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

[Yosharian]

I really liked DOOM 2016. I would probably consider picking this up if I wasn't already swamped with games. And didn't have to make a fucking Beth account just to play it. And my RSI wasn't making playing FPS games basically impossible.

I'll probably just pick it up in a sale in a year's time for five bucks.

 

[DalekFlay]

NuevoDoom1 was one step removed from having regenerating health and this is one step removed from having both regenerating health and regenerating ammo and all the arguments about how it's so innovative how you don't have look for pickups are giving me some flashbacks to the start of the CoD era. Yeah a game is a lot faster paced if there's less things to worry about but at some point it just gets braindead.

I don't think the argument has anything to with avoiding pickups (which are everywhere, and finding hidden ones is a big part of the game). The argument was that getting health, ammo and armor by killing shit encourages you to fight fast and loose instead of safe, to keep "ripping and tearing" instead of finding a wall to hide behind. Whether they pulled this off like all the reviews said they did is for the player to decide, but that was the goal, not avoiding pickups.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Quick reminder that Mick Gordon's work is hot garbage and will never rival a track like this:

 

[Curratum]

Mick Gordon's work is hot garbage

For some reason Doom 2016 felt like it had more texture and more composition ideas in it, Eternal feels like random ominous / angry chords and textures.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

For some reason Doom 2016 felt like it had more texture and more composition ideas in it, Eternal feels like random ominous / angry chords and textures.

I thought they both lacked memorability and character. It's difficult to remember anything that actually stands out or sticks with you. There's no tracks that comes close to Sinister or Suspense to be found in those games, that's for sure.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

With Doom Eternal, Doom has finally become a platform game like Mario, with additional QTE.

 

[orcinator]

Actually it's a MOBA

 

[Silentstorm]

Oh come on, Doom Eternal is so good you could compare it to the first two Doom games combined...i am only saying that because Doom Slayer has an old PC in his room that allows you to play Doom I and II, he also has a skateboard, various books including a shelf full of references to video games like the autobiography of Dork Norkem and even the Survival Guide from Fallout 3, oh, and a reference to the best game ever made, Daikatana, is in one of those books.

So apparently when he's not killing demons, Doom Slayer plays games in a 90's PC, skates and reads books, i also see that one of them is basically "Dungeons And Demons, 6th Edition" which seems odd since Slayer has no friends to play with, unless he just likes reading manuals, but yeah, Doom Slayer canonically stops killing demons for a while as demons are slaughtering people on Earth to set his own room and decorate with guns, books and games, also a rabbit cage that is empty.

 

[Ezeekiel]

It's okay,personally i don't like gameplay mods for Doom that much,because it can make the game extremely easy to impossible in some parts.

I use mostly cosmetic mods like this one:

https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=57310&sid=4695594cf23ad8633c64913f1c02e8f7

or this one:

Spoiler

Brutal Doom has its own campaign (Emergence Day or something?) which varies in quality quite a bit but you're not stuck with the laughably easy (regardless of mods) OC.

 

[Curratum]

Extermination Day, and it's surprisingly well-done. Maps are different in style from vanilla Doom maps which meshes nicely with the different BD gameplay and enemy distributions.

 

[Ezeekiel]

With Doom Eternal, Doom has finally become a platform game like Mario, with additional QTE.

The clunky climbing/jumping and platform crap feels more like something out of certain platform action games like Dante's Inferno imo, just in first person. You know, with the points you have to grapple onto where the controls get changed, the animations and whatnot.

 

[Silentstorm]

Never understood why some FPS games insisted on having platform sections, and it's not just Doom Eternal, some 90's FPS games also did this, and it sucks because the games clearly weren't made with jumping to different platforms in mind, i mean, platforming can work in first person, but it needs to be made with that in mind, not some random sections in a game where they were focused on having you slaughter stuff most of the time.

Just saying, you can clearly tell platforming sections don't tend to be fun in FPS games.

 

[Ezeekiel]

Extermination Day, and it's surprisingly well-done. Maps are different in style from vanilla Doom maps which meshes nicely with the different BD gameplay and enemy distributions.

I thought some parts of it were kind of weak (the desert/canyon areas imo, lighting can be kind of simplistic as well though maybe that is because I'm using Zandronum because of the better optimization) but most of it is really cool.

Much prefer BD Beta 21 to Doom Eternal in pretty much every way I think...

 

[Ezeekiel]

Never understood why some FPS games insisted on having platform sections, and it's not just Doom Eternal, some 90's FPS games also did this, and it sucks because the games clearly weren't made with jumping to different platforms in mind, i mean, platforming can work in first person, but it needs to be made with that in mind, not some random sections in a game where they were focused on having you slaughter stuff most of the time.

Just saying, you can clearly tell platforming sections don't tend to be fun in FPS games.

I think it depends a lot on the implementation... Having some platforming options (via massive jump height and great air control, none of those bullshit locked animations and grapple bs unless it's really fast and intuitive/freeform) normally in fights and for tough secrets can be great. Think Jedi Knight, Early AVP (as the alien with it's crazy effortless wall running), maybe Turok 1&2, some in Blood, Quake and UT etc.

In Doom Eternal every aspect, not just the platforming/climbing, is super heavy handed instead. Platforming there is not very fast and freeform as a natural part of FPS combat&exploration movement. It's basically a separate mechanic instead, with overly specific paths and slowdown animation crap and very console third person game -style but in first person. Too many bottomless pits everywhere, too.

Making bottomless-pit super basic platform puzzle crap constantly mandatory for progression sucks for a shooter though, imo. It just a trivial time waster, and more insulting that those sections can be in areas much larger and more open (even though you can only move through them in a limited fashion) than most of the rest of the level/arenas.

