This review contains spoilers
There's not much I dislike about Doom Eternal, so when I drafted my review of it, I thought it would be easier to summarize my experience with the game by contrasting my original experience with it at launch, and replaying it nearly three years later.
Sure, Doom Eternal has problems. Every game has its problems. Every game is graded on a curve. I would look like an idiot if I gave the original Super Mario Bros. a low score and said something along the lines of, “I didn’t like the music, and the story is almost nonexistent”. Anyone who’s played Super Mario Bros. would tell me, okay man, maybe the music’s not your taste or whatever, but the story? Mario is about jumping over and on top of things, not a story-driven narrative adventure. That’s just one example, but you get what I’m saying, right? Any critic would or should judge a game on its own merits although, yeah, all critics strike from different angles and see different things, which is why critique can be such a difficult thing to approach; but in this one instance, I’d imagine people would be calling me names for trying to claim the original Super Mario Bros. is bad because of its story or lack thereof.
The story of Doom Eternal may not be its centerpiece, and I’m not even going to pull the Carmack quote (iykyk), but I remember even playing it for the first time, Doom Eternal felt so tonally inconsistent with Doom 2016 and, to be frank, with itself at some points.
The politically correct holograms are probably the best example of Eternal leaning too heavy into its silliness, and these are some of the only elements I still don’t like that much. A lot of the sillier things are the more videogamey things, the dumb stock “GULP” SFX that plays when you shoot a grenade into a Cacodemon’s mouth, or the cork pop sound that plays when you get a headshot, or the Marauder seeing stars when you blast him with your SSG or Ballista. It’s dumb, but it’s kinda fun, too. A lot of the dumb fun in 2016 was, for me, in how the game characterized the Doomslayer through his actions alone: breaking a computer when Samuel Hayden said something he didn’t like, or disobeying orders, or even creating a backup copy of VEGA - the helpful AI program who reappears in Eternal’s Fortress of Doom.
Doom Eternal doubles down on its tongue-in-cheekness, but then triples down on its lore, creating this almost quasi-Souls mythology which is drip fed via codex entries and the like. In 2016 you could safely ignore most of this background information because, I mean, come on, it’s Doom, baby! There was only ever one question in any player’s mind in Doom 2016 and that was, by and large, are we playing as the same Doomguy from the original Doom games? In short: yes, we are, but for some reason, Doom Eternal goes even further, maybe almost too far in a few places.
From my understanding, both Doom 1 and 2 are canon, as well as Doom 64 (which I haven’t played) and apparently a LOT happened between then and 2016, and even MORE happens between 2016 and Eternal, although this isn’t given much explanation. It’s weird then, that Doom Eternal still presents itself with the same handwave-y, “Oh, you know, uh… the Ancients, and the… artifacts, prophecy, or whatever,” just constant precision airstrikes of term-sodden, lorebabbling nothing. Apparently VEGA is also GOD who was brainwashed into THINKING he was an AI? At least id software gives you a skip button for cutscenes now, yeah? But the main problem isn’t just the borderline-incomprehensible narrative as much as it is the fact that Eternal posits, yes, Doomguy is really just a dude with, like, divine superpowers bestowed upon him by an alien cyborg half-angel-demon who just liked him that much. I’m oversimplifying things a little. You can just ignore all that and boil it down to the bare essentials, Doomguy knows what he's doing. While some people (i.e. I) interpreted Doomguy’s actions in 2016 as brute force and rebellion against the authority that allowed demons to invade in the first place, Doom Eternal instead frames Doomguy’s actions as all wholly intentional, galaxy-brain know-how from countless years of arcane experience which conveniently happens offscreen. All can be summarized as Doomguy deliberately disobeying [character], and [character] yelling at him, “You fool! Do you realize what you’ve done? Now [bad thing] will happen, and nobody can stop [bad thing]... except maybe you, Doomguy!”
All this is to say, wow, it’s not that I don’t care about the story in Doom Eternal, but this is the kind of story that makes me want to watch an hourlong YouTube lore analysis video or something, because really, I don’t want to hazard any kind of interpretation of the deliberately-obfuscated story bits as they become arbitrarily available to me during my playtime. I’m too busy killing demons!!!
