A shame. The sleekness of DOOM (2016) is nowhere to be found—it’s been replaced with ugly garishness in nearly every facet of Eternal’s design.

The chonky combat remains, with gun-feel and glory kill animations improved considerably—and the music is still great!—but that’s where the positives end. The game is pumped absolutely chock-full with annoying, difficult-to-internalize mechanics, overwrought platforming puzzles (the effortless platforming in 2016 is so much better!), and a stupid, hamfisted story and atmosphere.

The appeal of DOOM (2016) had a lot to do with the interplay of self-serious elements and campy ones. It was like watching a B-movie that believed, wholeheartedly, in its own awesomeness. Eternal just plops face-first into campy mud, goofifying everything and winking at the player incessantly, sapping the game of any actual coolness. Those moments of quiet viscerality from the first game are half-assed or just completely non-existent.

Id has cranked the difficulty up, both in terms of enemy aggressiveness and, just, the sheer amount of bullshit you have to learn and remember. Oh I can grapple and blood punch and flame belch and chainsaw and double dash and ice grenade OR regular grenade, in addition to shooting my weapons with hot-swappable mods? Cool! Is it any fun to juggle it all, really? No, it isn’t!

I came back to Eternal thinking I’d been too hard on it, and found just the opposite— I like it even less now. It infuriatingly squanders the potential of its fantastic predecessor, going decidedly for content quantity over quality, and losing almost everything that made the latter feel special. While it’s not terrible in its own right, I consider it one of my personal biggest disappointments of the modern gaming era.