the overall package of 2016 was a much bigger and pleasant surprise. Not a knock on Eternal, it was just 2016 turned to 11 (and I didn't care for whatever the story was supposed to be in Eternal -- it was a mess).

I liked the gameplay loop of Eternal a lot, but something about it felt like it was catering to "git gud" people in a way the irked me. It's a stupid thing I can't really articulate well, but I couldn't really shake it the whole game.

Also the story stuff was dumb. I hated that they took away his "I'm a 'normal' but very angry man" and instead all the "lore" stuff made him this magically enhanced dude. Didn't need him to talk, didn't need to see his face. They took the elegant simplicity of 2016 and dumped on it honestly. Also kinda felt like they were trying too hard to be funny as opposed to the almost dry sense of the humor the first game had.

One last thing, I also can't believe that the first thing they showed off for the game (the Cannon thing) is like 2/3 through the game. Some KH3 level stuff there.

The gameplay in Eternal was arguably better. Doom (2016) felt so fresh though, had better music and was a more complete package. I've replayed levels from the first game several times, but haven't felt any desire to go back to Eternal.

2016 and it ain't hard. I've been meaning to give Eternal a shot on PS5 just to see if frames and resolution are enough to make me power through the game, but I'm not necessarily an FPS player to begin with. I love the way Destiny snaps your gun to the enemy's head. 2016 was a heavy metal playground with a comic book story for the ages nominally wrapped around a first person shooter; Eternal was, from what I played, a First Person Shooter nominally wrapped around a comic book story for the bargain bin with a free heavy metal sampler as an enticement.

But really, more than anything, I got stuck in a room on the second or third level where there weren't enough fodder spawns for me to have enough ammo to kill the mini-mini-boss of the room and proceed, and I'd already been feeling enough like too much had changed for me to ever get over that. God, Eternal was disappointing.

2016. I haven't finished Eternal (though I have been picking away at it recently) but while I don't think it's a bad game by any means I think it's got a lot of flaws that the first one doesn't. People have mentioned the story, and it's incomprehensible trash and there's SO MUCH of it that it detracts from the game. The first game had some platforming but the second game focuses on it and often in a bad way; I think all the wall climbing stuff kind of sucks. I think the first game had better and more memorable locations for its levels, even if Hell on Earth sounds really cool in theory.

But the biggest issue I have with Eternal is the way that it wants to shoehorn you into very specific play styles. It is full of combat puzzles and enemies you have to take on in the way the game dictates. The Marauders are the most famous, and they aren't particularly fun to fight, but there are others. Eternal really wants you to mess with all its systems and learn what enemies are vulnerable to what etc... It's a valid form of game design, but I much preferred the greater freedom of 2016 where you could pick whatever weapon felt right at any given time. Eternal definitely has some of that, but not enough for me.

The way they changed the BFG is just one example. The new BFG requires more skill to use effectively but the old one felt better and more empowering. The "you can do anything with your awesome powers" aspect of Doom 2016 is more metal and more fun than the "learn to use all these systems we've designed to conquer this combat puzzle" attitude of Eternal.

I guess I’ll vote equally. Things already mentioned in the thread, like the humor and especially the story fell flat for me in Eternal, but the frantic gameplay *really* clicked with me. It might’ve been a different story if I had played on a console (the platforming probably would’ve been a lot more annoying, while being tolerable on pc, though still not particularly fun), but the pc-version just felt really great to play.

I really liked 2016 too and like probably everyone else, didn’t expect anything from it before the reviews hit. I do wish Eternal would’ve kept the same attitude, but it feels like a minor complaint when I otherwise had a great time with it.

Hopefully whatever Id does next (Quake?) combines the best parts of both and really nails it.

Both. 2016 was super focused, Eternal went bigger in so many ways. Like Portal vs. Portal 2.

I think Eternal edges it out, especially when you factor in the DLC. It didn't get monotonous to me with all the variety, whereas 2016 did. The most mechanically dense FPS I've played in years, but getting in the groove with it was an unmatched feeling. My GOTY last year.

