I really love the DOOM series. The original second part was my first video game experience in this life and had a significant influence on the formation of my genre preferences. And this love extends to all significant games in the series, even to DOOM 3, which is considered the most controversial part of the franchise, unlike its relatives. I was endlessly happy when an incredibly cool reboot of the series came out in 2016. I was endlessly sad when the damn coronavirus pandemic and its consequences did not allow me to buy its sequel – DOOM ETERNAL. Then I was endlessly happy again, because a friend was able to lend me a disc for PS4. And now the disc with DOOM ETERNAL ends up in my console, and, as they say in the intro of the cartoon Luntik – “But what happened next, we will now find out!»
Welcome back, Great Executioner!
After completing the game, I came to a conclusion that may seem strange. And this text canvas is precisely an attempt to explain this very conclusion – DOOM ETERNAL has become for me one of the best shooters in recent years and one of the biggest disappointments at the same time. ID Software has significantly improved the combat system of the 2016 reboot. Now the Doom Slayer can initially double jump and quickly master the dash on the ground and in the air, which is a working example of the old rule – everything ingenious is simple. Charge isn’t exactly a revolutionary mechanic, but its addition made the Executioner’s battles against demonic abominations much more dynamic. However, this was not enough for the developers, and they decided to increase the level of adrenaline during the battles, reducing the number of cartridges the protagonist has. Instead of crowded stores, game designers suggest using a chainsaw more actively. Just like in DOOM 2016, it allows you to get ammo of all calibers from sawed-down enemies. And to compensate for the low ammunition, one level of the chainsaw’s filling is restored automatically after about half a minute. And the game literally insists on this approach, since almost every battle a huge number of weak mobs spawn, which require 1 chainsaw charge to cut. And yes, I have no idea where the cartridges in the demonic entrails come from, but the cut looks very cool!
Aaaaaaaaah, it tickles!
However, crowds of weak enemies can be used not only to replenish ammunition, but also to replenish the health bar with the help of brutal finishers, as well as the armor bar with the help of a shoulder-mounted flamethrower. And if the first is already well known to us, since it is one of the foundations of the entire relaunched series, then the second has become a fresh solution that works well on all enemies, and even better on groups of enemies. The more enemies you manage to shower with fire, the more armor you can get in the end. The flamethrower is restored automatically, as is 1 chainsaw charge. With proper use of all the above elements, you can not need anything at all and always be fully packed, like Jesus in one episode of South Park.
When you wash in the shower and suddenly boiling water starts flowing.
In addition to what has already been listed, the ability Bloody Strike has been added to the Executioner’s arsenal. It looks like a regular right hand, but don’t get confused, it’s Bloody. So Bloody that it causes significant damage to large enemies, and completely destroys small ones. And his bloodiness does not end there; if his comrades are standing next to the enemy who grabbed him, they will also suffer from the force wave formed after the blow. This weapon of retaliation is charged through finishing moves. However, it’s not just the Doom Slayer that has updates. Demons have received personnel additions to their reserves, some of which are borrowed from classic DOOM and DOOM 2: Hell On Earth. True, not everything is so good for the hellspawn, because most of them also received weaknesses that the Executioner can effectively use. For example, a cacodemon, and.To.A. Gennady can naively swallow a grenade fired at him from a shotgun, and the subsequent indigestion in his demonic stomach will make Gennady available for finishing off. And there are many similar tricks, the game itself willingly talks about them. Well, if all this didn’t seem enough to you, then don’t worry, closer to the end the Executioner will find the melee weapon that everyone has been wanting to equip since the finals of DOOM 2016.
To use such power you need powerful motivation.
And since I mentioned the ending of the last game, let’s move on to the plot, and with it the problems of DOOM ETERNAL. I understand that demanding outstanding plots from a game with the word DOOM in the title is a very thankless task. However, the developers themselves insisted that they approached this issue much more responsibly than before. Trailers containing clips of third-person cutscenes hinted that they would at least try. But in the end, I didn’t even notice an attempt to do something more with the narrative, in comparison with DOOM 2016. And the very fact of lack of progress in the screenwriting field is not such a big problem. The problems start where the plot holes appear, that is, at the very beginning of the game. Let me remind you that DOOM 2016 ended with the Doom Slayer sealing the portal to Hell, and Samuel Hayden, the head of the research complex on Mars, couldn’t think of anything better than to send the Slayer back to Hell, simultaneously taking away the Crucible combat artifact from him. Where does DOOM ETERNAL begin?? The Executioner, sitting in his cosmic Stronghold of Doom, learns that the Earth is undergoing a massive demonic invasion. And to stop the invasion, the Executioner must eliminate three hellish priests, the first of whom turns out to be too naive and does not even try to worry about his own safety, unlike his colleagues.
In vain he decided to save on security.
