Recent reviews by beef chief

This review assumes that you have either played through Doom The Dark Ages or are alright with spoilers

TLDR: 7/10, a clear departure from Doom Eternal that is still Doom at its core but doesn’t seem interested in building off the things that made Doom Eternal so great.
Let me start this off by saying that I played through the campaign on Nightmare difficulty. I’ve played all the Doom games since the reboot in 2016 and would categorize myself as a big fan of the franchise.

Immediately I can tell that while this is a Doom game, it’s very distinct from Eternal. The movement feels closer to Doom 2016 with the lack of a dash. In this game, it has been replaced by a sprint option, but to be honest I feel like that’s more of a sidegrade, maybe even a bit of a downgrade. The dash mechanic in Doom Eternal made moving feel very fluid – it was nice to be able to weave between enemies, dodge projectiles and charging enemies, and reach ledges from further away. A quick little dash would have been greatly appreciated in this game given how a lot of the projectiles are pretty wide.

I think it’s good that Dark Ages tried to mix things up after Eternal; id could have easily just slapped a new coat of paint on Eternal and released basically the exact same game, but they chose to really try and change things up. While that’s clearly the correct approach to take when making a sequel, I’m worried they tried so hard to make Dark Ages unique from Eternal that they intentionally turned away from the things that made Eternal so good.

The new weapons are cool, and I get the sense they were trying to imbue them with some Quake identity. However, they don’t fit into the gameplay loop as well as guns did in Eternal. Guns almost exclusively exist in this game to deal damage, with very little purpose beyond that. This is another step down from Eternal, where guns (weapon mods to be specific) had wider gameplay functions such as being direct counters to specific enemy types (the full auto mod for the combat shotgun countering stone imps vs the grenade launcher mod countering cacodemons) or helping you weaken tougher demons (the heavy cannon precision shot allowing you to shoot the turret off of Arachnotrons or damage the guns of Mancubi). Most of the guns in this game feel like they just exist to do damage. There are a couple exceptions like the plasma weapons being needed to destroy energy shields and your super shotgun being the best way to deal with armored enemies, but generally speaking your guns are either meant to do high single-target damage, high AOE damage, short-ranged damage, or long-ranged damage. Most of the time I found myself just using the super shotgun, only swapping to the chainshot or rocket launcher to deal with high-health targets like Agaddon Hunters and bosses, and the impaler for Cacodemons. I really enjoyed swapping between guns to deal with different enemy types and wish they expanded on it further in Doom Eternal to give every weapon mod a clear purpose, so I’m disappointed that guns in this game are generally just a means of dealing raw damage.

The parry mechanic in this game is a slightly revamped version of its incarnation in Eternal. This might just be a me thing, but the timing for parrying feels a little off. It felt as though the game wanted me to right click the second something turned green, rather than waiting for the last possible second to land the parry, which felt a little counterintuitive – especially early in the game, I got hit a LOT because I apparently waited too long to parry, even though I’m pretty sure I right clicked before an attack landed. Even on nightmare difficulty, where the parry window is supposedly smaller, it still feels like you’re rewarded for being quick on the draw and punished for trying to time it right. That is, until you encounter the Agaddon Hunter, who does the Elden Ring thing of winding up an attack way longer than would make sense to bait you into parrying, then doing an attack, which is intensely annoying.
In general, I feel like the balance of this game’s combat loop is too heavily centered on parrying. Especially when you start getting shield runes, it feels like the most effective way to deal with enemies is by running around looking for green stuff to mash right-click on. Overall, it feels like a bit of a clumsy mechanic that winds up being somewhat overbearing. This is especially true for the Atlan and dragon levels, where you’re just pressing your attack button and waiting for something to turn green. The parry mechanic in this game just makes combat feel very one-dimensional.

The exploration aspect of the game is neat. I like that the collectible toys make another appearance. I didn’t feel particularly inclined to comb through every level to find every codex entry, every piece of gold, and every secret. I suppose it’s there for people who want it, but I just found that it interrupted the flow of the game. As previously stated, I also didn’t see a use for about half the weapons, so I also didn’t feel the need to find all the upgrade materials to max out every piece of equipment.

The music in this game is… fine. There’s a big lack of identity in the tracks that absolutely was not the case with Mick Gordon’s tracks in previous games. The music works, it’s thematically appropriate, but it’s nothing to write home about. I didn’t find myself trying to look through the track list to find that one song from that one level that just sounded super sick like I did with Doom 2016 and Eternal.

