I've been enjoying the new DOOM games lately. I've played 2016 back on release and returned to it to beat the Nightmare difficulty. The difficulty curve seemed inverted because of limited toolkit in the early game, but once it gets going there is no stopping you. Overall it's one of those games that make me nostalgic for 2016. The year in gaming was positively stacked.

Peering into eternity

Then I turned to Eternal. Unlike its predecessor, it nailed the beggining in terms of difficulty, giving just enough options to appreciate early game weapons. Cue in the new vulnerabilty system. Between feeding the Cacodemon a grenade for a quick kill and shooting Arachnotron's turrets to disable its ranged options, the system gives you much more to think about, compared to "see the imp - shoot the imp" of 2016. Honestly, it made me cautious about spending time in the menu reading the codex for vulnerabilities, akin to Horizon games. Slowing down to strategize is a thing I enjoyed in Horizon, but reading in DOOM? Heresy.

The other change you notice is the new ammo management system. The game doesn't stop spawning fodder enemies and the chainsaw regenerates one charge so that you're never out of options. As a tradeoff, your total capacity is... not great. Weapon swapping is incentivised and encouraged. Honestly, I never quite got to memorise it mechanically and relied on quickswap button/weapon wheel, but anything that makes me think about the full toolkit makes me happy.

Meanwhile the game introduces Mancubus and its weaknesses. With another popup menu. Alright? Probably better than menuing or googling, but worse than discovering those yourself. Disabling flamethrowers doesn't disable all of its area denial, but that's a minor hiccup.

Another thing menus hurt is exploration. Secrets in this game aren't so secret. They are question markers on the map you clear. They are optional and somewhat tied to progression, so no harm done. I just wish one didn't have to complete the whole level when returning to it via mission select to reenable fast travel.

Back to Earth

The next iconic hellspawn to make a comeback is the Revenant. The game tells you you can shoot its rocket launchers, but at that point you have one of your own. With a lock-on mod you can dispose of a revenant with a single input. The time to kill is only going to go downhill from there, so there is no point in sniping.

By that point a completionist would have completed a Slayer gate or two. Great optional challenge. At least 3 out of 6 gates made me let out an audible victory roar when I beat them. Unfortunately they spoil a couple of lategame enemies and the problems with them, especially if you die to a Tyrant. While we are getting ahead of ourselves, the reward for completing all 6 gates is also somewhat underwhelming. Unmaykr is in an unfortunate niche between the "delete an enemy" Crucible and the "clear the fodder" BFG. Cool name though, I'm stealing it for my DnD campaign.

Back to the demons. Doom Hunter is an alright boss-type enemy, Cybermancubus is Mancubus with an extra step (singular), Knights, Prowlers, Whiplashes and Pinkies are nothing of note. But then the game introduces the Marauder. As a standalone boss it's a nice change of pace. Going defensive and keeping your distance is not something you do often. Slayer gate 5 is probably the most satisfying challenge to have beaten of them all.

As a returning enemy the Marauder in an equivalent of traffic light. Literally. See the green flash? Go all in. You can probably kill it in one go if you weapon swap properly. Otherwise it's not your turn to play the game. Except traffic lights are not random, while Marauder can decide to do a ranged attack in kissing distance or jump to overcome a foot-high elevation change. It also has a grand total of four moves and is 100% immune to both BFG and Crucible. Shame, he is the only enemy you'd want to use "skip an encounter" button for.

All the way Down

At that point we are about the length of DOOM 2016 in. There is still half a game to go. Boy, I hope the it continues to build on systems it introduced. No? Alright. Maybe new weapons? Not really, just 2 variations of "spend a limited resource to skip an encounter". Platforming doesn't quite reach the heights of Titanfall either, especially since half of it isn't relevant in combat.

Alright, what about new enemies? I'm not going to sugarcoat it - Tyrants, Pain elementals and Barons are bullet sponges. The game even lampshades it in the aforementioned loading screen: "Protip: to defeat a Tyrant shoot at it until it dies."

So enemies you fight minutes on end have less going for them than the ones you double tap with a super shotgun. That's what I don't understand. I think Zero Dawn nailed the idea that long lategame encounters (in the openworld, not the story boss) should evolve and provide you with more options for skill expression and advanced tactics. DOOM incentivises you to skip them.

There is a counter argument that by that point you deserved a little power fantasy of ripping through Final Sin with BFG and Crucible, but I would prefer to have a little agency over fighting the biggest baddest demons Hell has to offer. The final boss is no exception. It's slow, unreactive and is limited moveset-wise. It also shakes the whole arena, which made me miss the ultimate orb and fall of the map more times than I care to admit.

I don't think I have another 20 hours to complete Ancient Gods in me, especially knowing what reviews say.

Final Judgement

To wrap it up, don't let my criticism divert you from Eternal, it's a great game mostly thanks to the baseline 2016 established. Everybody should play it if not for gameplay then for the art and music. There are dificulty levels below Nightmare to accomodate.

My questions are addressed at a specific system one expects to use when the gloves are off. They called it Destructible Demons and I think they ran out of creativity as early as naming it. Is it a budget/time constraint? Did the weaker enemies have weaknesses just so that you have something to do, while the game builds momentum? Did I miss hidden vulnerabilities?