I’ve only recounted the first https://richyleocasino.uk/bonus/ few minutes of the game, but there are already an obscene number of questions. How the invasion of Earth began? How the Executioner got out of Hell? And where did he get his space castle?? If you can find an answer to the first question, at least in your notes and surroundings, but the answer, then the remaining questions will remain unanswered. It will still be possible to find a note that will tell about the history of the Stronghold of Doom, but will not tell how the Executioner got to it after the events of the finale of the last game. I can’t help but feel like there should be some kind of presequel between DOOM 2016 and ETERNAL. And if you naively believe that at least something interesting will happen to the plot in the future, then no, it won’t. At some point, the developers will insert an Easter egg, which will make some people smile, while others will come up with fan hypotheses, according to which the relaunched series has a common plot with the classic one, which is impossible, due to the lore of DOOM 2016. From start to finish, the game will adhere to a strict algorithm – activate a portal to the next level in the hub, clear the level, poke around in the hub, activate a new portal to the next level.
The whole demonic race is afraid of this geek.
The local hub has its secrets. Most are revealed through resources obtained at levels, and a few will require a little ingenuity. The Executioner collects toys depicting his enemies, vinyl records with soundtracks from other ID Software games, floppy disks with cheats and guitars. With the exception of the latter, all of the above are scattered throughout the levels. In the fortress you can even play classic DOOM and DOOM 2, but for this you will have to get a little confused, although no one has canceled guides from the Internet either. But most of all, during the first passage, the stronghold is intriguing with weapons locked with 6 locks. Each lock requires a separate key, which can be obtained by completing a duel in the Executioner’s Gate. These same Gates can be found at levels where the player will face a far from simple battle with demons. If the Executioner wins, he receives one key and is one step closer to the secret weapon. The complexity of the Gate is due to the prohibitively large number of demons, some of which may not even be encountered within the framework of the plot. I went through all 6 Gates, got this very weapon called the Unraveler, which came to ETERNAL from DOOM 64, and… I didn’t find a use for it. Yes, it is powerful, but in a critical situation it is better to fire from the good old BFG 9000, the cartridges from which the Disintegrator uses. Despite this, I did not regret passing through the Gate. After completing them, you experience the same victorious feeling as after defeating a boss in some Souls-like. I played the game on Nightmare, so the effect was especially strong.
The real gates to Hell.
Speaking of bosses, DOOM ETERNAL has 4 of them, and with the exception of one, they are all disappointing. Instead of boss names, I will use their serial numbers to avoid spoilers. The first leader was shamelessly leaked by the developers literally right after the bossfight. The situation is the following – you defeated the boss, and the fight was quite good. But then the game designer decides that everything is too good, so immediately after defeating the boss you are presented with a fact – you were good, but now you need to kill two of the same bastards. Such a decision already flushes the boss down the game design toilet, but even this was not enough for the developers, and they decide to push him with a brush, turning him into an ordinary mob in subsequent stages of the game. My position is that a boss in a video game is a unique opponent. If there is a second encounter with him, it should be clearly justified by the plot, and the boss himself should receive new abilities that will make the perception of the second battle with him somewhat different than the first time. DOOM ETERNAL’s first boss has none of this. The second leader is the above-mentioned exception, so I can only say about him that he is good. The third one starts for health, but ends for peace. A completely tolerable boss fight suddenly deteriorates the moment the game designer decides to add a “the floor is lava” challenge to it. After about half the boss’s health points, a considerable part of the arena becomes dangerous to move. It turns out that in a game, one of the foundations of which is its dynamics, the developers limit me in this very dynamics, and even in bossfight. But these are minor things compared to the final boss. The only positive aspect of the final confrontation is the Easter nature of the boss himself. Otherwise, it’s just an incredibly tedious shooting of, let’s say, two layers of fat. And speaking of bosses, we can’t help but mention the Guardian Armor, this is a buff that the game offers to take advantage of if you happen to die on a boss more than a couple of times. With this buff, the damage taken is reduced significantly. At the same time, the game will not require any in-game resources, nor blocking of trophies, or anything at all for using this legal cheat. I only realized the usefulness of this thing during the final boss; before that I didn’t even understand why it was created. It’s as if the developers themselves realized that their boss fights, to put it mildly, were not great, so they added a legal cheat so that their mothers would be less often remembered in battles with the bosses. However, it seems to me that the activation of the Guardian Armor should have been done a little differently. At levels, the player can find extra lives that resurrect the Executioner when health is reset. So, I think that the Guardian Armor should have been made the second function of these extra lives. If a player experiences a gameover, even if not in a bossfight, and he has extra lives, then you can give him a choice – just resurrect; load at the checkpoint, but with the Guardian Armor; or give up and go to the main menu. Of course, I’m not a game designer, but this option seems more logical and balanced to me.
At the final boss the choice is obvious.
And what’s most annoying is that there is a rather dangerous enemy in the game that would make a great boss. We are talking about the Marauder, who absolutely undeservedly plays the role of a dangerous but regular enemy. Marauders are former comrades of the Doom Slayer with similar abilities. This guy is incredibly fast and agile. At close range he shoots from his sawed-off shotgun, at long range he launches a red clot of energy. If you run from him too much, he will send his ghost dog after the player. He blocks all attacks in his direction with his shield. The only way to damage him is to shoot when he swings his ax at you. Yes, he also has an ax. The fight between the Executioner and the Marauder is practically a battle of equals, which makes it especially interesting. Making a Marauder a boss with two phases is very simple – you need to add more health points to him and make sure that he remembers about the shield and the dog only in the second phase. And that’s all that was required from ID Software to create the best bossfight in DOOM ETERNAL, but instead they turned the Marauder into a dangerous regular mob, fights with which towards the end of the game are more annoying than exciting.
