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Doom Eternal Review: Id Software’s return to Doom 2016 was a phenomenal update to the franchise’s classic shooter idea. It was fast and intense, full of monsters and blazing metal tracks, modernizing the feel of the ’90s original and adding some new school flowers. Where Doom 2016 brought the first Doom into the present, Doom Eternal feels like a huge step forward in making the franchise something different: It’s a master class in demon chunking after the rip and tears introductory course from four years ago.
Like its earlier versions, Doom Eternal makes you feel like a large shredder – not only because you are the strongest Doom Slayer, but also because you are also the smartest.
Doom Eternal Review: About
- Platform: PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Google Stadia, Microsoft Windows
- Developer: id Software, Panic Button Games
- Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
- Genres: First-person shooter
- Release Date: March 20, 2020
Doom Eternal Review: Official Trailer Video
Doom Eternal Review: Gameplay
Doom Eternal is all about effectively using the massive amount of murder tools available to you. Health, armor, and ammunition pickups are minimal in Eternal’s many battle arenas, and instead, you must earn them by killing monsters in various ways. Spread an enemy, and you can tear them apart with a relentless glory killing that will refill your health. Extinguish a demon with the new flamethrower, and they will spray armor pickups or cut them in half with the chainsaw to grab some much-needed ammunition.
To stay alive, you can’t just run loose while expecting to tear through everything in your path; you have to run around rationally to keep yourself in combat strength. Keeping track of your numbers means continuously running through your glory, chainsaw and flamethrower killings, while also making sure you’re using the right gun for a particular job. Many of the fiercest enemies now have weaknesses that allow you to cut their most deadly weapons, and you need to assess threats and take them out quickly.
At first, it seems like Doom Eternal offers a clumsy list of things to manage. Between all its weapons and tools, their different ammo counters, and your health, it can all get overwhelming. With so much to keep in mind at all times, it takes some getting used to Doom Eternal. And constantly pausing the action of pulling up your weapon wheel to check ammo counters and deciding which weapon to use on the monster to rip your face off can contradict Doom’s run-and-gun, rip-apart -everything approach.
Once you master it, all the many elements of Doom Eternal come together in a cascade of chaos that makes you the smartest killing machine. This is not the kind of shooter where your twitching and aiming skills will take you; Eternal is a game in which you always have to make your next move, perform a bloodbath to keep yourself alive and kill everything else. Every moment is about analyzing the battlefield to find the next enemy to spread for health or ammunition, figuring out which enemy has your highest priority and what weapons you need to take it out safely and where to go next to take the pictures you need or to prevent the creatures from chasing you to have their chance to tear.
The mental math to figure out how to keep yourself alive is a big part of what makes the game fun, but it’s the enhanced mobility that gets Doom Eternal starting and shredding a metal guitar solo. Each major battle takes place in a multi-level arena, decorated with bouncy blocks and monkey bars that allow you to move around quickly, and you also have a double jump and horizontal dash movement to avoid attacks and intersecting distances.
Between battles, spend your time using Eternal’s mobility to navigate the sprawling revolving levels and discover countless secret locations hiding upgrades and weapon mods. There’s an even greater emphasis on platforms than in Doom 2016, and puzzling through the environments to move around makes for a welcome breather between battles. Part of the platforming can sometimes be a bit of a try, especially when you need to clear large holes to grab distant monkey bars or hit sticky walls that you can climb. But for the most part, navigating the area is almost as much fun as breaking through Hell’s armies.
In addition to the primary campaign, Doom Eternal also includes a multiplayer mode called Battlemode. It overlooks the more traditional deathmatch approach of Doom 2016, where a bunch of players grab the Doom Slayer weapons and shoot each other, for an experience where one fighter takes on the role of Slayer and plays against a team of two opponents they play like demons. Eternal’s multiplayer Slayer-versus-demons approach helps preserve the puzzle-like feel of the fight while increasing the challenge by allowing demons to strategize and team up.
Demons also have a lot of special abilities: they can summon smaller enemies to fight for them, blocking the Slayer’s ability to pick up loot for a short period to prevent them from healing, trapping, or sharing buffs. Battlemode is an exciting take on Eternal’s battles, using all your skills against intelligent enemies like the Slayer and coordinated attacks like the relatively weaker demons. Playing as the beasts slow things down, but captures another, more tactical aspect of the combat calculations that are central to Doom Eternal’s gameplay.
Eternal’s multiplayer is a nice change of pace, especially with the ability to play like demons. Still, the steep learning curve means it’s a bit alienating to drop in, especially if you haven’t spent a lot of time in the campaign. There’s a lot to keep in mind, no matter what role you take on in Battlemode, making it a robust multiplayer experience to get good at. The mode doesn’t add too much variety to the Eternal formula either – for Slayer players; it’s usually just a more challenging version of the Eternal campaign.
Taking on the demonic role, you can try one of five different hellions, but while each plays a little differently, the essence of each is pretty much the same: Summon demons, shoot the Slayer. Battlemode is a fun diversion, but it’s nowhere near the great appeal of Eternal, and the novelty of taking on other people doesn’t add much to the game’s underlying formula.
Conclusion
While it may take a little bit to master it, the intricacies of Doom Eternal’s combat, combined with the enhanced mobility and option-heavy level design, create a ton of white knuckle moments that made Doom 2016 work so well, to lift to a higher level. The fight is just as fast and chaotic but requires you to analyze everything that happens to emerge victoriously continually. Once you master the rhythm of Doom Eternal review, you will feel like a savant defeated by demons.