Doom vs doom eternal6/6/2023 It aims to up the ante from the very beginning. It says a lot about Eternal’s combat that the first weapon you pick up is a shotgun rather than a pistol, one that is almost immediately upgraded with a gatling-style automatic fire. I can’t imagine what a nightmare balancing these moving parts must have been, but to id’s credit they largely succeed. These are essentially minibosses that include the robotic Doom Hunter, and the return of the Arch Vile, a magical mega-bastard who not only is tough to kill, but respawns and buffs all other enemies until it is killed. Eternal also offers a whole other class of “Super Heavy Demon”. Accompanying the familiar Imps and Hellknights (which have all received a visual makeover) are Imp-like Prowlers who can teleport around the level, Arachnotrons, and the “Dread Knight”, a cybernetic version of the Hellknight that has swords for arms. You’ll need to familiarise yourself with all these abilities, as the enemy roster has almost doubled from Doom, and Eternal isn’t afraid to throw them at you like some demonic tennis-ball machine. Meanwhile, as well as dropping health, glory kills also fill up the “Blood Punch” meter, letting you unleash a thunderous melee attack causing a shockwave that damages enemies in a 180-degree arc. For example, Revenants and the Spiderlike Arachnotrons can have their primary weapons disabled with carefully placed shots or explosives, while lobbing a grenade into a Cacodemon’s mouth will cause it to swallow it (accompanied by a wonderful “gulp” noise), making the demon instantly vulnerable to a glory kill. Every enemy now has explicated weaknesses to certain weapons or abilities. The two most significant additions to combat, however, are enemy weaknesses and the Blood Punch. More mechanically significant is the delightfully-named Flame Belch (coincidentally my term for acid reflux) which causes enemies to drop armour when set alight. Alongside your chainsaw, the Doom-Slayer is now equipped with an arm-blade that makes glory kills extra grisly, alongside a shoulder-mounted grenade launcher that can fire standard explosives or ice-grenades that freeze enemies in place. Id has essentially taken this foundation and decked it out with new weapons, abilities and enemies. You’ll enter an area full of demons, blast them to bits with your weapons, use glory-kills to top up your health, and your chainsaw to refill your ammo. Combat has the same fundamentals as the 2016 reboot. For now, let’s focus on what you really want to know about. It’s a directive decision by id that I don’t understand.įlow, incidentally, is an issue Eternal struggles with in several ways, as we’ll come back to later. They completely break the flow of the game without adding anything beyond an occasional reminder of what DoomGuy’s suit looks like. I’m not a big fan of cutscenes at the best of times, but their presence in a Doom game verges on sacrilegious. Whereas 2016’s Doom kept you squarely in first-person at all times, Eternal frequently breaks the main perspective with interluding cutscenes. I don’t mind the broad strokes of the story, although it is white-hot nonsense that treads similarly scorched ground to the plot of Darksiders. And whereas Doom kept most of its worldbuilding buried in the codex, much more of that lore is exposed to the air `this time around. ![]() I will say that, if you felt that 2016’s Doom leant a bit too heavily on the narrative, then you should be aware Doom Eternal has considerably more story. That point – anything – is significant, although I won’t specify why. And of course, being the Slayer, you won’t allow anything to get in your way. To stop them, you, the Slayer, must track down and kill three “Hell Priests” responsible for summoning the demonic hordes. The demonic forces of Hell have escaped Mars and ripped Earth a new one. Whereas 2016’s Doom broadly followed the “story” of 1993’s Doom, Doom Eternal uses Doom II as a jumping-off point for its own, distinct tale. Sometimes it many, many combat mechanics became too much for my brain to handle, while other features are of questionable merit when included in a Doom game. Doom Eternal adds a lot of new ideas to the formula, to the point where it begins to feel overstuffed, like a mancubus who’s one super-shotgun blast away from bursting. Id’s 2016 reboot walked a fine balance between classic FPS play and more modern design ideals. When Doom Eternal is in full flow, it might just be the most thrilling FPS I’ve ever played.īut that final point – messier – is not entirely meant as a compliment. Id’s sequel to its fearsomely-good reboot of the classic shooter is more expansive, more challenging, more action-packed, more violent, and generally just more.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |