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tldr: It's fun, but. Also, go for HMP on your first run.
As expected, it has the same linear arena gameplay as the previous one, but it feels faster and more consistent at that. Doomguy turned trapeze artist Popeye lumberjack. I didn't mind the glory kill and chainsaw pinata system this time and it all works together smoothly. Visually pretty cool unless QC style puts you off. The levels look good, and some great setpieces and blending of styles e.g. techno cathedrals. All a bit random though, for better or worse. Story is crap of course - not that anyone cares. My hot take, though: in a game like this (especially with its cutscenes and color-coding), if you need a radio voice giving directions or blathering exposition, it's flawed design. My main issue with the game is that it seems they packed too much stuff in for the player to handle on top of the combat, which gets quite distracting, at least on the first playtrough. There's eight standard weapons, each of which have two alternative firemodes (weapon mods) which you can unlock. Then there's weapon points acquired through combat to upgrade each of these mods; and once fully upgraded there's an another bonus upgrade to be unlocked through grinding. Then there are tokens to be found for upgrading your suit for some useful and some completely irrelevant features. There are crystals to upgrade max health, armor and ammo. And finally some secret extra encounters to unlock yet another weapon which you'll then end up never using. Oh, and at some point you get a sword too. All the weapons, mods and upgrades come in handy in certain situations, but they overlap, and it feels like there's not enough game for each of them. Perhaps it's more about individual playstyle? Still, a less-is-more approach would have been more beneficial imho. I played on UV, because I thought I was a proper badass (and of course for reasons of dickwaving. *flip* *flap* slapping it across Lun's cheeks!). Got my ass kicked countless times and, well, it is what I signed up for after all. Though, despite some bullshit situations, eventually I realized it mostly was because I was trying too hard to unlock all the stuff and get the challenges - which the game, at least on the harder difficulties, kind of requires. However, this works to prevent the player to get into (or stay in) the "groove" and flow of the game, so to speak. Surely enough, when I replayed some sections without caring for any performance or exploration, I found that I had an easier time and enjoyed it much more. Started a limited lives run (on HMP) after completing the game and suddenly it's very much the mindless slaughter fun I was looking for. I haven’t played Eternal yet but all of the upgrade systems you described were also in the previous Doom, right? When I played that game I started out thinking it was a bunch of unnecessary complexity but by the second half I was familiar enough with the core mechanics that I appreciated a new thing to pay attention to, and started actually using the weapon fire modes when they tactically made sense.
I remember the original being a mix of linear levels and hub based levels, and the hub based ones, like Foundry, were some of my favorite. Sounds like from your review they are all linear this time. Is that correct? This time around there are just more upgrades in Eternal, or at least it does feel like too much.
There were no hub areas in DOOM2016, it was all just linear missions. Although Eternal also has linear progression, it does however have a hub "HQ" area, which is some floating fortress in space - doom guy/slayer now hangs out there. Has demonic guitars hanging on the wall, collectible toys on shelves, PC that can run original Doom games, stack of video games, books and magazines. I was relieved when I finished, as it was a lot of juggling, which wasn't always as streamlined or flowy feeling as the previous game often was. There were certainly huge improvements also - the game design is more epic and varied in a way I generally enjoyed. But all that variation comes with some less than successful and sometimes quite extraneous feeling elements.
The story blows, too much going on there as well. The reboot handled the storyline much more gracefully and integrated it into gameplay in a way that made more and more sense as the game progressed - I was actually fairly impressed with that element of DOOM. And it left more to the imagination, which is almost always better. Like Lovecraft mythos, or many other following horror universes, it is better when there's a good amount left merely hinted at instead of exhaustingly detailed documented and catalogued. ...seem to have this obsession with upgrade points and pointlessly customizable stuff. Doom 2016, while a fun game, had way too many types of upgrade currency to keep track of IMO, and Doom Eternal's upgrade/customization systems seem to be even worse. I can't think of a better way of making a Doom game "un-Doom-like" than over-complicating it by throwing in a bunch of useless modern mechanics like that. It's rather tiring, and sometimes I just want to kill monsters and explore hellish levels. That's why I've been playing a lot of Quake 1 maps lately.
> I can't think of a better way of making a Doom game "un-Doom-like"
that, and also cosmetics and "man cave" area, because kids like it nowadays!! > seem to have this obsession with upgrade points and pointlessly customizable stuff
Dopamine. There are a few studies on how "checking things off a list" and similar behavior can release dopamine and therefore get you hooked into the action. Same for customization. That's why so many modern games put that crap in: it works for a large percentage of their target audience. And if their target audience is bigger, the more generic and bland those systems are. Sad, but there's a reason to it. Upon revisiting Doom 2016, it is indeed pretty much the same. Though I remembered it felt more natural there in comparison. Maybe because you get weapon upgrade points by discovering secrets in general, and the collecibles and suit points are less obviously gamey inside the levels.
The good news is: It's a Gears turn-based strategy game. The bad news is: It's a Gears turn-based strategy game.
What you get is an almost adequate re-skinned XCom, in which good graphics, smooth functionality and useful skills barely compensate for repetitive missions, constant map re-usage and occasional but insomnia-curing boss combats. All of this is wrapped up in the classic Gears aesthetic which was bad enough to make GOW an instant uninstall & refund failure and has hardly improved with this - pre-teen fantasy wooden cliche meatheads fighting slightly differently textured wooden cliche meatheads. Whereas, say, MYZ had instantly endearing characters, WH40K mechanicus had fresh and interesting races, and BTech had goddamn battlemechs, the characters in this were half-heartedly loathable straight away and this improved only marginally with the distant perspective and acquiring helmets to cover their moronic visages. You can't polish a turd and serving that turd in a different format is scarcely better. If you've played all the vastly superior TBS games in the last few years and want yet more generic TBS to pass the time, this may well serve that purpose (as it did for me, with a lot of very casual hours in). If you've played all the Gears games and want yet more, this will serve as a timely remind to book your lobotomy appointment. https://store.steampowered.com/app/870780/Control_Ultimate_Edition/
Buy Control SPECIAL PROMOTION! Offer ends 3 September -20%£34.99 £27.99 Add to Cart Savour that sweet sweet coming from EGS beta-testing to proper Steam release DISCOUNT. Gotta love it. The devs get EVEN LESS from your purchase cos they fucked around putting it on EGS exclusive. Ziggurat 2 goes into Early Access in a few days. You should be able to watch someone streaming it on Twitch soon after to see how it plays (that's my plan). And you can check the recent tweets from @Milkstone for some teasers.
https://twitter.com/Milkstone http://www.milkstonestudios.com/ As a reminder, Ziggurat came out in 2014 or so and is a pretty neat indie rogue-style FPS game with magic. It made up for lackluster procedurally generated levels with plenty of good ideas and interesting weapons & powers, so I'm interested to see what they're doing for the sequel. Hopefully better level designs are in the works. Very cutesy and cartoony and kid-friendly, but also looks pretty harmonious and cool settings / backdrops.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1_iUAA8N6kU Some parts of it make me think about if setpieces were abused to make the levels or if it was done with something like Doom4's snapmap.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6grwdMemV1o thanks to Vondur for posting it on discord.
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