Recent reviews by ItBurn

Really creepy with good art and sound design. Kind of a fever dream, in a good way.

The game resets your controls to default every time you quit. This isn't a rare issue, it does this 100% This issue has been reported since at least November 2021 and the dev hasn't even acknowledged the issue in the forums. I don't have time to waste finding workarounds or setting every single key every time.

This was a joy to play. It's very difficult, but the gameplay itself is so fun that it just keeps you coming back. It has souls-lite elements, but they're handled in such a way that it's not really frustrating. I also love that there's a progression system and that you can play it how you want to. The level design is interesting and the music is just great. It's a bit short, but at the same time, it's so demanding that it's nice to have a clean conclusion.

It's incredibly visually busy to the point where it's impossible to tell where things that can hurt you are. The enemy bullets themselves are almost impossible to see. The graphics resolution is also extremely low making it even harder to see anything. The movement controls are extremely janky to the point where you feel it's not your fault if you hit things. This was so bad that I just had to alt+f4 and post this review.

Simple and short Metroidvania that has tight controls. It can be frustrating to lose progress after instant-death pits/spikes that you can fall into unfairly, but overall, it's not too difficult. The first two hours of the game are way more difficult than the rest of it for some reason, so don't worry too much if you're having a hard time at first. The story is weirdly told and doesn't really make much sense. It's still a good time for the few hours it takes to complete.

I don't like Doom Eternal. Why is that, considering I devoured Doom 2016? Long story short, my main issue with it is that it plays more like a third person action game like Bloodborne or Devil May Cry than a FPS. It also suffers from over-production. Read on for more.

INTRO

First of all, this is just my opinion and I'm very often in the minority. I think that compared to 2016, graphics and movement are greatly improved, and I love the platforming, but I feel like everything else is worse, but mainly story and combat. I'll try to keep my « review » short and omit a lot of the more minor issues I have.

STORY

2016's story happened in one uncut fashion through the eyes of the protagonist. It was about reacting moment to moment to a demonic invasion with pressure and rage. It reminded me of Half-Life. Eternal did everything different. You often see things outside of the character's eyes and the story is very disjointed. You're flooded by names, races, locations and jargon and it gets difficult to care because it's not personal or pressing in the moment. I didn't care about it, I didn't want to read books and remember lore and be tugged all around the universe at random.

MISSIONS

Eternal's missions are also way too long, contain too many collectibles and it's too vague what and when things are saved. Too often I unknowingly stepped on the trigger that ends the mission, losing the opportunity of getting all the upgrades. This is incredibly stressful and frustrating especially since the missions are so long and grueling and you definitely need the upgrades because of the high difficulty. Also, gone are the more open levels of 2016. Here we can only see linear levels done in a linear way and the extremely repetitive concept of get in arena, kill everything, get to other arena, repeat. Why? While 2016 wasn't exactly a shining beacon for open levels, at least they tried more and it was one of my favorite things about it. It was extremely refreshing for an AAA.

DOOMGUY

The hub does help decompress between missions, but is any of that stuff what Doomguy would do? It doesn't fit the character, his rage and his singular focus. Speaking of Eternal's Doomguy, He doesn't detroy every machine he sees or get mad at a single thing. He actually bows down to someone and shows great patience in many situations. This is completely unlike the 2016 marine that I fell in love with.

COMBAT

Eternal's combat can only be done one way. If you stray, you die. In a FPS, I want to play my way and use the weapons I like. Ammo is too low and enemies require specific weapons. You need to use all the tools to stay alive, even if you don't enjoy it. This is where it feels like a third person action game. You need to combine things with other things, you need to switch targets, you need to keep the ressources flowing and of course, you need to melee a whole lot, or way too much. It plays more like a frenetic puzzle game than the shootouts I play FPSes for...

In FPS games, a weapon does a certain amount of damage and shoots precise bullets and you can always count of them behaving the same way. In eternal, a weak weapon can one-shot a bigger demon depending on the situation and a much stronger gun would do less damage. This is very jarring and makes the action seem artificial instead of believable. When shooting with the shotguns, it's very hard to see where the bullets hit and in general, enemies have huge hitboxes that compensate for the player. You always feel like hidden systems are altering what's happening in combat. It feels like an over-produced plastic toy instead of the brutal simulation I enjoy.

Many bosses and enemies also play more like a quick time event, or a God Of War fight. Wait for the button prompt to appear over their head(wait for the eyes to go green), then you can do an unknown amount of damage. Do that a few times, go through a phase or two, and you can see the rest of the cinematic... We're pretty far from « shoot at it until it dies ».

CONCLUSION

I encountered a lot of smaller frustrations, bugs, glitches and problems, but I won't waste your time with them and I would have looked past them anyway if the rest of my issues weren't there. In closing, keep liking Eternal, but for me, this franchise has stepped too far away from what I like in first person shooters and has started merging into the shapeless mass that are modern AAA games.

Strife has mediocre combat, broken autoaim and boring level design, but the hub system, the quests, the gold and the progression motivate you to continue playing, for a while anyway... It satisfied the quick enemy shooting and looting that I crave for a couple of hours. Get it on sale though.

Time is more precious than money, and there's enough game here to justify spending time on this, but really don't expect much more than a somewhat interesting story.

It's tough to give a bad review for a free game, but this is essentially just a tech demo for a screen filter. Just look at a video of it for 5 seconds and go do something else instead.

The tutorial of the game broke. I did absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. It took me hours of hair pulling to figure out that it wasn't my fault. I was stuck and couldn't progress further in the game. What a collosal waste of my time. What have the devs been doing all this time? The game simply doesn't work, encourage devs who treat you with respect instead of these guys.