Be Excellent To Each Other

Two words: shotgun grapple.

Fuck. Yeah.

I still haven't finished the first one. Got stuck on the boss near the end and ran out of BFG ammo. Haven't been arsed to retread the entire level again.

I really must get around to that.

I will be all over this like a cheap suit, DOOM is one of my top ten games ever.

Oddly enough I didn't like the original Doom or its sequels and never understood what the fuss was about, even when it was shiny and new. The new DOOM however I played through to completion three times over on all the difficulty levels.

If Doom Eternal is pretty much just more of the same, I'll be quite happy.

Deffo a PC purchase for me, I can't hack games like this with a pad even though I'd quite like to play it sat on the couch with awesome 5:1 surround sound.

I'm slightly worried about bigger, more sprawling levels. I liked the tightly packed levels in Doom. And "It's more like the original Doom" arguments butter no parsnips...

Oh and I don't like the arm-knife.

It’s got a ... urgh ... hub world.

It’s also got ... urgh ... more story.

These things look awful. But the combat looks about the same and some of the glory kills genuinely made me laugh. But more third person cut scenes? I mean, why the fuck? The one thing people loved about Doom 2016 was that we didn’t give two fucks about the story and the lore because it was just about the shooting.

Fear not Mr Satsuma, they've got this.

I’ll be needing an abridged version of that 55 minute video.

I thought Doom was 2016 not 2017

It's going to be awesome.

I quite liked some of the story, especially the background on leading up to the disaster in the facility. I enjoyed reading the codex entries too, but I'm glad they were optional and could be done at leisure.

When it got to the hellscapes was when I became less interested, and the gravelly voiced readings from those stones, talking all about the prophecy of the 'doomslayer' (or whatever it was called), seemed a little bit silly.

I'm not sure about these new third person cut scenes. I don't think it suits, and I don't like seeing the doomslayers face, just enough to make a forum post about it but not enough to do anything else, or to put me off the game.

I rather liked how the demons were all scared of the Doomguy. I thought was ace.

Hugo explicitly addresses all of this stuff in the podcast.

First of all they acknowledged that some of the Codex entries and story elements in DOOM 2016 were better than others, for DOOM ETERNAL they ruthlessly worked on only putting in stuff that worked, and was interesting and funny.

He also says words to the effect of 'Of course some people still won't give a shit, so hey, just press skip and you'll be murdering demons five seconds later'.

It's a long podcast but well, well worth a listen IMO. (I listened to it whilst I was cooking yesterday evening.)

One thing that's clear is that it's not going to be a DOOM 2016 retread, they realised early on in development that wouldn't be good enough.

But people liked Doom 2 and that was basically a data disk

Again, covered in the podcast.

Hugo covers this by saying that just doing DOOM 2016 again didn't feel right, the 'always push forward' mechanic wasn't going to carry a second game, but adding in cool new stuff on the DOOM 2016 template simply made Doomguy feel overpowered.

He talked about how the devs and people in the office weren't playing the game for fun, and they were worried.

And at that point they started doing a major reworking of their approach to the game.

Seriously, listen to the podcast when you get chance (commute, walk, in office on headphones, whatever?), it's a fascinating insight into game creation you don't often get, and remember Hugo is the Game Director so he's coming right from the centre of the entire project.

I loved the Doomguy's character. He is the most expressive silent protagonist we've ever had.

I see the devs made their staff crunch pretty hard last year.

https://www.vg247.com/2020/01/21/doom-eternal-delay/

Nah, I’m not buying it now on ethical grounds now I know what they put their staff through. It’s about time we stood up and made our voice heard about the awful practices.

One man can make a difference

That man, is pie support

I always support my local pie. UNTIL I GOT RIPPED.

Good writeup of things we've been discussing here:

https://www.pcgamer.com/after-playing-d ... -we-didnt/

I liked the concept, yes, a monster for the mosters to be afraid of, but I felt the way it was presented through the deep voiced talky-stones was a bit hokey.



I listened to some of it, and I got that bit. It was interesting but I just didn't fancy listening to it all, thanks for sharing it though. It was interesting that he mentioned that they realised it needed a change in direction when staff stopped playing it for fun. I've never really stopped to think how much attention goes into balancing things and how it can tip in the wrong way quite easily.

Grabbed a key. £38.

Ah well, if it gives me a few hours I'll be happy enough.

Can believe they're still charging that for Doom with the sequel only a couple of hours away.

I don't think this is the thread you think it is.

I've played some of it. My thoughts: too much sodding platforming. Lack of feeling of place that Doom 2016 had. The setting feels generic. Feels like we're starting in the middle of the story.

It’s a sequel HTH HAND

The middle of this game's story. Like you were playing on a mate's PS4 and accidentally loaded their save, and suddenly you're hunting down some characters and being told off by other characters, none of which you've ever heard of.

It certainly is pretty different, and I agree with you, suddenly Earth is infected and there's all these things you have to do. It's far more "generic fantasy" than "sci-fi", and you need to farm ammo in a way you never did in the 2016 one. Not sure I agree about the platforming, mostly it's just been climbing the "CLIMB HERE" walls for me, but you may have played more than I have (I did the first two levels).

I should point out that I'm fucking loving it. RIP AND TEAR

There's one bit which is literally you jumping on collapsing platforms over a pit of lava.

