DOOM Eternal - the sequel to the 2016 reboot - now with The Ancient Gods DLC

[Ezeekiel]

I am still half-way the 3rd level and I haven't seen any playtroughs, so I have no idea how the game will progress and how the remaining enemies affect the combat.

But on cacodemon I agree, I've as much on my previous post that's so far the enemy they seem to have dropped the ball.
The conditions are to easy to pull of and the rewards makes any other way to engage him useless.
They should've made the weakpoint more difficult to pull off (doing X amount of damage to the eye; or only chucking a grenade while he's doing the bite attack, so the player's needs to risk himself) and the subsequent effect "weaker" but useful (like simply disabling the fire ball attacks)

I'd be happy if launching a rocket/grenade or two into his mouth would pop him completely (agreed on making it harder to hit... He swallows grenades which are nowhere near his mouth) and he'd drop a health thingie or two or something. I hate the clunky extra step of the glory kill, especially because you do it that way through most of the game. They also have to decide whether he's supposed to be a tough foe (you usually face few of them at once and his melee lunge seems to be very damaging, he also takes 3 rockets to the face to kill in Nightmare so I guess yes) or a laughable pushover (super easy shotgun grenade or grenade toss -> glory kill... Even dumber with glory kill range upgrade).


If you shoot the caco in the mouth with the shotgun primary or whatever, does he also at least take some increased damage, or is the weakpoint grenade-only? I've never really tried so far.

 

[Durandal]

And FWIW I'm totally against the heavy handed forcing of the player into a very specific play style like in DE.

What, like this?

And yes, this is on Nightmare.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Is it just my impression or does the balista no longer have a kick-back that can be used as a "triple jump"?

They also have to decide whether he's supposed to be a tough foe or a laughable pushover

Yeah all of the times I died to him so far was either because I didn't see or was distracted with something else, and so got my ass bitten off from behind or sniped mid-air by a fire ball.
Because when you do spot him he's barely more of a threat than the armed zombies.

I don't know if there's any sort of damage multiplier to him, but aside from the grenade the super shotgun now with the meathook disposes of him fairly quickly. It's specially fun to use him as a propeller, because you gain speed by rotating around an enemy with the meathook

 

[Durandal]

Thank god this game doesn't have maze level design, I hate that shit.

As opposed to a bunch of arenas stringed together by mundane platforming sections or linear hallways...

I was planning on finishing the campaign first before giving my thoughts, but I'm finding it harder and harder to even find the drive to continue playing. Eternal somehow manages to feel both overdesigned and underdesigned at the same time.
That is, the devs probably spent so much resources on "perfecting" their idea of good combat they forgot to actually bother designing levels around it. NuDoom 2016 was far from perfect, but at least it had some levels strewn about that encouraged exploration and had competently hidden secrets. The vast majority of Eternal's secrets can be found by doing a sweep of the arena you just fought in, punching some cracked walls and dashing to ledges. Then there's the platforming sections which are clearly just mundane filler because Id had no clue how to string their arena encounters together, and hey what's more arcadey than platforming right?! It all feels so incredibly lazy.

Even better, Doom Eternal should ditch platforming and exploration entirely. When you finish an arena, you should just get teleported immediately to the next one. No downtime, no bullshit, no aimless walking around, just pure non-stop action until the level ends. Just like in the arcades.

 

[fantadomat]

Another worthless shill. It is amusing how youtube stars become more and more desperate as their "career" continues to decline .

 

[Lyric Suite]

Thank god this game doesn't have maze level design, I hate that shit.

As opposed to a bunch of arenas stringed together by mundane platforming sections or linear hallways...

I was planning on finishing the campaign first before giving my thoughts, but I'm finding it harder and harder to even find the drive to continue playing. Eternal somehow manages to feel both overdesigned and underdesigned at the same time.
That is, the devs probably spent so much resources on "perfecting" their idea of good combat they forgot to actually bother designing levels around it. NuDoom 2016 was far from perfect, but at least it had some levels strewn about that encouraged exploration and had competently hidden secrets. The vast majority of Eternal's secrets can be found by doing a sweep of the arena you just fought in, punching some cracked walls and dashing to ledges. Then there's the platforming sections which are clearly just mundane filler because Id had no clue how to string their arena encounters together, and hey what's more arcadey than platforming right?! It all feels so incredibly lazy.

Even better, Doom Eternal should ditch platforming and exploration entirely. When you finish an arena, you should just get teleported immediately to the next one. No downtime, no bullshit, no aimless walking around, just pure non-stop action until the level ends. Just like in the arcades.