This is what a lost opportunity looks like.
But there is something worse in DOOM ETERNAL than unsuccessful boss fights. This evil came to DOOM from cinema and other video game franchises. Only a few have managed to curb it, and ID Software is not even close to one of these craftsmen. And those who knew the full potential and horror of this nemesis called it..
Local parkour first makes you wonder why it’s here? And then it just starts to irritate with incredible force. The developers thought it was a great idea to force the player to jump through absolutely inadequate obstacles that even manage to break out of the style of the game, where a silent man tears demons apart with his own hands. I don’t mind jumping over a chasm or two, but when it comes to jumping on some sarcophagi, or jumping through fire chains that spin both horizontally and vertically, I start to lose the sense of immersion, because such things look very strange in a meat shooter. And even all this could be perceived less painfully if all these parkour mechanics worked perfectly, but their execution is not flawless. Perhaps the most controversial parkour mechanic is the crossbars. On the one hand, jumping on them to overcome obstacles is very annoying. On the other hand, crossbars work great in arenas with enemies, where they simply allow you to increase your jump range.
It will be obviously unpleasant to fall.
The question may arise – what then to entertain the player between shootouts?? And the answer to this question was prepared by the artists together with the authors of the lore, which, like in the last game, is read in the writings of the codex, one of the local collectibles. The developers didn’t get along with the plot, but reading the local lore is quite interesting. The merit of the artists, as you might guess, lies in the beauty of the game levels. Instead of under-parkour, I’d rather just admire the locations and read the lore. The same case when leisurely walking and reading turned out to be more interesting than parkour.
Terribly beautiful.
However, you have to endure parkour not only to advance through the plot, but also to collect items that are necessary to upgrade the Executioner. You can improve the protagonist’s weapons and costume. You can also add 3 auxiliary runes to yourself. In DOOM 2016, before you can start using a specific rune, you had to pass its special test. In DOOM ETERNAL everything is somewhat simpler, you just need to find the runic terminal, let’s call it that, and select the rune you are interested in to unlock. In general, leveling up looks expensive and rich and at first it even creates a mess in your head coupled with a package of new combat mechanics, but you quickly get used to it.
There is an opinion that all these features are useful only on maximum difficulty.
Well, I can’t help but mention the works of the wonderful composer Mick Gordon, whose tracks take pride of place in my playlist. This time Mick decided to get more involved than usual and recorded a heavy metal choir. To implement this task, many participants from various groups were invited. The result is simply cosmic! Fans of heavy music may well get several auditory orgasms while playing DOOM ETERNAL.
Give him a Grammy already!
But now the game has been completed, leveling up has been completed, everything has been collected, what to do now?? Here the developers offer 2 options – master levels and Battlemode. As conceived by ID Software, master levels are already completed levels with a more severe mix of enemies that players will receive regularly, because you can experiment quite a lot with the demonic mix in the arenas, due to the diversity of the local bestiary. Only on PS4, even a month and a half after the game’s release, there is only one master level. Maybe the situation is different on other platforms, but on the Sony console there’s no sign of regular replenishment. I’m not saying that a dozen of them should have already been made, but in a month and a half, it seems to me, at least one could have been released. However, the developers themselves are clearly more interested in the development of Battlemode. It is an asymmetrical multiplayer for three, where 2 players take on the role of demons, and the third plays the Doom Slayer. The developers clearly have plans for this mode, because there is even a free battle pass for it with a bunch of cosmetics. You can unlock this cosmetic content in a single-player game, but I doubt that fans of single-player adventures will specifically bother with a battle pass for online battles. I’m just one of these fans, so in Battlemode I only had enough for 2 matches. I won’t even try to evaluate it objectively, there are cyber athletes for that, I can only say that it was not the worst experience in multiplayer. I’ve read reviews that Battlemode, like its asymmetrical counterparts, has problems with balance, but in 2 matches I didn’t feel anything like that. However, these are only 2 matches, and I’m not a cyber athlete.
You can check out the revenant’s capabilities in one single-player episode.
DOOM ETERNAL was an extremely controversial game, I didn’t think that after the almost perfect DOOM 2016 something could go wrong, but it happened. As a result, we have an updated, for the better, combat system, increased dynamics, interesting lore, excellent visual design, amazing soundtrack, as well as failed bossfights, a plot with holes and disgusting parkour. Again, complaining about the story in a DOOM game is not the smartest thing to do, but no one forced the developers to raise consumer expectations with phrases about how carefully they handled the work with the narrative. And besides, I followed the plot in Painkiller, but here the potential for a good story is much richer. Who knows, maybe the conditional DOOM 3 will be able to correct the situation. If they don’t push parkour into it, it will be very nice. Well, reader, thank you very much for your time. Take care of yourself, because in the chaos of existence our fight is eternal.
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