Doom Eternal - Hell on Earth Returns

Are you sure about that?

Well, you’ve convinced me to try this game out, interesting write up!

Sounds like someone finally got an SSD :)

Guess I’ll have to get this when it’s back on Sale on Steam.

And you’re not the first person I’ve seen complain that higher difficulty levels on Doom 2016 are just not fun.

I played them both not on Nightmare but the level below that, and I had a much easier time in Doom 2016 than I did in Doom Eternal.

In Doom Eternal, first on PC and now on Xbox, my progress is glacial. Most days I can’t even make it past a single checkpoint. But it’s still fun to try.

I know this has been discussed a million times, but will I be bored on HMP? I really don’t like modern linear shooters, and HRose’s manifesto notwithstanding, I think I’d prefer to zip through this on a tour and then play it on Ultra-Violence when the RTX upgrades come out. I just hate the idea of taking a lot of damage and retrying fights in a game I don’t expect to be thrilled about.

I’m afraid that is the kind of subjective question you can only really answer for yourself. How can anyone say if HMP difficulty fits you? What’s your aim and reaction time like?

I will note that I think this game excels when you’re prepared to push yourself. If you’re not dying, and often, on your first time through I’d argue that you’re (ironically) doing it wrong and have perhaps missed the point. Like Hotline Miami, the near-instant reloading is a pretty strong hint as to what it expects you to be doing quite often (I don’t think enough praise is heaped on that technical achievement, if it were much longer I half feel the game would become too frustrating to persist with).

The levels are pretty, the guns cool (if wholly unoriginal) but the writing sucks. Consequently I’d resist the urge to ‘tourist’ your way through it on your first play as you will misread the entire tempo of the game start to finish and be condemned to slowly plodding through levels without relying on the mobility skills and will likely just fall back on ‘bad’ habits cultivated in slower FPSes.

You’d finish and be entirely absent that feeling of knowing you’d actually done something pretty awesome. As in, not your character or the scripted scene at the end being awesome. You being awesome.

Whether that actually matters or not to you is something you’ll have to explore - if you don’t already know the answer.

I imagine a game like this people with so-so controller right-stick aiming ability better stick with mouse and keyboard? Sounds too fast and furious with my controller skills. I need to finish my Ubi games before that subscription runs out on the 17th.

I play just about everything with a controller (since I play just about everything on a console, at least every AAA game) and this was probably the first time I’ve really felt like I was probably at a disadvantage. I definitely wouldn’t have attempted a higher difficulty level. Watching the folks who can really perform in this game it’s all basically point and click, and I definitely can’t do that with a controller.

Well, you just answered it for me, so I guess like that.

Ultra-Violence it is.

I’m on Hurt Me Plenty and I die plenty.

Yeah, I’m not suggesting everyone just whack it UP TO THE MAX and suck it up. You should adjust depending on how you find it. Make it as hard as you can without it feeling like a total brick wall, I guess. Just… don’t throw in the towel too quickly?

Anyone who can beat it on HMP with a controller is pretty awesome in my book. :)

For the record, I had to bump it down to ‘Baby’s First FPS’ difficulty to actually beat the game.

You’re saying I should try this game with a mouse and keyboard? I haven’t played a shooter with a mouse since Bioshock 2. I wonder if I even have the skill set anymore. Is it like riding a bicycle?

The problem with m+k, for me at least, is never the mouse. It’s getting my fingers to cooperate together to manage all the various keys. It’s very fumbly to me - I remember getting Borderlands for cheap on Steam and I figured I’d see how the other half live and play just mouse and keyboard and oof, what a disaster. It’s a training thing, just like I could give up inverted controls if I wanted to (but who would want to?) it’s just investing the time to get better that holds me back.

And I find that tradeoff worthwhile, at least usually. I like that I can reach any command or function I need pretty easily and with minimal finger movement/distance on a controller. I understand completely what I’m giving up with regards to quickness or movement and aiming with a mouse, and in fact usually find it a worthwhile trade. Doom Eternal though, is one exception. It almost made me want to try it on a computer, if I had a halfway decent one at least.

You should try it on your computer. I’ve heard Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal can run smoothly on potatoes.

Another advantage of Eternal not mentioned is that I’m playing Nightmare + extra lives. Or how it’s called.

That means the failure state is gradual, and that means you again have more space to learn and adapt. Comparing the very beginning of both 2016 and Eternal, 2016 is “flatter” as a difficulty curve. The first room was absurdly challenging for me, but after I beat it, I also beat the rest of the level dying a few more times, but easily. Right in that first room I was getting one shotted and couldn’t even figure out how everything worked. There are imps that jump on pillars and shoot you. I was shooting them buy they didn’t flinch and didn’t die, making me think they were in some kind of invulnerable state. The game, coming from Eternal, felt WEIRD. The truth is that they seem harder to die. In Eternal I think with a couple of shots they already light up for a finish, in 2016 they are more resilient.

