Doom Eternal Review

Doom Eternal is a game in which the writing does not matter. Now let me tell you about the writing.
Doom Eternal's a fantastic game on the gameplay front, and a horrible, awful mess on the writing front. Does that matter? Sometimes, but not enough to diminish the quality of the gameplay, so it's something of a moot point. Subsequently, I talk about it for ten minutes straight.

[@eirikeiken]

My favorite anime.

[@abelesperanz4196]

dad is finally back after getting milk for 2 months then left again for another milk never to be seen again

[@Aaox]

Look, the lines at the store were very long. Can I borrow five bucks I want to buy some lottery tickets

[@SweetPeteInTheBackSeat]

@@Aaox Got a Patreon dad? lol

[@lunokhod3937]

I like the idea that Doomguy is the human realm equivalent of God or Satan, but they did it in such a freaky way that it feels like a particularly chubbed up fanfic. Like if the Doom Slayer was the lone nuclear missile of humanity in the cold war between heaven and hell it would have been awesome.

[@Aaox]

Yeah, they just go too hard with it. Doom 2016 did a fantastic job of making you *feel* powerful, without explicitly telling you you *were*. Doom Eternal won't shut the fuck up about how powerful you are, and that really sucks the wind out of it for me.

[@gansmith]

Aw yeah! What is the best review music to hear for Doom Eternal? A subtle hint of Katamari Damacy.

[@Aaox]

What is the Doom Slayer if not a Lonely Rolling Star?

[@Legomaster-nj4oo]

@Aaox Now I know how the die hard Duke nukem fans after either playing Duke nukem forever or watching one of the trailers for it and to a lesser extent how SugarPuch Design Works felt about the more recent Mortal Kombat games.(go to Time Index {13:00} for more on the first point) which is beyond sad because I was actually planing to by Doom Eternal for the switch

[@santiagovasquezvanturnhout550]

goood in depth review you did here aaox. i especially enjoy that you talked about the mortaly challenged stuff because i had heard about it when the first trailer came out but never heard anymore from it in the other reviews i have seen for the game. definitely made me made me reconsider when i want to purchase it.

[@Ritokure]

Nothing better to break the two year game review hiatus than breaking said hiatus down with a bloody chainsaw.

[@krovarus1911]

Can't tell you how much I appreciate that you liked the marauders

[@Aaox]

It seems a lot of people really didn't, which I totally get because you almost never fight them in ideal circumstances, but the feeling of rattling off a Super Shotgun > Ballista > Shotgun combo - a *combo* - on a Marauder feels _incredible_ every time you pull it off. As an enemy, they're great in theory, they're just utilised very poorly.

[@krovarus1911]

@@Aaox I just really appreciated how they worked as a sort of test for the player. Like on the higher levels they essentially tell you "if you don't have your quick swap skills down by now then this is not going to be a good time son"

[@Aaox]

@@krovarus1911 Exactly. They're not just an enemy where you shoot at them unti they die; they're the only enemy that you have to bait out and take advantage of. They are to Doom Eternal what Death Scissors are to Devil May Cry.

[@ThePseudoIntellectual]

Great content mate. Also your voice, accent and snark are an absolute treat. Definitely sticking around for more.

[@pincopallino36]

Nice to see you back

[@bagelbuddy1]

5:56 this is my favorite thing you've ever said

[@bagelbuddy1]

SCRATCH THAT-- "A BUILT WHITE DUDE WEARING A GARBAGE CAN"

[@DrRESHES]

7:49 makes me smile every time.

[@Ω3103ζ]

I just barely payed any attention to the story, often going "yea whatever" to the events surrounding the doomguy and the earth. I never took it seriously and also never really catched onto the things you said in the video about the uac lady. The thing is though, that in doom 2016 i could still follow the story and kinda knew what was going on, even with my adhd-riddled brain and copious amounts of energy drinks in my system. I barely cared about the angel lady and was even more confused as to why the game didnt start of where it left me back in 16'. I was desinterested in the story up until the marauder section because of that. After watching your video i realized that i kinda share the same views as you do, i just didnt cringe as much because i didnt want to notice i guess.

[@Levixne]

Imma need that tower of god breakdown king

[@Aaox]

I just watched the most recent episodes; enjoyed them quite a bit, even if I'm still not quite sure what's going on. The sword lady's attractive. Since it's one of the only shows still airing I expect it may be very high up on the list of review candidates come End-of-Season.

[@noirscape_]

I literally earlier today had heard the comparison that Doom Eternals writing is essentially the fanfic writer's sequel to DOOM 2016. It'd certainly explain the stupid attempts to marry the plot of 2016 to 64.