That would make the game impossible to play in one sitting. The last level in Doom 2016 is three consecutive arenas with no downtime between them and it's fucking exhausting and quite a bit obnoxious.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Down time is very import even to the most unrelenting action games.
It allows the player to take a break and prepare himself for what comes next.
If the game is non-stop action from begining to end, you end up getting exhausted with whole affair pretty quickly.
A good example of this is Ninja Gaiden 1 and 2.
Both those games are brutal and intense. But NG2 doesn't give you any sort of breaks and as such after every level you're left tired from all the action (because of this I only did 1 level a day or else I would've stop playing it even before reaching the 3rd level). NG1 on the other hand is well paced and has good amount of quiet time, which makes the experience overall much more pleasent and engaging, as such completing the game in one sitting remains fun until the end.

 

[Silentstorm]

So a twin stick shooter in first person?

That...sounds terrible unless they made demons much weaker, anyways, i hope the next Doom game has Bethesda listening to complaints and making bigger levels and the combat more fun, maybe get a new person to make the soundtrack too while we're at it.

I mean, they did leave plot threads for the next game or games, like the existence of the lord of demons that is stated to have created the very demons themselves, that guy has never appeared yet and that just seems like the last boss of the last game.

Hopefully without the game stopping and saying "Psst, this guy's weakness is his knees, shoot there for maximum damage to win faster" in a tutorial and as an objective.

 

[deama]

Thank god this game doesn't have maze level design, I hate that shit.

As opposed to a bunch of arenas stringed together by mundane platforming sections or linear hallways...

I was planning on finishing the campaign first before giving my thoughts, but I'm finding it harder and harder to even find the drive to continue playing. Eternal somehow manages to feel both overdesigned and underdesigned at the same time.
That is, the devs probably spent so much resources on "perfecting" their idea of good combat they forgot to actually bother designing levels around it. NuDoom 2016 was far from perfect, but at least it had some levels strewn about that encouraged exploration and had competently hidden secrets. The vast majority of Eternal's secrets can be found by doing a sweep of the arena you just fought in, punching some cracked walls and dashing to ledges. Then there's the platforming sections which are clearly just mundane filler because Id had no clue how to string their arena encounters together, and hey what's more arcadey than platforming right?! It all feels so incredibly lazy.

I had fun with the combat at first until the novelty wore off and it became apparent that the game expects you to follow a strict set of rules, and if you dare deviate from them you'll very likely end up eating shit. Then there's also the stupid gimmicks like sticky nades being a OHK on Cacos, thus invalidating any other means to take them down. I'm currently at Taras Nabad and combat has become a serious drag. Every encounter has started feeling the same, because they always progress the exact same way due to the game expecting you to play in a very specific way. Maybe it's better on difficulties lower than Nightmare, but so far I've been very disappointed.

Also, before I'm accused of trying to be contrarian or just hating it for the sake of it, I went into this with a decent sizing of optimism. Just look at my earlier posts.

I liked how crysis 1 did it, so I was thinking of something like that for doom. I also like how farcry 2/3 did it too.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

You're forgetting that Crysis gameplay and enemies are designed for working within a sandbox framework. Doom isn't, never has been and never will be.

 

[deama]

You're forgetting that Crysis gameplay and enemies are designed for working within a sandbox framework. Doom isn't, never has been and never will be.

I don't see why it can't be.

 

[DalekFlay]

I don't know about that... Enemies dropped health, armor and ammo (appropriate to the enemy type in question, usually) in many older shooters already. You still had to run there (with no invincibility frames like during nudoom's chainsaw/melee animations) and get it. You could actually focus on movement and shooting in a shooter of that type without trivial but interrupting busywork thrown in for no reason. Busywork which is just a more convoluted way of doing what you could already do in the past in a more smooth and intuitive manner.

Yes but the "interrupting busywork" is still killing shit, instead of searching the level. If you watch videos of "good" Doom Eternal gameplay, it's almost a rhythm game of shooting, running and glory/chainsaw killing (and it does go quite fast, despite the claims of long and slow animations you just watch). I'm not saying they pulled this off perfectly for everyone by ANY means, or that it's even a thing they should have tried to pull off. I'm saying that was the intent and what most reviewers think they pulled off. Anyone can disagree with that of course, but you can't argue with their intentions.

 

[Great Deceiver]

This game is so fucking bad, holy shit. The 2rage4u "soundtrack" makes me laugh every time.

I didn't like nuDoom 2016, but that game was miles better than this parody. RIP.

 

[Mortmal]

Thank god this game doesn't have maze level design, I hate that shit.

As opposed to a bunch of arenas stringed together by mundane platforming sections or linear hallways...

