Doom Eternal

TLDR: Doom Eternal is a poor follow up to Doom 2016, failing in nearly every way to live up to the predecessor, excepting the Slayer Gates which are brilliant, shining beacons in an annoying morass of platforming and terrible level design. For reference, I played on Ultraviolence, the same difficulty I played all the other Doom games on, and on the PC, because its a Doom game and that's where they live. Also, spoilers.

There is a universe where Doom Eternal came before Doom 2016, and is a fun reinvention of the old Doom games. It has irritating platforming, updated to be irritating by modern standards. It has obtuse level designs, updated to be frustrating and rob the game of its most entertaining parts in service of making a new generation suffer through them for the sake of finishing a game. It has an awful story, updated to be dull and uninteresting to an audience fresh off of turning off all the dialogue in Borderlands 3. It has a suitably metal soundtrack ,that fights for your attention with audio cues and demon sounds to make the game both more difficult to play while also being just good enough to not want to turn it off. It has a variety of enemies, updated to be frustrating to a modern audience by mixing tried and true designs with incredibly irritating new enemies, like Snake Lady or Asshole Who Makes Shields. But Doom Eternal, alas, did not come first and instead is a colossally disappointing follow up to Doom 2016. The much lauded (and deservedly so) Slayer Gates are the sole exception, because they take place in interesting levels without any environmental garbage or tight spaces, showing that there is a diamond at the core of a golem made of cheap devil merchandise.

The combat is very good, as portrayed in the Slayer Gates. The heavily restricted ammo (at max upgrades, your super shotgun as 14 shots, your Arbalest has 10 and you have 12 rockets.) is offset by having a chainsaw that will drop all the ammo from any enemy killed with it (except for BFG or Crucible, those are highlighted drops in world). It works very well when you can hit your own rhythm and use the level design to your advantage. The unfortunate part is that the combat is very rarely given the chance to do so, and most often you're going to be switching weapons constantly as they run out of ammo while trying to both stay far enough from enemies to avoid their AOE attacks while trying to close in for Glory Kills (which there aren't enough of, since you have to do them constantly. Every enemies has 3, but since you need to glory kill to save ammo and regain health, you're doing between 5 and 10 per fight, and they get old fast). The Blood Punch feels like a lazy stand-in for glory kills, serving to wipe out fodder enemies and sort of stagger larger ones. The grenades started like an interesting addition, but because they don't do enough damage to large enemies they really only serve to lockdown a few enemies with the Ice Grenade and clear groups of fodder with the Frag Grenade. Having an additional button to switch between them made me only ever stick to the Frag Grenade, because I never saw the purpose of the Ice grenade until it was completely upgraded, and by then I hadn't used it for hours and wasn't going to start remembering the button to do that then. Then they add the Crucible, an additional one-hit-kill melee, but one that's much more fussy about where you can execute from and takes the button next to the chainsaw, so I would pull it out, panic that I didn't want to use its preciously rare ammo, and switch back to something else only to then get to chainsaw the enemy. The dashes, used most often by holding down the button in platforming because everything is a jump and two dashes away, are an interesting idea that is both buggy and absolutely requires the upgrade to recharge speed. They are good for dodging enemies and clearing distance, but so was just Moving Fast Normally as you did in 2016, and they feel like a middle ground between slowing you down so the combat is harder, but not making you too slow. But they don't recharge reliably (which is probably a bug, but happened often enough that I never really trusted them) and slowly, so you can dash twice before feeling like a suddenly slow sitting duck. You can still dodge Imp fireballs, but now there are CONSIDERABLY more fireballs thrown at you constantly, so dodging one only means taking another to the face. They offset this with a massive maximum health and armor pool, but it takes the 10th out of 12 levels to get all the upgrades, so you're going to be some combination of short on health, armor or extra short on ammo. The chainsaw to refill ammo seems to also recharge through combat (but I never paid attention to its icon, and only managed to figure out what most of the icon even meant by the end of the game). The Slayer Gates have recharging chainsaw fuel, which is brilliant, and most arenas always had at least one canister of fuel when I was hunting around after a fight to find the pickups I didn't see during the fight. There are usually a handful of fodder enemies between encounters, giving you the opportunity to Glory Kill, Flame Belch or Chainsaw your way to more much needed resources, but early on I never felt like I had enough, and more than once was glad to hit the Slayer Gate because I knew i would leave with mostly full health and more ammo. The during-fight platforming feels awful, where they expect you to stop shooting to go play on the monkey bars to get away from the enemies, I guess? But most enemies are ranged and the ones who aren't are extremely fast, so the end result is the platforming in combat is basically a waste of time or a means to grab an extra life by hitting a jump pad. The monkey bars being buggy doesn't help, but they're probably going to patch them and only the early adopters get to enjoy dashing into one, only to see the animation as they drop to their death.

