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Doom Eternal is exhausting to play

i did the master level gorenest on ultraviolence and actually got to the end. the last arena was so ridiculous that i just had to laugh and deinstalled the game right after. i don't think i've done this with any other game ever.

They decided to jack up the difficulty of the master levels since that one and it makes sense. Arc base and cultist base ML didnt feel that much more difficult than their base versions.
Yo complain about that is kind of ridiculous.
 

Bragr

Banned
I think you are exaggerating. DOOM Eternal is DOOM 2016, but faster paced and with some more stuff like a flamethrower, but that's it.

The arena shooting is the same, the semi-linear levels are the same. Yes it has a bit more of platforming and ammo is more scarce, but imho that's an enhancement on the formula rather than a radical change.
I may have exaggerated a bit, but the concept I was trying to explain still stands.

I welcome more platforming, but it's more than that. In Doom Eternal, the enemies rush you constantly, which means you need to move all the time, combine that with the increased mid-fight resource farming from 2016 to stay alive and you almost get a rhythm of sorts that you need to follow. You have to hit certain beats to survive. The game is designed to force the player to move and always worry about ammo. It pushes you around. I think it's creative and impressive that they pulled it off, but it's very different. Perhaps too different.

Imagine if the Dead Space remake that just came out featured enemies that were twice as fast, so in any combat situation, you always have to move and circle, there was no room for tension, no room for enemies that sometimes move slowly, or anything else than just run in a circle and shoot. It would feel like a completely different game.

And yes, I understand that comparisons like this are mostly stupid, but it's the idea of it, people find that Eternal plays in a different sort of way that they don't like as much.
 
It's not about complexity.

Imagine if you could install 4 mechanical legs on your horse in Red Dead Redemption 2. It might be fun and "more complex", but it would be another game entirely.

That's Doom Eternal. It feels like they mixed 2016 with a pinball machine. It's a different thing. It's not about the difficulty or complexity, but that it feels like a different thing.

It's as if they released Half-Life 3, and it played like Superhot. I don't want fucking Superhot, I think it's worse than regular Half-Life. Give me Half-Life.

And then all you guys would be like "hur hur don't you like new things, Superhot is more complex, Superhot is too hard for you, hur hur."

It's not about that. It's that I find Superhot to be a different thing entirely, and it doesn't have the "soul" of Half-Life. Doom Eternal doesn't have the "soul" of Doom.

Doom Eternal is like Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts of the Banjo franchise. It's just very different.
DOOM Eternal doesn't have the soul of doom? Did you play the original DOOM games lol? Eternal is much more in line with them than 2016 which focused more towards a realism aesthetic.
 
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I would add - it's annoyingly exhausting compared to excellent 2016.
You onstantly have to glory kill, flamethrower and chainsaw. If You don't do one of these every 30 seconds, you are dead or out of ammo.
It gets tiring and annoying fast imo. Where s the combat puzzle? Where is power fantasy? It felt weird and I did not liked all that micro management all the time


Yes, that gameplay loop is just not for me. I wanted a more mindless shooter.
 
I may have exaggerated a bit, but the concept I was trying to explain still stands.

I welcome more platforming, but it's more than that. In Doom Eternal, the enemies rush you constantly, which means you need to move all the time, combine that with the increased mid-fight resource farming from 2016 to stay alive and you almost get a rhythm of sorts that you need to follow. You have to hit certain beats to survive. The game is designed to force the player to move and always worry about ammo. It pushes you around. I think it's creative and impressive that they pulled it off, but it's very different. Perhaps too different.

Imagine if the Dead Space remake that just came out featured enemies that were twice as fast, so in any combat situation, you always have to move and circle, there was no room for tension, no room for enemies that sometimes move slowly, or anything else than just run in a circle and shoot. It would feel like a completely different game.

And yes, I understand that comparisons like this are mostly stupid, but it's the idea of it, people find that Eternal plays in a different sort of way that they don't like as much.

Here's a comparison that might help you and it involves Dark Souls, since that name keeps coming up in this discussion.