But none of that really matters because, again, [Carmack Quote, IYKYK] and although I don’t always agree with [Carmack Quote, IYKYK], I believe that Doom is, at the very least, one applicable example of the truth behind that quote. Nobody plays Doom Eternal exclusively for the story (or at very least, I hope they don’t?) and it would be unfair to judge the game on the merits of its story alone. It would also be unfair to judge Doom Eternal on the merits of its platforming alone, but if I had to, I probably would judge it fairly harshly!
I didn’t mind the platforming bits in Doom Eternal on my first playthrough. In fact, I originally thought platforming was a nice change of pace between combat encounters. On my second playthrough, I thought, what exactly does this accomplish besides being a pacebreaker? There are some genuinely interesting obstacles here and there, but these are few and far between; mostly, it’s just making long jumps over bottomless pits (which don’t kill you outright like in 2016, which is good) which is a different variety of gameplay, sure, traversal puzzles always make for some serviceable pacebreakers, but there’s not any puzzle here at all, really. It’s not even a traversal puzzle, it’s just… traversal.
But again, this is hardly a point against Doom Eternal. These sections are short, forgettable, but more importantly, do not significantly hamper the experience overall.
Most of Doom Eternal zips by anyhow, lost in the constant stream of bloody, visceral murder. It shouldn’t come as a surprise then, that if I were to tell you something stupidly obvious, like “You know, if you just ignore the bad parts of Doom Eternal, it’s actually a perfect game,” because I’m sure you know this. If you ignore the bad parts of Doom Eternal, TAG1 is also a perfect DLC… almost.
It is nothing if not more Doom Eternal, except more difficult, with more enemies, and somehow condensed into only three levels. This was a super controversial DLC when it was first released, I remember my friends whispering horror stories of the legendary bullshit Hugo Martin filled TAG1 with. Now that I’ve come out on the other side of that dark tunnel, I definitely see why.
Again, I have only played this game on Ultraviolence, I know that Nightmare is the “true” difficulty for newDoom purists now but I simply decline. I will tackle Nightmare one day when I’m well and ready. Ultraviolence was and is enough for me.
TAG1 feels like a cruel and unusual joke from start to finish, and I do mean that admirably. It feels like an expansion on everything Doom Eternal set out to (and dare I say did) accomplish, as is evident because players start with literally everything unlocked. All weapon mods are maxed out from the jump. There’s nothing left for players to discover or upgrade (except for the purple perks I don’t remember what they’re called), and yet Doom Eternal has not finished evolving – this creates a lot of friction.
Your crucible is GONE. You are back to zero lives by default (although the DLC does introduce 2ups, which I could never figure out how to obtain). It was when I reached that one part (in the first level) where players are submerged and enter an underwater technobase that I realized Hugo Martin wanted my fucking head on a pike. Facing down two Marauders at once, I thought to myself, now I’ve finally entered the Big Boy Zone, no more baby crap!
I don’t remember dying a lot. In fact, I don’t think I died until the final boss which, to me, communicates that I’m at least proficient in Ultraviolence at this point. There aren't many new enemies, and the ones they introduce are a turret, an invisible whiplash, and a tentacle that is just… really big this time. The Spirits are actually interesting ideas for enemies, demanding priority over other enemies lest they possess another host. Do they elevate the DLC? Not really.
What elevates TAG1 is the ridiculous difficulty. TAG1 doubles down on every questionable design decision and demands mastery, no freebies, no half-hearted good-enoughs, just unmistakable comprehension of the available tools and their correct applications. Simple as.
Even so, all the little things pile up. The devil’s in the details, so to speak, and although I suspect I’ll return to TAG1 when I decide to replay Doom Eternal on Nightmare, I can at leasy say I’m both excited and anxious to return to the meat grinder once again. At the end of the day, it really is just more Doom Eternal, with all its quirks and many of its familiar flaws. Although id software has perfected Eternal’s combat, the only things holding back is… well, everything besides its combat (and art direction, and music…)
What I’m trying to say is, uh, the final boss was kinda whatever, and the platforming is still not so fun either, so I wouldn’t give it a 10. But it’s pretty close!
