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

[Silentstorm]

So, this went from a more fun Serious Sam that, while not being like classic Doom but using the name, had at least fun fights against demons to boss fights having literal tutorials and instructions on how to kill them, bland music and having to stop to chainsaw monsters, and heaven forbid you run out of fuel so that you have to wait for the chainsaw to recharge...making you wonder why they didn't just make it have infinite fuel since it doesn't actually make the game harder.

Also, i actually don't mind the visuals and unironically enjoy the silly moments, it's very much the Army Of Darkness to Doom 2016 but i don't mind, seeing Doom Slayer put himself on a cannon to fast travel is just great, or him dragging Samuel Hayden with no care at all and even tossing him aside before a boss fight like he was trash, also the way everyone fears or talks about Doom Slayer, it's a quirky game, but i actually happen to love silly and quirky games, and always find silliness mixed with horror or badass settings way funnier than i should, so this actually works for me.

And damn, i wish we could shoot the UAC spokesperson, or that there would be some kind of epilogue or special ending where she goes "I know i said that Doom Slayer's strength was just a myth, but fucker just killed a fucking goat kaiju and various armies of demons in one day, and things are going to hell for us, what do you know, you guys were right, Doom Slayer really is that badass!" before UAC cuts the transmission.

 

[Durandal]

What Eternal managed to do is make using all of your tools essential for survival,

I dunno dude, having infinite ammo seems like an even greater incentive to keep using the rocket launcher on everything and then using whatever random weapon has full ammo while you wait for the chainsaw to cool down.

That is how 2016 worked. You can no longer just spam the Rocket Launcher. There are also many times when you just can't find a smaller demon to chainsaw. Plus the chainsaw only restores part of your ammo.

Small demons are almost always available unless it's the very end of the fight (or those later stages I haven't gotten to yet but imps and zombies have been plentiful for the first 50% of the game) and with a chainsaw every 15 seconds restoring half your ammo cap you get 20~ rockets per minute, add the 10 you started with because you chainsawed some of the ambient zombies on the way to the arena and you're right below 2016's maxed ammo cap of 35, and you can keep going even higher if it's a particularly long fight.

You should probably switch after blowing through the five rockets the zombie dropped but 20 rockets per minute is a lot of rockets.

This point is moot because the Rocket Launcher itself has been much more toned down compared to 16. While it is more powerful (takes like 4 rockets to kill a Mancubus instead of 5/7), its projectiles are also much slower (where some enemies like the Arachnotron and Whiplash will actually dodge it on reaction) which makes it much less effective at longer ranges, it deals a lot more self-damage, you can no longer charge a lock-on while the primary fire isn't done reloading (which in 16 would let you fire five rockets in a single burst instead of three) and Carcasses are specifically designed as a hard counter to the Rocket Launcher by spawning barriers in your face. Even if you were set on using the Rocket Launcher all the time, it's usually plain overkill against fodder enemies when a single Sticky Bomb is just as effective and nowhere as self-damaging, and switch canceling into Ballista and back into the Rocket Launcher is much more effective in terms of single-target DPS than using only the Rocket Launcher, while also letting you split ammo consumption between different types.

The new weapon balance and enemy design is such that even if you decided to stick to one weapon for the whole fight regardless of ammo, you'd get your shit slapped regardless.

 

[Seethe]

Oh, I see a cacodemon. Oh, should I shoot it with with my shotgun? No. Should I shoot it with the plasma rifle? Nope. I will lobe a MOBA ability grenade in its mouth to trigger an instant gory kill. Over, and over, and over again.

Maybe try a better example since you can use the shotgun to trigger the instant glory kill.

Bitch I was complaining about glory kills long before you played doom16. And guess what, I was right, they doubled down on the retard shit.
Still, he complains about having to use a certain weapon when at least another one does the same thing.

I assume you are talking about the grenade launcher on the shotgun. It's literally the same thing except you have to equip a shotgun mod instead of using the MOBA ability. I feel like you missed the point of my complaint.

 

[Junmarko]

If anyone wants to play without making a stupid Bethsoft account, just D/C your internet before you boot up the game and it let's you play without it.

