4.5/5 ★ – pinksteady's review of DOOM Eternal.

What a ride It was lockdown and I wanted to treat myself, so I made a rare full-price purchase of Doom Eternal. [I loved the 2016 reboot](https://medium.com/@cdpinker/finishing-thoughts-doom-2016-ea5fada9368d), and so I was looking forward to some more gun slingin’ and demon slayin’. First impression - my god Doom Eternal was hard. Way harder than Doom 2016. And this was a problem at first. I just kept dying, and I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. I’m ‘ok’ at first-person shooters, so why was I constantly having my ass handed to me despite being on the ‘normal’ difficulty? I was also running out of ammo all the time - where was the ammo!? I quite quickly got a bit fed up and disappointed with the game. It was only when I read a tip on a loading screen that things started to click - I had to farm health, ammo and armour from enemies, by killing them in certain ways. This mechanic was introduced in Doom 2016 (glory kill for health, chainsaw for ammo), but for some reason it wasn’t as pressing that time around, and I’d also basically forgotten about that mechanic. With Eternal, I had to smartly use this mechanic at all times to ensure I always had health and ammo, as items lying around were almost non-existent. In addition, armour also became a farmable resource via fire blasting enemies. Doom Eternal therefore hones this resource-management mechanic that they introduced in 2016, and arguably creates a masterful combat experience. Once I understood the importance of the strategy, things became a bit more manageable and I stopped dying as much (although I still played it on the easiest difficulty!) The result is that combat is quite a lot more involved than in a normal FPS. You have to constantly keep an eye on your health, ammo, armour and powerful ‘blood punch’, as well as your chainsaw and flame burst fuel, and then plan your killing to ensure your stocks are appropriately replenished. You have to smartly use the weaker enemies as resource farms, killing them only when you need to, and concentrating on the larger enemies. It made for a tactical form of FPS combat I’ve never really experienced before. Combine this with the double jump and newly-introduced double-dash, and combat becomes quite mind-blowing. You fly around the arenas at breakneck speed, constantly assessing the enemies and maintaining a strategy in your head of what you’re going to do next. Most larger enemies have weak points, so you can target that, but again being mindful to ensure you harvest ammo etc from the lesser demons in the meantime. It sounds complicated and it kind of is, and honestly it took me longer than it should have done to get into it. But eventually I started to get the hang of it. Another thing that made it much more fun was to re-bind the controller so that jump and dash were on the triggers, so I could jump and dash while still looking around with my thumb. Controller players are at a real disadvantage by default here - imagine asking a PC player to take their hand off the mouse to jump! (This game would hugely benefit from using the perennially-sold out PS4 Back Button Attachment). Once I’d adjusted to the new layout, I was able to be really dynamic in my movements, and it made it all a lot more fun. I say fun, but there were many, many times that I ended a battle with my hands literally shaking. It is so intense, and so tough, but for many that is a real draw. Ok enough on the combat. Next up is the STORY. I’m in two minds about this. On the face of it, the story is so utterly convoluted that it does the game a disservice. There is so much lore to read in-game, and my god is it confusing. I’m not even going to try and explain the plot it is so ludicrous. On one hand, you can kind of ignore it - it doesn’t really matter as you can still have loads of fun murdering demons en masse. But the game tries SO hard to push this story in your face and make you care about it, which you invariably won’t, so it is a bit of a distraction. Compared to Doom 2016, where the plot and lore were so perfectly delivered in a manageable quantity, this was a bit of a shame. The only redeeming aspect was that, the new lore does actually, and fairly comprehensively, tie up and connect the lore of ALL the Doom games (apart from Doom 3). This is no mean feat, and perhaps explains why it is so bonkers. Spoiler - yes, the Doom Slayer from 2016 and Eternal is indeed the Doom Guy from the earlier Doom games (he’s just been through a lot and had some shit done to him). It is also worth pointing out that Doom Eternal is gorgeous. The scenery of destruction, especially the landscapes, is really something to behold. All in all I ended up really enjoying it. I was sad when I finished - I wanted more! Perhaps I should try and beat it on not the easiest difficulty (but it was still bloody hard even on the easiest!). It didn’t quite live up to Doom 2016’s standards because of the complex resource management and the bonkers plot, but it does deliver a unique and perhaps more refined combat experience, that becomes incredibly satisfying the more you get the hang of it. I respect ID for trying something new rather than just re-hashing the same thing - this resource management mechanic is novel and does work, and so credit to them for having the guts to deliver some innovation.