2016 for sure. Call me crazy, but I found the loop in Eternal extremely repetitive in the worst way possible. Basing the gameplay so heavily around shortages of health and ammo and a heavy dose of "if enemy A, then weapon B" was a really terrible choice IMO. Being forced to use the glory kills and chainsaw constantly just murders any momentum you feel during encounters and the rigidness of the enemy weaknesses means you don't have the sense of freedom you did in 2016.

Shooting demons is fun. Sitting through a bunch of repetitive 1.5-2 second animations over and over and over again is not. Using a plasma rifle is fun. Being forced to use a plasma rifle because the enemy has an energy shield and the plasma rifle is the hard counter to the energy shield is not. I ultimately stopped playing because I got bored. Bored. In a Doom game.

It doesn't help that the presentation also took a major step back. 2016 had this wonderful minimalism to it with the story largely being in the background and the menus being clean and concise. It meant that when the game was loud, the loudness was focused on the combat. The contrast between the two was part of what made that game great.

In Eternal, everything is loud. The story is in your face and bad, the menus are a mess and hard to navigate, and the UX is garish and colored like an arcade attract screen. The game is just shouting at you, constantly, all the time. I just went numb to it after a while.

Eternal is fine but they messed up the combat a bit, it's too reliant on resource management and killing enemies a certain way, you're not allowed to play the way you want you HAVE to play their way, and Marauders are awful, and the end boss sucks.
Also they kinda messed up the amazing image they built up of Doom Guy in 2016 by revealing him to be just an angry rage child who likes to hang sick guitars on his wall.

Not part of the question, but the best Doom game is Brutal Doom with the Extermination Day map pack.

I had successfully blocked the story and “humor” of Eternal out of my mind until now. Thanks a lot, thread!

I can’t articulate it as well as others have, but there’s a more pared-down feel that makes 2016 more vital in just about every aspect. The only thing I strongly prefer in Eternal was that shotgun grappling hook, which was awesome. I respect that Eternal is a top tier game for some folks, but I’m not one of them.

Eternal, easily.

2016 had no kit because the super shotgun was the best tool for every situation. Turning the game into a massive series of combat puzzles was absolutely the way to go.

Both, because that's just more Doom for me. I like the Eternal gameplay loop, but if I were to make a slight tweak, it would be to turn down the length of some of those fights. Some of those battles felt like endurance tests, and I just wanna have fun blasting demons.

Man I love them both! But I think after playing Eternal it'd be hard to go back to 2016. Still need to finish off those DLCs...

I played both of them within a six month time span and...I think they are largely more similar than people tend to portray them as. Worth noting I played on easy, so that may affect my opinion. The final boss fight in Eternal was much better than the final boss fight in 2016, though.

@efesell said:

But see, I would argue that Eternal doesn't actually have combat puzzles. You see an enemy and you do the particular "thing" the game wants you to do for that enemy. There's no puzzle there because there's nothing to figure out.

In fact, I'd go so far as to argue that Doom 2016 and Eternal both kind of failed to deliver on the developer's stated goals. The phrase they kept using in the run-up to both releases was that they wanted "combat chess." The problem with that analogy is that chess is fundamentally about choice. At any given moment in the game you typically have a huge number of potential moves available to you and you need to decide which one to use based on the state of the board and what you know of your opponent.

The problem with 2016 was that you never needed to make a choice. The super shotgun covered 95% of the situations you were ever going to face. In Eternal, there's never any choice to make - you use the weapon the game wants when the game wants you to use it or you fail.

So they're both kind of failures. The difference is that I found the way 2016 failed to still be really fun, whereas Eternal failed in a super-boring and tedious way.

I can't choose. I'm half way through Eternal and do love how it uses it's encounters. You do get options in combat but there's always an optimal way which kind of makes all other approaches feel like a last resort. I need to revisit 2016 at some point. I've got it in my head that Eternal is way more colourful and frantic but I might be glossing over reality a little.

One thing's for certain: Doom Eternal is a better Doom 2.

both games suck when compared with the original and only DOOM (93).

@therealturk: I would concede maybe I worded it poorly but the gameplay loop was still more satisfying to me because I had to identify a variety of problems and then use the correct counter and do it all at a breakneck pace.

So maybe not much of a puzzle sure, I did have all the correct answers already, but it was a hell of a time applying them on my UV run and I loved it.

