DOOM Eternal

Review

Slayer, you are the only one who can save Earth and Mankind! The Hell’s armies have landed, and you must find and eliminate the three Hell’s Priests first and then kill their almighty soldier. . .  The Titan!  It’s going to be a hell of a fight and we know we can count on you to pull it off. Your base, The Fortress of Doom, is stationed on Earth’s orbit and from there, you will be able to launch each of your missions. Good luck Slayer, or Mankind is eternally Doomed!

DOOM Eternal is a FPS/action game developed by id Software and published by Bethesda Softworks on the 20^th of March on the Steam and Bethesda platforms. The game is also available on PS4 and Xbox One.

I must say that I was amongst those gamers who were extremely disappointed when the original 2019 release date was pushed back to March 2020. But the wait was worthwhile (despite the fact that I had to take breaks between my gameplay sessions; as I am an older gamer in my late forties, my reflexes are still ok, but my eyes are not as focus as they used to be once upon a time). What an absolute cracker this game is, especially for single player campaign.

That’s right, DOOM Eternal has a brilliant single-player campaign mode, but a disappointing (being polite here) multiplayer mode. The Battlemode (multiplayer), consists of three players; one is the Slayer and the other two are controlling Demons. It only took me a few goes to totally disregard the multiplayer mode, as I didn’t like it at all! However, the campaign is an absolute beauty!  

There are 6 levels of difficulty, from I’m Too Young to Die to the older school favourite, Extra life, where you have only one life in hand and when you die its game over.  I opted for the middle range Ultra-Violence difficulty, which turned out to be seriously difficult from my point of view.

You’ll engage each of the levels from The Fortress of Doom, your Earth orbital station. However, the Station is a sort of a level in itself. There are items you can unlock, and you can also practise what I call intermediate fights, which will be frequent throughout the campaign. In these fights, you are basically confined to a locked area, and wave after wave of enemies will spawn until you eliminate them all. After that a path (door) will open and you can move on. I really like the level designs; they are fun, tricky and full of surprises, as you never know what’s coming next. But what I really like in these levels is that they have really thought about the combination of fighting, exploring (finding secret areas) and parkour.   You’ll have plenty of fights, including intermediate ones, and it’s not hard to see where you have to go, but you have to notice the important thing to get there, which I really like; it’s not that obvious.

There’s a lot of stuff to pick up in each level, such as sentinel crystals (which you’ll need in order to open the door at the Doom Fortress), runes (which give you new abilities), and other items that you’ll enjoy discovering.

The fighting is absolutely superb!  As you progress throughout the game, you’ll find new weapons that you’ll be able to update. What I really like is the over-the-top bloodshed that you encounter in each level, and especially the glory kills which will give you different ways to kill an enemy and gain additional health, armour and ammunition.  

Great graphics, cut scenes and voice-overs! In terms of soundtrack, if you like hard rock music, you’ll be well-served, and it suits the game brilliantly. Overall, I think the single-player campaign is the gem of this game.  The multiplayer is not worth it at this stage; it’s just boring (I’d be better off watching the grass grow!).