I have a sort of love/hate relationship with Doom Eternal. I love the core combat loop, I actually do enjoy the platforming, I love its big focus on forward momentum, but I hate things like its three separate upgrade trees, pretty much every voiced line, the absolutely bizarre levels of reverence it puts on Doom as a cultural idea but especially the Doom Slayer…
But there’s one thing that bothers me more than any of those things I hate because it’s tied deeply to something I actually love. One thing I fucking adore about Doom Eternal is the way you can enter a very specific flow in each combat arena, zipping from place to place, launching off boost pads, executing dashes at just the right time, and reaching a skill level where you’re also exploiting enemy weaknesses while moving at this speed. It’s a fucking blast, really.
For about two minutes.
Because eventually it reaches a point, especially in longer encounters, where you can’t help but notice that you’re just running laps, but with a gun in your hand. There’s very few arenas where you’re afforded more than one or two loops, especially the later into the game you get. There’s very little room for experimentation or deviation from the set path, which is very weird in a game where you’ll often be given a near-guided tour of the larger arenas before they get flooded with enemies.
And it sucks! It sucks so bad! About two or three hours into the game I went from being absolutely psyched for combat encounters to just letting out a really kinda weary sigh. I had a lot of issues with Doom 2016’s combat arenas as well, mostly related to how often it felt like my momentum was being stunted by the traversal system, but Doom Eternal feels like a massive overcorrection that feels really fun for a while, especially if you’ve managed to get the upgrade points you need to hit the ammo capacity sweet spot, but then just hits a wall.
I could rant about other things, like how the Doom Hunter boss fight is fucking atrocious in both idea and execution, but this is the thing that really gets me. For all the times it felt like my momentum was being stunted in Doom 2016, I was also always visualizing new paths when it came to combat. I was always adapting to the situation and finding new ways to get around to deal with the enemies that were being added.
Eternal just fumbles the fuck out of that and that sucks in a game where you’re constantly doing a Shooty McBangbang.