I was planning on finishing the campaign first before giving my thoughts, but I'm finding it harder and harder to even find the drive to continue playing. Eternal somehow manages to feel both overdesigned and underdesigned at the same time.
That is, the devs probably spent so much resources on "perfecting" their idea of good combat they forgot to actually bother designing levels around it. NuDoom 2016 was far from perfect, but at least it had some levels strewn about that encouraged exploration and had competently hidden secrets. The vast majority of Eternal's secrets can be found by doing a sweep of the arena you just fought in, punching some cracked walls and dashing to ledges. Then there's the platforming sections which are clearly just mundane filler because Id had no clue how to string their arena encounters together, and hey what's more arcadey than platforming right?! It all feels so incredibly lazy.

Even better, Doom Eternal should ditch platforming and exploration entirely. When you finish an arena, you should just get teleported immediately to the next one. No downtime, no bullshit, no aimless walking around, just pure non-stop action until the level ends. Just like in the arcades.

yes , platforming part are a pain in the ass. I managed them but they bring nothing of worth to a shooter.

 

[JDR13]

I was going to wait awhile before playing this, but my curiosity got the better of me, so I decided to "try" it for a bit.

I was expecting the graphics to be a lot better. On Ultra settings, it doesn't even look as good as Doom 2016 to me. Does the Nightmare setting look significantly better?

Secrets are shown as giant floating question marks in the game world? Are you fucking kidding me?

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

And FWIW I'm totally against the heavy handed forcing of the player into a very specific play style like in DE.

What, like this?

And yes, this is on Nightmare.

Looks like some Devil May Cry shit. I wish I was still good at video games. Damit all.

 

[Junmarko]

The 2rage4u "soundtrack" makes me laugh every time.

"2rage4u"?

It's called Heavy Metal. Faggot.

 

[Silentstorm]

Even little things got worse in Eternal, like, remember how you could find areas from the classic Doom games in the 2016 game as secrets?

Well, Eternal decided to do one better and...just have random sprites and textures be hidden in the levels:

That's about the best you get, sure, those weren't big things in 2016, but at least it was a whole area and everything but you and the enemies was the classic look and part of a map, so it was less jarring.

At least you can find Dopefish in this game...

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

This game is so fucking bad, holy shit. The 2rage4u "soundtrack" makes me laugh every time.

I didn't like nuDoom 2016, but that game was miles better than this parody. RIP.

This. Doom 2016 bored me due to arena "level design" and glory kill spamming, but DE forces me to play like a frantic autist to make any progress. This resource farming approach may look good on paper, but it just plays terribly.

Can't wait for id's next "masterpiece".

 

[Draconis]

Looks like some Devil May Cry shit. I wish I was still good at video games. Damit all.

It's basically DMC in FPS mode

 

[sullynathan]

Looks like some Devil May Cry shit. I wish I was still good at video games. Damit all.

It's basically DMC in FPS mode

That's why it's so good.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I see even the nuDoom fans are complaining at how cartoony the graphics are. I saw a couple of danger hairs in that dev team picture i think this game has been infected with mobile zoomer retardation.

 

[orcinator]

And FWIW I'm totally against the heavy handed forcing of the player into a very specific play style like in DE.

What, like this?

And yes, this is on Nightmare.

Wait so the other ballista upgrade was the good one.

 

[Nyast]

Thanks for the codex, otherwise I'd be questionning my sanity. Everybody else seems to love Doom Eternal, all reviews are positive and players so excited. "FPS of the year, no of the decade", I hear all the time. I've been playing the first 5 levels and only one word comes to my mind: "meh".

It's not bad, but it's not great either. I hate getting interrupted every 5 minutes by these stupid tutorials. They go as far as highlight the weak points of the monsters ( including bosses ) before you even have a chance to figure them out yourself. How retarded is that ?

I could comment on the lack of ammo / resource management, which I also hate, or the plat-forming which sometimes feels out of place. But what infuriates me is how, every half an hour, I'm getting stuck for 5-10 mins after cleaning up an arena, because I do not see how to progress to the next checkpoint. This often involves jumping on a wall somewhere with plat-forms that blend in the background, so you feel stupid once you realize that you've been running past that point a dozen times like an idiot. This totally kills the pacing.

Also the story is.... a big mess. It's like they do not know how to tell a story or do exposition. There's plenty of stuff ( Doom fortress anyone ) or characters that seem to come out of nowhere. I played and finished Doom 2016, but that was years ago obviously, so all the lore feels alien to me and I can't get invested in it. To the point I'm playing the game like a dumbass, just following checkpoints.

Doom: Eternal aimed at making me feel like a badass, but so far it only succeded at making me feel like an idiot, for a number of reasons, and that's not a good feeling.

 

[sullynathan]

Tutorials aren't even there in the second level. How far are you?