This game feels like a very poorly thought out mess

[DarkCobalt]

I loved the original, and of course this one seemed to be getting glowing reviews, so I decided to give it a shot. So far, it's a huge mess.

Firstly, the level design. Why did there need to be platforming? The levels feel very pointless since the platforming is largely linear, and the "secrets" have thus far been "turn left and you'll find a secret!" or "Jump-dash and you'll find a secret!" The old one felt like legitimate secrets, weird scaffolding you could climb up to and suddenly run across the level to a corner you didn't know existed, etc. On top of all of this, in general the levels are very arcade-y, which isn't usually bad for this type of game but it seems overly nonsensical. The previous one's keycard system felt natural, you need keycards for the humans to get around. Here, there's big floating green buttons that I need to shoot, why are they there? Where did they come from? What's with the monkeybars everywhere? How come I can't climb other rocky surfaces, but have to rely on this strange foam-like material? None of it feels natural or well-placed. All of a sudden I'm playing 3D Mario.

Secondly, the combat. It's generally fine, except there's too much fluff. It doesn't help that all of the enemy encounters have a rock-paper-scissors nature. Constantly switching grenade types, firing modes, weapons, etc. It's a huge spamfest and is incredibly messy, not at all like the clean Quake-like combat of the first game. And I never thought I'd say this, but I dislike the chainsaw mechanic in this one. The ammo pool is so small it becomes a persistent necessity to use the chainsaw. One moment you're spamming weapon swaps, the next you realize you're out of ammo and suddenly need to grind the nearest trash mob to a pulp just for a handful of shots. Rinse and repeat every 20 seconds. I don't know, personally it's just not clicking, there's no zen-like flow to the whole ordeal like the first one had.

Lastly, the load of extra crap. I'm just not a fan of all of these new features. Armor perks that seem to be so niche to the point of not existing? Perks? Weapon points? Ship upgrades? A BATTLE PASS??? What is this, Destiny 2? There's so much that didn't need to be here. I have no idea if any of these armor effects or weapon upgrades will feel impactful, again it's all fluff to me at this point.

I'm getting the sinking feeling they tried to do too much to "innovate". They seem to just be borrowing ideas from other games, and slamming them one-by-one into DOOM without much thought or care. I'll keep playing it, since there is some amount of fun to be had, but man it's just doesn't have the same raw energy as the first one did.

[RyuShenReborn]

This is why you are not a game developer dude...

[RageOfPerun]

I definitely agree that immersion is out the window. in Doom 2016 the environment and story where belivable.. here its like being trapped inside a comic book where anything can happen at any time with no rhyme or reason.

For example you have floating (jet) rigs that cant hold the weight of the Slayer for more than 5 secons, you have flaming spinning chains, you have wall-cannons that just shoot straight across the room for no particular reason other than to make you time them..

I am not yet done with the game so cant give a final score but so far.. it feels weird for what it is supposed to be

[alka]

Some people prefer Doom 2016 to Doom Eternal, and that's fine. I'd reckon they are in the minority though (and that's fine too).

[DefectiveByDesign]

If any part of Eternal is a mess, it is the weapon switching.

• You can't rebind the weapon number keys to match the mousewheel.
  
• Quick shooting the rifle and weapon switching is clunky.
  
• Weakpoints and abilities are a design conflict with weapon switching.
  
• Default keys are not optimal for weapon switching.
  
• Rebinding keys are not optimal for weapon switching, because you need access to grenades(2keys)/flamebelch/chainsaw/bloodpunch, and blocks rebinds.

You basically need spare mouse buttons for weapon switching, and it ends up being even better to just make them mouse scripts.

[Monkey Man]

So about the platforming and secrets, the game got you to move around and explore from what you said alone they were successful, how could they have done better with secrets im quite interested in that.

Combat i wouldn't name it a rock paper scissor you can kill anything with anything, the spirit in the ancient gods part one is the only demon that will die to one weapon the rest you can rocket, chaingun, plasma, shotgun to your heart's desire, by first game you may mean 2016 and the weapon combos and switching tools was meant to be a part of the game but you had a ton of ammo that you don't think or try it out, the game was advertised not to be like 2016 many devs didn't like how you can just get the ssg and then boom every demon might as well get on their knees, it didn't feel like you was fighting the 'unstoppable horde of demons' but more so stepping on enemies that couldn't hold you down for a second, to me if i'm gonna fight the demons of hell you'd expect them to actually do their job, i loved 2016 don't get me wrong but it had no challenge to me and it became repetitive with certain guns because the rest didn't give me the same result.

