johanness

First Portal had a ton of timed puzzles but many players found them really frustrating so in Portal 2 the developers toned them down by a lot and I think it's a lot more enjoyable game since you can take your time to solve the puzzles. Kinda related to this but I really hate how much traversal gimmicks there are in DE. In addition to jumps, climbable walls and monkey bars every room has cannons firing fireballs, lightning arcs, purple goo, tentacles or some other nominal obstacle. They don't make the game any more challenging, just annoying. I don't know what's so bad about just walking through a room or corridor to the next area and have a little breather.

It looks much more fun to play when you don't have to worry about the ammo, especially in the early levels, makes me wonder why they changed the values so much from Doom 2016. Just out of curiosity, I checked a pre-release gameplay video and addition to the older Doom 2016-style UI, the ammo counts are much more plentiful Plasma gun holds 350 rounds. SSG has 30 shells Ballista 16 rounds Heavy cannon holds 210 rounds Shotgun has 60 shells. Really makes me think why did they change these values to drastically late in development.

Sure, it had some satirical elements but it was grounded in Doom 3 style horror atmosphere and visual design. Most of the plot stuff, references and lore were out of the way or hidden in the codex. I think they hit the right balance there. For Doom Eternal it seems like they wanted to game to be over the top and goofy from the start. Like with the lore being front and center with 3rd person cutscenes, visual design where everything is glowey and video gamey. Bowser’s Castle -style jumping puzzles and level design instead of sticking to realistic environments. I guess that’s fine for some people but that’s doesn’t feel like the Doom I have always played. Maybe I will get used to it after playing the game and it will be fine but from all the footage I’ve seen it feels like a step in the wrong direction.

The gameplay will be probably fun but my main problem with the game is the tone, Doom 2016 at least tried to keep it serious and had really good atmosphere but everything about Doom Eternal feels like a Saturday morning cartoon, here’s a few quotes from the developers from a Polygon interview I wonder if we are talking about the same Doom series here.