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I still remember when I had beaten Doom 2016, I wanted to play the sequel. Yet, for some strange reason, my PC which was strong enough couldn’t run the game. Now, I was planning to build a new computer and recently I did. Now, I have a totally new computer, and I got Doom Eternal for free via my Humble Bundle subscription. Currently, I have beaten the main campaign, not yet the DLC. So, was it worth the wait for the new computer, or should I have played other games first? Well, in this article, I’ll talk about my honest first impression of the game and what I thought of it. I only focused my playthrough on the main campaign. So, no opinions on the DLC and the multiplayer. Also, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section with your thoughts and/or opinions on this game and/or the content of this article.

Just A Little Bit More

Doom Eternal is a game where the core mechanics of Doom 2016 are taken and expanded upon. Kind of like Tears of the Kingdom did for Breath of the Wild. The first piece of evidence of that move is the story.

In this game, we play as Doom guy. 14 years after the ending of Doom (2016). And of course, we get no explanation why it took Doom guy so long or what happened during that period. We do get some amazing voice acting from an outstanding cast. But the story this time around isn’t the best. While yes, we don’t play Doom for the story… But, this story has some problems.

There is a lot of technobabble in the game. Various things you can understand from context clues, and I mean the word context here in any way shape or form. Others are never explained at all. Of course, we have the scattered lore documents… But, that’s not the way how you pace a Doom story. We don’t play Doom to read notes, we play Doom to shoot demons and save Earth. If there was a bit more: “This is such and such, a member of that demon race that invaded Earth after that energy source was discovered…” or amongst those lines, it would feel a lot less mediocre.

Also, the unexplained 14-year gap between both games isn’t doing the story of this game any good. Quite often I felt I was playing the 3rd game in a story driven series. Where in the second game, a lot a thing happened and step up this 3rd story.

I think the balance between not explaining and explaining things is off here. Suddenly we are hunting for Hell Priests now, why are these important? How powerful are they? Why are we hunting them and… Hold up… Is this taking the gag of not caring about the details of the story to an extreme? Maybe so. Yet, this execution falls flat on its face in my opinion when it takes itself so seriously.

The expanded lore is there through the sometimes quite hidden notes you can pick up. So, if you want to make sense of the story and the events, you can read them. But, like I said… We don’t play a Doom game for reading, we play a Doom game to play a badass and challenge ourselves in tricky arena’s.

Nevertheless, I think the story is okay. I’d give it a just passing grade, out of 10. I just feel that it could have been fleshed out a bit more. Not only that, but I couldn’t help myself compare it to the opening of some of the previous Doom games, where things gradually build up, and we get to learn what everything is. Just like how this game introduces all the returning and new enemies to us.

Oh boy, the enemy roster is quite expanded in this game. And some of the new enemies are fascinating. For example, the Carcass. This enemy can put up energy walls that serve as shields. And they are used to protect their demon kind from an attack. Also, the new Whiplash snake enemies are creepy. They are snakes with whips that are quite annoying to hit when they are moving on the ground. There are other enemies like the Marauders. These just frustrated me to no end.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. At the start of this part of the article, I said that Doom Eternal is an expanded version of Doom 2016. So, if you have played Doom 2016, you will feel right at home in this game. This game is still the action packed and tense shooter where you feel that you are locked in with the demons, but the demons are locked in with you.

Hectic micromanagement

Most of the gameplay loop is still here from Doom 2016. But, like in Doom Eternal tradition, there is more. The first big change is that there is no pistol anymore with unlimited ammo. So, if you run out of ammo, you’ll have to rely on the chainsaw.

You’d think that, like in Doom 2016, you’d use glory kills to refill your ammo as your health. But, oh no. In this game, that’s only for health. If you want ammo, you’ll have to chainsaw attack the enemies. So, it’s a good idea to keep the weaker enemies around to chainsaw them if you are running low. New in this game is that you don’t have to refuel the chainsaw when you are out of fuel. One piece of fuel automatically recharges. You can pick up more fuel if you want or have to chainsaw the bigger enemies.

Now, Doom Eternal got a lot more tricky compared to Doom 2016. If you are quite used to the Doom 2016 combat loop… Well, you will be thrown for a surprise here. This game is even more of a balancing act than before. You have so many options to kill demons, it’s a joy to enter an arena and fight your way through it.

Overall, Doom Eternal is quite linear. You go from A to B and overall, the path is almost always clear on what to do. And if it isn’t clear, a quick glance at the map will help you to figure out where to go next. At first, I was afraid that this would mean that secret hunting would be quite easy, but oh boy was I wrong. When I finished my first level and saw that I didn’t even find half of the secrets, I was surprised.

I can’t wait to replay through some scenario’s and try things differently or look at what I might have missed. Since, sometimes the secrets are quite helpful in your quest. And other times, they are fun collectables to decorate your ship.