Sure, Doom Eternal has problems. Every game has its problems. Every game is graded on a curve. I would look like an idiot if I gave the original Super Mario Bros. a low score and said something along the lines of, “I didn’t like the music, and the story is almost nonexistent”. Anyone who’s played Super Mario Bros. would tell me, okay man, maybe the music’s not your taste or whatever, but the story? Mario is about jumping over and on top of things, not a story-driven narrative adventure. That’s just one example, but you get what I’m saying, right? Any critic would or should judge a game on its own merits although, yeah, all critics strike from different angles and see different things, which is why critique can be such a difficult thing to approach; but in this one instance, I’d imagine people would be calling me names for trying to claim the original Super Mario Bros. is bad because of its story or lack thereof.
The story of Doom Eternal may not be its centerpiece, and I’m not even going to pull the Carmack quote (iykyk), but I remember even playing it for the first time, Doom Eternal felt so tonally inconsistent with Doom 2016 and, to be frank, with itself at some points.
The politically correct holograms are probably the best example of Eternal leaning too heavy into its silliness, and these are some of the only elements I still don’t like that much. A lot of the sillier things are the more videogamey things, the dumb stock “GULP” SFX that plays when you shoot a grenade into a Cacodemon’s mouth, or the cork pop sound that plays when you get a headshot, or the Marauder seeing stars when you blast him with your SSG or Ballista. It’s dumb, but it’s kinda fun, too. A lot of the dumb fun in 2016 was, for me, in how the game characterized the Doomslayer through his actions alone: breaking a computer when Samuel Hayden said something he didn’t like, or disobeying orders, or even creating a backup copy of VEGA - the helpful AI program who reappears in Eternal’s Fortress of Doom.
Doom Eternal doubles down on its tongue-in-cheekness, but then triples down on its lore, creating this almost quasi-Souls mythology which is drip fed via codex entries and the like. In 2016 you could safely ignore most of this background information because, I mean, come on, it’s Doom, baby! There was only ever one question in any player’s mind in Doom 2016 and that was, by and large, are we playing as the same Doomguy from the original Doom games? In short: yes, we are, but for some reason, Doom Eternal goes even further, maybe almost too far in a few places.
From my understanding, both Doom 1 and 2 are canon, as well as Doom 64 (which I haven’t played) and apparently a LOT happened between then and 2016, and even MORE happens between 2016 and Eternal, although this isn’t given much explanation. It’s weird then, that Doom Eternal still presents itself with the same handwave-y, “Oh, you know, uh… the Ancients, and the… artifacts, prophecy, or whatever,” just constant precision airstrikes of term-sodden, lorebabbling nothing. Apparently VEGA is also GOD who was brainwashed into THINKING he was an AI? At least id software gives you a skip button for cutscenes now, yeah? But the main problem isn’t just the borderline-incomprehensible narrative as much as it is the fact that Eternal posits, yes, Doomguy is really just a dude with, like, divine superpowers bestowed upon him by an alien cyborg half-angel-demon who just liked him that much. I’m oversimplifying things a little. You can just ignore all that and boil it down to the bare essentials, Doomguy knows what he's doing. While some people (i.e. I) interpreted Doomguy’s actions in 2016 as brute force and rebellion against the authority that allowed demons to invade in the first place, Doom Eternal instead frames Doomguy’s actions as all wholly intentional, galaxy-brain know-how from countless years of arcane experience which conveniently happens offscreen. All can be summarized as Doomguy deliberately disobeying [character], and [character] yelling at him, “You fool! Do you realize what you’ve done? Now [bad thing] will happen, and nobody can stop [bad thing]... except maybe you, Doomguy!”
All this is to say, wow, it’s not that I don’t care about the story in Doom Eternal, but this is the kind of story that makes me want to watch an hourlong YouTube lore analysis video or something, because really, I don’t want to hazard any kind of interpretation of the deliberately-obfuscated story bits as they become arbitrarily available to me during my playtime. I’m too busy killing demons!!!