 

[Ezeekiel]

NuevoDoom1 was one step removed from having regenerating health and this is one step removed from having both regenerating health and regenerating ammo and all the arguments about how it's so innovative how you don't have look for pickups are giving me some flashbacks to the start of the CoD era. Yeah a game is a lot faster paced if there's less things to worry about but at some point it just gets braindead.

I don't think the argument has anything to with avoiding pickups (which are everywhere, and finding hidden ones is a big part of the game). The argument was that getting health, ammo and armor by killing shit encourages you to fight fast and loose instead of safe, to keep "ripping and tearing" instead of finding a wall to hide behind. Whether they pulled this off like all the reviews said they did is for the player to decide, but that was the goal, not avoiding pickups.

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.

So in the past you either have large ammo reserves (which the devs could control based on how much ammo was in the level, thus allowing them to give you stronger weapons earlier and their ammo intermittently... Which is impossible in DE due to the chainsaw system) or you could replenish in-battle from enemy drops without all the forced animation nonsense.
Thus you could "rip and tear" just fine if it was that kind of shooter. (the movement speed and post-doom jump height and air control also played into this heavily)

Every other time DE breaks with old game trends and introduces a "fix" or something has similar issues. They're almost all unnecessary, total overkill (because the devs fucked with absolutely EVERY aspect, rather than balancing things more carefully by changing one or two things here or there) or not really justified by the devs/fanboys' justifications. They usually just introduce new or more problems, too.

 

[Ezeekiel]

And FWIW I'm totally against the heavy handed forcing of the player into a very specific play style like in DE.
If some folks want to take things slower and snipe and corner kite more, whatever.
Build a challenge and let them tackle it their way and win or fail based on how the simulation and their actions shake out instead of this "nuh-uh, gotta play it exactly our way" crap.

The overdone upgrade system eventually gives you enough crap to get past The Playstyle(tm) anyway to some degree, but more due to poorly balanced and compounding upgrade interaction than anything.

 

[Ezeekiel]

The ammo capacity has indeed been considerably lowered, but specifically for the shotgun. In the first level I ran out of ammo very fast, which forced me to chainsaw someone/look for ammo constantly and that pissed me the fuck off. But again it's mostly the shotgun. Once I got the first ammo upgrade the machingun had a confortable amount and once I found the plasma rifle the game never once again had that problem that kept fucking up the flow of the battles. By the 2nd ammo upgrade the shotgun actually lasts.

It definitely gives a really bad first impression because of having one or two guns and little ammo, that gets considerably better in just a couple levels. They should have figured out a way to have it be better at the beginning, but I don't know how.

That's just it, they've backed themselves into a corner because of their design choices...


Edit: I'm spamming the crap out of this thread, better stop...

 

[Curratum]

Doom Eternal is the Fallout 3 of shooters.

 

[Silentstorm]

That's why Doom Slayer has a book from Fallout 3 i guess, though he also reads books that are references to Deus Ex and System Shock 2, so no matter what your opinion of Fallout 3 may be, Doom Slayer has some taste.

He also has Commander Keen's skulls lying around and the Soul Cube from Doom 3, his room is actually more fun to look at than a lot of the game, if only because silly puns and references are still a bigger attempt at being charming than anything else the game does, either that or because it reminds you of good games.

Anyways, it's Doom 2016 but worse, and they completely botched potentially good ideas, oh sure, let's add angels to Doom and maybe make a war between humans, demons and angels as they try to bring judgement day or even join forces with the demons to kill humans because we are so sinful, adding more variety and potential awesomeness...oh wait,the angels are actually just some random aliens, don't appear and do much and are killed off in one game while being far less memorable than the demons ever were...way to introduce a third faction into Doom.

 

[deama]

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

 

[Ezeekiel]

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

Yeah, it's evolved into the more efficient Call of Duty school of level design, but with mandatory platforming over bottomless pits and a few 5 yard detours for "secrets" which are already marked on your map when you get close :/

 

[Biscotti]

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.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

And FWIW I'm totally against the heavy handed forcing of the player into a very specific play style like in DE.
If some folks want to take things slower and snipe and corner kite more, whatever.
Build a challenge and let them tackle it their way and win or fail based on how the simulation and their actions shake out instead of this "nuh-uh, gotta play it exactly our way" crap.

I was thinking that the enemy weakness system would cause this. And admitelly the first level does give the wrong impression.
But by the time I got the plasma rifle I feel this complain isn't very valid.
It's like D16 your arsenal is effiecient but obiously each "tool" has a situation where they perform better (and worse). And the game doesn't really "force" you, it's just given how enemies are more threatening and there's more of them you make things harder on yourself by not making proper use. But you can overcome the combat encounters while ignoring the weakspots.
That's my impression so far at least.

 

[Ezeekiel]

And FWIW I'm totally against the heavy handed forcing of the player into a very specific play style like in DE.
If some folks want to take things slower and snipe and corner kite more, whatever.
Build a challenge and let them tackle it their way and win or fail based on how the simulation and their actions shake out instead of this "nuh-uh, gotta play it exactly our way" crap.

I was thinking that the enemy weakness system would cause this. And admitelly the first level does give the wrong impression.
But by the time I got the plasma rifle I feel this complain isn't very valid.
It's like D16 your arsenal is effiecient but obiously each "tool" has a situation where they perform better (and worse). And the game doesn't really "force" you, it's just given how enemies are more threatening and there's more of them you make things harder on yourself by not making proper use. But you can overcome the combat encounters while ignoring the weakspots.
That's my impression so far at least.

It took me getting the rocket launcher to arrive at that point, but yeah, you can mostly ignore the weakspots eventually (caco's aside as it takes more time to kill them with a rocket launcher than just a grenade + upgraded glory kill).

But that's just one small aspect of this, there's a lot more as discussed before.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

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)