Despite all the criticism I’ve given, I still had fun with this game. At its core, it’s still good old run-and-gun Doom. It’s certainly more inspired than most other shooters on the market today. As someone who really enjoyed Doom Eternal, I was hopeful that id would build on the ideas they had in that game to make an even more fluid game where everything in your arsenal felt like it had a specific purpose, and that you’d be dashing around arenas like a madman swapping between guns to most effectively deal with all the different enemies you encounter. Unfortunately, that wasn’t what I got. Being able to enjoy this game required acknowledging that this game isn’t Doom Eternal, and it isn’t trying to be Doom Eternal, so stop asking it to be Doom Eternal. Once I was able to do that, I was able to return to having fun with the game. However, the more one-dimensional combat loop doesn’t make me want to come back to the game and replay levels. I beat the game, I’m glad I beat the game, but now that I’m finished, I’m going to put it down and don’t know if/when I’ll pick it up again.

I really enjoyed Doom Eternal - in most ways it felt like a natural next step forward following Doom 2016, most obviously with regards to the gameplay. Doom 2016 laid a great foundation with its emphasis on constant movement and swapping between weapons, and Doom Eternal made the logical next steps in every possible way. The dash feels like it should have been in every Doom game since the early 90s, the way you can manipulate the meat hook to fling yourself across the stage allows for some really cool moments, grenades and the chainsaw having a timed cooldown rather than requiring grenade/fuel pickups creates a more coherent gameplay loop, and the flame belch fits in seamlessly with your other tools. Eternal also made a good start in making weapon mods feel more meaningful than just a raw damage upgrade - having special situations that benefit from particular weapon mods was a great idea that was expanded upon further in the DLC campaigns. My only wish was that there was a situation/enemy that was directly suited to every weapon mod. My vision for this would be that in later stages of the campaign and on higher difficulty levels, not only would you be expected to swap between weapons, but also swapping between weapon mods to counter specific enemies for optimal gameplay.

My one gripe about this game is that the music feels a little too self-aware of the game's meme reputation compared to the soundtrack from 2016. I know plenty of tracks in this game are popular, but I preferred the grittier sound of 2016 over the cartoonish one of Eternal.

Overall, Doom Eternal is perhaps the most enjoyable shooter on the market today - it made some excellent next steps from Doom 2016 and I hope they do the same building into Doom The Dark Ages.

If you're a big fan of Warhammer 40,000, you should get this game
If you're a fan of third person shooters, you should get this game
If you're interested in exploring Warhammer, you should get this game

I had a lot of fun with Space Marine 2. The visuals are phenomenal, and it's clear that much effort went into making all models, from the space marines to Tyranids to Thousand Sons, look like animated versions of their tabletop models. The gameplay loop of transitioning between ranged and melee combat takes some getting used to if you, like me, haven't played many other third person shooters. I played the prequel many years ago, but don't remember much. If you're a big fan of games like Gears of War, perhaps the gameplay loop will feel more familiar. The combat is solid - when it works, it feels outstanding. This is especially true in the boss fights, which generally feel fluid and dynamic. When it doesn't work, however, gameplay can feel very frustrating. You might lose your entire health bar very quickly to ranged enemies or get swamped by a horde of hormagaunts or tzaangors, and it won't feel like there was much counterplay. This game is best experienced in a squad with other human players. The AI squadmates are... ok, but it feels like the developers gave them a large heathbar to compensate for the fact that they're really sluggish and don't really do much. When playing solo, you might get swamped by enemies that your squadmates should have easily dealt with, and from my experience this doesn't happen anywhere near as often when playing with human teammates. The story is quite short but it's tight. The missions feel well-structured, and if you want more there's a plethora of activities to do once you finish the main campaign. Overall, this game is quality over quantity. I hope the season pass DLC brings more PVE missions that include other factions from the Warhammer 40,000 universe, such as other xenos races and other chaos gods.

it's really disappointing how much post-release content you DON'T get from buying the ultimate pass. I purchased this under the assumption that it would include all of the music added with the Akuma update, and was more than a little annoyed that despite owning the "ultimate" season pass, I still have to pay separately, either with drive tickets or with fighter coins, in order to get things like music from previous games that contemporaries like Guilty Gear Strive or Tekken 8 make available for free