If you are talking about the original dooms you still had certain weapons for certain demons.
barons = rocket or super shotty
archville = rocket or super shotty
fodder (soldiers and imps) = shotgun/plasma
Cyberdemon = rocket/bfg
revenant = chaingun
mancubus = chaingun/ rocket

While they have a lot of common weapons to kill the others so does eternal.
hell/dread knight = chaingun/rocket
baron = chaingun/rocket/super shotgun if you can move around them
fodder = anything works
caco = ballista/shotgun

I've only listed a few but they are only examples of the best way to kill these guys you can still use what you want, even weak points are optional things, it helps to remove them but you can fight them without taking them away.

Weapon points, runes and health/ammo/armour upgrades are from 2016, ship upgrades is more so just ways to get these things inside your base between missions.

There isn't a battle pass but i guess you mean events, at least it's free.

In my opinion they took more from their own games than they did anything else.

[DarkCobalt]

Originally posted by Malekith:

So about the platforming and secrets, the game got you to move around and explore from what you said alone they were successful, how could they have done better with secrets im quite interested in that.

My point was the platforming is entirely trivial. You don't have to think whatsoever, you just look around for 30 seconds and you spam spacebar and shift. Death means nothing, you lose 20 HP for falling, that's about it. The "secrets" are right in front of you most of the time. It didn't make me move at all, at one point I saw the glowing secret icon, and walked forward, fell to a small ledge, and got a "secret". To get back to where I originally was, I double-jumped back. It's trivial at best.

Originally posted by Malekith:

Combat i wouldn't name it a rock paper scissor you can kill anything with anything, the spirit in the ancient gods part one is the only demon that will die to one weapon the rest you can rocket, chaingun, plasma, shotgun to your heart's desire, by first game you may mean 2016 and the weapon combos and switching tools was meant to be a part of the game but you had a ton of ammo that you don't think or try it out, the game was advertised not to be like 2016 many devs didn't like how you can just get the ssg and then boom every demon might as well get on their knees, it didn't feel like you was fighting the 'unstoppable horde of demons' but more so stepping on enemies that couldn't hold you down for a second, to me if i'm gonna fight the demons of hell you'd expect them to actually do their job, i loved 2016 don't get me wrong but it had no challenge to me and it became repetitive with certain guns because the rest didn't give me the same result.

If you are talking about the original dooms you still had certain weapons for certain demons.
barons = rocket or super shotty
archville = rocket or super shotty
fodder (soldiers and imps) = shotgun/plasma
Cyberdemon = rocket/bfg
revenant = chaingun
mancubus = chaingun/ rocket

While they have a lot of common weapons to kill the others so does eternal.
hell/dread knight = chaingun/rocket
baron = chaingun/rocket/super shotgun if you can move around them
fodder = anything works
caco = ballista/shotgun

I've only listed a few but they are only examples of the best way to kill these guys you can still use what you want, even weak points are optional things, it helps to remove them but you can fight them without taking them away.

Weapon points, runes and health/ammo/armour upgrades are from 2016, ship upgrades is more so just ways to get these things inside your base between missions.

There isn't a battle pass but i guess you mean events, at least it's free.

In my opinion they took more from their own games than they did anything else.

Yeah that's true, the ammo economy in the first game was more lenient so switching weapons wasn't that big of a necessity. Here, it's practically a necessity, and it feels incredibly clunky as well. The weapon wheel breaks the flow of combat, yet we cannot remap the input keys. Trying to hit 6,7,8 on keyboard in the middle of combat ends up being a chore, so I usually just use the mousewheel which is slower and tends to get me in a bind. But again, double-dash bails me out. It feels messy and incoherent, needing to essentially flip through the inventory every 3 seconds to find the right gun. In that sense at least they've figured out how to balance the super shotty, just never give you enough ammo for it so you rarely use this iconic gun outside of dealing with a few tougher enemies, again rock-paper-scissors.

[Monkey Man]

Originally posted by DarkCobalt:

Originally posted by Malekith:

So about the platforming and secrets, the game got you to move around and explore from what you said alone they were successful, how could they have done better with secrets im quite interested in that.

My point was the platforming is entirely trivial. You don't have to think whatsoever, you just look around for 30 seconds and you spam spacebar and shift. Death means nothing, you lose 20 HP for falling, that's about it. The "secrets" are right in front of you most of the time. It didn't make me move at all, at one point I saw the glowing secret icon, and walked forward, fell to a small ledge, and got a "secret". To get back to where I originally was, I double-jumped back. It's trivial at best.

