The Steam 500 Challenge: Game 26 - Doom Eternal - Week 15

oom fucking Eternal son. Now strap the fuck in this is gonna be a long one (with a lot of fucking cursing).

Doom 2016

If Brutal Legend felt like getting sucker punched by a big fat guy, Doom 2016 (or DOOM) felt like getting haymakyred by Doom slayer. I was not expecting anything near to what I got when playing this game. It uplifted the original DOOM format into the modern era so damn well that it made anyone who played it forget about how terrible Doom 3 was as a sequel. DOOM was easily the best shooter of the decade for me (yes, the decade ends in 2019. I don't care if there was no year 0). To me DOOM was a perfect game. And it came in three forms.

Gameplay loop - Shoot demons with guns until they stop bleeding. That hasn't changed. What did change was the glory kills. No longer do you run away like a bitch to find a health kit when you're low. Get in there and fuck shit up, because executing enemies now gives you health, it feeds a loop encouraging the player to get deeper and deeper into the fight is what leads to those intense moments and supported by strong foundational shooting mechanics put Doom 2016 back on the throne.

Sound design - Every time I recommended this to someone I said it "felt like Heavy Metal the game". Every fight was amped up by not only one of the greatest soundtracks I've ever heard, but how the sound designers weaved it into those intensifying gameplay moments.

Legend of the Doom Slayer - The nuance of the story in this game went understated (and we'll get to that more in Eternal). It was very clear from the moment that you get off that slab, cock your pistol and bitch slap the demanding voice away on the monitor that you're pissed, and you don't want to talk it through, you want to kill fucking demons until it goes away. It was a common complaint that there wasn't much story, and I couldn't disagree more, because those people didn't read the codex's. That's the beauty of Doom 2016, the story was nonobligatory, if you just wanted to just kill demons like Doomguy does you could. The voice log Bioshock style character performances were excellent, particularly Hayden providing the voice of doubt for you to constantly surpass (who returns to do the same in Eternal) and the mystery of how Doom Slayer ended up leading a group of cyber templars through hell was fantastic.

Doom Eternal

Now here we go.

The Good

Soundtrack - Mick Gordon you beautiful Australian bastard. You did it again. I'm not sure what else to say other then the soundtrack is dope and if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Gameplay loop - so remember how I said Doom 2016 gameplay loop was so phenomenal that it became my game of the decade? Well I'm not sure how to feel about the fact that Doom Eternal surpassed that so much that it's probably the best shooter I've ever played, and in 2020 it could be the shooter of the decade. A dash has been added making the game even faster (along with Monkey bars). The platforming was mixed for many but I enjoyed it. Glory kills are taken to the next level. Need health? Snap a neck. Need ammo? Chainsaw. Need armour? Belch fire onto the unholy. I played on Ultraviolence in my first play through and it very quickly became apparent that clinging to this like a 6 year old to his mother's leg before his first day at school was the most effective path. Everything is additive. Weapon mods are now more in-depth, allowing you to unlock perks for mods. Praetorian armour has perks that enhance movement or grenades. Then there are runes that drastically change your gameplay style. All this is synergised in such a masterfully designed way. For example I first upgraded my suit so grenades do more damage and recharge quicker. My first rune made those abilities recharge quicker if a foe died under their effect. Allowing me to dominate with that health-armour-ammo generating loop. You can't adhere to a few weapons anymore, every enemy has there tool and ammo is shared/limited so unless you're playing on easy you'll need to mix it up. All this rapid weapon switching like Jesse James on meth amphetamine felt even more like Doom then Doom 2016 did. Unlike it's predecessor I don't want to move on and I don't think I could go back.

God it feels good...

The Bad

The Marauder - This naughty boy wasn't hard (shoot & dash back, repeat). He was just boring. In a game that requires such fluidity, movement and mastery of the environment around you an enemy designed to demand your attention is the antithesis of everything that is good about the game. He was cool as a boss, he should have remained that way. Or hell, maybe he gets away and brings a few extra (of the many many) tools he has with him in the next fight. A nemesis to rival the doom slayer.

Bethesda - You know what's worse at interrupting flow then the Marauder? "But Bethesda didn't develop it and isn't in the game you say?" Yes they are. Even the taint of Bethesda's slow corporate corruption from within can be felt here. It's felt every time I get taken out of the action because of a Bethesda account pop up saying I disconnected from their shite servers. There's nothing worse then being full immersed in a fight as it ramps up and you're carving a killing field and then BAM. You're sitting in the menu wondering what happened. Give us an option to disable this for fuck sake.

The Doom Fortress - Now don't get me wrong, standing over a ledge as you peer down at a Demon infested Earth is phenomenal. The general sense of power as you orbit Earth from your floating castle is fantastic. And the home for your collectibles, unlocks, and hub in general was fun to explore.

But I like the many Demons that lay in my wake, am torn. I felt like overall it created a mission and story structure that was vastly inferior to 2016. I'm the type of guy that feels RPGs are at their peak during long dungeon crawls, the type of fight that feels like you've put everything you have into it and you're throwing punches that feel like they're in slow motion with every ounce of energy you have left pouring out of you and each blow you throw feels like it might sap the last of life you have left. What do you do when you have nothing left? In other words, any experience or story of this nature is at it's best when it requires struggle.

Doom Fortress is not that. You're Superman launching yourself from Solitude into whatever the fuck you want to do whatever the fuck you want. And hey, that's pretty darn cool. It's all additive to the badass mythos overall that is Doom Slayer.

Witness the Legend of the Doom Slayer - this leads to my next point. While I like a lot of the story beats in Doom Eternal, Slayer's million yard death stare, any human or demon cowering in your presence. The story overall felt less nuanced then 2016 and this as a result made the game feel less complete. There were a lot of cool cut scenes, but they were overused. I don't want to witness Doom Slayer do something I want to do it. Even if more of those scenes are in first person. Why do I see a scene of Doom Slayer raising his shotgun to the Hell Priests as they cower and flee, witnessing it from the periphery and not in first person? There are a few moments where this does happen and I asked, why didn't I get to pull the trigger? Such as the tentacles at the gore nest or getting to blow a fucking giant crater in Mars with a planetary BFG.

The game does tell a story in nuanced ways such as the human resistance reporting on your demon slaying, adding to your sense of badassery or audio logs of a scientist turning from skeptic agnostic to devout believer in your absolute divinity and godhood. I didn't really care for the general plot as well and felt the mystery from the first game was more alluring then the truth of Eternal. Heaven and hell is overdone and the Makyr's did not really interest me at all. I believe a story between humanity and hell would have been far better, not these two alien entities that I'm happy to commit methodical genocide against (where's some human betrayal? human cults? human greed and sin?). Overall I felt the Makyr inclusion dampened the mystery of the Night Sentinels. I was never surprised. Hopefully the next game is set around the alluded to "Father" or the hooded figure who gave Doom guy his divinity.

I've harped on about the bad far more then the good. But I think comparative to the colossal gameplay it's still minute. I criticize out of pure infatuated love and considering how every single criticism has a big fat asterisk next it is a testament to how good this game is. In a lot of ways it's vastly superior to its counterpart, I simply felt for it's time those few mixed issues were holding it back from greatness. From becoming the masterpiece that was the complete Doom 2016 package.