Personally, I think this game can be a bit overwhelming. There is so much you can do in this game, it’s hard to keep track of everything. There are so many different types of enemies with their own unique weak points. You also have to juggle your ammo pool and on top of that, you have secrets to find… It took me until over the halfway point before I understood a lot of the finer mechanics of this game.

At a certain moment, the game just started to click. Yes, there is a lot in this game, and don’t expect to be able to find everything at your first playthrough. Unless you are using a guide, that is. Overall, this game took me 14 hours to complete, and I felt I found quite a lot of the secrets. There are several I didn’t find, but that’s for another playthrough.

The gameplay loop is mostly the same as Doom 2016. You go from arena to arena, shooting up waves upon waves of demons. If you stand still or let yourself get cornered, you’ll die. In this game, you can pick up extra lives. Now, these extra lives are extremely worth it. They respawn you when you die without you having to reload from a checkpoint. Let me tell you, if you think that this makes the game easier, oh boy… At the final three levels, I had close to twelve one ups in the bag. Even while being careful, I had zero of them at the final boss fight. This game will punish you if you don’t keep moving and prioritize certain enemies.

If you kill the weaker enemies right away, you’ll be in trouble. Since, it’s quite easy to run out of ammo. Even when you fully upgrade the ammo cap. Then, you’ll have to stagger the weaker “fodder” enemies to chainsaw them for ammo. Or blow up barrels for ammo. Sometimes I felt I wasn’t playing a shooter but an action strategy puzzle game.

Especially because this game becomes a sort of game where you have to make quick decisions. Remembering your controls and what does what is essential. I even mapped various things to my mouse for quick access. The trickiest thing is deciding if you chainsaw or glory kill the fodder enemies. Do you need health or ammo? Since, chainsawing fodder enemies gives you less health than glory killing. I do have one complaint about that, if you have the bad luck a stronger enemy comes in front of you, and you press the chainsaw button instead of the glory kill button, the animation of “not enough fuel” takes a bit too long before you can really preform your glory kill or chainsaw the right enemy… Or even shoot.

Outside the shooting, this game turns into something resembling the modern Tomb Raider trilogy. There is a lot of jumping and platforming puzzles in this game… So much so, that I even considered subtitling this review “Doom’s Identity Crisis” where I started to compare both games. In most cases, the way forward is very clearly signposted, so it’s quite rare to get lost or not know where to go. In very rare cases, it was not. It was either a swing bar being a bit too hidden or a switch that I didn’t know I had to hit. For example, in the later levels, swimming sections gets introduced. In these sections, there are tubes you can shoot into to shoot a button. Thankfully, I know from previous Doom games that this is a mechanic in the series, but newer players will have a tough time figuring that one out.

Happy journey

This article first started out as a first impression article. Since I played this game with a lot of breaks in between, I felt that I had to play this game again for a longer time to fully form an opinion. So, I played it quite a lot these past days and I even finished it.

I wondered if it’s better to play this game in one long sitting or in short bursts. To be honest, I don’t have a clear answer on that. The game is a lot of fun to play and when you get into the rhythm of things, it’s hard to put down. But on the other hand, I felt that this game was repetitive in longer bursts.

Now, during my research for this article, I noticed that a lot of people praised this game for it’s polish and smoothness. I do have to agree for the most part. Visually, this game is amazing. It’s gore and creepy in the right places and gorgous when it needs to me imposing. Very rarely I encountered some visual strangeness. Sadly, a few times I noticed some rough parts of the game. A door texture in the main hub here, a floating arm there.

Something that I felt that was off is when the Archvile spawned enemies, they don’t come alive right away. It’s an amazing effect to see them get “build to life”… But, quite often it took a few seconds for them to become active. As if the newly generated object was loading in the code of the AI for that demon. It felt jarring sometimes especially since this game runs so smooth. Just like me having the game sometimes not boot when I change my screen resolution.

Something that’s also quite impressive in terms of the visuals is the fact you can dress up your slayer as you wish. There are a lot a cosmetic options and skins you can unlock. Some of them ingame, others via cosmetic DLC. It’s amazing to see that all the cutscenes and reflections in game change as well. But, the cosmetics don’t give any buffs or change anything gameplay wise. So, having around € 90 of cosmetic packs in the Steam store, no thanks.

In terms of preformance, this game ran amazingly on my new computer. I had quite the smooth framerate and I have to agree that it’s optimized quite well there. Yes, the game is overwhelming and there is a lot going on… But, all sound cues and visual cues still give the player the information they need. Very rarely I nocited some input lag with the jumping.

The controls are quite good as well. Thankfully, the keys are shown in the UI, so you can quickly find what you are looking for at a glance. The UI isn’t “in your face” but gives you a lot of information as well. The only annoying thing in terms of the controls is that near the end of the game, you have to “use” some doors instead of what your are used too, runnig up to them and open them.

