I have a love-hate relationship with Doom: Eternal, although it definitely leans more towards the love side. It’s a technically phenomenal first person shooter that makes you feel like a badass more than almost any game I can think of, ratcheting up the action and pressure from its predecessor, but lord did it make me almost hurl my controller through the screen. If there was one universal complaint about the 2016 Doom it was that it felt like something of an incomplete package, with a fairly short story and a multiplayer mode that seemed like an afterthought. Eternal goes in the complete opposite direction, stuffed full of almost too much content; with a 16 hour campaign filled to the brim with bloody battles and secrets to uncover, multiple difficulty levels to encourage repeat playthroughs and a far more fun, interesting multiplayer mode that shows that developer Bethesda has gone above and beyond fan’s expectations to deliver the game they wanted. Apart from a few repetitive levels and game mechanics and some lacklustre boss fights, Doom:Eternal is an absolute must-buy and one of the best first person shooters of this console generation.
Let’s get one thing out of the way first. You don’t come to a Doom game for a deep, emotional story. You come to murder demons in increasingly violent ways, splitting skulls and spilling innards as you progress deeper and deeper into the bowels of Hell coming up against bigger and more badass demons. Alas, the game must have a story to propel you forward and true to form for the franchise it’s kind of a mess, but that just adds to the fun. Doom: Eternal‘s story is epic, picking up 2 years after the events of the 2016 game, where the Earth has been all but conquered by the demon forces that were brought forth from Hell through the gate on Mars. As the hulking Doom Slayer, you are tasked with saving the Earth and sending these demon forces packing before they can complete their mission and completely decimate the planet. Seems pretty straightforward right? Believe me when I say that you haven’t seen anything. Any coherent plot line that might have been gets gutted just as quickly as one of the games many demons as your quest takes you across multiple locations including Earth, Hell and inter-dimensional demon planets. At these locations you will be tasked with collecting a myriad of endlessly powerful items that the game does its best to explain, but which ultimately ends up confusing the player more than it should. A lot of these levels seem like filler, as ultimately the conclusion of your mission does nothing to impact the overall threat facing you and causes the game to drag in a few stretches, relying too heavily on its excellent combat to drag you through the tedium. Ultimately the story is simply a means to an end for you to kill as many demons as you possibly can and in that regards it gives you almost too much content, with the story clocking in at around a meaty 16 hours.
The star of the show is undoubtedly the gameplay here. Doom: Eternal is just so damn fun to play and despite a few levels that just piled on what seemed like endless enemies, I happily sunk hours into the increasingly frantic and overwhelming demon slaying combat. Part of this is the movement of the Doom Slayer. He handles wonderfully, moving with a speed which seems completely unnatural for a man his size but which makes the combat far more enjoyable. The 2016 games physics were such that the double jump felt like such a breath of fresh air for the decades old franchise, with the lower gravity on Mars giving you a brief period of time to float above your enemies before delivering a crushing blow or blast from a shotgun. Eternal increases the flexibility of this movement with the introduction of a double dash – a move that can be chained in the air to give you previously impossible reach and manoeuvrability options – allowing you to zip behind enemies and pick them off before they even know you’re there. Of course that would be far too simple and the logical answer to this is to increase both the movement speed of enemies and their sheer numbers. The waves of enemies thrown at you are seemingly endless, quickly filling a room and forcing you to think strategically about where you jump and dash to in order to pick off the smaller villains first before focusing on the big baddies.
The enemy variety has also seen a big increase over its predecessor with upwards of 20 different types of demons to hunt you. These range from mere cannon fodder to mid tier terrors slightly harder to take down – like the fan-favourite Cacodemon or the jetpack-wearing Reaper – to hulking slabs of evil that start off as mini-bosses but who appear increasingly frequently to add another dimension of strategy (and pressure) to your late-game encounters – like the half-tank, half-demon Hunter. The highlight of these new enemies, however, is undoubtedly the Marauder: an axe-wielding, flame hound summoning behemoth, capable of destroying you at close range with his shotgun and from afar with his ranged axe attack. He is undoubtedly the most difficult enemy you will encounter apart from the main bosses and demands a combination of patience and fast reflexes in order to take him down; something you will find yourself in short supply of when you’re also surrounded by about 30 other enemies.