 

[Ezeekiel]

If anyone wants to play without making a stupid Bethsoft account, just D/C your internet before you boot up the game and it let's you play without it.

If you have it on steam you can go into steam's offline mode, then it skips the bethsoft thing as well.

 

[orcinator]

This point is moot because the Rocket Launcher itself has been much more toned down compared to 16

It's easy to use and effective against most things, which is what matters, and the remote detonation upgrade takes care of faster enemies. The nerd demons can cockblock you when they put their shield down in the right place but that's about the only occasion where there's a real downside to spamming it.

Even if you were set on using the Rocket Launcher all the time, it's usually plain overkill against fodder enemies

The Federal Ammo Reserve just inserted a trillion bullets into the chainsaw economy, overkill does not exist.

Yeah other weapons are better at certain things and I could finish encounters faster if I bothered to switch more, but since the ammo printer goes BRRRR you can just mash your face against the weapon wheel and come out on top as long as you don't get stop moving and get exploded. Being one step away from giving you regenerating health was NuDoom's issue and giving you regenerating ammo on top of that makes the game that much more forgiving and mindless (even on nightmare).

 

[DalekFlay]

So no, ammo is available quite often. But the means to acquire it, and the interruption it causes is annoying, frustrating, stupid, and makes me run around the battle like a headless chicken with a chainsaw, to use the one charge I always have on a zombie. What a heap of trash. Why does this shit have 89% score on Steam?

It's pretty obvious a ton of people like that mechanic. I don't really get it either, and I think they went too far with it this time, but reviewers praised it like the second coming of Jesus with 2016 and if sales and reviews mean anything consumers love it this time around too. I'd guess a lot of people are playing on default difficulty (like I am now) and it's muuuuuuch less of an issue there. I have to chainsaw once per fight now, if that. I'm not even sure I'd agree it's an issue on "hurt me plenty" honestly, it becomes a nothing burger pretty quickly on that difficulty. Doing it here and there is no big deal, it was doing it constantly on the harder modes that annoyed me.

 

[Biscotti]

It's pretty obvious a ton of people like that mechanic. I don't really get it either, and I think they went too far with it this time, but reviewers praised it like the second coming of Jesus with 2016 and if sales and reviews mean anything consumers love it this time around too.

Let me help you understand:

 

[Junmarko]

Maybe it's just me, but I'm not impressed with id Tech 7 Engine... I have everything maxed out, yet I think Doom 2016 (id tech 6) looked better on PC. It's like they've de-tuned the engine this time to not outshine the console ports (?) Texture detail is there, but a lot less advanced shader effects for sure.

PC obviously wasn't their focus this time around.

 

[Curratum]

Ok, I did update my drivers just to see what this is about.

I now wish I hadn't. This is the worst shooter I've played in nearly a decade. There is literally nothing good about this apart from the performance-to-visuals ratio, which is great.

Before you ask, I more or less liked Doom 2016, bought and played it to the end.

 

[sullynathan]

Boomers don't like work, they want it now

 

[Silverfish]

The idea of "freedom of player expression" more often than not translates to "please let me stick to this one playstyle for the whole game that completely breaks the game but nonetheless lets me live out my power fantasy".

 

[Silentstorm]

I will say, i like the idea of Heaven or a race of angel like beings getting into the midst of conflict, but the Maykr were just...kinda there, particularly Khan Maykr, she just suddenly appears and afterwards just keeps going on speeches about how she can totally kill you or you can't do anything to stop her before she is killed and the Maykr are apparently destroyed, it feels like they only added them in to explain how Doomguy got his new armor and were done with it, when a more angelic side trying to bring about judgement day would be an amazing idea and something different to the franchise.

Instead, like i said, they are just some random aliens that made deals with the demons, only appear in a few areas and are done with in one game, total waste of time and potential adding a new faction into Doom.

 

[fantadomat]

The idea of "freedom of player expression" more often than not translates to "please let me stick to this one playstyle for the whole game that completely breaks the game but nonetheless lets me live out my power fantasy".

The funny thing is that the real game is even worst than the clip .

 

[DalekFlay]

Maybe it's just me, but I'm not impressed with id Tech 7 Engine... I have everything maxed out, yet I think Doom 2016 (id tech 6) looked better on PC. It's like they've de-tuned the engine this time to not outshine the console ports (?) Texture detail is there, but a lot less advanced shader effects for sure.