Originally posted by Malekith:

Combat i wouldn't name it a rock paper scissor you can kill anything with anything, the spirit in the ancient gods part one is the only demon that will die to one weapon the rest you can rocket, chaingun, plasma, shotgun to your heart's desire, by first game you may mean 2016 and the weapon combos and switching tools was meant to be a part of the game but you had a ton of ammo that you don't think or try it out, the game was advertised not to be like 2016 many devs didn't like how you can just get the ssg and then boom every demon might as well get on their knees, it didn't feel like you was fighting the 'unstoppable horde of demons' but more so stepping on enemies that couldn't hold you down for a second, to me if i'm gonna fight the demons of hell you'd expect them to actually do their job, i loved 2016 don't get me wrong but it had no challenge to me and it became repetitive with certain guns because the rest didn't give me the same result.

If you are talking about the original dooms you still had certain weapons for certain demons.
barons = rocket or super shotty
archville = rocket or super shotty
fodder (soldiers and imps) = shotgun/plasma
Cyberdemon = rocket/bfg
revenant = chaingun
mancubus = chaingun/ rocket

While they have a lot of common weapons to kill the others so does eternal.
hell/dread knight = chaingun/rocket
baron = chaingun/rocket/super shotgun if you can move around them
fodder = anything works
caco = ballista/shotgun

I've only listed a few but they are only examples of the best way to kill these guys you can still use what you want, even weak points are optional things, it helps to remove them but you can fight them without taking them away.

Weapon points, runes and health/ammo/armour upgrades are from 2016, ship upgrades is more so just ways to get these things inside your base between missions.

There isn't a battle pass but i guess you mean events, at least it's free.

In my opinion they took more from their own games than they did anything else.

Yeah that's true, the ammo economy in the first game was more lenient so switching weapons wasn't that big of a necessity. Here, it's practically a necessity, and it feels incredibly clunky as well. The weapon wheel breaks the flow of combat, yet we cannot remap the input keys. Trying to hit 6,7,8 on keyboard in the middle of combat ends up being a chore, so I usually just use the mousewheel which is slower and tends to get me in a bind. But again, double-dash bails me out. It feels messy and incoherent, needing to essentially flip through the inventory every 3 seconds to find the right gun. In that sense at least they've figured out how to balance the super shotty, just never give you enough ammo for it so you rarely use this iconic gun outside of dealing with a few tougher enemies, again rock-paper-scissors.

Yeah i can understand what you mean and you can remap weapon keys, i changed both 6 and 7 can't remember where tho, the super shotty i just leave for the heavy's or super heavys if you get the mastery for the full auto you get ammo back for killing with it so that may help you.

[Gixanix]

Originally posted by DarkCobalt:

I loved the original, and of course this one seemed to be getting glowing reviews, so I decided to give it a shot. So far, it's a huge mess.

Firstly, the level design. Why did there need to be platforming? The levels feel very pointless since the platforming is largely linear, and the "secrets" have thus far been "turn left and you'll find a secret!" or "Jump-dash and you'll find a secret!" The old one felt like legitimate secrets, weird scaffolding you could climb up to and suddenly run across the level to a corner you didn't know existed, etc. On top of all of this, in general the levels are very arcade-y, which isn't usually bad for this type of game but it seems overly nonsensical. The previous one's keycard system felt natural, you need keycards for the humans to get around. Here, there's big floating green buttons that I need to shoot, why are they there? Where did they come from? What's with the monkeybars everywhere? How come I can't climb other rocky surfaces, but have to rely on this strange foam-like material? None of it feels natural or well-placed. All of a sudden I'm playing 3D Mario.

Secondly, the combat. It's generally fine, except there's too much fluff. It doesn't help that all of the enemy encounters have a rock-paper-scissors nature. Constantly switching grenade types, firing modes, weapons, etc. It's a huge spamfest and is incredibly messy, not at all like the clean Quake-like combat of the first game. And I never thought I'd say this, but I dislike the chainsaw mechanic in this one. The ammo pool is so small it becomes a persistent necessity to use the chainsaw. One moment you're spamming weapon swaps, the next you realize you're out of ammo and suddenly need to grind the nearest trash mob to a pulp just for a handful of shots. Rinse and repeat every 20 seconds. I don't know, personally it's just not clicking, there's no zen-like flow to the whole ordeal like the first one had.

Lastly, the load of extra crap. I'm just not a fan of all of these new features. Armor perks that seem to be so niche to the point of not existing? Perks? Weapon points? Ship upgrades? A BATTLE PASS??? What is this, Destiny 2? There's so much that didn't need to be here. I have no idea if any of these armor effects or weapon upgrades will feel impactful, again it's all fluff to me at this point.

