Short Version
High speed mayhem with a couple of speed bumps.
Long Version
I would divide Doom: Eternal into two sections: before you meet the marauder and after you meet the marauder. Before you meet the marauder, combat rooms play much like 2016’s Doom, keep moving or die. I had a ton of fun during the first half of this game. I played on ultra-violence and I found most of the fights to be challenging, but workable; the slayer gates in particular are a blast. Doom: Eternal incorporates this tricky bit of farming into the combat where all your resources, ammo, health, and armor, have to be harvested from the “fodder” demons. It makes you think about what weapons you’re using and how you’re killing. You get more health from a glory kill than a regular kill so you may want to reconsider popping that gargoyle with the super shotgun. They expanded the exploration aspect from Doom, giving you a bunch of secrets to find, but again, I didn’t feel put upon. If you want to find them, they can be found. The graphics are chunky and have a comic-book feel to them – I didn’t love them at first but they grew on me – and the game has a good sense of humor. If we can’t laugh at the apocalypse, we’re truly lost. Then you meet this asshole.
This is the marauder and he’s the boss of The ARC Complex mission. If you read Part I, he’s a Night Sentinel who sides with the Kahn Maykr in the Argent D’Nur civil war. He’s a dick. The boss fight itself is fine, but for the rest of the game, they mix him into combat fairly regularly and that’s when he truly spoils the party. Success in this game, and the previous Doom, depends on motion. In a room chock full of demons, if you stand still for very long, all of their ranged attacks will hit you and you will die, quickly. What you gotta do is find yourself a good route around the level and keep running, firing off shots where you can, and glory killing and blood punching your way back to health. What the marauder does is make you face up. In order to defeat him, and I WILL ruin this for you because you want to know, you have to wait for the green eye flash, interrupt him with the super shotgun, fast switch to the ballista and hit him with a regular ballista shot. You do this four or five times and you’ll stagger him. The problem is you have to stand there and wait for him to do his flirty little eye thing, and as we’ve just discussed, if you stand still, you die. Every time the marauder appears he ruins the perfect demonic ballet that is modern Doom combat. Oh and he has a dog made out of fire. The dog is also an asshole. I almost quit playing because of this guy. The Doom Hunter is similar because you have to hold the plasma rifle on him for a while to disable his shield but he’s not nearly as bad.
The only other aspect of this game I didn’t care for was the Sentinel Armor. I don’t like help. I want to beat a game on my own merits. I get angry every time I’m playing a game and it reminds me I can change the difficulty at any time. Doom: Eternal’s version of this is to offer you the Sentinel Armor if you die enough times during a boss battle. The Sentinel Armor makes you effectively invincible, and is therefore a huge help. I am not a fan of this, if people find your boss battles too hard, then you should make them easier, give us a way to succeed that doesn’t feel like cheating. The game tells you that using the armor won’t effect progression in the game, but it sure effects progression in my mind, doesn’t it Doom! If I tell someone I beat the game on ultra-violence, I’m going to have to mention this. I got through the Doom Hunter and Marauder without it, but after spending an hour trying and failing on the Gladiator’s second stage, I swallowed my pride and put that shit on. By the time I got to the last two bosses I didn’t even hesitate. Sentinel Armor all the way! I may not like it, but I got other games to play.
This game is almost all good time, some mild frustration. I give it 3.75 out of 5 shotgun shells.
Advice to the Player
Cheat! Use all the help you can get. Look up how to defeat enemies, use the Sentinel Armor, play on an easier difficulty. I know you’re trying to save the world from demonic invasion, but try to remember it’s all about having fun.
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