Doom Eternal - Good Game, Bad Doom?

[DM Science]

I'm an old school gamer. Was around to play original Doom (and Wolfenstein before that). I generally try to be positive and try to separate my personal feelings about games, movies, music, etc from the work in and of itself.

I tried Doom Eternal for the second time recently. Doom 2016 was the most fun I had in a long time on a computer game with high intensity. I like most types of games. I started on Atari and Pong, so can appreciate the bounty of modern gaming. I usually enjoy depth and story, but occasionally, I want a game that I can jump and tear stuff up at 100 mph without thinking too much. It's like music. Sometimes I want Pink Floyd, with its complex arrangements and layered lyrics giving me pause to reflect on the human condition. Other times, I want Ministry- can't understand most of the lyrics, but it makes me feel like moving fast and breaking stuff.

Now imagine you were feeling aggressive. Had a long week and you don't want to think about anything, just let off some steam. You pick up a newly released Ministry album, only to find they have branched off from industrial speed metal to a slower, more clean sound. The vocals are clearer and they are taking distortion out of the guitar.
It may be brilliant and beautiful- a work of musical art. But you're still angry. Why? You bought a Ministry album, you expect Ministry. If they wanted to experiment under a different name, you would be fine. But don't say it's Ministry, if it's mellow.

This is the problem with Doom Eternal, and why I have multiple completions of Doom 2016 and have given up on Doom Eternal twice now when I realized I wasn't having fun.

Doom Eternal is a polished, well-thought-out, creative, and visually gorgeous video game. So why the complaint? It doesn't feel like DOOM. It's complicated. The problem is that I think developers sometimes confuse complexity with creativity. You see, the enemies require more planning and precision to kill. You need to use the right weapons and hit the right weak points. The weapon mods and runes and points and whatever else they throw in, requires planning and customization, secrets abound that you are encouraged to look for, and finally there is the challenging platforming aspect- always fun in a FPS. (They only managed to get climbing ladders in FPS a less monitor-smashing exercise a few years ago). While they emphasize "keep moving" to keep the action looking frenetic, the reality is that my mind is constantly engaged in trying to keep track if I need health, so I need to hit E and glory kill, or do I need ammo, so I hit c to chainsaw, or armor so I got to hit r for my flamer, then kill the enemy, but which weapon do I have, which mod is set on it, what enemies are here, what are their weaknesses, does it match my weapon mod, and where do I need to go on this map, can't stop to look what's over the edge because KEEP MOVING, and so on... My mind is definitely engaged- Which is what is WRONG!

As I described above, when I sit down and decide to play Doom, it is because I am in a certain "mood"- a DOOMMOOD if you will. The DOOMMOOD hits when I'm stressed, been doing lots of problem solving, bummed out, etc... I play Doom because I want to kill stuff fast. So when I sat down to play Doom Eternal, that's what I wanted to do. I was just on stage 2, Exultia when I realized I had not really fought that much. But I had spent hours trying to execute dashes and jumps to hard to reach secrets and dying in that stupid ********* lava. It wasn't scratching my Doom itch. And because I was already in a DOOMMOOD, this changed to anger and made me begin to resent and hate the game.

As I reflect now, I think if I had bought a game called The Sentinels, that was described as a challenging platformer, with a story spanning divine and infernal realms, a mysterious hub where you can refine your tools and techniques, and enemies that you dominate by precision application of force combined with knowledge of their weakness, and then played this, I would give it an A+. I would have been in a Portal type mood, or maybe an Ori type mood. But it was called Doom. So I was disappointed. And while I may try to reframe the game in my brain as "The Sentinels" and play it again in another mood, my conclusion will stand that this is a really good Game, but a really disappointing DOOM.

[Grampire]

^To clarify, mastering the game = learning and understanding the game on a level that let's you play successfully.

You just understand the mechanics in Eternal with some depth and know how to apply them is enough for me to consider someone to have mastered it.

You don't have to be amazing or abnormally skilled to do that - anyone can. You don't need to play the game on Nightmare.

[furbleburble]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Grampire:

^To clarify, mastering the game = learning and understanding the game on a level that let's you play successfully.

You just understand the mechanics in Eternal with some depth and know how to apply them is enough for me to consider someone to have mastered it.

You don't have to be amazing or abnormally skilled to do that - anyone can. You don't need to play the game on Nightmare.

Ok. I get it now.

[SuperFly]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Grampire:

^To clarify, mastering the game = learning and understanding the game on a level that let's you play successfully.

You just understand the mechanics in Eternal with some depth and know how to apply them is enough for me to consider someone to have mastered it.

You don't have to be amazing or abnormally skilled to do that - anyone can. You don't need to play the game on Nightmare.