I'm getting the sinking feeling they tried to do too much to "innovate". They seem to just be borrowing ideas from other games, and slamming them one-by-one into DOOM without much thought or care. I'll keep playing it, since there is some amount of fun to be had, but man it's just doesn't have the same raw energy as the first one did.

Wow, so I put in over 100 hours+ to this game and apparently it's bad now? you know what I'm going to refund it because of your opinion you're absolutely correct :)

[El Fuerte]

I honestly can't see how this is any worse than Bioshock Infinite, sir.

[alka]

Originally posted by DarkCobalt:

My point was the platforming is entirely trivial. You don't have to think whatsoever, you just look around for 30 seconds and you spam spacebar and shift. Death means nothing, you lose 20 HP for falling, that's about it.

The platforming is meant to be trivial, it's just a way of connecting one arena to the next. In D2016 you just walked down a space station corridor or walked through some hell caves, the platforming in DE is just a different way of doing that. Some people like it, some don't.

[DefectiveByDesign]

Originally posted by Krustaceo (𝐑𝐞𝐝♛𝟒𝟓𝟕):

I honestly can't see how this is any worse than Bioshock Infinite, sir.

Yeah, that game was garbage. It only got high reviews for being the first game to have SJW brainwashing before people caught on and started complaining about it.

My top enjoyable moment was the suspicious NPC who says "I'm a progressive", and you can just shoot him. I can't find the original machinegun video, so I think it was taken down like the Red Dead 2 video where the player feeds the feminist to an alligator. There's still copies of that though.

[EndGameOmega]

Originally posted by DarkCobalt:

I loved the original, and of course this one seemed to be getting glowing reviews, so I decided to give it a shot. So far, it's a huge mess.

...

I'm getting the sinking feeling they tried to do too much to "innovate". They seem to just be borrowing ideas from other games, and slamming them one-by-one into DOOM without much thought or care. I'll keep playing it, since there is some amount of fun to be had, but man it's just doesn't have the same raw energy as the first one did.

For what it's worth, I agree with you. This game, just isn't good. There's just too much and it doesn't feel put together well. This isn't doom. There's too much complexity here and the story is... bad. Like one thing that made doom scary and interesting, was how little there was lore wise. Like just enough there to make you wonder and think about it, but not enough to really explain anything.

Why are the demons attacking and killing people? By answering that question,
Bethesda removed a lot of the cosmic horror elements to the game's story, and made it... boring.

Combat is bull too. Like come-on, you can't even punch out the weakest demons in this. I kind of want a refund :/

[Grampire]

The "original" being 2016? Sure, if you expected this to be more of that then disappointment is almost guaranteed.

I will say that my initial impression of Doom Eternal was also negative. I hated weakpoints, I disliked how some of the weapons felt (the Heavy Cannon) and the first few levels didn't really do it for me. The game really changed considerably after about 10 hours, and now I can't stop playing.

Eternal puts its worst foot forward, and after you get all the upgrades and fill out your arsenal it becomes a different game. At least it did for me. The skill ceiling is way higher than just clearing your target difficulty and calling it good; I feel like the best comparison is a coin op arcade game. Sure, you can jam quarters in non-stop and finish the game, and you might enjoy that. But some people are going to see how few they can do, how much they can refine their play. Eternal caters to that mindset.

It's not for everyone. It requires constant learning; the developers intentionally designed the game to frustrate and push the player. Despite your impression, I assure you that nothing is fluff; if you felt like anything was unnecessary then it's possible you were playing at too low a difficulty level.

Anyways, it seems like you made up your mind, and I can respect that. The game isn't for everyone.

[WEATHY]

Why do you even exist ?

[Sh. Fred]

Originally posted by DefectiveByDesign:

Originally posted by Krustaceo (𝐑𝐞𝐝♛𝟒𝟓𝟕):

I honestly can't see how this is any worse than Bioshock Infinite, sir.

Yeah, that game was garbage. It only got high reviews for being the first game to have SJW brainwashing before people caught on and started complaining about it.

My top enjoyable moment was the suspicious NPC who says "I'm a progressive", and you can just shoot him. I can't find the original machinegun video, so I think it was taken down like the Red Dead 2 video where the player feeds the feminist to an alligator. There's still copies of that though.

Wait, is Bioshock Infinite bad?
I've had that game in my backlog for years now, but never had the chance to play it.
Bioshock 1 is still one of my all-time favorite games tho.