Recent reviews by ihavenoideawhatsgoinonrightnow

lightfall is absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ garbage. You really have to question if bungie knows what they are doing at this point, good lord.

Doom eternal is, in my view, the greatest single player FPS experience of all time, and I suspect that will hold for a while. The ancient gods part 1....is pretty mediocre, but The Ancient Gods part 2...HOT DAMN. This is excellent. This is the content I am looking for. Everywhere that pt 1 failed, the lack of new weapons, the uninspired (and recycled) level design, drastic swings in difficulty even for seasoned vets, and a focus on tedious artificially hard combat (via a lack of traversal options, insane amounts of environmental hazards, or just getting body blocked in a tiny corridor by enemies spawning all around you) are all pretty much repaired in pt 2. This has a new weapon, a new traversal option, better and more varied level design (including actual new locales, not just recycled uac and urdak tiles), and a good amount of new enemies that arent literal floating orbs that shoot floating orbs at you (there are still a few of them, but its not the only new addition).

Yes, some of the enemies models are kinda recycled still, the new baron is based on the old baron, the new imp is based on the old imp, shield soldier to shield soldier etc etc....but they play differently. They require new techniques, and to me, they don't feel recycled, but they add a nice fresh layer to the combat. The new armored baron of hell in particular is a great addition. It scratches the same type of itch the marauder does, but the approach is different and it is maybe my favorite enemy in the franchise.

There are still some areas that feel kinda artificially hard, like fighting two marauders that are both damn near permanently buffed on a small platform with a baron of hell waiting to ♥♥♥♥ you up and thatl felt pretty cheap, but still enjoyable and not near the level of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ you had to endure in pt1. The boss level design is still a bit like pt 1, which is to say, just a circle (to be fair, the final boss in part 1 fought you in a cube...so...thats kinda different...i guess), but the boss fight is waaay more engaging and felt like a true proper sendoff to the series. In pt 1, you dont even really fight the boss, he watches while you fight some boosted adds, in pt2 its a gladiator match to the death...with adds, but thats doom. Its pretty bonkers.

Having said that, if you dont like the marauders, you are gonna ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hate this game. There are now 3 different enemies *and* a boss that require you to time your attack in an counter window. If you struggled with that, then:

1: literally just git gud, its not that hard, they ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pause, make a sound, flash green, and only attack when they are in your prime murdering distance
or
2: dont play this, its not for you.

If you enjoy the marauders, this add on is just the ticket.

i give it a solid 9/10.

its the best single player fps of all time, you owe it to yourself to play this and feel whats its like to jam a hot metal rod laced in cocaine up your urethra.

Man I just don't know what they were thinking here. The base game gradually adds layers of complexity as the game moves on, and in the process offers new and exciting options to deal with that level of complexity. Each time they give you something new, be it a weapon mod, a new weapon, the crucible, whatever, they ramp up the difficult with a new enemy. Each enemy has different weak points to exploit, and a specific weapon that helps to do so. You pick between jump pads and swing bars and portals, all while juggling an insane amount of weapons and equipment.


The ancient gods just throws that all away. It adds nothing new of value (save maybe the blood maykr, but even that felt like it needed more playtesting to get it right) and instead strips away options. Traversal options become more and more limited as the game progresses.

You will fight a tyrant in a straight line hallway, cause reason.
you will encounter jump pads that send you head first into the ceiling instead of through any sort of opening
you will get caught on random bits of geometry
you will get bodyblocked by enormous enemies spawning randomly behind you in tiny corridors
You will fight a buffed maruader in a tiny tiny room
you will fight a bullet sponge of a boss in a literal circle with zero traversal options whatsoever, while a pinky and a hellknight just straight line chase you for twenty minutes while you wait your turn to shoot at a cube.
you will be forced to fight in a white box with a grid of lasers and more dead ends than options, with only a scant 2 portals to adjust elevation
you will be *forced* to use the beam mod for the plasma rifle as the only way to kill an immensely powerful enemy
you will be required to fight inside the radius of a ghost dog for some reason and wait for enemies to come to you.

it is in essence, the opposite of the base game. By the time the final battle rolls around, you will be down to a game with almost zero traversal options, in a giant empty whitw box, with enemies with no weakpoints that have double damage, double speed, double health, and are immune to stagger, chainsaws, ice bombs, blood punches....you just wittle away at them gradually before having to stand essentially still for several seconds while you hold the plasma rifle on them. It was anti-climactic, it was artificially difficult, and it was extremely unfun.

I have run through 2016 and eternal multiple times each on nightmare, they represent some of the finest single player FPS content ever made. The Ancient Gods pt 1 has glimpses of that brilliance, the good encounters (the ones that arent marred by terrible level design) are still among the best experiences you can have in a doom game, but the bad ones (and its about 50/50 if im being honest) are so abysmal that I have to assume that the main dev team rolled off to a new project and phoned this in.

If you have ever played the muspelheim trials in god of war, where they throw random ♥♥♥♥ at you like...you are blind if enemies are close, or the towers of time in MK11 (which are similarly abysmal) then you more or less have a sense of what the ancient gods part 1 is like. Bad ideas thrown into a brilliant game to pad out the playtime.

At the end of the day, this feels less like a game and more like a challenge mode slapped onto a game, and in the end it feels like ID never intended for any of us to beat doom eternal, and when we did they took it very personally and decided to make something you wouldn't finish because either its too hard (and for damn near everyone, this will be) or just plain unfun. What a colossal disappointment.

Now as someone who plays these things on nightmare to begin with, I'm clearly a bit of a sadomasochist, and I will be playing the ancient gods part two. But i bet I'm not gonna like it.

3,300 hours on record. ♥♥♥♥ this.