I keep seeing the emboldened complaint about Doom Eternal, in both forums and from a friend, and I just don't see it. I've finished the game on Ultra Violence and played a decent bit on Nightmare and you can, in fact, use pretty much whatever you want against whatever you want. YES, I am aware that you either use hard counters against the Marauder or nothing at all, but there's literally nothing else in the game that requires that and there's only a handful in the main game. Some enemies are weaker to a handful of moves than others, but Doom Eternal still gives you lots of options for how to approach things while also ensuring that you can't just use one tactic for the entire game. I'm not some kind of savant, either, but Doom Eternal is not a hard-counter-or-nothing game. As far as starved ammo counts go, use the chainsaw, the game liberally spawns trash mobs for you to chop into bits and the damn thing recharges at about the same rate you're going to run out of ammo if you're actually hitting things. I know people have this complaint, but in my experience that's just not true at all.

You can't use the Super Shotgun for the entire game, you do have to use a variety of weapons and make frequent use of your equipment.

This is all about the base game, for the record. The DLC needed to ratchet up the intensity and difficulty and they did that by implementing enemies that actually do require hard counters or nothing. Spirits, stone imps, and an over-reliance on Marauders really do make the DLC an awful chore that I wouldn't recommend.

To actually answer the question, Doom Eternal's combat loop - specifically the base game and excluding Marauder encounters - is the best first person shooter combat I've ever encountered. From original Doom to Half-Life to Halo to... whatever else I've played, the pure gameplay loop of Eternal is amazing. I remember playing it for a few hours the first time, jaw on the floor with how intense and great the whole thing felt to play, and then jumping on the internet to find that about half the people playing it were sorely disappointed. That really surprised me. There's always someone who doesn't like something, I just didn't expect so many people to dislike it.

I also like the platforming. I don't love it, I could take it or leave it, but I did enjoy those sections of the game and I definitely prefer platforming for secrets to bad puzzles or "find the hidden door/hallway to this thing" secrets. Still, if it wasn't there I wouldn't really have a problem with it.

So I loved the combat, I enjoyed the platforming, I think the art direction behind a lot of the levels looks great... but I'll have to agree that the story is bad. I don't have a huge problem with it, but they were really going for a "Doom but 40k" thing, seemingly, and a lot of it is pretty lame. It feels like whoever wrote it knew it was pretty silly, knew most people wouldn't take it seriously, but still really wanted it to be taken more seriously. Doom 2016's story hints at a much bigger mythology, but for the most part your main character is just a very strong man driven by pure fucking rage and it's fun in an old-school God of War sense. Eternal just wants to put its mythology in your face and it isn't great.

Do I think Eternal is a better game than 2016? I personally enjoyed it even more, but also I think Eternal has much higher highs and much lower lows. I think if you're only going to play one of them in your entire life, I'd probably still recommend 2016 over Eternal because 2016 is more consistent in its quality, but... I really think Eternal is one hell of an achievement in terms of how intense and thrilling FPS gameplay can be.

EDIT: As an aside, I'd really like to find out the percentage of people who enjoyed it while playing with a mouse and keyboard versus the percentage of people who enjoyed it on a controller. It's playable with a controller, but I don't think it's the best of times, I think the speed at which you have to move and aim all the time is a little much for an analog stick.

@justin258: I’ve only played either game on controller. It’s fine on even higher difficulties.

I played some of it with a controller and had a hard time doing so. Maybe I've just spent so long primarily playing shooters with M+K that those multiplayer Halo controller skills have softened a lot?

Eternal missed the mark with the art direction. The weapon, enemy and level designs are more cartoonish. The satirical tone ID nailed in 2016 is lost. As someone else posted earlier the "elegant simplicity" is gone.

Eternal has rock, paper, scissor combat design while 2016 is just a rock (super shotgun).

Both are fun, but I have replayed 2016 multiple times while I only went through Eternal once.

