"Hi, before you begin we're contractually obligated to force you into making a Bethesda account before playing our game."
Turns on airplane mode
"... I guess that works too..."
Yeah that's a baffling thing for Doom, of all games, to have but if there's a workaround then I ain't going too complain much. Especially considering how fun the game itself is.

Doom Eternal is all about resource management. You need to be mindful of your health, your armor (more or less a second health bar), and your ammo. Even with max upgrades it's very easy to run out of ammo. You'll need to either scour the arenas for ammo, or more commonly chainsaw a demon for a shower of ammo drops. Your chainsaw fuel is limited, but recharges a single tank overtime. But having three fuel at once will allow you to instakill a larger demon for free, so now you have to choose whether you want ammo now or save it to immediately remove a demon off the board. For armor you can shoot a flamethrower to ignite enemies that will drop armor on hit, and even more upon death; bearing in mind that they don't stay on fire for long. To be as efficient as possible you could try to lure many weak demons into a big crowd, ignite them, then blow them all up with a grenade or blood punch. Alternatively you could also use it on enemies that are close to death to reap the bonus armor immediately if you desperately need some now. Health is arguably the hardest resource to manage as you can only recover (excluding pickups) from glory kills, which is when you finish off a enemy near death, an upgrade ice grenade that are also incredible tools to immobilize and/or finish off powerful demons so you may not always have one available, or if you are close to death defeated enemies will drop some health as a sort of dynamic difficulty. You can also freeze and ignite enemies at the same time (cause video games) for armor and health drops simultaneously, but now both those options are on cooldown so hope you are good at dodging.
This isn't even getting to all the weapons and the many, many roles and functions they serve. Certain weapons can more easily break parts of demons to disable dangerous attacks, some can more easily falter specific demons in which their actions are interrupted, maybe the gun can destroy armor or shields more easily, or they can lock on to a particularly mobile demon, and so forth. Doom Eternal would be a strategy game if it weren't for how fast and frantic this game is. Demons are absolutely relentless. Most are very good at chasing you across the arena, making hard to break line of sight from long range enemies or if you move away from a close range demon then you can guarantee that they'll be back in your face again before long. So many demons have specific strengths and more importantly weaknesses. It's a ton to juggle in your head all the times.
Maybe too much for some. While Doom Eternal doesn't throw all these systems at the player straight away (unless you, for whatever insane reason, play the DLC first) it does expect you to pickup these lessons fast, because the next new mechanic is right around the corner. Doom Eternal will rewire your brain to the point that all these mechanics will become natural. It won't ever become a question of "what do I do" it'll become "how do I do it". You start making decisions on what enemies and resources to prioritize without any hesitancy. You immediately identify demons of higher danger but of course you almost never fight just one dangerous demon alone but several at once. The moments that stick with me though will always be the "oh shit!" moments. The times that I miss my grenades on the flying meatballs to glory kill them, the times I get too trigger happy with a particular weapon and now I have no ammo for the demon whose weak to that very gun, when I get to careless and find myself desperately in need of health and armor with missiles flying at me, the dread realizing there's not one but two Tyrants at once, maybe I hear a the Marauder's sound cue right behind me, or worst of all I see the translucent demons being summoned by the Archville and now I'm panicing looking for that asshole.
Doom Eternal is consistently a thrill ride from beginning to... mostly the end. I found the bosses to be a low point, including DLC. Some were better then others, but they can really pushed the boundaries of fairness where I felt the game was expecting me too much of my attention with the boss and the infinitely respawning enemies. And these enemies aren't always the easy fodder kind. They'll be spamming projectiles while your looking at what the boss is doing but it's harder to justify killing them if they're going to respawn anyway and... it's not impossible by any means and there are certainly ways to make it easier, it's more that I didn't feel it was a satisfying challenge like the most of the game already was. And lastly this isn't a issue, but I actually had to take breaks in the middle of levels because my mind and hands were working up a storm of inputs and decision makings. Was having a blast the whole time but goddamn I didn't want to go into the next high intensity fight with my brain completely drained.

So glad I finally played Doom Eternal after its been on my wishlist for so long. It demands a lot from you but it'll give so much dopamine in return.

Those ghosts that possess demons in the DLC can go suck Satan taint though

Reviewed on Jun 18, 2023


5 Comments


10 months ago

YES! I'm so glad you enjoyed Eternal, such a fantastic game, and your anlaysis of the gunplay and how it kinda has some strategy elements despite how frenetic it is is on point.

Amazing review!

10 months ago

@DeemonAndGames Thank you kindly :)

10 months ago

Great Write-Up! You perfectly encapsulated the player experience. This was the first FPS I got really hooked on, and I really hope they plan on making a new Quake game at this quality.

10 months ago

@JanssenJam Thankee kindly. If they did make a Quake game then I kind of hope they stick to a more classic style of level design like in Quake 1. Arenas work super well in Doom Eternal, but I'm also interested to see how well this new team could handle more labyrinthy levels. Though that said if they made "Doom Eternal 2 but it's Quake" then I wouldn't complain.

10 months ago

IIRC what we’ve heard from Hugo is the next game will be designed around making the player feel like a tank, so slower and more “weighty” attacks I guess? Doesn’t sound particularly fun after Eternal but I still have total faith in the team and I’m sure I’ll be there day 1 haha