Fortunately you’re well equipped to quell the rising forces of Hell, with the classic Doom assortment of weapons returning in all their explosive glory. These range from your classic combat shotgun to the machine-gun-like “heavy cannon” to the trusty rocket launcher, all of which are fully upgradeable with extra features that change the way you use each weapon. Equip the combat shotgun with the sticky grenade mod and it becomes a low-cost grenade launcher that, if used correctly, can be one of your greatest allies. The Doom staple “super shotgun” also makes a powerful return with the inclusion of a meat-hook like attachment which allows you to fire it into enemies and hurl yourself towards them, adding another dimension to the movement based gameplay. While that sounds fun in theory, I found that the lock on for the grapple was somewhat unreliable and had a rather limited range, relegating the gun to more of a close quarters powerhouse. All told there’s 8 main guns and while it’s unfortunate that there’s no major new inclusion to the arsenal, what you do get is more than enough to offer a variety of ways to take down your enemies.
On top of this is the ever-present Chainsaw, which allows for close-quarters bloody kills (provided you have enough fuel), which spew ammo from the enemy. The Glory Kill feature from the 2016 game also makes a triumphant return, allowing for an instant kill to be performed on an enemy that has sustained significant damage and which causes health pickups to burst forth. The newest attachment to the Doom Slayer’s suit is the wonderfully named “Flame Belch”, a shoulder-mounted flamethrower which torches enemies and causes them to drop armour pickups. This creates another sub-layer of strategy in Doom: Eternal: resource management. On the normal to higher difficulties you will constantly find yourself struggling for ammo, health and armour and the careful, well-timed use of these support weapons on the litany of minor enemies which constantly respawn will often mean the different between life and death, adding an extra level of panic to a game almost overflowing with it.
In addition to the extensive single-player campaign, Bethesda has also spent considerable resources on revamping the disappointing multiplayer from the 2016 Doom, reassessing the format from the ground up. Gone are the standard death matches and map creator modes, replaced by a more modern, on-trend asymmetrical death match; pitting two player-controlled demons and their horde of minor demons against one slayer complete with their entire arsenal. It works surprisingly well, with each demon’s play style feeling fresh and adding a new dynamic to the proceedings. Whilst you may think the slayer has the advantage in his far more varied arsenal, that is not the case and both sides are fairly balanced and come with their own set of challenges. Choose the demon and you have a clear advantage in numbers, but without careful collaboration with your partner, the slayer will pick you off one by one, using the smaller demons as fuel to rain down fire on you. Pick the slayer and you need to use your movement incredibly well, traversing the maps quickly in order to cut the demons off from their partner and strike while they are weaker. Whilst it’s still not something I can see myself sinking hundreds of hours into, it is a marked improvement over the previous game’s multiplayer and something that should find something of a cult following amongst the game’s biggest fans.
Doom: Eternal builds on everything that made the 2016 refresh of the franchise great. The action is more hectic and fast paced than it has ever been, the weapons feel just as great with new mechanics and resource management changing how you use them, and the enemies you encounter constantly challenge you and force you to adapt your play styles and try new things in order to succeed. While the story doesn’t make a lick of sense and drags in some places, the sheer joy of the core gameplay loop delivers just enough adrenaline and satisfaction to keep you coming back for more. The multiplayer may not be for everyone but is nonetheless a welcome addition to the game that extends its playability until the inevitable sequel. Doom: Eternal is an absolute must-play game and one that you should experience as soon as possible. There just isn’t anything out there at the moment like the sheer intensity of being on low health with no ammo and gutting a towering 8 foot demon with a chainsaw to give you just enough health for you to take down his friend behind him. When his friend cracks you open like a melon however, just make sure you have insurance on your TV.
Doom: Eternal is available now on Playstation 4, Xbox One & PC.