Developer: id Software
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Rrp: £49.99 (Steam and the Bethesda Launcher)
Released: 20th March 2020
Available on: Steam, Bethesda Launcher
Played Using: Mouse and keyboard
Approximate game length: 15 hours
See the demon spin up the barrels, the hole riddled demon drops to the floor. Two zombies approach from the left, a burst of fire from your shoulder mounted canon sets them ablaze leaving them open to the chainsaw. Two zombies are quickly divided into four hunks of meat and now you have more armour and ammo than you did before. Now the fun really begins.
Doom Eternal is the sequel to 2016’s Doom, meaning that you get more of what made the last game so great. More ultra violence, more horrific demons and more ways to shed them of their vital organs. However this game isn’t simply a copy of the last one, there are plenty of things that are different.
One thing that hasn’t changed are the glory kills, for those that didn’t play the last game, glory kills are a mechanic that allows you to regain life by killing an enemy that is close to death (depicted by your victim flashing yellow and blue). Another thing that hasn’t changed is being able to gain ammunition by instantly killing low ranking enemies such as imps, zombies and soldiers etc with the chainsaw, which is just as gory as ever. However, the only way to gain armour was to find it within the world, at least that was the case, now Doomguy has a shoulder mounted flame thrower called the ‘flame belch’ that will set your enemies alight. For the brief period that they are on fire they will drop pieces of armour if you kill them while they’re ablaze they drop a much larger amount. The flame belch takes time to cool down between uses, so you can’t just spam it.
Unsurprisingly the combat is as fast paced and visceral as it ever was. Enemies in this game come at you fast and are relentless, thankfully with many of the enemies you can take advantage of their weak spots (that the game gives you a brief tutorial on) which can lower how much of a threat they really can be to you.
Every so often an ’empowered’ demon will appear, these are demons who have killed another player within the campaign and are much stronger than their normal counterparts. Once you succeed in killing the empowered demon they will drop a lot of resources.
Between missions you return to a hub zone called the ‘Fortress of Doom’ (which sounds more like a super villain lair to me). Within this fortress you can go continue with the story, go back and replay missions, look at your collectibles as well as unlock some extra upgrades and cosmetics that are dotted about. However certain parts of the fortress are locked off due to a lack of power. To unlock these you need to find Sentinel Batteries within levels or earn them by completing all the challenges within a mission.
Once you have completed the campaign the ‘master levels’ are unlocked which can be selected from within the fortress. These levels are regularly added to and change up the way the campaign missions work.
Most missions have three challenges that you can complete while playing, usually these will be a variant on ‘kill x enemies in y way’ but sometimes it changes it up. Each challenge completed grants a weapon point and if all three are complete a Sentinel Battery is given.
Your Weapons also have their own challenges, specifically these are ‘Mastery’ challenges that are unlocked once you have maxed out a weapon mod. Once the challenge is completed that mod will have some kind of added ability, for example the with the chainguns ‘mobile turret’ mod its ability removes the cool down that occurs from firing it for too long.
Within most missions there will be a floating little robot that bears a weapon modification. Upon collecting the modification you can choose what modification to unlock. Each weapon has two modifications available (baring the chainsaw and three end game weapons) which are not mutually exclusive, meaning you can unlock both if you find all the robots. That being said you can’t equip them at the same time, but switching between the two is as easy as a single button press.
Throughout the game you’ll be earning weapon points be this through the completion of challenges, secret encounters and Slayer gates. These points are spent on the aforementioned weapon modifications to make them more potent.
Within most missions you can find secret encounters, these are optional, timed encounters that will spawn in enemies once activated. You simply have to kill all the enemies in the allotted time and upon completion will be awarded a weapon point. There are also Slayer gates occasionally to be found, these are gruelling encounters that upon completion award three weapon points and a special key called an Empyrean Key. Once you have all the keys you can unlock a special reward in your fortress. A thing to remember though is that both Slayer gates and secret encounters won’t give back the resources used in them so in completing them you can put yourself at risk for later on.
As you play through the game you’ll be earning suit points, like with weapon points these are awarded for your actions in game but also can be found within the missions. These suit points allow you to unlock a number of passive upgrades to your armour such as making exploding barrels no longer harm you or increasing the efficiency of specific skills.
Another collectible to find are Sentinel Crystals. These upgrade ammo, health or armour capacity and if two upgrades that are unlocked are connected a bonus upgrade will be unlocked.
Finally there are also runes to be found within some of the missions, collecting these allows you to add some minor benefits such as greater control while in the air or an elongated ‘stagger’ time for glory kills. There are nine runes to find but only three can be active at once, thankfully you can swap out which ones are active as you need to.
This is where I have to level my only real criticism of the game. I feel that the game focuses too much on exploration. That feels strange to say as I usually tout exploration as a good thing in a game but in this case the amount of exploration is a detraction (if only a small one). Doom is about fast paced action and while having a couple of secrets is fun having so many in a level takes away from the experience of mowing down demons. On top of that I felt that I had to go looking for these secrets as quite a few of them actually have a effect on the gameplay such as the weapon and suit points.
Want to know the crazy thing? I haven’t even listed all the collectibles just the ones that have a direct effect on the gameplay that aren’t a cheat code. There are still 1Up’s, toys, music and the game disks that every mission has.
A fast travel system has been included that unlocks just before you reach the end of a level. That way you can go back to a previous section of the level you’re on to find what items you have missed, which can be accessed through the map screen.
One can’t speak of the modern Doom games without making mention of the soundtrack, which once again is fantastic. Deep bassy beats and the raw energy of the heavy metal guitar really give the game some added oomph. However, quite a few of the tracks felt flat compared to those that were in 2016’s Doom. This is due to some mixing that occurred that was not done by the composer Mick Gordon, those tracks that he worked on still feel as heavy and energised as the last games. Unfortunately it seems that there was some kind of disagreement between Mick Gordon and Bethesda Softworks (of which I don’t know the full details and will therefore not dwell on) which has meant that Mick Gordon may never work with Bethesda Softworks again.
If you liked the last Doom game then this one will definitely be right up your alley. I do feel that they went a bit too far with the upgrading system and the collectibles this time but it didn’t effect my enjoyment of the game so much that I wouldn’t recommend it. In fact I’ve been having a blast playing through the master levels.
If this appeals to you perhaps try;
Doom 2016
The Serious Sam series
Borderlands 2
