Doom Eternal review

Well, I just loved Doom Eternal.

It's hard to describe the cathartic bliss of deep, bitter frustration and exhilarating reward this game suspends the player in from beginning to end. It is not an easy game. It is not Dark Souls difficult - it is more forgiving than that, certainly on the Ultra-Violence difficulty which I played during my campaign - but that influence is apparent in Doom Eternal's constant demand for attentive, thoughtful, precise play. 2016's Doom was itself a difficult (and brilliant) game, but with a focus on rhythm combat which felt more akin to the Arkham series - you could get away with button-mashing to a certain degree, so long as you kept yourself moving, dodged heavy fire and glory-killed your way to victory. That game of "combat chess", of positioning and mobility is still ever-present here, but both you and your enemy have far more elaborate means available to control the battlefield, many more threats demanding our attention, many more cool-downs to keep track of.

Yes, there are a lot of cool-downs and a lot of buttons. Not content with 2016's chainsaw-for-ammo glory-kill-for-health contrivance (an acceptable one), Doom Eternal adds a flamethrower which ignites enemies, causing them to drop armor shards. The game does not deign to explain to us that carbonised demon flesh actually forms an incredibly powerful kevlar-like compound or any such nonsense, thankfully. There's also an ice bomb, which freezes enemies, a grappling hook (attached to the super shotgun), eight weapons each with two toggleable alternate fire modes, a insta-kill magic sword, blood punch (it's a super-punch you charge by glory-killing), and a frag grenade (returning from 2016).

At times, it feels like too much, but it's hard to pick an element I'd remove now that I'm enjoying having mastered all of them (enough to beat the game, anyway - I'm not going to be streaming any speedruns anytime soon). Doom Eternal walks a narrow tightrope to keep the player thinking "just one more go, and then I'm torching the Playstation" without them ever quite getting to that point. But I could have, and almost did, and I don't doubt this game will be responsible for some crispy CPUs. The difficulty setting of course offers some consolation to the overwhelmed, but it doesn't change the number of things you have to do or pay attention to, just how often you can afford to overlook them.

There's also platforming. Quite a lot of of it. 2016's Doom used light platforming to spice up play, add mobility, and hide secrets. Doom Eternal makes it a core component of gameplay, both in-combat, and during lengthy, timing-critical jumping sections of level traversal. There is more traversal generally, also; the arena combat of 2016's Doom coupled with interconnecting tidbits of corridor-based gameplay.

It's fair to say that the strength of the arena combat can make those interconnecting tidbits - especially when they drag on as frustratingly as the platforming sections can - feel like you're treading water, waiting impatiently for the next wave. That said, for a game which crams in as many new things as Doom Eternal does over its predecessor, it's astonishing that it doesn't really fail at any of them. At worst, it occasionally over-indulges its lesser successes at the expense of its greater ones.

Doom Eternal is at its core a game of frenetic, adrenaline-pumping, gore-soaked arena combat and I have **never played a game which does that better. Like 2016's Doom, push-forward combat is the name of the game; the key difference here is that one more often "push-forward" in the opposite direction from the Cyberdemon that's just spawned in, not in retreat but rather towards weaker enemies and pickups that replenish your resources before you return to defeat the big bad.

It is incredibly demanding of the player - requiring levels of precision, mindfulness, endurance, and nanosecond-to-nanosecond judgement that very few games could get away with without controllers being hurled at the TV (and it is, by all accounts, somewhat easier with a keyboard and mouse, sadly not an option I had). It does get away with it, though, and the reason is that id Software have been incredibly intelligent with the game's pacing and structure - every encounter functions as a tutorial which prepares you for the next; the entire game functions as a tutorial for the final boss fight, which requires all the skills you've learned up to that point. The first time you face down the Doom Hunter or the Marauder one-on-one - super heavy enemies which require special attention and methods to defeat - you will think "this is impossible". When you eventually prevail it will feel like an accomplishment of herculean proportions. A few hours later, when you find them spawning into combat arenas already filled with countless other threats, you will again think "this is impossible".

But it isn't, and that's the sheer joy of Doom Eternal. People will say this is a game that doesn't hold your hand, but its genius is the extent to which it actually does hold your hand without the player realising it. It constantly puts its players up against seemingly impossible odds and yet - by introducing new elements one layer at a time and punishing you so swiftly and mercilessly for mistakes - it forces you to learn, to become awesome at it, an unstoppable demon-slaying machine against whom "impossible odds" are barely an inconvenience. There are times when it is genuinely transcendent - you hit a blissful flow state, where there is no fear, there is no self, there is only rip and tear. There were at least a couple of occasions where I snapped back to reality with a jolt upon finally completing one of the game's exquisitely hellish slayer gates, realising that I had no memory whatsoever of the battle I'd just fought and somehow won.

Aesthetically, it is absolutely gorgeous. They've doubled-down on 2016's nostalgia, with the addition of many classic Doom enemies and weapons and its returning cast largely remodelled to better resemble their original appearance. The level of detail that has gone into the environment is incredible, particularly given the game's length (and the fact that it is a shooter rather than a walking simulator). There are influences here not just from the original Doom games, but it also draws from classic illustrations from Dante's Inferno and Milton's Paradise Lost (art by Wililam Blake and Gustave Doré respectively) as well as Bruegel's painting The Tower of Babel, to name a few that I spotted. While it is not primarily a story-driven game, the effort id Software have gone to to create a fully realised Doomiverse shines through in every world you explore - and Eternal takes us on a universe-trotting adventure far beyond the familiar landscapes of Hell, Earth, and Mars. The lore of Doom Eternal is much deeper and richer than its predecessor, but it is also mostly optional, told through collectible codex pages which can be read (or ignored) at the player's leisure. There are a few cutscenes where control is briefly taken away from the player, a deviation from 2016's Doom, but never to the degree that I found it annoying (I would have liked to at least pull the trigger on the BFG10K myself, though). It is also utterly and delightfully batshit bananas, leaning fully into its own absurdity and tongue-in-cheek self-seriousness. There's plenty of fan-service here too; not only does Eternal connect itself with the earlier games (albeit, in a way which doesn't make much sense if you dwell on it, but Eternal wisely doesn't) but fans of other 90s shooters may notice subtle allusions to the Heretic and Quake games as well - it's almost as if id Software are teasing a shared universe, avoiding the contrivances that explicitly connecting the dots would require, but providing ample fuel for Reddit fan-theories.

So yeah, it's great. If you liked 2016's Doom you'll love this. It might take a little patience (particularly if you're not a veteran FPS player) and riding of the difficulty slider, and there will be moments of frustration, but the thrill of overcoming those frustrations is well worth the effort. If I'd been a playtester during the final days of development I probably would have suggested they trim back the platforming sections and simplify the upgrade systems a bit, but these are the only real blemishes on an otherwise sublime gaming experience. I can't wait to see where the Doomiverse takes us next.
4.5/5