Doom: Eternal Review

Note: I originally wrote this review on Steam, viewable here. It's a bit outdated and in need of some polishing, but I haven't played the game recently so I have made no edits, and the displayed date is a reflection of that.

I don't often post reviews, but something about Doom Eternal compelled me to post one. And tl;dr for anyone wondering why this review is negative: If I were to choose between playing this and 2016, I'd choose the latter. A lot of the reasons for that are subjective though, and keep in mind I haven't played all that much so these are first-2-hours impressions.

First off: one of the issues I have with Eternal is that it requires a Bethesda account, which on its own is annoying but if there is ever a disconnection from the server it will pause the game to bug you about it. I don't care for online services in a single player game, and I've sifted through the settings and can't find anything to disable it. This alone would make me prefer 2016.

I am very conflicted about the visuals of the game. From an objective point of view, Eternal has a lot of things going for it. It has a better level of detail, more cool tech behind it, etc. and I think that has a lot of merit. On the other hand, they went for a very gritty cartoony look, which I will say is unique, but from my subjective view looks like unicorn blood. What it looks like to me is they kept adding more and more detail to the map, but soon realized it obscured what the player needed to focus on (such as pickups or secrets) so their solution was to make those things glow like an RGB keyboard. They even put a lot of secrets behind giant cracks on the wall like it's a Zelda game. I wouldn't scoff at someone for preferring Eternal's look, but I think 2016's was way more streamlined.

As for the combat, I much prefer 2016. Basically, if you liked the combat in the previous title you better hope you agree with the devs about what made it good. If you thought that the glory kills and the chainsaw made Doom good, well your in luck because Eternal makes it effectively required to not die. If you like pumping bullets into a cacodemon, well screw you because the game is balanced around you using grenades on them. The one part of Eternal's combat that I think is better is that the movement feels more responsive and there are more movement options that are unlocked earlier in the game. But in most other respects, I don't find myself agreeing with the direction of the game when it comes to what is fun. If you do agree with those changes you might enjoy it more than 2016.

One of the big criticisms of 2016 was that the setup of arena-hallway-arena made the game repetitive, and made the combat over-rehashed by the end. I didn't really have a problem with this because, to me, the point of Doom is the combat. But from playing Eternal, it feels like the devs heard that criticism and overcorrected by interspersing the game with platforming elements and more secrets and pickups hidden behind gates that you have to find the entrance to somewhere else. The most I can say about it is that it's okay. Like I would have preferred if id spent this development time on, say, a commander keen game (assuming they still have the copyright for it) or focusing on temporary switchups to the combat like Titanfall 2 did with it's time travel mechanic.

I should make it clear that this isn't a bad game. The problem is that it is competing with it's predecessor which is cheaper, and in my opinion, is better.