Way back in 1993, the original DOOM thrilled kids and terrified parents with its brutally gory violence and demonic imagery—though how a game about killing demons was supposedly Satanic, I’ll never know.
In 2020, DOOM Eternal became the newest installment of demon-slaying goodness. Sadly, I was gaming on a potato at the time and couldn’t play it. It’s now 2024, I have a shiny new rig, and Finish the Damn Game Month is in full swing. That means it’s the perfect time to finally clear this one out of my backlog.
One thing I should make clear before we dive in: Although DOOM is a series about demons invading Earth, billions of people dying, and humanity’s last, best hope waging a one-man war against the overwhelming might of Hell, it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Much like Warhammer 40k, everything is ridiculously over-the-top and DOOM knows it, so the whole thing is a bit tongue-in-cheek.
The only thing they fear is him.
Gameplay
Since this is a game about slaughtering hordes of demons, let’s start with that. The combat is really good. Good enough that if you just want good FPS style combat, you can stop reading now; you have what you need, go get this game.
For those of you who grew up on cover-based shooters where you have to carefully position yourself and pick off the baddies, this is… not that. The combat is fast and chaotic, and your best bet is usually to throw yourself face-first into the biggest group of enemies you can find. If a game could be an FPS and a brawler at the same time, that’s what DOOM Eternal is. It feels like how Bloodborne took the Dark Soul formula and bent it towards constantly rewarding you for being more aggressive.
That aggressive approach involves more resource management than you’d expect. The Doom Slayer has health, armor, and ammo, but not nearly enough of any of it. Luckily, perhaps because of the Slayer’s vaguely-defined ability to absorb the strength of the demons he slays, you can refill those resources mid-combat by killing enemies in certain ways. This turns combat into a juggling act of using your flamethrower, chainsaw, and Glory Kills to keep yourself just barely alive while all the hordes of Hell try to tear you apart. If you are playing the game right, you'll end up seeing your health bar bounce back and forth like a tennis ball.
Eagle-eyed readers might notice that this picture is of an early level, but I have endgame stats. That’s because I was so caught up in the combat that I kept forgetting to take screenshots of it.
Of course, this leads to the (DOOM) eternal question: Is this game really hard, or am I really bad at first person shooters? I was playing on Hurt Me Plenty (the “normal” difficulty) and was still dying so much that the game tried to take pity on me.
Lore? (Spoilers?)
This might be a controversial take, but… why does DOOM have lore? Why does it have so much lore?
When I was a kid [redacted] years ago, the lore was: “You have guns. There are demons. Use guns until there aren’t demons anymore”. Now there’s a convoluted plot where the demons are evil, and the “angels” (Maykrs) are also evil, and the Slayer is the last survivor of an ancient brotherhood that used to defend the Maykrs until they were betrayed and slaughtered, and human souls are a power source that the Maykrs need because they overused their own resources, and… wait, is DOOM Eternal secretly an environmentalist message?
On the plus side, this game did confirm a couple of things that I was genuinely curious about. First of all, we now know for sure that the Slayer from this and DOOM (2016) is the same character as Doomguy from the earlier games. This also means that DOOM (2016) wasn’t actually a reboot, it was a sequel to the earlier games. And, finally, the Doom Slayer’s endless war against Hell really did start because a demon killed his pet bunny.
John Wick’s got nothing on Doomguy.
I should note that this sort of addition of lore isn't exactly a positive or negative on its own; it's just different than what I was expecting. Maybe this is the curse of returning to a game series after years away.
Closing Thoughts
My overall reaction to DOOM Eternal is that it’s a good game, but maybe not a good DOOM game. While it’s a lot of fun overall, and the things that bug me about it certainly aren’t dealbreakers, it just feels like it’s trying a little too hard to fit into modern gaming when it has such classic roots.
Maybe I’m just an old man yelling at clouds, but DOOM Eternal feels very modernized, and not always in good ways. I’ve talked about the lore already, but this game also features several kinds of collectibles, achievements, secret challenges, unlockable abilities… I’m just saying, it’s hard to imagine the relentless force of pure violence that is the Doom Slayer going out of his way to find a page about the history of the Armored Response Coalition. Sure, this can be an issue in other action-heavy game series as well, but it just stands out against my nostalgia for the original games more here.
Maybe the best/worst example is the fact that you have an NPC talking to you throughout the game, explaining what’s happening and telling you where to go next. DOOM (2016) actually mocked that trope: an NPC starts talking to you through a computer as soon as you wake up, and the first thing Doomguy does is punch that computer across the room. Not so in DOOM Eternal, where you have no choice but to listen to your AI helper throughout the entire game.
There’s one saving grace here, and it’s that the Slayer could not possibly care less about all the lore and NPCs, which is very appropriate for this series.
Case in point: Immediately after this, you shoot a hole in the surface of Mars.
With all of that said, I don’t want you to think that I came away with a bad impression of DOOM Eternal. If I’ve spent a lot of this article talking about the things I don’t think worked well, it’s just because there’s only so much you can say about how the combat was excellent—and, after all, that is the main focus. I had a lot of fun playing the main campaign, now I’m looking forward to diving into the Ancient Gods DLC, and I’ll definitely be picking up DOOM: The Dark Ages when it comes out.
I just can't shake the feeling of how this game shows both the triumphs of modern gaming, letting you slash your way through hell in glorious bloody detail... and how so many modern video game tropes like achievements and collectibles can overcomplicate what should be a straightforward killfest. Sure, you could play this game to 100% completion and earn that Platinum trophy, but for me, DOOM is at its best when you can just rip and tear until it is done.