Imagine if Fromsoft released Sekiro under the name Dark Souls 4. Superficially, they look the same. Third person action-RPGs. Functionally though, they're entirely different. Souls leans more heavily into the RPG side, with slower combat, the ability to summon help to party up, and the use of stats and equipment that allows a player to build their character around their preferred play style. Meanwhile Sekiro leans more heavily into the action side, with significantly faster combat, extremely limited customization, and no summons, thus forcing the player to adapt to and learn one specific way of playing the game.

By comparison, Doom 1, 2, 64, and 2016 are Dark Souls (you can choose your guns, you can run past many enemies, you scrounge the environment for pickups) and Doom Eternal is Sekiro (you must learn weapon swapping, resource management, cooldowns, alternate firing modes, and weakpoints). I'm not making a value judgment on either playstyle, but they are very different and personally, when I bought a game titled DOOM, I was expecting the former, rather than the latter.
 
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Fake

Member
I don't personally see how you can be disappointed by Doom Eternal if you liked the first game, it just does everything the first game did better

I know people love to jump infront bullets to defend this game, but this is not true at all. Constant low ammo, forced to chainsaw, puzzle jumps, plataforms, monster armor system...

Doom Eternal is inferior to Doom 2016 in many many ways.
 
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OZ9000

Banned
I know people love to jump infront bullets to defend this game, but this is not true at all. Constant low ammo, forced to chainsaw, puzzle jumps, plataforms, monster armor system...

Doom Eternal is inferior to Doom 2016 in many many ways.
The platforming and low ammo is crap I agree. However having faster chainsaw recharges + full ammo for 1 chainsaw would be a good fix for the game. Fortunately there is a mod which does just that, and increases enjoyability of the game by 100%.

Doom 2016 however is a one trick pony. A well crafted single player campaign but combat scenarios aren't fast and frantic like Eternal. Every battle plays different in Eternal. The game feels so much more enjoyable to replay.
 
The platforming and low ammo is crap I agree. However having faster chainsaw recharges + full ammo for 1 chainsaw would be a good fix for the game. Fortunately there is a mod which does just that, and increases enjoyability of the game by 100%.

Doom 2016 however is a one trick pony. A well crafted single player campaign but combat scenarios aren't fast and frantic like Eternal. Every battle plays different in Eternal. The game feels so much more enjoyable to replay.
I will die on the low ammo hill!

It's there to encourage no force weapon switching. Some players will forever stick with there favourite gun if they have too much ammo. The low ammo count is there to drag some players by the neck to try different guns and find new strategies.

With limited ammo you can have wildly different power levels. The BFG couldn't exist unless the ammo was very limited.
 

Dr. Claus

Vincit qui se vincit
I disagree. In souls you can get by just doing one thing (Kinda like Doom 2016...) or with an optimized build. E.g. just dodge rolling and spamming R1. It's great and challenging but doesn't require much thought.

In Eternal your constantly making decisions about which weapons to use on which enemy, whether to glory kill, flame blech, ice bomb, chain saw, blood punch.... at a way quicker pace.

It's way more mentally challenging than souls.( Not necessarily more difficult ) I could see why someone might find it mentally exhausting
Dude, cacodemon is walk in the park. Anyway taking down a single enemy in doom eternal is nothing big (well maybe except "marauder" and "cybermankubus" with green shield). The problem starts when game throws at you multiple strong demons at once, and what's worse in some very tight location, where you cant even use the dodge function. And what's funny it gets even worse later in the game when you have to fight very strong Arch-vile demon (he require BFG to kill it quickly) that can summon UNLIMTED number of strong demons (and every single one of them requires a lot of ammo to kill). With limited ammo on top of that this game feels just unfair to play. I have completed doom eternal, but it was more about luck than my skill and memory (in souls games you can memorize pretty much every enemy encounter). And BTW. I have frequently used a chainsaw to replenish my ammo as much as possible and ammo has still been a problem for me. Such limited ammo mechanics in doom game (and especially considering the amount of enemies this game throws at you) is just unfair. Souls games arnt like that at all.

