Post
by Raid » Wed Jan 29, 2025 9:25 pm
So after that discussion on Doom: Dark Ages last week, I went back to Doom: Eternal, which I had loved upon release but had never finished (I'd gotten quite a long way in, three or four levels from the end). I think the gameplay loop in this is incredible, extremely fast and satisfying... but the game eventually starts throwing *so* much stuff at you in one fight that it starts to break down a little. Perhaps it's because I resumed playing the campaign halfway through (and I was playing on Ultra Violence), but I think the amount of mental discipline you need to activate the right abilities at the right times and not accidentally lob your ice grenade when you mean to use the flamethrower is just a bit too much, because it absolutely punishes you for even a second or two of stumbling around without any armour. It's also surprisingly difficult to hurt enemies just enough to get a glory kill without exploding them, so health gets annoyingly difficult to find when you're under pressure.
But to top it off, this game ends with one of the worst, most frustrating boss fights I've ever played. It's an absolute slog, the boss has such an insane amount of health, and being in the wrong spot as he punches the ground can lead to you losing almost all of your health and armour in one go, and there are so many very threatening enemies in the arena that you can't ignore, so if you're not being punched by the boss, you're being bitten by a Pain Elemental. On one attempt at the first phase, I must have been fighting constantly for ten minutes, and then got cheap-shot punched into a corner I couldn't get out of because I was being blocked in by a Baron of Hell and a Cacodemon, and died. I gave both phases a good, solid few tries, but ended up relenting and using the sentinel armour because I just did not care anymore. It's a bloody awful piece of game design to cap off a game that otherwise fucking rocks, and as the game just ends immediately when you kill the guy, it left me with a really sour taste in my mouth instead of any sense of achievement.
And fuck Cyber Mancubi. They are such pains in the arse in this; the only way to kill them quickly (without one of the three heavily resource-limited super weapons) is to blood punch them, but every single time I tried to do that they just do a nova attack which eats too much of my health. If you don't do this they take too long to kill and you get overwhelmed by everything around them.
) Ive felt a game is a true successor to ADOM. This thing seems incredible. That said I dont feel I'm in the right mindset to enjoy it properly right now for whatever reason (its hard to explain!) but very much look forward to coming back to it.
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