[@Aaox]

That's exactly it! Eternal reads like if Doom 2016 were written by a hyperactive thirteen year old on WattPad. Which does baffle me rather completely, because the sole writer for 2016 is one of the five writers for Doom Eternal. Although, that said, any Doom game that has five writers has about four writers too many for a Doom game.

[@noirscape_]

@@Aaox I feel like the biggest mistake is ultimately the fact that they overcharacterized the Doomguy. The rest of the plot isn't even all that different from 2016. The only difference is that instead of Pierce, the villain is the Kahn Makyr. Both are undone by their own hubris and their idea that they could control the demons. You lose the anti-corporate message from 2016, which I think is quite a loss, but the basic plot beats aren't _super_ different. The foil between Hayden and the Makyr works-ish? Eternal kinda flubs the execution on this, but the idea is there and a large part as to why this fails is the fact that they 1:1 copied the doomguy's personality from the Doom comic. That acid trip of a comic was always thought to be the inspiration for the 2016 character (which was easily summarized as "I really FUCKING hate demons"), but it's just overdone in Eternal. Doomguy gets played in Eternal exactly like he is in that comic, and I can't find a good reason as to why, beyond "lol wouldn't it be funny if our hero was a nutcase with a gun", which yeah as a comedy beat it's kinda funny, but as a serious character it just fails, especially when the rest of the game treats him completely seriously. 2016 got that part right imho. He's not without comedic moments there (glory kills, terminator references in lava, the corpse peek when Hayden says it was worth it), but the character was played completely seriously as this stoic badass with a comedic side, rather than being the nutcase he becomes in Eternal. The gameplay is a straight sidegrade in terms of improvement imho. I like the new weapons and universal viability of all guns, I'm not too big on the constant need to reload by breaking open zombies as some sort of ammo box. It adds a layer for me that makes combat feel a bit more confusing than it should have been.

[@zenxmizuki]

DOOM Eternal is everything I can wish for in a gameplay perspective. story? meh. Soundtrack? GOD FUCKING BLESS MICK GORDON. Honestly, I see alot of parallel with DOOM 2016 and eternal's relation to Godzilla 2014 and kotm -both franchise reinvigorated the hype from their original works with the first film -both franchise became more "fan-pandering" with the sequel but sacrificed good writing in return -both franchise's sequel had juxtaposing stellar and bad parts to them (kotm being the monster fights and cgi but bad characters and doom eternal being gameplay but convoluted lore)

[@anonmoose3734]

I have no interest in neo-Doom. However, still watched for the relaxing music and silky voice.

[@The_Reaper_Ren]

What are you on when you write these reviews? I want to know because I want some.

[@Aaox]

Sleep deprivation and dehydration.

[@ShallowContrarian]

Hi dad, I know I'm 10 months late with this question but you're not the only one who can leave for cigs. Anyway what'd you think about the change in aesthetics from 2016 to Eternal? Genuinely I really disliked it overall, the science fantasy bored me and the old designs being brought back (which made the already clashing new art style clash even more) made me groan knowing that they were trying desperately to pander. It might just be me but one of the most refreshing things about 2016 in my mind was how it was a genuinely novel take on sci-fi aesthetics, it might've had some laser guns and touch screens but it was very grounded because most of the sci-fi stuff was insanely advanced industrial equipment which is a rare direction to head in sci-fi.

[@Aaox]

I think the changes are emblematic of the whole "People rather liked the fact that we deified the Doom Marine in 2016; let's make that the main focus of the design of Eternal!" shift in general, which was and is my main sticking point with the game. I appreciated the environment variety in Eternal, at least, but I could never shake the feeling that it was a symptom of the drive to take what - in 2016 - was stated almost entirely through gameplay alone, and scream it from every aspect of the thing. The science fantasy also felt, as you say, fairly uninspired. It all just felt so misguided. The generic fantasy and the sci fi and the industrial and the apocalpytic earth areas made for decent enough visual distinction, but it felt more like a Painkiller-esque gamut of barely connected video game levels than the coherent world of 2016's outing.

[@Chunkyloops]

Is that monogatari music I here

[@baikal9268]

Any plans on having a discord server?

[@thereferencegide]

I love the review as always though I have to say that I did not get the takeaway that the spokesperson propaganda was a sort of right wing spin or that the demons were symbolic of immigrants (though yes i can very much understand how many can arrive to that conclusion) but that it is indeed a parody of a corporation trying to sell you a product, just in this case the product is eternal damnation with the resistance using the rhetoric being emblematic of just how indoctrinated and consumed by Hell's lure humanity was thanks to the UAC even before the invasion began (after all the resistance is led by a person who uses an evil demon soul sword to power their entire arsenal and is the person largely responsible for the apocalypse by playing with hellfire and adamantly refusing that he's been burnt), this was also a theme present in 2016's story and codex. Speaking of the codex I do also indeed believe that both it and the narrative it presents are indeed not meant to be taken very seriously despite just how much of it there is, it's reminiscent of death metal lyrics in the way that it just feels like Id's writers were just having fun trying to come up with a narrative that incorporates all the most brutal and epic words they could think of and I am the type who will read the shit out of a joke story myself. Of course this may still not excuse your issues with the writing and to that end I'm just one who can be fairly easily entertained but even then there's 1 or 2 moments that do go a bit far even for me like some of the spokesperson's lines and the doctor logs. Oh yeah on tutorials while yes they're very in your face and maybe explain a bit too much you can also turn them off which imo absolves it completely.