The result is that Eternal throws at you more enemies, but right from the first room those enemies aren’t a problem, they are a resource. Use a melee attack and they replenish your life. In 2016 there are less enemies, but they seem more resilient and give you back far less health. Even if Eternal pushes so much more sheer caos, it also makes it more manageable because all the enemies spawning are a constant health resource just waiting to be harvested. So in 2016 I was pushed to a more defensive approach because health was a thing that I needed to preserve. You can’t go crazy and jump in the chaos in the same way I was doing in Eternal.

(That’s also my guess why everyone says that 2016 is much easier: it was harder for me because I had to unlearn Eternal. I simply assumed it was the same game, easier. It’s much more different at a radical level.)

The feel I got is that for damage received in two games is similar, maybe 2016 has it even increased. But the real difference is that if I’m low on health, in 2016 I need to put A LOT more effort and time to go back up. Of course, on the other hand, 2016 has a lot less enemies to worry about.

For perfect balance (but I don’t know how it works as the game goes on), I’d give the player, in Eternal, a little larger health pool. Leave the number of enemies and sheer chaos the same. That’s perfect. But it’s a big toy that is fun to play, so it’s fun if you have space to flex. If you die too quickly then it’s problem. But that’s why I think the extra lives option is perfect.

Some more observations about 2016, coming from Eternal:

  • I spent quite some time at the beginning of level 2 to find the access to the classic Doom door. I understand that some people enjoy this aspect in a game, but in Eternal and with the goal of replaying these are really out of place.

Then right in the next room I hit another substantial difficulty wall, and there are many aspects about it:

  • When I succeeded, I didn’t play any better or didn’t find any pattern. It was just chance. I tried many different things through the various attempts, but nothing really worked.
  • Many times I died because I was trying to move forward, and I couldn’t. I was locked in place because of some mysterious reason. Turns out the imps have an habit of jumping in front of you and crouch so low that they are OUTSIDE the view. Without double jumping there’s no way to move past them.
  • I’ve died many, MANY times during a glory kill animation. I might misinterpret, but is this even possible in Eternal? I thought the animation gave invincibilty frames. I remember one particular occasion where I had my eyes on the health, I had 40 left, and died right in the middle of the animation. Many other times I died with a +30 health shown on the corner while the screen was going black.
  • I was out of ammo and without the chainsaw it’s really a bad place. The pistol would be completely useless if there weren’t explosive barrels to trigger.
  • In general I felt overall swamped. No chainsaw, no double jump. I was getting constantly cockblocked by some monster. No applicable strategy or flexibility to win the room. With glory kills not giving invincibility and imps throwing explosive balls everywhere that can one-hit kill me, it’s really a game of chance with very little control.

So I’m here thinking this hellish experience depends entirely on not having the mobility of double jump, and flexibility of ammo from the chainsaw, and that the game will become different once I get there… Right after this room I got the chainsaw, finally. And here’s an even bigger disappointment:

  • There’s really no shortcut for the chainsaw?!? You have to press a key to switch to it, press another key to use it, then press another key to switch back to a weapon. That’s THREE, for what Eternal needs just one. It makes all the difference.

No extra lives, no immediate chainsaw, no invulnerability frames, very little health from glory kills, much more cramped spaces with worse mobility… How is it possible that 2016 is easier?

I’ve researched this some more and while I cannot confirm how it works in Eternal, it’s definitely very poorly designed in 2016.

Glory kills, at higher difficulties like Nightmare DO NOT give you any form of invulnerability during the locked animation. The AI “shouldn’t” shoot at you, but any charged attack plays out just the same. This means that if an imp is charging a fireball, or the fireball is in the air while you start the glory kill animation, you’re going to take the full damage from it.

But even worse, the glory kills don’t provide any mechanical advantage. The health a kill gives back is only proportional to how low is your own health. But that means a “normal” kill just works the same as a glorious one.

That means that at Nightmare the glory kills PENALIZE you, since they make you vulnerable during a locked animation, without offering any real advantage.

And this doesn’t even acknowledge that you’re vulnerable to damage during the animation itself, not just after it.

This also confirms my impression that 2016 is harder at the beginning:

(and I can see why people have a BIG problem moving from 2016 to Eternal, proportional with mine going from Eternal to 2016. In 2016 the glory kill is an optional “cool” animation that gets boring after 5 minutes, in Eternal it’s the PRIMARY mechanic to stay alive! And why me playing aggressive in 2016 just isn’t working. Aggressiveness LOWERS the difficulty in Eternal.

It all makes sense now. When I hit the difficulty wall in 2016 I started doing more and more glory kills, in the hope to stay ahead on health regeneration. I didn’t know this is precisely what made me MORE vulnerable instead. This is TENET, the game design. 2016 is like walking BACKWARDS. Only that for me Eternal is the “normal” way while everyone goes in the other.)