There is a very good FPS here somewhere. Unfortunately, it is buried under layer upon layer of useless upgrades and skill trees, forced platforming, and worst of all, the ever-present resource management: ammo, health, and armor are intentionally scarce, and you are forced to use special attacks to refill. To some that may be fun, to me it just makes the whole experience feel incredibly clunky and unnatural, interrupting the flow of the game rather than adding to it. While we are on the subject, the number of special attacks is excessive: chainsaw, flamethrower, glory kills, blood punch... keep it simple will you? It's a Doom game, I came here to blast demons away with a double barreled shotgun, I don't want to have to memorize half a dozen key bindings. Then there's the platforming: I like the idea of double jumps, climbing, dashing, somersaulting. Those are all things which, in moderation, would have been a great addition to the game, but sadly they got carried away, and often you find yourself spending more time jumping than shooting - again, this is a Doom game, I came here to fry hordes of demons with a BFG, not to re-enact Nadia Comaneci's perfect 10 at the Montreal Olympics. Probably as a consequence of this forced platforming, the levels also feel very linear.

The story is also a significant let down: they turned the tech-occult theme of previous Doom games into a sort of dark fantasy mishmash with kings, priests, gothic churches, and similar elements which might have been great in another game, but which simply do not blend at all with the Doom lore. The main character himself is disappointing: in Doom 2016, through some excellent use of environmental storytelling and brief cutscenes of the Slayer punching and smashing his surroundings, you felt like fury incarnate. Here... meh. The storytelling is also subpar: in 2016 you knew who the main villain was within minutes of starting the game, here, I've played the game for seven hours and I'm still not sure who or what I'm trying to find - something to do with some priests?

Overall, Doom Eternal feels bloated and clunky. That said, it is not a terrible game. It is a major step back in the series, and it is also a major disappointment, given how much potential was wasted due to poor game mechanics, but it is definitely not all bad. There are some enjoyable moments here and there: when the fighting picks up and you don't immediately run out of ammo, it can be entertaining. Just don't buy it at full price.

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Addendum: I forced myself to finish the game. I only did the campaign because I don't care for multiplayer. I stand by what I wrote: when you are in the thick of the fight it can be entertaining, and once you get the hang of it you even stop running out of ammo (protip: dash, dash, chainsaw), but the glaring issues I saw in my first hours of play only got worse.

The platforming and puzzles became so annoying I almost quit several times. I do not know how much time overall I spent jumping around like a frog, or frustratedly looking in every direction, searching for a climbing wall or a horizontal bar that might get me to the next cluster of demons, but it definitely felt like hours, and it probably was. All that time spent not shooting anything and engaged in activities which would have been better suited to a Mario game, was time in which Doom Eternal was failing utterly at its main purpose: being a first person shooter .

Then there's the whole "you must only play the way we want" attitude. This was already evident in the forced chainsaw-flamethrower-ice bomb mechanics, but it became even more annoying with the marauders: they're really not that difficult to kill, they're just... boring: there is a certain distance you have to keep, and there is only a specific time window during which they are vulnerable to your attacks. There is absolutely no room for doing things any way other than what the developers decided. And don't even get me started on the Khan Maykr. Once again, the experience feels incredibly mechanical and artificial.

The story and the atmosphere... eh. More priests, more fantasy environments, some clichés about . It's all a convoluted mess. Where Doom 2016 was almost lovecraftian in hinting at the unseen and the unspeakable ("They promised me so much"), this was in-your-face and comic book-ish, and I cringed every time the UAC hologram talked. Even the "evil priests" sound petulant rather than scary, definitely not something you would expect from literal Hell. All this nonsense is canon in the same way that midichlorians are canon: it simply does not fit with the rest of the story, it severely hinders suspension of disbelief, and I hope it will be quietly ignored in future games. Speaking of disbelief: what's with "empowered demons" who "killed another player"? This is a single player game, I don't want to know about other players, this has to be the most immersion-killing thing I've seen in a game! What were they thinking?

To conclude: several times while playing Doom Eternal I had the distinct feeling that, in some posh executive's office at id/Bethesda, some of the suits decided that rather than improving upon the previous game, the surest way to sell more copies would be to expand the target market by including gameplay elements which may attract people new to the franchise or even to the genre. Unfortunately, the end result is a Frankenstein monster of a game which tries to be too many things at once, and fails to deliver the kind of experience a lot of older fans have come to expect. There are still moments of absolute brilliance, namely when you are given lots of guns and lots of very angry, very mobile targets, but that just adds to my disappointment, because if this game had just tried to be Doom, instead of Doom Raider or Assassin's Doom, it could have been really good.






Vaxxie Shill gets out of bed
Another day of posts ahead
Of all the things he loves the most -
Fifteen cents for every post!

Mom is yelling - Get a job!
No more being such a slob!
Mom just will not get a clue
Shillposting’s important, too.

Tendies in the microwave
Lots of unvaxxed still to save.
Time to find out what to do,
Get talking points from Shill HQ.

Get on 4chan. Slide! Slide! Slide!
So many threads you have to hide!
Can’t let normies see this stuff,
Or they might catch on to the bluff.

Why won’t you get the damned vaccine?
Why are you so freaking mean?
Don’t you know this all would stop
If you weren’t so scared of the shot?

Fifteen cents! Woohoo! Cha-ching!
Their anger makes him want to sing.
Call him shill, he does not care.
Being unvaxxed isn’t fair!

Get the jab! Wear a mask!
Why is that so hard a task?
Call them incel! Call them chud!
Gotta stop them spreading FUD.

Take the jab - it’s safe and free!
I heard it from the CDC!
There is no danger from the spike.
That’s nothing but a bunch of hype!

Fifteen cents! Cha-ching! Woohoo!
Much more posting still to do!
Eat some tendies, drink a Coke,
Tell them why they need the poke.

They tell him to cope then to seethe,
They talk of onions and of sneed.
None of it makes any sense.
How can they be so very dense?

Take the jab - it’s free and safe!
Your obstinance begins to chafe!
Trust the science! Trust the docs!
You do not want to get this pox!

Nothing ever seems to work.
In every thread shіtposters lurk.
Every post is answered “VAERS!”
Why must they keep on splitting hairs?

ADE and Marek’s, spikes and clots,
Heart inflammation and other rot.
Vaxxie Shill has no reply.
Why oh why won’t they comply?

The hour is late, it’s all too much,
His talking points were not a crutch.
Vaxxie Shill gives up the game,
Knowing tomorrow will be the same.