Hottake; the "you can just SSG through 2016" is a misconception, atleast on Nightmare difficulty. You'll get sniped or overcrowded if you do that

You CAN mobile Siege mode and remote detonate everything though, but Eternal honestly isn't much different in this regard because you can also Precision Bolt/Rocket combo spam or SSG/Ballista combo spam everything in Eternal

Doom Eternal was one of my personal biggest disappointments with a game in a long time. I adore 2016 and I felt the changes in Eternal either made the game significantly worse or did not move the needle at all, which made me wonder why they were made at all. I think the direction they took the story and Doomguy was fucking stupid, I don't like how strongly they encourage you to deal with enemies in a very specific (but also never fun) way, and the ammo scarcity initially made me quit playing the game within the first hour (I went back to it months later but never finished it). My biggest frustration, though, is how much they overload the player mechanics. Why the fuck am I thinking about cooldowns all the time? Why do I have so many grenades? Why are there basically three melee moves? Just coming to grips with how many buttons they want me to press, but only at very specific times in particular circumstances, just made the whole enterprise a drag, and it felt like a deep misreading of what worked about 2016. It's been years since I've actually played 2016 but I'm 100% confident in my comparative assessment of these two games on a personal level.

Super shotgun with a flaming grappling hook is pretty sweet.

I'm torn. Going back to 2016 after Eternal is rough, the new dash and the combat changes really did improve the game -- but I also liked it way less than I liked 2016 back in the day (mostly due to the level design). Kind of a worst of both worlds situation.

It's tough, the gameplay in Eternal is really a fantastic achievement that leans heavily into a particular gameplay style that clicks with me. In that particular facet I guess I would say it's "better" because it would be so hard to go back to 2016 after playing eternal and not having that increased game fidelity.

However I mirror the sentiments of others that the story is kinda flat and alot of the ancillary stuff isn't as good. Doom 2016 was a revelation and it's simplicity was so good. It didn't reach for the sky and in turn it doesn't miss the mark literally anywhere. It's closer to a perfect game than eternal, even though it doesn't set its sights as high as Eternal did.

My vote is going Eternal for the gameplay but hot damn, 2016 is about as close to a perfect FPS game as there is

@reachmorrowind: To be fair I’m not sure if it’s that much of a misconception if it may only apply to the hardest difficulty.

What are people talking about with Eternal's cool downs?

2016 had three equipment items with cool downs (Hologram, Frag, Siphon), Eternal has four (chainsaw, flame belch, frag and ice bomb) but you don't even need to use the grenades.

Am I missing something?

I'm a bit confused...there's only frag and ice bomb. Which 2016 only had frag and siphon. Which is the same amount of grenades. Also there's only one melee, blood punch is just a charged version.

I also have to pick 2016 over Eternal. 2016 was almost the perfect FPS in a lot of ways. The gameplay was buttery smooth. The weapons felt good to use. The difficulty was just enough to give a challenge, but not overwhelming. Eternal makes the classic mistake of trying to fix something that wasn't broken. All they had to do was expand the scope of the game, but still keep the smooth gameplay. Instead, they completely change it to make it more difficult by assigning weapons to different demons and making the demons damage output very high where Doom Guy dies in a couple of hits, regardless if he has body armor or not. Instead of the battles being fun, they became very tedious and stressful, because all it took was one mistake and a long battle string ends and you have to start it all over again. Some people loves these type of challenges, hence some of the defenders, but most people just want to enjoy their games without the brutal difficulty. I ended up beating it, but I was more relieved that is was over than happy afterwards.

I prefer 2016 too....but this point confuses me because 2016 demons do waaaay more damage on Nightmare difficulty compared to Eternal's Nightmare difficulty (2016 imp fireballs can do 80 damage, and Lost Souls insta kill you), Eternal Nightmare made it way easier to stack to full health and armor as well. Meanwhile 2016 Nightmare made it very hard to stack your health and resources back.

@reachmorrowind: I don’t have numbers or anything but I would be rather surprised if there are a lot of folks who played any significant amount of either game on nightmare.

I suppose but I seriously doubt they're playing on Hurt Me Plenty if they're complaining about the enemy damage output though.

Truth be told I actually find 2016 Nightmare as significantly harder in general. Eternal's Nightmare becomes quite easy when you're comfortable with the gameplay loop because of all the resources flying at you every second, the extra mobility options, the overpowered energy shield of the chaingun, the ridiculous power of lock on rockets, the lower damage from enemies, also blood punch is RIDICULOUSLY strong etc.....

However Eternal can have much more broken crowd control sometimes, there's a fuck ton of knock back attacks, and you can straightup get stun locked to death. Which is something 2016 NEVER had. Eternal also has a lot more bugs and inconsistencies with the core mechanics and enemy AI.