[@Aaox]

I think you certainly could read it that way, but if Hell's indoctrination were that widespread, A) I'd like to see that actually set up more, and B) I'd like to not see the picture of Samuel Hayden holding the Crucible leading an army of resistance fighters _against_ the demons. At best, it blurs the message, at worst it invalidates it. If I recall correctly, don't they imply it's not actually the UAC's fault but rather the Sentinels who became the Hell Priests and the Khan Makyr who are actually responsible for the corruption of the UAC, rather than Hayden himself? They put Hayden on a bit of a weird pedestal in this game considering he was a tertiary antagonist in the previous one. I know they're not meant to be taken seriously but my point was more that they didn't need to, and they walk all over the more subtle, funny story Doom 2016 told by being completely over the top. Perhaps there was nowhere else to go after that game, and this was the best direction they could think of, but the hard lean towards over-the-top ham and obviously false gravitas just rubbed me the wrong way completely. You _can_ turn tutorials off, yeah, but they added a lot of new mechanics to Doom Eternal, so I didn't feel like it was safe to just turn them off wholesale from the start. I feel like if there were two types of tutorials, one for mechanics and one for enemies, and you could toggle them both seperately, that would resolve the issue, but since the current option draws no distinctions, it's hard to give it a free pass.

[@TheGamerThatKills]

@@Aaox I feel like they shouldn't have even put anything remotely political into it since that allows for the argument to had in the first place, be the initial inclusion benign or otherwise. Or even if it did make a politically-coloured joke to not make it a long-running one on top of that. That said I personally didn't find anything too egregious about such content in the game but I can understand others finding them somewhat frustrating.

[@Aaox]

@@TheGamerThatKills That's the big point exactly. It didn't need to be in there. Like I say in the video, I hope it was just a shitty sales tactic to court controversy to push sales upwards, but even then, that's a very mean-spirited, EA-circa-2007 way to drive sales. If 'mortally challenged' were a one off thing I'd have been mostly fine with it, but they keep repeating it over and over again from the first ARC log through to the end of the game, and every time it reared its head I'd just roll my eyes and sigh with exasperation. Frustrating is a very good way of putting it. They managed to be anti-corporation in Doom 2016 without resorting to politics; the fact that they felt the need to in Eternal, to me, either bespeaks a lack of confidence, a lack of creativity, or both.

[@thereferencegide]

@@Aaox Aaox I do think that Hell's influence was set up suitably enough since it is established that Humanity had been using argent energy to solve an energy crisis for who knows how long and that the hellpriests had been in contact with Olivia and subsequently the UAC well before the Mars invasion had even begun. I'm not really seeing how the art of Hayden leading with the crucible blurs the message since in my eyes it highlights the image of this man who is marking the downfall of the planet since by the beginning of the game the resistance has totally and utterly lost the fight and earth is all but doomed. My takeaway with responsibility is that Hell has an all corrupting lure that affects anyones that becomes aware of it, where then those most affected become a catalyst for that world's consumption (hellpriests for the sentinels, the Khan maykr for Urdak, and the UAC for earth). Imo Hayden is on no more a pedestal than he was in 2016, hes presented as someone who has vital information that you need but is attempting to further his own nefarious agenda in the process of helping. The slayer obviously still hates haydens guts and I feel it's a pretty obvious route that a sequel or dlc will feature him betraying you using the hell crucible and the fortress.

[@Aaox]

@@thereferencegide But didn't he betray you already in 2016?

[@medic5387]

An aaox upload!

[@quantumlasagna4669]

See you guys in a year

[@DrRESHES]

If i could give this video game a name that would sum all my feeling towards it and any other game of its kind, it wouldn't be a word in its favor. if anyone would like to call me old fashion i wont make any excuses, but there's just no appeal to these games. they're just a vomit of blinding blurs. at least in The Last of Us 2 i get to do what i always wanted to do, but i won't spoil what it is.

[@danielnolan8848]

Would mind the ironic "jokes" if they weren't thrown in you're face, should have just been Easter eggs

[@Twilightcz]

..I really want to play it and not have it spoiled but it will take me 40 years to get enough cash for the game and a pc that coud run it

[@TanaBaka]

When did your voice get so deep? You sound like Ahoy.