I would suggest you re-read what I wrote as it is clear you completely misunderstood it and are just reiterating what I stated:
Learn the moves for each demon.
Learn to utilize the enviornments effectively (yes, you can still move and dodge just fine in “tight” spaces, git gud)
Learn to utilize your entire arsenal. Rotating chainsaws, fire belches, freeze grenades, and alt fire and you will never have to worry about health, armor, or ammo. It is literally just a you failing to ”git gud” and blaming The game instead of your own lack of skill.

Same exact thing with Dark Souls. You can dodge out of the way of any attack, even in small spaces - but it is more challenging. You have to know the moves of the enemies and understand their tells. You also need To know the best weapon for the job at hand. Example in Demon Souls, you need a piercing weapon to get through the thick skin of the miners. You don’t use a long sword in tight controlled spaced less your weapon bounce off the wall.

This isn’t rocket science, guys.
 
I would suggest you re-read what I wrote as it is clear you completely misunderstood it and are just reiterating what I stated:
Learn the moves for each demon.
Learn to utilize the enviornments effectively (yes, you can still move and dodge just fine in “tight” spaces, git gud)
Learn to utilize your entire arsenal. Rotating chainsaws, fire belches, freeze grenades, and alt fire and you will never have to worry about health, armor, or ammo. It is literally just a you failing to ”git gud” and blaming The game instead of your own lack of skill.

Same exact thing with Dark Souls. You can dodge out of the way of any attack, even in small spaces - but it is more challenging. You have to know the moves of the enemies and understand their tells. You also need To know the best weapon for the job at hand. Example in Demon Souls, you need a piercing weapon to get through the thick skin of the miners. You don’t use a long sword in tight controlled spaced less your weapon bounce off the wall.

This isn’t rocket science, guys.
Dude I have no idea what why your banging on about git gud...I've beaten every souls game and Eternal multiple times on Nightmare where as you were chatting about beating it on on ultra violence.

Anyway objectively there's so much more happening in a doom eternal encounter compared to souls. More enemies, more weapons to juggle, more mechanics to master, more complex level design and its happening way faster.

That's why it's mentally draining.

Souls is hard because it's punishing and your character is way less capable than the doom slayer. But its not mentally exhausting because all you need to do is memorise one enemy 's attack pattern and exploit it. Often with the same weapon you played with for the last 20 hours

I don't know how to explain myself further.
 

damidu

Member
like clockwork gitgud crowd emerges, lol
i beat the game too moron, you are not special.

doesn’t change the fact whole thing is a chore to get through.
with an extremely stupid story (which unlike first game forgot to take itself not serious)

not even gonna mention the abysmal attempt at platforming.
 

Dr. Claus

Vincit qui se vincit
like clockwork gitgud crowd emerges, lol
i beat the game too moron, you are not special.

doesn’t change the fact whole thing is a chore to get through.
with an extremely stupid story (which unlike first game forgot to take itself not serious)

not even gonna mention the abysmal attempt at platforming.
part brother GIF
 
“Forced to chainsaw”

Sounds like:
“Forced to accelerate” in a racing game.
Or
“Forced to parry” in sekiro

I mean… ya I guess, if you want to play successfully you are “forced” but isn’t this true of nearly every game with rules? You are “forced” to play by the rules of the game.
 

Fake

Member
I will die on the low ammo hill!

It's there to encourage no force weapon switching. Some players will forever stick with there favourite gun if they have too much ammo. The low ammo count is there to drag some players by the neck to try different guns and find new strategies.

With limited ammo you can have wildly different power levels. The BFG couldn't exist unless the ammo was very limited.

What a load of bs.
Have you ever played Ultimate Doom? Final Doom? Doom 2?

BFG is the most rare weapon of the entire game, not only rare, but is also lack ammuniton in many levels. Some secrets give you BFG as a reward for getting into exploration.

Every weapon have his pros and cons, but BFG is like used when you get out number by monsters or when you face high hit points enemies like Cyberdemon or Mastermind.

Look, just by your reply I know for sure you never played prior Doom games. Next time make sure you don't end up talking with someone who actually played previous games.

