I had a jolly good time with the previous DOOM game and I went into Eternal expecting pretty much the same thing, a classic FPS experience with some modern sensibilities strewn over the whole thing, with a challenging but tight core loop that wouldn’t be too punishing or frustrating. Eternal goes into a few different directions that distracted me from the core experience and I also found that some of the new challenges and systems weren’t my cup of tea. Overall I enjoyed the game, but it didn’t hit as much as the previous one did in my case.
A little side note, but the whole Bethesda.net thing was really annoying me, being forced to create an account - while I was already on Steam! - to play a single player game didn’t feel right to me. This game has so many events and extra content (I think?) that when you launch it for the first time you get a bunch of popups for stuff you have 0 context for before you even play for the first time and all the monthly challenges and experience trackers could’ve been omitted easily.
This aside, following the events of DOOM (2016), “The Slayer” must venture across many locales on demon-infested earth and strange other worlds, shooting, chainsawing and glory-killing everything that moves in a rotation of resources and health management. Equipped with grenades, a flamethrower and a bunch of different weapons, you explore large maps to find secrets and upgrades, battle through arenas and fight bosses at the end of it all. This game became overwhelming pretty quickly for me, as between chainsaws, guns with special abilities and alternate modes, flamethrower and grenades that also have alternate modes, there are A LOT of buttons to push and systems to use if you want to be optimal in battle scenarios, more often than not I fumbled around.
The levels are very big with multiple sections to find secrets and challenges around, but here again I felt that there was a bit too much. There are a few upgrade tracks, you can boost your weapons, your base stats and unlock special abilities for your suit, you can find cheat codes, extra lives - not a big fan, because you’re not asked if you want to use them when you die, and it’s pretty frustrating - music discs and toys, and while the traversal is really snappy, with the Doomguy running along walls like some kind of creature, double jumping and air dashing around, it can become a bit much to try and find everything. You’ll also have secret encounters that you need to complete in order to get completion and weapon points, but they are timed, your resources aren’t replenished and anything used to attempt them is lost, with no easy way to just refill all your ammo and health, failing one repeatedly makes it even harder, and that’s also frustrating. Slayer gates are little arenas where you have to defeat all enemies and they’re self-contained, so that’s fun.
The weapon selection is good, the enemies are challenging - and a bit frustrating if you can’t juggle a ton of systems all at once - and areas are interesting to explore for what that’s worth. DOOM Eternal might not have hit as hard for me as 2016 did, but I’m still glad I tried it!