I think I preferred 2016 for most of the game (that is, I feel like Eternal was less fun for most of the game) but Eternal's best moments are way better than 2016's encounters, and I don't think I could go back to 2016 after Eternal. It's just a little deeper

Even on lower difficulties...I find it kinda a weird complaint/point to make because in Eternal, the SSG has a grappling hook, and point blank SSG into blood punch insta kills or staggers most demons

Yeah I know SSG has way less ammo compared to 2016 and can't double shot, but chainsaw infinitely recharges anyway

Also ballista/SSG or PB/SSG combos are very spammable on every difficulty

That's something I kinda understand, but don't quite relate because to I can't think of anything in Eternal that hits me as hard as 2016's VEGA Core battles or exploding in the core of the Argent Energy Tower to teleport to Kadingir Sanctum for the first time with BFG Division playing.

The best moment in Eternal for me is probably the Arc Complex elevator/kitchen fight, but it's still not QUITE the same for me

What's y'all favorite level btw?

Doom 2016 was a masterpiece. Doom Eternal was a cluttered mess.

For the way I played Doom (1993), which was trying not just beat the levels, but to beat the levels well, as well as better enjoying the more challenging levels, I liked Eternal much more than Doom (2016). I found Doom Eternals gameplay more satisfying. Secondly, Doom Eternals levels had so much visual detail in them. You could tell the artists must have spent eons on them

Doom 2016.

One of the best made games in recent memory and it was so much more free form with how you tackled each combat arena. The game philosophy of having very little narrative story to keep the action going, but still having environmental story telling was fantastic. Also that soundtrack... god damn what an awesome soundtrack.

Doom Eternal... the only positive thing I can say is that shooting and slicing "feels" better. BUT nearly everything else was such a downgrade.

The design of the Marauder was the anti-thesis of the whole concept of the game. Why would you have an enemy that drags the combat down to a crawl where you have to use specific guns and distance to kill them? In general, the combat is more risk management and it's supposed to make you "feel" more like a bad ass for using all your tools available to you correctly. In my opinion though I feel like I was given the world's best guitar only to be limited to playing pop music with it, while 2016 feels like I was doing free-form jazz.

I know the lore was supposed to be tongue and cheek, but I found it pretty cringe and not necessary with how long winded every piece of collectable lore is. Again, a complete 180 of the "who cares what the story is? let's get you a gun and something to shoot" style of 2016.

damn

The Marauder's fine for me. There's one window of opportunity but, if you stay in range, that window is always open. I've got a few levels left to play but the lore definitely isn't clicking with me. I can have people around Doomguy acting with all the sincerity in the world. What I can't abide by is Doomguy screaming actual words in an actual voice. Shit words. Words from a book nobody needed to write.

Doomguy is a man of action. Him hammering the BFG 10K trigger before Vega unlocks the safety is fun. The idea that his very existence turns a woman of science into a believer in God is kinda funny. Unfortunately, that seems few and far between. Doom 2016 pitched that much better.

bodied

I like Doom Eternal. I bought it twice upon realizing that I should have bought the deluxe edition for the Demonic Slayer skin and The Ancient Gods DLC seems pretty good.

...But I actually finished 2016.

Doom 2016 is easier to recommend but Eternal has the best combat in a first person shooter ever.

I couldn't even imagine going back to 2016 at this point, it's simply too basic for me now. I finished 2016 on Ultra-Violence once and Nightmare twice, so I really love that game, but man I've finished Eternal and all it's DLC like...10 times now? Maybe a dozen? It's basically mechanical FPS perfection, I keep coming back to it. The one issue I'd take with it is that it over emphasizes weak points. In the early game you have to abuse sticky grenades on cacodemon's, but that's really it. Everything else you annihilate with quick swapping PB/RL/Ballista/SSG once you get them. It's an issue that a lot of the criticism is based around and it's just kinda... wrong. But the game and the tutorial basically did it to itself, so I won't blame anyone for thinking it.

Also I'm gonna go FULL pinky out here and say that I personally wouldn't touch either of these games with a controller. No way no how. It's basically the opposite to how I feel about Halo.