If you want to defend Doom Eternal at least try put a bit of sense on those arguments.
 

BlackTron

Member
From the very first moment I played Eternal and discovered that it's now impossible to deliver a killing blow with melee even to the lowest puny skeleton enemy of the game, I knew it was inferior to 2016 even if the entire rest of the game redeemed this. It didn't, it was a cascade of baffling changes just like that one. I stopped played a few levels in and didn't play Doom again until a few 2016 levels last week.

I was going to buy Eternal, but was lucky to try out my friends copy first. They were sitting on the game anyway -when I reported back, they and a few mutual friends tried it too and we all agreed and were really disappointed.

I'm not calling it a horrible game but the original had doom guy kicking down the AI help screen and punching demons to death in the face. To me that fits the spirit of DOOM better than making you learn exactly how to play the game with 1000 tutorials and mechanics to manage.
 
What a load of bs.
Have you ever played Ultimate Doom? Final Doom? Doom 2?
I haven't actually no need to be rude you jackass!
BFG is the most rare weapon of the entire game, not only rare, but is also lack ammuniton in many levels. Some secrets give you BFG as a reward for getting into exploration.
Right so you agree... It rare because its easily most powerful and encourages exploration.
Every weapon have his pros and cons,
Yes it's never just one thing. If you have an abundance of ammo weapons need to be really well balanced to encourage weapon switching. If you dont players will stick with the most powerful or favourite guns like the super shotgun in 2016.
but BFG is like used when you get out number by monsters or when you face high hit points enemies like Cyberdemon or Mastermind.
So you save it for hard situations. If it had too much ammo you could use it on everything and not experiment with the other guns.
Look, just by your reply I know for sure you never played prior Doom games. Next time make sure you don't end up talking with someone who actually played previous games.
I briefly played them back in the day but they didn't grab me. Not sure what this has to do limited ammo.

If you want to defend Doom Eternal at least try put a bit of sense on those arguments.
They made sense you didn't refute anything. In fact you backed up claim that you need to limit ammo to overly powerful weapons.

Happy to discuss further with or without insults!
 
“Forced to chainsaw”

Sounds like:
“Forced to accelerate” in a racing game.
Or
“Forced to parry” in sekiro

I mean… ya I guess, if you want to play successfully you are “forced” but isn’t this true of nearly every game with rules? You are “forced” to play by the rules of the game.
Exactly! A game without rules is no longer a game.

A huge amount of players seem to think that unlimited freedom will result in the best games. In reality I think its lead to alot the open world bloat we have now.

Even in those games there's still rules you have to stick too have fun.
 
It's the first time ever I've seen someone saying more choices gives less choices.
Well it's what happening isn't it? Some Players don't want to weapon switch they want to stick with one gun for the rest of the game and get pissed off when the games trying to encourage different weapons and tactics.
 

The_Mike

I cry about SonyGaf from my chair in Redmond, WA
Well it's what happening isn't it? Some Players don't want to weapon switch they want to stick with one gun for the rest of the game and get pissed off when the games trying to encourage different weapons and tactics.

They don't want to switch weapons - which is a choice.

They don't want to use the gun the game forces them - which is no choice.

The two weapon carry games forced you to have two specific weapons - not much choice.

Doom Eternal wants you to use specific weapons - not much choice.

Doom 2016 let's you use whatever you want - no limits on choices.

Of all the arguments you could use, you chose the worst.
 
