Eternally doomed

Review

Played on: Xbox One X & Series X
Released: 2020

Doom 2016, review here, was a perfect example of reviving an old franchise; bringing back the simplicity of, well, shooting everything while getting rid of unnecessary elements distracting from that. id Software brought their franchise forward to modern times as a beautiful looking shooter with lots of nostalgia through its clever use of distinct environments and recognisable monster designs. A perfect example of rebooting a series.

Doom Eternal then, the 2020 sequel, takes it further by putting a deeper meaning to simply killing monsters and shutting the gate to hell. It expands gameplay too, adding platforming elements and exploration into the mix. At the same time, it wants players to play and experience every weapon on offer, all the time.

It's bold move, to rock the boat of the simple and addictive gameplay that Doom 2016 excelled at. Does it deliver?

Let's rip and tear!

What made the Doom 2016 work well as a story was its simplicity; the main protagonist, Doomguy, wakes up on a space station on Mars with everyone around him killed by monsters. His task is simple; kill them and shut down the dimension gates to hell which have opened. He simply just does the task, he never talks, just grunts and constantly disobeys orders given to him. He wants to kill everything and smash up every screen and button he can find.

Doom Eternal then, somehow feels the need to tell a far more comprehensive story and expand the lore. It's no longer as tongue-in-cheek as its predecessor gained from. This time around, earth is under attack from hell and Doomguy must save it. Yet, it delves deep into a lore which I'm not sure it needs, to build a path towards a grand ending where everything is ruled by an overlord in a high-tech society controlling hell.

With a helmet wearing hero, basically you, and these generic speeches from the overlords and little other key cast members, it all kind of passes me by as uninteresting. It doesn’t have any proper human element that feels recognisable or something you can relate to; thus, it all comes off as empty talk from giant monsters as you march on to the next level where you, for reason the game needs to explain, to kill yet another evil entity.

On a positive note it gives room for a lot of environment variety, far more than the 2016 release for sure, but the story itself becomes convoluted and too complicated for a game where I simply just want to shoot the crap out of nasty monsters.

Between missions you're sent to a spaceship for debriefing, basically a hub where you can test weaponry, take on small missions and enter the next level from. Not my preference in this type of game either; I simply just want level after level in linear fashion.

The great movement and gunplay are retained from the first game and excellent. It feels smooth, responsive, satisfying and quick. There's no denying that when everything picks up pace and enemies rush you, the ease of lighting fast movement and instant gun control is key. Eternal excels at this just like the previous game. With such stunning visuals too, it's fun to see the overdone gore as you blast monsters literally to pieces!

Gameplay undergoes a change in dynamic though. While the 2016 release had a neat selection of classic Doom weapons, it allowed you to stick to your favourites most of the time. Eternal, on the other hand, feels the need to expand the weaponry into a confusing amount and consistently force the player to switch weapons as they run out of ammo. All the time.

It's clearly a deliberate design to get player out of their comfort gun and try the wide spectre of weaponry, but I found it annoying. With firefights being super intense, throwing tons of enemies at you, the way it auto switches weapons as you run out of ammo is just confusing and pulls you out of the pace. I disliked a few of the weapons too, and so being forced to use them just comes off as annoying.

Sure, monsters have their weaknesses and some guns work better than others on specific ones but just let me be the judge of that and don't forcefully restrict my access to ammo for that specific gun midfight.

Outside of combat there's another major gameplay change. For some reason Eternal feels the need to have platforming. And not just jumping over a gap here and there; I'm having to combine elaborate elements of climbable walls, double jump and mid-air forward rushes to reach ledges and vertical surfaces to grab. At some points I was stuck for extended amounts of time working out where to climb and how to get there. I'm playing Doom not Tomb Raider. This is not what I want in a fast paced, kill everything, shooter.

For visual variation it does a better job than the last game; there's a fair share variety in terms of locations and colour diversity. Although I felt overall a lot of the levels seem apparent are limited, floating areas. There are multiple routes through them, but they all seem to be controlled by having boundaries with drops into infinity.

It's cool to see the locations set on earth overrun by hells invasion and torn apart, but they could offer more variation and familiar locations. Mostly there are some high-tech office areas covered in orange and red growth from hell and that's about it from earth.

On the flipside the castle locations look great and really suit the style of the new Doom games and are a big contrast to the high-tech environments. They offer room for natural elements like trees and grass too.

A level towards the end of the game, featuring the sixth-dimension location called Urdak, really changes up the visual appearance of the game. Here there are futuristic buildings floating on islands in space, with colourful trees and nature, blended with rounded, alien like, futuristic buildings. It charmingly reminds me of something from Unreal Tournament!

Eternal looks really slick with smooth 60 fps for both its higher resolution mode and its ray traced mode. The latter offers the most visual effects, with lots of reflections and light sources altering the colouring of the environment surrounding the player.

Should you choose to sacrifice some resolution and the ray tracing through, it offers a super silky 120fps mode. It's a perfect match for intense and fast first-person shooter action like this with the higher framerate!

It's a sweet looking shooter with tons of effects and gore, cleverly disguising some limited levels by blending distant backdrops with the foreground. Textures and surfaces in general are extremely varied and great looking up close.

There's a somewhat limited space to walk about, but with this kind of gameplay it's preferable as it will throw rooms full of enemies at you and rightly as a Doom game should!

Overall, it offers a solid shooter with lots of speed and chaotic moments, it does indeed fill that some of that hunger Doom 2016 left for more of the same. However, it misses the mark on some simple design choices to make the gameplay flow like 2016 did, and the added element of platforming is a truly unwelcome one.

It misses a higher rating by being more advanced, which sounds like paradox, but somehow that's what Doom always has been about: shooting things with little thought behind it other than you simply must to survive. Deepening that lore never was something we needed.

There's a balance of serving the player more than they ask for and delivering more of what made the original work so well, and to be clear; why shouldn't the developer try to progress, otherwise we'll complain of the lack of doing just that. 

However, Eternal puts this balance out of order. It's still great fun, with tons of shooting action nonetheless with a hell of a lot of environment variety, but it overloads the player with weapon switching, annoying platforming and too deep lore.

At the end of the day, you'll still have tons of shooting fun and gore though, which brings a smile to the face of any old-school Doom, Quake or Unreal fan. It's good to see that the fire-from-the-hip styled shooters focusing on moving quickly about still lives.