[@ColonelCbplayer]

Doom Eternal feels like a Saturday morning cartoon made by a 12-year-old and I kinda love it for its campiness and heart. I guess its more like a taste thing because I would utterly love if Skeletor flies out of nowhere and taunts doomguy. Even the small details like the doomslayer keeping vinyls of songs from the original game are such a geeky thing that makes the game feel more like a love project than just a corporate product.

[@Aaox]

It just rubbed me the wrong way because Doom 2016 managed to pull that same camp off without feeling, you know. Over the top. It was funny in 2016 that the Doom Slayer also collected toy figurines on the side, since he was, by all accounts, an otherwise faceless, voiceless killing machine. In Doom Eternal, with the painting of him and his rabbit, the memes on his triple monitor desktop, and the laser guitars, it felt totally natural that the Doom Slayer would collect funko pops, which is kind of my problem with it.

[@ColonelCbplayer]

Aaox doom 2016 definitely had a very different atmospheric feel, probably cause the game came from salvaging what came from Doom 4’s troubled development, which the early staged looked more like cod shooters and other military shooters of the time before the entire project was rebooted to look more like the dos games. 2016 felt like the classic games in gameplay but kept the visual design style of Doom 3 which went more for the survival horror genre. The state of Doom 2016 being successful came more of an unexpected accident in which then studio ID probably attributed to nostalgia and went overboard with it rather than keeping the new direction 2016 had which is a bit of a shame.

[@Giglioti]

Though I agree the writing is subpar and there's way too much talking and "story", I truly feel that you forced yourself to read way too much into the "anti-sjw lines", which I don't even think they are, to me they are a critique of corporatism and evil companies ready to sacrifice everything & everyone for their own gain, in this case hiding behind the "Progessive & Modern Company" mask and lexicon It feels like you got angry at it and chose the uncharitable opinion on a game that is not serious nor is trying to say something, it's just guns and heavy metal

[@Aaox]

It's a two minutes of a seventeen minute long review. I acknowledged the 'evil corp using progressive language' defence, and that doesn't stand under scrutiny since the good guys also use the same language. I didn't get angry, I got exasperated; it didn't need to be in the game. They got the same message across without resorting to using political language in 2016, and the *last* game I want to be political is Doom. The fact is, just by using that language, they *are* saying something - something quite resonant with a lot of people, if the baying of the crowd when the UAC Spokesperson first uttered 'mortally challenged' at the Quakecon reveal in 2018 is anything to go by. Even if, and that is a _big_ if, they meant well by using it, the sad truth is that people did rally around that language. The game is, as you say, guns and heavy metal. It's not serious. Subsequently, iI don't think it should utilise issues that, for some people, are very serious, flippantly.

[@photonicpizza1466]

If you take a look at the posts on /pol/ around the time of the trailer, though, you'll see quite a few people proudly claiming those lines as being against immigration and the like, saying the game is "redpilled as fuck" and such. This also led to a bunch of videos on KZbin in the same spirit. The game itself most likely didn't intend it like that and just had it as cheap satire (which would still make it an eye-rolling line), but that didn't stop people from interpreting it that way. I'm not a "death of the author" kind of person, but the way something is interpreted is still important, especially with something that attracts a very fervorous audience, such as videogames.

[@Aaox]

@@photonicpizza1466 Precisely so. Even if that wasn't Id's intent, the sad truth is that you can't flippantly use words like that without some people inevitably rallying around them. Doom 2016 didn't use political language because it didn't need to. Doom Eternal didn't need to either, but it did anyway, and I felt the need to at least _mention_ it.

[@TheGamerThatKills]

Great review! Now I don't agree on everything but sure that's the damn point isn't it? Regardless this was as well put together as anything else I've seen from you Aaox, nice job as always.

[@Aaox]

Thank you very much! And yeah, that was my issue with this review - that most of the problems I have with Doom Eternal are deeply subjective - because objectively the game is still a teriffic thing to play. Glad that even if you disagreed you did so civilly, too, I was nervous about throwing this one up.

[@TheGamerThatKills]

@@Aaox Honestly I find most reviews are just a litmus test at best for the quality of any given piece of media. You have to look at a lot to see whether something is going to be either good or bad. Sticking with a reviewer is pretty much a way to more easily gauge what aspects of it you'd respond to since you get to know their likes and dislikes relative to yours. The other reason is because they're a verbose, eloquent bastard with a fetish for silver haired anime girls and are immensely entertaining. PS - hope you're staying safe, don't want to lose the video-monkey or we'd be in danger *and* bored.

[@norwa3518]

please watch Kaguya-sama, Aaox!

[@Aaox]

I am! I enjoy it greatly!

[@passdoutcouchpotatos]

I thought the mortally challenged joke was hilarious. Frankly I dont understand your problem with it