Thanks, Gatekeeper! Glad to know where the standards are set for D:E, officially
-- and who meets what bar for skill levels, according to your sacrosanct delineations.

[Grampire]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย SuperFly:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Grampire:

^To clarify, mastering the game = learning and understanding the game on a level that let's you play successfully.

You just understand the mechanics in Eternal with some depth and know how to apply them is enough for me to consider someone to have mastered it.

You don't have to be amazing or abnormally skilled to do that - anyone can. You don't need to play the game on Nightmare.

Thanks, Gatekeeper! Glad to know where the standards are set for D:E, officially
-- and who meets what bar for skill levels, according to your sacrosanct delineations.

You're coming off like a mopey zoo lion now man. But hey - if you have a better, more inclusive definition kd what "mastery" is I'm all ears.

Seriously, why are you such a buzzkill?

[Ace]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย SuperFly:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Grampire:

^To clarify, mastering the game = learning and understanding the game on a level that let's you play successfully.

You just understand the mechanics in Eternal with some depth and know how to apply them is enough for me to consider someone to have mastered it.

You don't have to be amazing or abnormally skilled to do that - anyone can. You don't need to play the game on Nightmare.

Thanks, Gatekeeper! Glad to know where the standards are set for D:E, officially
-- and who meets what bar for skill levels, according to your sacrosanct delineations.

How is this gatekeeping, it's perfectly reasonable & good advice for anyone starting out in D:E.

Stop being so bitter because you're not a good player.

[furbleburble]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Grampire:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย SuperFly:

Thanks, Gatekeeper! Glad to know where the standards are set for D:E, officially
-- and who meets what bar for skill levels, according to your sacrosanct delineations.

You're coming off like a mopey zoo lion now man.

Seriously, why are you such a buzzkill?

He thinks he has some sort of mastery of the game because he's played UV without runes... or something? I don't know. Apparently it's a badge of honor or something, and the rest of us haven't earned it and so we're just gatekeeping because we're jealous. Or something.

[Ace]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย furbleburble:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Grampire:

You're coming off like a mopey zoo lion now man.

Seriously, why are you such a buzzkill?

He thinks he has some sort of mastery of the game because he's played UV without runes... or something? I don't know. Apparently it's a badge of honor or something, and the rest of us haven't earned it and so we're just gatekeeping because we're jealous. Or something.

I guess trying to force the game to be like the classics instead of just learning & understanding it's mechanics is the new meta now?

[Grampire]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย furbleburble:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Grampire:

You're coming off like a mopey zoo lion now man.

Seriously, why are you such a buzzkill?

He thinks he has some sort of mastery of the game because he's played UV without runes... or something? I don't know. Apparently it's a badge of honor or something, and the rest of us haven't earned it and so we're just gatekeeping because we're jealous. Or something.

I would be absolutely willing to acknowledge that he has mastery/understanding of the game if he weren't so busy contradicting himself.

[SuperFly]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Grampire:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย furbleburble:

He thinks he has some sort of mastery of the game because he's played UV without runes... or something? I don't know. Apparently it's a badge of honor or something, and the rest of us haven't earned it and so we're just gatekeeping because we're jealous. Or something.

I would be absolutely willing to acknowledge that he has mastery/understanding of the game if he weren't so busy contradicting himself.

That just says you know I know my ♥♥♥♥, but it would be a bad talking point to acknowledge it.

[furbleburble]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Grampire:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย furbleburble:

He thinks he has some sort of mastery of the game because he's played UV without runes... or something? I don't know. Apparently it's a badge of honor or something, and the rest of us haven't earned it and so we're just gatekeeping because we're jealous. Or something.

I would be absolutely willing to acknowledge that he has mastery/understanding of the game if he weren't so busy contradicting himself.

That seems fair to me.

[furbleburble]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย SuperFly:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Grampire:

I would be absolutely willing to acknowledge that he has mastery/understanding of the game if he weren't so busy contradicting himself.

That just says you know I know my ♥♥♥♥, but it would be a bad talking point to acknowledge it.

You may know your ♥♥♥♥, but your ♥♥♥♥ ain't the game. Please stay on topic.

[Ace]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย furbleburble:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย SuperFly:

That just says you know I know my ♥♥♥♥, but it would be a bad talking point to acknowledge it.

You may know your ♥♥♥♥, but your ♥♥♥♥ ain't the game. Please stay on topic.

Exactly this.

[Joker]

we already established that there's no rhythm aspect in relation to any music or beat or timing in the game

[Joker]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Ace:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Jordan Peterson:

no one from the original team has or is working on the new title.

where did reb get that from??

[Sar]

From his connections in the industry, I’m sure.