I am late writing this review in 2021 but that's not gonna change the fact that doom eternal is insane. People dislike its parkour, the monkey bars, the platforms, and the terrain but i found this being great, allowing more creativity for bad-*** combos and to pick up the pace. The main problem with doom 2016 was that how slow pace it was compared to doom eternal. These platform makes each encounter a lot more fun and is a great thing which was added. The combat is great(obviously), and i like the idea of forcing you to switch weapons and manage your ammo. (but the shotgun capacity is a bit too low) This game has learnt and removed every single flaw from its predecessor and added so much polish towards the game. The diversity, the challenge, and the story are all the things that made doom eternal feel immersive. This game is very underrated and TGA can go f**k themselves. (I prefer playing on pc but consoles are also alright for me)

Doom (2016) helped resurrect the aging and dying franchise. Doom 3 was scary and atmospheric but lost the fast-paced action of the original games. Doom bought this back in 2016 with a rocking soundtrack, fantastic visuals, fast-paced shooting, and what felt like Doom brought into the future, it was nearly perfect. Eternal follows in the footsteps of Doom 2016 by trying to expand the lore, story, and combat altogether. It does a great job doing this, but it does bring about some problems that didn't exist in the first game. You are still Doomguy or the Doomslayer trying to stop Hell from invading Earth. id Software did a great job expanding the lore via a codex that has some interesting reads on the backstory of the Doomslayer and his origins and what the world is that he's trying to save and destroy. The locations are more varied this time around with more back and forth between Hell and a mix thereof. Combat is basically the same as well as the demons you encounter minus a few additions. A new shoulder blaster has been added that can shoot fire or ice bombs as well as a flame. I feel this was probably the most useless addition as it's one more thing to remember while you're furiously trying to kill enemies. The ice bomb can freeze a group of enemies if you're backed into a corner and the firebomb does a decent amount of splash damage. The flamethrower though...what was the point? On the other hand, you have a new super punch ability which can be used to knock out some demons' armor and open walls for secrets. You also get a new dash ability as well which is used for platforming. That's another thing that's been added is more platforming. You can wall climb on some surfaces and jumping from platform to platform works well enough but feels wholly unnecessary. Secrets consist of numerous items from songs to unlock to play in the Fortress of Doom, codex pages, toys, and an all-new upgrade system for the Praetor Suit and weapons. Weapons get two mods each and can then be upgraded with weapon runes. There is also a mastery upgrade that requires certain requirements to be met or you can skip the challenge with a mastery token. You can also upgrade your health, armor, and ammo with certain passive benefits. There's a lot of upgrading and acquiring and I feel this is an excuse to make the game feel artificially expanded. I preferred the simpler game of Doom 2016 with regular upgrades found. I feel Eternal is doing too much for a game that's supposed to be very simple. I also feel the new reboot series has run its course at this point. There's not much else the game can do really. The combat itself feels fine and is incredibly challenging and mostly unbalanced towards the last few levels. There are 14 missions so it's much longer than the last game running about 10-15 hours if you explore every nook and cranny. I found exploring for secrets quite enjoyable and fun as everything is on the map and you just need to figure out how to get there. There are also combat challenges such as timed gore nests, and crucible challenges that give you keys to unlock a hidden weapon. You can find sentinel batteries to unlock rooms in the Fortress of Doom which is the new hub area that also has upgrade items locked away. It's fine enough, a pain to navigate, but an interesting idea. I again feel that Eternal strays a little too far from the traditional Doom path in favor of more modern methods to make the game feel bigger and expanded when in essence most people come to Doom for the visuals, gore, fast-paced shooting, and interesting levels. Speaking of levels, the game does overstay its welcome around mission 10 and feels like it just drags as you chase the final boss around. Not only are they incredibly difficult and almost unfair, the levels end up being repeats of previous levels, and the Urdak level is boring to look at. I do like the first 8-10 areas as they are interesting to look at with demonic imagery, gore, and just overall interesting atmospheres. The demons are great to look at and fun to shoot and tear apart. The quick-time event animations are much faster this time around and more varied. Each demon has it's own set of front, aerial, and rear animations. Blue for health and orange for more ammo. You also have your chainsaw with three fuel cans to get yourself a large number of orbs, but this also is one of my gripes with the game. You have to rely on using the chainsaw to acquire ammo and health from enemies more than you do picking them up around you. Instead of giving us larger ammo capacities, you have to constantly scrounge for ammo and it drives me insane. I understand you run out of ammo sometimes in Doom, but every 5 minutes? I would die sometimes because I ran out of ammo and chainsaw fuel so what do you do then? Use your super punch and hopefully have a weaker demon around for a scrap of ammo. This focus on ammo scrounging really needs to shift in the next game. The multiplayer in Eternal is much better than Doom 2016 as PvP is out the window this time in favor of demons vs the Slayer. Two demons and AI bots versus one Slayer is kind of fun at first, but after about 3-4 hours in these modes, I was over it. It just doesn't hold my interest like Unreal Tournament or Quake's Deathmatches did. Doom was never really well known for multiplayer and while it's much better here, I wish id would just focus on the single-player only. Overall, what we get is a great sequel to Doom 2016 with fantastic visuals, a rocking soundtrack, great weapons to shoot and demons to kill, and just amazing fast-paced shooting. The last few levels are boring and overly difficult and the added stuff to combat feels like filler and fluff to pad a game that was already great.