Don't get me wrong, the shooting is pretty fun. I'm just (thus far) not enjoying it as much as Doom '16.

Oh, and I'm not a fan of the 3rd Person Cutscenes. I liked inhabiting Doomguy as he made his feelings known.

Yeah, I didn't like that either. I don't want to know what he looks like.

The idea of Doomguy has always been that he represents the player. He's like You but with a shitload of combat skills and attitude. That's why he's never been given a name and has generic features. Doom '16's characterisation worked because he mirrored our own thoughts.

I don't think the Doomguy as presented thus far in Eternal has that.

Did you see him in Doom3? I can't remember.

You don’t see anything in Doom 3

I played through the first full mission last night, and was in completionist mode so took around three hours about it.

I have to be honest it didn't click with me immediately, but then I realised how they'd shaken things up a bit. Ammo is really limited, but they compensate for this by giving you the chainsaw straight away and it always slowly recharges enough juice (one bar) to chainsaw a minor demon, (this is different to DOOM 2016), so that's basically your ammo replenishment mechanic, they want you to be using the chainsaw far more frequently, basically.

Once that had clicked I enjoyed myself more, although I'm not sold on the earth environments yet, and the third person cutscenes aren't doing it for me.

Also the music doesn't seem as good so far, (although DOOM 2016 does have pretty much the best soundtrack ever, so that's a high bar to cross), hopefully that'll change.

That probably all sounds quite negative but I had a blast with it overall, and will be firing it up again later on.

PC SPOD BIT:

4K is off the table this time around unfortunately, I've had to drop to 1440p at ULTRA settings and that's a good solid lock on a v-synced 60FPS. Bizarrely though, according to the ingame performance metrics, it's my CPU that's tapping out, not the graphics card. (I couldn't get it locked at 4K60FPS at any graphics settings, which suggests it is a CPU bound issue.)

METAL AS FUCK

The Marauder can go and fuck itself with his sparkly fucking axe.

I'm not sure whether I love or hate this game, right now. It's so stressful, and not always in a fun way.

This is good fun but I’m taking a while to adjust after getting back into COD for the first time in ages.

I have to admit, I'm not really enjoying this, which surprises me.

I think it comes down to two things:
#1 : Arachnatrons are just not fun to fight. Bullet sponges when you have very limited ammo... Nah.
#2 : It feels like the resource management part has become far too much of the game. See: limited ammo requiring chainsaws (but often not a chainsawable enemy around), flamethrowers to get more armour, etc etc

I'll probably return to it at some point in the future, but I think I'm done with it for now.

Music is better. For a total lamo like me it's quite hard even on the easiest setting

I like the much better loading times. The 16 one was a bore to load. Runs like butter.

Ahhhh this has properly clicked now, the final piece of the puzzle was to play the game with headphones on in a dark room at absolutely ear-bending volumes.

RIP AND TEAR MOTHERFUCKERS.

So I was playing through this a few evenings ago and not having as much fun with it as I felt I should be, (I'd got to the fourth level), and ended up putting it down for a few days. (I was playing on HURT-ME-PLENTY.)

Yesterday I was back in the mood for more, but didn't feel like picking up from where I was, so I had the idea to just start again, but this time put the game on NIGHTMARE, as that's the difficulty level I most enjoyed DOOM 2016 on.

IMMEDIATELY BETTER GAME, even the very first little arena fight was dramatically more engaging.

The combat loop gets locked in straight away, there's no way you can sort of 'work around it', as HURT-ME-PLENTY allows you to do, and every mass fight becomes a brutal struggle for survival.

On HURT-ME-PLENTY I'd been getting a bit perfectionist about things, trying to complete fights without getting through too much ammo, not taking any significant damage, and generally looking cool.

You can forget all about that on NIGHTMARE, it's simply a case of dealing with the problem at hand, by all means necessary, and worry about the next fight when you get to it. The full auto on the shotgun, which I'd considered something of an unaffordable luxury (due to ruinous ammo usage) on HURT-ME-PLENTY became a necessity on NIGHTMARE, as it's the only way to take down the Arachnotrons quick enough.

What I quickly learned is to leave the shit demons alive, and effectively use them as ammo crates or health drops as the fight progresses.

Therefore Hearthly's top tip if this isn't ringing your bells, is to put it on NIGHTMARE, and you'll soon find yourself playing the game correctly, as it won't let you survive any other way.

You see, I had the opposite experience... I knocked it down to easy half way through and started enjoying it way more. The platforming still kinda sucks though.

Maybe you could resolve this difference of opinion via duelling nine hour Youtube video links?

I'm feeling good about that challenge.

God yeah there was one section that I found genuinely quite hateful, and was thinking to myself 'WHY THE FUCK IS THIS IN A DOOM GAME?'.

I'm amazed the platforming bits got through playtesting, not only do they not add to the game, they actively detract from it.

To my mind the game would be a lot better if they patched it to remove the platforming sections outright, and simply have a teleporter that takes you straight to the end of the platforming bit.

Utterly perplexing design decision.

I still like it. I've got a sword now. FWOMB. FWOOSH.

HTH HAND

Does the sword have any usage limits or cool-down timers or does it turn you into (even more of) a straight-up killing and rampaging machine?