Doom Eternal - the very late review

I've been a huge Doom fan since the first Doom. I remember being absolutely amazed by the game not only as a gamer, but as a developer too. There I was, staying in-game in front of an open door with low health and tilting my real world body to look at my CRT monitor from an angle, trying to see if there was a demon hiding there. The first ever money I made with programming went to buy additional 2 MB (that's 2 Megabytes with an M) of RAM for my PC because Doom required 4 MB of RAM to run. Yes I'm that old.

Recently I've decided to buy the latest Doom game (Doom the Dark Ages) but then I thought: I never finished Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal, let's have a Doom fest first.

Doom 2016: A Blast with Minor Annoyances

Doom 2016 was a blast. It added some complexity to the gameplay that I didn't need. Yet the only thing that really annoyed me was the "glory kill" mechanic. Yes it is innovative and fun the first 50 kills, but then the novelty wears off and you realize, it often breaks the flow.

If a monster hits you from a distance you shoot at it and it becomes glory-killable, then you need to either come closer to launch a "glory kill" or quickly spend a big amount of ammo shooting at it before the stagger wears off. The bigger the monster the more you need to shoot. But the biggest "fun" was when in the middle of a long and hard fight you instinctively press the "glory kill" button on a monster that is staggered above a chasm... you kill it and fall to your death.

Other than that the game was fun and I enjoyed finishing it.

Doom Eternal: Too Much of Everything

Then came Doom Eternal's turn. The difference was huge. They added more mechanics to think about. Also added lots of platforming elements, so now I needed to jump more than Lara Croft just to navigate the level. Every level. On the same difficulty setting, monsters were tougher to kill and hit way harder. Why?

What I Love About Doom

What I love about Doom is its simplicity. You go around in a relatively easy to navigate level. If anything moves, you point your gun in this direction and start shooting until it stops moving. That's it. A 5-year-old understands it.

This simple approach keeps the Doom II community alive even today with a great modding scene doing things from maps to total conversion mods. (Ashes 2063 I'm looking at you!) I remember the times when I used Doom II and similar boomer shooters as a break when I got tired programming things. In Doom you didn't have to think. You just went around and acted instinctively.

The Problem with Complexity

With all Doom Eternal mechanics it felt like I need a university degree level of thinking to combine all available weapons literally on cooldown in order to be effective in combat. Also I'm not a big fan of platforming and with this game I died more from falling into chasms than from monsters.

It was more struggle than fun. Not my kind of experience. Uninstalled.

Now I'm not sure if I should buy Doom the Dark Ages.