They don't want to switch weapons - which is a choice.
Agree
They don't want to use the gun the game forces them - which is no choice.
You're rarely forced to use any gun. But some guns work way better in certain situations. You can still use the other weapons but you will have a tougher time. These are choices that didn't exist at all in 2016 like choosing to destroy weak points or not
The two weapon carry games forced you to have two specific weapons - not much choice.
Maybe but fundamentally the games basically become identical. Maybe just knowing they could use other weapons is enough for some players.
Doom Eternal wants you to use specific weapons - not much choice.
There more suggestions but it results in more choices in the moment to moment combat. Some weapons work better than others but you can still choose to use less optimal weapons.
Doom 2016 let's you use whatever you want - no limits on choices.
To be honest I don't know how true this is. Some weapons are just flat out better than others in 2016 like the super shotgun and pulse rifle. In theory you could choose to use just the assault rifle and regular shotgun but the game will be harder. So in a way its the same choice as in Eternal but on a macro level. Certain weapons in 2016 are strict with ammo like the bfg, mini gun and chainsaw. Having said that on a macro level doom 2016 does accommodate using any weapon at any time. On a micro level however you have way more choice in Eternal. This would take a whole other post if you would care to indulge me lol.
Of all the arguments you could use, you chose the worst.
Well I apologise for articulating myself poorly lol! I think the broader point is sound though players have more choice on a broader level in 2016. I.e any gun will work in any situation (kind of) but they won't experience any of this beacuse there happy just using one gun. If that's what they want then fair enough.
 

The_Mike

I cry about SonyGaf from my chair in Redmond, WA
Well I apologise for articulating myself poorly lol! I think the broader point is sound though players have more choice on a broader level in 2016. I.e any gun will work in any situation (kind of) but they won't experience any of this beacuse there happy just using one gun. If that's what they want then fair enough.
You say it like literally everyone played that way.

Again, I am always for more choices.
 
You say it like literally everyone played that way.

Again, I am always for more choices.
Well obviously I am generalising. You could weapon switch combo in 2016 but it was for its own sake. It didn't offer as many tactical advantages as Eternal.

Choices are fundamentally to videogames but they need to be interesting or have consequence. Having too many choices can result in no challenge or dominate strategies that make all the other all other choices meaningless.

If the BFG had infinite ammo you would technically have more choice but the choices would be meaningless. You would no longer think about when to use it.
 
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Dr. Claus

Vincit qui se vincit
They don't want to switch weapons - which is a choice.

They don't want to use the gun the game forces them - which is no choice.

The two weapon carry games forced you to have two specific weapons - not much choice.

Doom Eternal wants you to use specific weapons - not much choice.

Doom 2016 let's you use whatever you want - no limits on choices.

Of all the arguments you could use, you chose the worst.
english GIF
 

22•22

NO PAIN TRANCE CONTINUE
My only gripe is it's length and playing on controller isn't ideal regarding the design choice of constant switching of weapons. But only on harder difficulties that becomes a real issue.
 

Sygma

Member
Don't get me started on the DLC. The first 15 Minutes of the DLC was subjectively harder than the entire base game. And that was justvthe beginning. I gave up midway through the second DLC. It was just not fun anymore.

They nerfed the first DLC so hard its basically almost a walk in the park now tbh. However these two arenas in the level where you gotta get 2 parts of a symbol (blood swamp ? i forgot its been a while) are straight up the nuttiest combat sections of any single player fps ever released and its absolutely glorious
 
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AndrewRyan

Member
My main problem with Eternal is after not playing for a while I forget all the mod types, which mods go with which gun, all the little details about which gun is best for each weakpoint and all the weakpoints/techniques. Feel like I need to leave my future self notes with icons to jumpstart my return after taking a break.

It takes a bit to remember everything but once it's back in short-term-memory I love this game. So damn fluid and perfect controls. The guns all pop and feel amazing. Runs flawlessly on steamdeck. Even enjoy the platforming since you use it in combat all the time- remapped dash to L1 and melee to R1 which feels great.

My conclusion is there's room for improvement to the resource management system but it works to make you use all the weapons and I'm guilty of otherwise sticking to my favs. Maybe it asks too much if you have to use notes, but still consider it a masterpiece and a personal treasure.
 

Mr Reasonable

Completely Unreasonable
Good luck! Let me know how it goes!

I've played other things as well, but recently I decided to get back on this, and the credits are now rolling. (Anyone else think you should let the credits roll out of respect, but then not actually pay attention?)

Weirdly, I've been stuck on the various stages of the final boss for a week or two, but just absolutely romped through it.

Edit: still pretty pleased with myself.
 
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