The level design consists of a form of arena fights with platforming sections between them. If you looked at the preview coverage and said 'Hey, first person platforming is terrible because it has severely restricted situational awareness and makes judging distance really difficult, it makes me worried that they're showing so much of it' pat yourself on the back, because you were wholly right. The platforming serves no purpose other than padding the length and being a way to hide secrets. Excepting, of course, the multiple swimming sections, which serve no purpose other than to fully illustrate how no ideas were cut, even the worst ones. I spent much of my time with the platforming staring at a mess of green lights and empty cavernous drops, trying to figure out what they wanted me to do, and what that usually was was jump to catch a ledge and then jump at a wall to crawl on. None of it ever felt good or felt like it added anything, especially since you could see the secrets on your map and so could just stare at the glowing question mark on the other side of the gate long enough to trace whatever entrance you needed to punch to open it. The level art design consists of boring, too-often repeated pieces festooned with unnecessary skulls and demonic symbols occasionally scrawled onto walls (in the beginning, later in the game they don't bother anymore) and you never go to Hell, although they go out of their way to make areas on Earth look like it. The other half of the levels, the arena fights, vary wildly in difficulty even within the same levels, depending on whether or not it takes place in an arena or a hallway and whether or not there are environmental hazards. One particularly frustrating arena started with an area covered in the purple goop (which makes you slowly walk until you completely walk out of it) and every time you touch the goop, the dozen or so demons around you all hit you at once, killing you outright. Some of the arenas are very good, reminiscent of 2016 where they are just wide open arenas with maybe an underground part to break sight lines. But most are varying degrees of confined space with too many enemies (or one big annoying enemy, they are very fond of forcing you into face-tanking Cybermancubus's with an arena where they can fill the entire are with damaging goop and shoot blasts you don't have nearly the room to escape. They do it at least 8 times I can think of off the top of my head). The variance in difficulty feels incredibly uneven, with some encounters being incredibly simple to complete while others will force you into memorizing spawn locations to eliminate problems enemies as quickly as possible. One especially irritating encounter on the second to last level took me maybe 7 tries until I gave up and used the Crucible to kill the most irritating enemies, while its mirrored encounter didn't even make me lose an extra life. Most combat encounters are waves, where you drop into an arena with some mobs, some harder enemies will spawn, then a big one, then more fodder, then another big one that acts like a boss. They're often littered with health pickups, ammo and armor, the exception being one Taras Nabad which might be the most mean spirited level I have ever encountered in a videogame. The end result being the combat doesn't stay fun throughout the extent of the game, and ends up being tedious by the end.