But none of that really matters because, again, [Carmack Quote, IYKYK] and although I don’t always agree with [Carmack Quote, IYKYK], I believe that Doom is, at the very least, one applicable example of the truth behind that quote. Nobody plays Doom Eternal exclusively for the story (or at very least, I hope they don’t?) and it would be unfair to judge the game on the merits of its story alone. It would also be unfair to judge Doom Eternal on the merits of its platforming alone, but if I had to, I probably would judge it fairly harshly!
I didn’t mind the platforming bits in Doom Eternal on my first playthrough. In fact, I originally thought platforming was a nice change of pace between combat encounters. On my second playthrough, I thought, what exactly does this accomplish besides being a pacebreaker? There are some genuinely interesting obstacles here and there, but these are few and far between; mostly, it’s just making long jumps over bottomless pits (which don’t kill you outright like in 2016, which is good) which is a different variety of gameplay, sure, traversal puzzles always make for some serviceable pacebreakers, but there’s not any puzzle here at all, really. It’s not even a traversal puzzle, it’s just… traversal.
But again, this is hardly a point against Doom Eternal. These sections are short, forgettable, but more importantly, do not significantly hamper the experience overall.
Most of Doom Eternal zips by anyhow, lost in the constant stream of bloody, visceral murder. It shouldn’t come as a surprise then, that if I were to tell you something stupidly obvious, like “You know, if you just ignore the bad parts of Doom Eternal, it’s actually a perfect game,” because I’m sure you know this. If you ignore the bad parts of Doom Eternal, TAG1 is also a perfect DLC… almost.
It is nothing if not more Doom Eternal, except more difficult, with more enemies, and somehow condensed into only three levels. This was a super controversial DLC when it was first released, I remember my friends whispering horror stories of the legendary bullshit Hugo Martin filled TAG1 with. Now that I’ve come out on the other side of that dark tunnel, I definitely see why.
Again, I have only played this game on Ultraviolence, I know that Nightmare is the “true” difficulty for newDoom purists now but I simply decline. I will tackle Nightmare one day when I’m well and ready. Ultraviolence was and is enough for me.
TAG1 feels like a cruel and unusual joke from start to finish, and I do mean that admirably. It feels like an expansion on everything Doom Eternal set out to (and dare I say did) accomplish, as is evident because players start with literally everything unlocked. All weapon mods are maxed out from the jump. There’s nothing left for players to discover or upgrade (except for the purple perks I don’t remember what they’re called), and yet Doom Eternal has not finished evolving – this creates a lot of friction.
Your crucible is GONE. You are back to zero lives by default (although the DLC does introduce 2ups, which I could never figure out how to obtain). It was when I reached that one part (in the first level) where players are submerged and enter an underwater technobase that I realized Hugo Martin wanted my fucking head on a pike. Facing down two Marauders at once, I thought to myself, now I’ve finally entered the Big Boy Zone, no more baby crap!
I don’t remember dying a lot. In fact, I don’t think I died until the final boss which, to me, communicates that I’m at least proficient in Ultraviolence at this point. There aren't many new enemies, and the ones they introduce are a turret, an invisible whiplash, and a tentacle that is just… really big this time. The Spirits are actually interesting ideas for enemies, demanding priority over other enemies lest they possess another host. Do they elevate the DLC? Not really.
What elevates TAG1 is the ridiculous difficulty. TAG1 doubles down on every questionable design decision and demands mastery, no freebies, no half-hearted good-enoughs, just unmistakable comprehension of the available tools and their correct applications. Simple as.
Even so, all the little things pile up. The devil’s in the details, so to speak, and although I suspect I’ll return to TAG1 when I decide to replay Doom Eternal on Nightmare, I can at leasy say I’m both excited and anxious to return to the meat grinder once again. At the end of the day, it really is just more Doom Eternal, with all its quirks and many of its familiar flaws. Although id software has perfected Eternal’s combat, the only things holding back is… well, everything besides its combat (and art direction, and music…)
What I’m trying to say is, uh, the final boss was kinda whatever, and the platforming is still not so fun either, so I wouldn’t give it a 10. But it’s pretty close!
Reviewed on Feb 13, 2023