Now, I touched upon sound cues earlier. In terms of the music and sound effects, this game is just amazing. You’ll have a hard time playing this game without the sound. There are so many sound cues like low health or bosses charging up, it’s quite important. Thankfully, most of these sound cues also have a visual cue so deaf people won’t have trouble with this game too much there.

The music as well is amazing. The heavy metal tracks by Nick Gordon just pump you up for the action and add some amazing atmosphere to the game. During writing of this article, I have beene listening to my buddy Kovic his arrangement and I’m reliving the game again. I just have a weak spot for heavy metal soundtracks from shooters.

Now earlier, I said that I mostly agree that this game is extremely optimized. Sadly, I did encounter a few things that raised my eyebrows. First of all, sometimes after ammo depletion of one of my gun suddenly switched to the BFG. In the hectic fight, I didn’t notice that right away and the amount of times I shot a BFG round without wanting too, is just sad.

Also, I did notice some minor bugs. Twice, I clipped through the floor while climbing raising platforms. Sometimes I found a spot where I could clip into the level geometry. Yeah, some parts weren’t solid. Thankfully, these parts are very far and few between.

One thing that really felt “bad” is one boss fight. I’m sorry but the Khan Maykr boss fight is just silly. Just like others, I quite often ran out of ammo during that boss fight. Now, it turns out that when you shoot the new minion enemies in the head, they drop ammo. This is fine and all, but Khan Maykr eletricifies half of the arena and there are no fodder enemies. So, if you really run out of ammo… Though luck. That means you have to redo that boss fight. And how do we learn that these minions drop ammo? Well, from the codex page of course in the menu… Unlike all the other new enemies where you have an introduction screen with their weakspot.

This bossfight was needlessly hard and I honestly didn’t like to play it. Since, a few too many mistakes in your ammo management and it’s game over. Even all other boss fights spawn fodder enemies for you to heal or get more ammo. Why not this time? You can’t recover after a few mistakes and that just feels unfair. Especially when you read online that several weapon mods are quite effective… But, what if you weren’t focussing on these mods?

One other thing that I felt was disappointing in this game was that some mechanics are underused in the main campaign. During one moment in thte campaign, you can take control of a Revenant. You have a battle as that demon. There are also upgrades for that fight in your suit. But, this is only a short fight and once during the entire game. But maybe I can experiment with that more in the endless battles or the new battlemode that update 66.6 brought.

Now, I fully know that I haven’t talked about everyting this game has to offer. But there is just so much that this game has to offer that talking about everything would make this review take hours to read and weeks to write. So, I’m leaving various things as a surprise for you to discover when you give this game a shot.

Conclusion

The good:

+Addictive shooter loop.

+Amazing music and audio design.

+Great animations and visual presentation.

+Replay value in a linear shooter.

+Secret hunting is a lot of fun.

+Amazing controls.

+Great voice acting.

The bad:

-This game can be a bit overwhelming, so it’s easy to forget certain mechanics or features.

-Very minor visual hickups here and there.

-Presentation of the story. A bit too much reading for certain lore points and twists to make sense or have any kind of impact.

-Too many cosmetic DLC’s.

Conclusion:

If you enjoyed playing Doom 2016, you’ll love this game. This game is an amazing action game where quick decision making is key and central to the gameplay. I only have two major problems with this game.

First, is the story and how a lot of the lore and background information is explained in notes. Notes that are sometimes hidden in secrets. It’s a shame it’s presented like that since the pacing, writing and voice acting is amazing.

Secondly, the game is a bit too filled with content. This is a very tricky balacing act since as a casual player, you can only remember so much. The game is a bit too hectic to always remember that you have challenges and such. Thankfully, this makes the game quite replayable. Hopefully, the second time you play it in a different way so you unlock the other things.

Now, I’m happy that I played Doom Eternal. I can’t wait to start the two DLC campagins and explore all the mechanics and modes that I have missed. This game is amazing ride and an amazing follow up to Doom 2016. In my Doom 2016 review, I wondered if this game fixes a lot of the grips I had with Doom 2016. They set such a big step in the right direction. I honestly think that if in the next Doom game, they explain the lore eabout certain things more.. I think I’ll have a hard time finding flaws in this game.

If you enjoy action shooter games and don’t shy away from an interesting puzzle… This game is for you. You don’t need to have played Doom 2016 for you to play Doom Eternal. It wouldn’t surprise me that this game will be on my top 10 games of the year list. It is an amazing gamee with a few flaws but overall, these flaws didn’t hinder my enjoyment with this gem of a game. While the main campaign will take you 14 hours, I can totally see myself sinking a lot more hours in it.

And with that, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game. I want to thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reaeding it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welecome you in another article, but until thene have a great rest of your day and take care.

Score: 90/100