The new enemies, the Gargoyle (or Imp With Wings), the Carcass (or Asshole Who Makes Shields), the Whiplash (or Snake Lady), the Prowler (Or Big Imp With Too Much Health), the Doom Hunter (or Tedious Missile Guy), the Makyr Drone(or Shoot Her In The Head For Ammo) and the Marauder (or Garbage Man With Dog) all feel like extraneous additions to the roster, made to make the game harder or more tedious, depending on the enemy. I liked fighting Barons of Hell, I liked fighting Hell Knights, I liked fighting Arachnotrons. Doom Eternal's re-imagining of the old favorites is pretty good (The exception being the Archvile, who is the biggest asshole in the game and the only enemy worth using the Crucible on, because there is no fun to be had while they are around. They spawn new enemies, shield themselves from attacks, and teleport around with no indication of where they went. ). Even the much-malaigned Marauder isn't that bad, since he's easy to stun lock with a super shotgun blast followed by a rocket or an Arbalest shot, going down in about 5 hits (which is good, since one of the Secret Encounters is kill one in less than 30 seconds. Taras Nabad, everybody.). But the new enemies range from just annoying (the Prowler) to incredibly frustrating (the Carcass and the Whiplash, both of which do more damage and disrupt the flow of combat more than any other enemies in the game). By the end of the game, I was tired of the combat and just wanted it to be done. Its worth also talking about the bosses, of which there are 3 real bosses and one (the first) that just introduces the Doom Hunter by making you fight one and some enemies. And then two and some enemies. The other three fights get worse as they go: the second is a glorified Marauder fight, annoying but not terribly difficult, the Makyr who fills the arena with minions and damaging ground as you fight her, making her arbitrarily hard, and finally the Icon of Sin, who I found impossible without taking advantage of the you-died-a-lot reload, the Praetor Upgrade, which effectively meant you only take 1 damage per hit. But in a fight not only against a giant monster that takes a tedious amount of time to shoot the parts off of, you have to fight an endlessly spawning series of enemies, including Barons and Cybermancubuses. I turned around after damaging a limb only to see no fewer than 4 mancubuses, a Cybermancubus, a hell knight and two Whiplashes. I never felt the need to use it the rest of the game (I only saw the option one other time, on the fight I mentioned earlier) and it felt like a Mario here-let-us-play-this-for-you, since it took a fight I found impossible and knocked it down to tedious. But having seen it on easy mode, the fight still isn't good, and you still have to spend more time fighting enemies and trying to hit limbs that move too quickly out of the way and take far too many shots to break.

The story serves to remind you that this is another game from the people who brought you Rage 2, or The Game That Would Be Borderlands. If you enjoyed turning off all the dialogue in Borderlands 3, have I got the story for you. In summary, it details the origin of Doom Guy (yes, they do call him the Doom Guy on more than one occasion) as literally following the story laid out in Doom 1 and 2. You are picked up on Mars by some kind of space knights, who between then and now made a deal with the Dark Lord (literally what he's referenced as) to siphon human souls into Argent Energy to feel the planets where the Makyr came from, who sort of start out as a stand in for heaven but are really just generic bad guys in white. You never go to Hell in this game. Hell is basically working for the Makyrs so they can do whatever nonsense they need to. By the end they seem to just be demons themselves and the game seems to be saying that the Heaven stand-in is worse than the demons, and you can make your own conclusions about the perceived message of the game being. The Doom Guy is meant to be the enforcer for the Makyrs, but what is he enforcing if they're allied with the demons? Gone is the mysterious but hinted story of Doom 2016, where the Doom Slayer is an eternal enemy of Hell, the last of a Doomed civilization and clad in mysterious, demon forged armor. Now, he's another boring white guy who spends his time worrying about earth and collecting devil themed guitars and magazines. Its an incredibly inconsistent character, that they want you to believe is both a rage fueled killing machine and a nerd who keeps multiple game consoles around, along with shelves of games and convenient places to put lame toys of his enemies on. If you never played Doom 2016, don't worry because nothing that happened in that game matters at all, but if you didn't read the old comic where the Doom Guy rants about guts and murder, then you're going to miss some references. The attitude of this game is that Doom is, was, and always will be lame, and should be embraced for it. Doom 2016 wallowed in being metal, and thought killing demons was cool. Even the new art style is terrible, the Praetor suit from 2016 is an unlockable in Doom Eternal and looks TERRIBLE. Nothing in Doom Eternal is cool. Nothing.

The near exception is the soundtrack, again a new work from Mick Gordon. But it lacks the power and character of Doom 2016's soundtrack, sounding more like his work on the Killer Instinct soundtrack, but also occasionally just deteriorating into noises. For the most part, its not a bad soundtrack, until the 2nd to last level where it devolves into some sort of singing that is meant to be haunting but came off as just boring. Its not the sort of soundtrack that will become a spotify playlist you return to when you need to make something more interesting, like Doom 2016 was. It's the sort of soundtrack that you stop paying attention to, except occasionally to catch moments of and say 'yeah, this is ok. '