TL:DR - Not as fun a game anymore, a lot of annoyances and downgrades from Doom 2016. I'd only recommend to buy it at -50% off or more. - Glory kills are terrible and so much worse than 2016 - Ammo is shared between some guns and is sparse - Enemies can CC and stunlock you - Game is harder than it needs to be on the earlier levels - So. much. parkour. It doesn't belong here and is just an annoyance - Too many upgrade currencies and menus get overwhelming - Bad UI makes knowing when things are off cooldown harder than it needs to be - Forced to use weapons you don't want to on a lot of enemies, like a rock paper scissors - No more normal multiplayer or snapmap from 2016, replaced by a mediocre battlemode - Has a battlepass system Although I do have a lot of complaints for the game, I do enjoy parts of it and they got some things right: - Good soundtrack as always - Really well optimised, can run on almost ultra at 144 fps which a lot of games can't really do. No fps stutters or crashes - Graphics look pretty good - They added a more prevalent story into this one, although no one plays this for the story - When in combat and I actually have ammo, it's really fun most of the time - The game has some customisation with skins and such, if you are into that (although they're not serious at all)

I really want to like Doom Eternal more than I actually do. It's mostly because the team at id Software have sprinkled a menagerie of new mechanics on top of the already hectic combat from Doom 2016, resulting in a game can feel very overwhelming at times. I'm definitely not saying the game isn't fun to play—in fact, when every mechanic is clicking and your demoing hordes of demons, it's actually better than Doom 2016. But that exhilaration of feeling like the ultimate badass Doom slayer just doesn't happen often enough. Doom Eternal is a tough game even on the Normal difficulty, so unless you're on top of your game at all times, you hardly ever feel like an unstoppable monster that the Doom Slayer is made out to be. "LOW HEALTH" or "LOW AMMO" would constantly flash on my screen—it honestly felt like these callouts were there 90% of the time. In every encounter you need to juggle executing enemies for health, burning demons for armour, and chainsawing them in half for ammo, and it can get overwhelming to ensure you keep everything in rotation. New additions to the combat like the freeze grenade and the flame belch are neat and work as intended, but because the focus is always on killing enemies and not dying, it's easy to forget about them entirely. There's a bunch of cool mechanics in Doom Eternal, I just wish I wasn't always juggling 20 other things at the same time. One of the best parts of Doom Eternal, other than looking incredible and feeling like butter, are the new Slayer Gates. They act as one-off combat encounters where the game throws everything at you in specifically designed arenas. These are easily the best parts of the game and it made me wish the campaign was as exhilarating—many sections of the campaign felt kind of cramped and not as open for improvisation. There's other disappointing things like the story which feels a little try-hard, some frustrating enemies like the shielded Marauders, or the platforming sections which often felt like filler. It's a fun game, most definitely, but it feels like too much at times.