On Doom Eternal


Doom Eternal is really good. You should play it you like shooters.

It’s not without its flaws though. They tried to alter the main gameplay loop in this one. In Doom 2016 players, myself included, often stuck to the same gun (usually the super shotgun) and in Eternal they clearly want you to switch weapons more often. There’s 2 ways they do this. First is that enemies have weaknesses, e.g the Cacodemon staggers instantly if you shoot a grenade from the shotgun into its mouth. This is great. It incentivizes changing weapons and rewards you for doing so.

The second is that your max ammo is pitifully low, and so are the ammo pickups in the world. Your chainsaw, which rewards ammo when used to kill an enemy, has now 1 rechargeable fuel charge, so you’re supposed to use it more often as part of your strategies, as opposed to 2016 where its more of an ’emergency’ weapon.

This is not so great. 1 fuel charge can only kill the smallest of enemies, so when you run out of ammo you’re often scrambling around the level looking for an appropriate enemy to chainsaw. This doesn’t feel great cos’ its a disincentive. It feels like the game has an arbitrary ammo restriction, and you’re being unfairly punished for not learning to deal with it.

IF you switch weapons more often though, you won’t have to chainsaw as often, which alleviates it somewhat. The earlier you figure this out, the faster the game gets back to being fun. It does take a bit of getting used to, but once you do, the familiar flow that 2016 had returns.
There are other minor flaws here and there, but this is the main one that annoyed me. Again, it’s just a matter of getting used to it. Still a good game though.