The unlockables, which mostly consist of the soundtrack from the original 2 games, but also include tracks from Quake, one track from Doom 3 and a track from 'Wulf', are almost universally disappointing. It is nice to hear E1M1, but its only on the ship and only after you go talk to the painting of the album cover for it (the Doom Guy collects vinyls of each of these songs, so he's also an audio nerd too I guess). The unlockable skins are the original Doom Guy armor, which they place front and center, the Praetor Suit which they have updated to match the new game's bizarre proportions, the Training Set which makes you look like a marauder, and a handful of palette swaps of the original armor. If you would like more than those, than prepare to feel like you're in the real hellish future, because what does every game need to make people keep playing it long after the content has gone stale? Say it together now, a Battle Pass. Mostly emblems and backgrounds for your nameplate, it includes a few red skins for the enemies in multiplayer and a black palette swap of the original set with a burning head. Which you'll never see because its an FPS, but if you're deep into the multiplayer, they might get spooked or something. Which you'll also need to play a lot of to hit the end of the pass, which even at only 12 rewards, I only hit 8 by the end of the game, including having done all the Weekly challenges for the week it launched. But, you may say, there are two more awful ways that you can get Unique Skins. Yes, you can go to Twitch Prime for disappointingly predictable Unicorn Skin (who sort of has a battle pass of its own, that levels concurrently with your battle pass and has animations that you can only use while using the skins from the pack) or, somehow even worse, the Slayer Club, in which you can directly interact with the marketing department of Doom Eternal in exchange for a Zombie Slayer skin, and more (palette swap) skins if you continue to do such riveting tasks such as Daily Logins, Submitting Fanart, Visit The Forums, View An Old Contest or other such gamified marketing tasks. That one of the very few unique skins is hidden behind their stupid marketing and not in the game instead of one of the palette swaps is extremely indicative of the future that they're envisioning for Doom Eternal.

The multiplayer is worse than the multiplayer from Doom 2016. At least 2016 was a boring generic shooter made by a different team, the new (sole) mode is a 2v1 monsters vs Guy mode where every card is stacked against the Guy. In addition to being human beings who have a mouse and will never miss, they can lock you from pickups, double their own health, respawn every 30 seconds and mark huge areas as damaging to the Guy, in addition to a horde of regular enemies (including Barons!) who are there to make sure you're always taking damage. Depending on the skill level of your opponent, it may be an even fight or you might get murdered in seconds. But because every match is best 3/5 they will all take too long and feel like a waste of your time by the end. And no one is playing Guy (because of how much more difficult it is to win against anyone who even understands the tools at their disposal as monsters) so unless you queue as a monster (in which case, you're gonna hurry up and wait) you're going to have some version of a bad time. This might get a few balance patches to adjust, but right now, its an abhorrent excuse for multiplayer that I'm sure streamers will get some mileage out of crushing people who just want to do the weekly challenges, that so far have always included some multiplayer.

Doom Eternal probably suffers from some of Dark Souls 2 syndrome, where different decisions don't necessarily mean bad decisions, but are worse decisions than the previous work. The combat is still great, but marred by bad level design and bad enemy design. The music is good, but not great. There are cosmetic unlockables, but that take grinding and the sale of some amount of your soul to the marketing team at Bethesda. Doom Eternal doesn't make Doom 2016 bad retroactively (in some ways it makes it look better, showing the sublte brilliance of many of the design choices in it), but it does make me very skeptical of any more work coming out of Bethesda. Just more Doom would have been a slam dunk, but instead its an over-fattened abomination with seven heads arguing with each other wearing a DOOM GUY SUX t-shirt, riding a skateboard while juggling chainsaws that it drops every few seconds. If you already own Doom Eternal, go ahead and play it I guess, but if you don't you aren't missing much. Go back and play 2016 again, and wait for it to drop in price considerably if you're curious. Or watch all the cutscenes on youtube and take a super shotgun to that niggling interest, sending it back to hell in chuncks where it belongs. I ended Doom 2016 feeling strong, like I had conquered Hell. I finished Doom Eternal frustrated and defeated, feeling like I had somehow failed to find a way through what might be the worst boss encounter I've ever seen. Its crushingly disappointing, from start to finish. Maybe its me, and I'm not good enough to hang with this game. But if that's the case, I got pretty far before I couldn't do it anymore, and it didn't feel fair, like I wasn't good enough. It felt like a tedious fight made impossible with poor design, that I guess I couldn't measure up to.