Renzatic on 20/3/2020 at 22:05
I bought Doom 64 for the Switch. :D
SDF121 on 20/3/2020 at 22:58
Quote Posted by Nameless Voice
Is anyone playing it, and what's the verdict?
I'm only three chapters in but am digging it so far. If you liked DOOM (2016) then this is more of the same but with everything cranked up to 11. There is also more nuance to the combat as enemies now have weak points to exploit which encourages you to use the right weapon on the right enemy in the right way in order to take them out faster otherwise you're going to be in a more difficult fight. Unlike DOOM (2016), you can't just wreck everyone and everything with the super shotgun.
Nameless Voice on 21/3/2020 at 13:54
Good review, game sounds great.
I'll definitely be picking it up soon.
Volitions Advocate on 23/3/2020 at 16:15
Mick live streamed this in the first couple of hours of the game going public. I decided to wait for next month to buy it and bought Alyx instead, but this nearly pushed me over the edge. Good thing I had my kids this weekend or I would have caved.
As a music producer, Mick Gordon gets me pretty excited. He's not all that innovative, but he knows how to find that groove and feel.
[video=youtube;3lQUuXKW4FQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lQUuXKW4FQ[/video]
Starker on 23/3/2020 at 17:51
The music was a big part of what won me over to the reboot initially. Probably elevated the whole game from good to very good. At least in this category, the new Doom games don't get any complaints from me.
scumble on 25/3/2020 at 09:25
Quote Posted by Volitions Advocate
Mick live streamed this...
Interesting - his GDC talk on Doom 2016 music is worth a look - he explains a lot about how he created a "Doom Instrument" pushing a sine wave through a number of guitar pedals.
[video=youtube;U4FNBMZsqrY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4FNBMZsqrY[/video]
I thought more of you might be playing this - unusually for me I actually pre-ordered it. Listening to the music had me replaying Doom 2016 again, where I turned the sound effects down to get the music upfront.
Initially I found Doom Eternal a tad overwhelming as it throws a lot more stuff at you - like SDF121 says you have to use particular weapons to break the defences of some demons so I've certainly been switching them more often than I was in the previous game.
I've found that when progression through the next large battle is a bit frustrating or I fancied a break the game makes it interesting to replay
you backtrack for Preator points that you missed, you can farm extra lives, and you can collect cheat codes to make the replays quicker and also a bit hilarious.
I'm nearly at the end now - although some sections have been frustrating - such as just falling of the map and getting stuck in a corner in a demon dogpile - yet overall it has been satisfying. I'm not someone who usually likes a game just for the gameplay challenge so it's interesting to find myself developing some sort of strategy - although that seems to be running away in circles to get away from the horde.
I've found the lore to be interesting as well - it is of course written around a game about shooting things but it's done really well and seems to reinforce the various environments you travel through. It leaves ambiguity but manages to integrate the material from Doom 2016 really well.
The music is great of course - and that sits very well with the environments alongside the lore. I think anyone looking for more Doom will get value from it.
Volitions Advocate on 9/5/2020 at 16:24
I'm surprised nobody is really talking about this here.
I'm really glad I initially skipped on this to play Alyx, but with the sale this last week I had to pick it up because I was really hyped about it. All the complaining about the new direction they took the gameplay loop made me want to play it even more.
Then I started playing it.
I think I'm an apologist by nature when it comes to my favorite games and I'm not going to be shy about it, but as much as I'm trying to love this game, I'm just finding it's too much work. I understand what they were trying to do to force the player into playing the way they designed it, but at a first glance, It's just too Arcadey for me to enjoy it as a Doom game. They did that stupid thing where there is some sort of crapton of exposition needed to explain why the hell you start where you do, without any explanation of how things went since the previous game other than "earth is hell now" and I'm finding it very jarring.
I have to agree with the complaints about the level design, because it doesn't feel rooted in the language of the game that has been setup. It's like its' from a different universe than the one we played in 2016, and I'm not just talking about the floating powerups. This really feels a lot more like a Warhammer 40K game you'd play at the arcade if such things actually existed in this decade.
The secret hunting isn't fun, and even though they've given you some sort of fast travel mechanic that you can use toward the end of each level to go back and bypass all the point-of-no-return spots to grab secrets you missed, they do a piss poor job of telling you when you can do it, and if you miss your opportunity, you have to play the massive level all over again anyway. 3 missions in a row I have missed the prompt that supposedly came up to tell me I could now fast travel, I still don't know what it looks like. The catch is if you finish the mission, you lose your chance, and so far most of the missions end with defeating an enemy which goes straight to a cutscene and the ends the level.
The combat loop itself is pretty fun once you get the hang of it, but I'm never going to reach mastery level. I think I'm a damn good FPS twitch shooter player. I was born in the 80s and I played a shit ton of UT99 in my teens. But I can't play this game at any enjoyable level above "hurt me plenty" which is the 2nd lowest difficulty level. I'm not going to be winning any eSports matches any time soon, but that seems a bit steep for me.
But when you fold that into unlockables and a completionist mindset, it just becomes work. And suddenly Doom just isn't fun anymore. Doom isn't fun! And that's a travesty.
example: Gore nests are now more like a level secret. You find one, you pop it, then you get a very brief combat challenge (much like the rune challenges in 2016) which is a cool idea, BUT. You have like 20 seconds to somehow negotiate a way around killing a bunch of demons that spawn in. Yes it's cool that they've designed it so you have to think your way around beating it, but in the latest one I tried 8 or 9 times to complete this is the scenario: You have 20 seconds to kill 2 mancubi and 2 zombies. The gore nest is about 2.5 seconds traversal away from the "arena". The mancubi are bullet sponges and you have limited ammunition, so you literally don't have enough time to kill them through attrition. If you want to destroy their cannons first, that will eat up 4 precision shots with your machine gun, which takes nearly a full second to reload after every shot, and if you glory kill one of them, the animation is about 4 - 4.5 seconds long.
I'm not even rage quitting, I'm sad quitting.
I get why it's getting its 9 and 10 ratings if the reviewers are focusing on certain specific aspects of the game, but I think they have a miss here. I don't think the way they did this is going illicit any long term love. Coupled with the debacle that has happened with the OST (which I have to admit is at least 50% Micks' fault if not more), I just don't see this becoming a classic.
Microwave Oven on 9/5/2020 at 23:27
This pretty much nails it on the head here. I agree completely. It's like they took all of the crap from Doom 2016 that made it arcadey, and just doubled down on it. I liked Doom 3, the environments especially (minus the super obvious monster closets), but Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal just crapped all over it.
Nameless Voice on 12/5/2020 at 19:22
Just started playing it. The music sounds fine?
Highly frustrated at the game having ammo caps so low that I'm pretty much permanently out of ammo and have to seriously consider every shot - that's very, very, un-Doom to me.
Hopefully it will get better when I can (presumably) unlock ammo capacity upgrades, but it's a bad first impression.