According to Digital Foundry it runs better than the first one on consoles, and it has a smaller installation size, so I do think they kept the visual budget tight to hit 60fps locked on console. I'm fine with it though, since it means 140fps on a mid-range PC like mine. I'd rather have performance than super hard to run smoothly processing and particle effects everywhere.

That said the TAA + sharpening thing always looks like shit to me, but that's something you can't escape with modern games.

 

[Junmarko]

I'm fine with it though, since it means 140fps on a mid-range PC like mine. I'd rather have performance than super hard to run smoothly processing and particle effects everywhere.

That said the TAA + sharpening thing always looks like shit to me, but that's something you can't escape with modern games.

Eh. It just sucks coming from idSoft. They've always been known to push the PC hardware to it's limits in all their games. This is the first time they haven't, and put priority on the current console gen - one which is going to be obsolete soon anyway.

and it has a smaller installation size

On this, they've left out content. It has a "season pass" which will add more campaign content, whereas D16 didn't. Fucking hell...

 

[Lyric Suite]

Imagine living in a time when id soft had to dump down the graphics of its games to make them run on consoles.

Ho right.

 

[Draconis]

No, it's because they ditched megatextures which bloated file sizes.

 

[Silly Germans]

I'm fine with it though, since it means 140fps on a mid-range PC like mine. I'd rather have performance than super hard to run smoothly processing and particle effects everywhere.

That said the TAA + sharpening thing always looks like shit to me, but that's something you can't escape with modern games.

Eh. It just sucks coming from idSoft. They've always been known to push the PC hardware to it's limits in all their games. This is the first time they haven't, and put priority on the current console gen - one which is going to be obsolete soon anyway.

and it has a smaller installation size

On this, they've left out content. It has a "season pass" which will add more campaign content, whereas D16 didn't. Fucking hell...

I haven't seen Doom Eternal and probably won't anytime soon so i am not commenting on whether it looks
worse or not than its predecessor but Id games pushing hardware limits is nonsense. They all run smooth and look decent.
I don't know about the hardware requirements of their first games but anything since Quake I was not especially
hardware hungry. Id say the Id Tech engine is designed for good performance rather than maximal graphical excellence.
And that is where its best, good performance with good looks.

 

[Junmarko]

but Id games pushing hardware limits is nonsense.

They always have dude. Obviously there haven't been that many memorable milestones since Doom 3 (id tech 4 was one of the earliest games to implement physics, complex shadows etc - very impressive at the time ) But idSoft has always had the option to really push top tier hardware on PC at the time of a release, they kind of took pride in making sure their engine looked bleeding edge.

4 years in development and it's sub par fidelity wise with Doom 2016. Not a deal breaker, but disappointing.

 

[Curratum]

Ok, allright, let's break this down.

I know *I* broke down before I even finished the Hell on Earth initial chapter. It's that bad.

Max ammo is a joke. Every enemy past imps requiring "weak point" damage to kill without emptying both your available ammo pools. Not enough ammo to clear a single room if you don't do at least 2 chainsaw kills in it.

So now the flow of combat is broken up and you're force-frozen not just by glory kills but by mandatory chainsaw kills as well!

Amazingly, weapons lack feedback when shooting and don't feel satisfying to use, which is a first for an id soft game.

Game is a joke, even if I had bought it, I would have refunded well before the 2-hour mark.

 

[vortex]

They always have dude. Obviously there haven't been that many memorable milestones since Doom 3 (id tech 4 was one of the earliest games to implement physics, complex shadows etc - very impressive at the time ) But idSoft has always had the option to really push top tier hardware on PC at the time of a release, they kind of took pride in making sure their engine looked bleeding edge.

Their tech is simply amazing. I'm sure RTX and other goodies are coming.

 

[fantadomat]

 

[orcinator]

The funniest part about the hazards in the platfoming sections is that all you need to do is punch an imp and all the damage you received is undone.
Not that they do alll that much damage, since even on nightmare it's a pathetic amount even when you're like me and barge through without a care.

 

[Jenkem]

Brutal Doom is absolute shit.