Uh oh, I wonder if I cleared off Doom Eternal. Bethesda Launcher mug here!
Ohmygod, that trailer got me stoked, and I grinned as the two Marauders appeared. Not that I’m great against them. The concept of that, knowing how much kickback there was against them, is delicious.
GameSave Manager will backup Doom Eternal saves for you automatically. Not a bad bit of insurance against cloud save issues.
Yeah I chucked some money at the developer for that a long time ago. Saved my bacon several times! A good recommendation.
It’s a little clunky, but it gets the job done. Storing the files on OneDrive has saved me some heartache over the years.
Well I am certainly late to the party on this one, but better late than never yes? I just started this in the last couple days, I am up through the third level and really enjoying it. I love how wide open it is, not just a series of arenas, and traversal if far more important than I would have ever predicted in a Doom game. Some of the secret areas I’ve found so far have been really tricky to reach but I get there eventually. Haven’t come across any enemies that I just can’t beat yet, but as I think I’ve read upthread, some of the combos can certainly get challenging. So yeah, a little early to make much of a determination but I am enjoying the ongoing story of Doomguy, who has nothing to say but destruction.
I’m late too… I’ve been surprised with how difficult I’m finding it. First few areas were fine, but now there is just a bit too much going on. I may have to lower the difficulty … again. Or figure out exactly which mechanic I’m not taking advantage of.
What’s weird is that I got stuck on a jumping puzzle. I started a new level, and the first thing you have to do is to jump over a huge chasm or something, and since I’d been away from the game for a while, I’d forgotten how to jump that far.
So I’ll start over at some point and relearn how to jump, I guess.
I remember double jumping forward dashing and still there was nothing to grab onto, it was just a vast empty hall, and it seemed to be the only way to go.
I’m sure it will become more obvious once I start the game over from the beginning.
Edit: Ok, fine, I looked it up:
It turns out I just had to think 3 dimensionally. The secret was not to keep looking forward, upward, left or right, but to look downward toward the abyss I was falling into. There’s a ledge I can grab down there.
To be fair to me, the objective marker has me trying to get forward and to the right, so that’s where I was looking.
I beat the fourth level a bit earlier, I’m still kind of surprised at how important jumping is turning out to be here. I could see old school gamers getting annoyed with it, but I kind of like how it breaks things up. Searching for secrets is pretty fun too, I’ve been able to find most of them without any assistance - hopefully I can sweep up the rest later.
Kind of funny how the game kind of introduces the forces of ‘heaven’, for lack of a better word? The lore of Doom is turning out to be kind of like Diablo’s, with mankind caught in an ongoing battle between heaven and hell except heaven and hell are kind of propping each other up maybe? I’m not sure I totally follow just yet. Still, I’m enjoying the gameplay and the little peeks of plot that pop up now and then are interesting too. Really dig Doomguy’s mancave (mancastle?) too.
It’s not just movement, if that were all you had to focus on things would be much easier. I’m finding this game to be positively stressful to play, because of the combination of shooting your enemies, constant movement, and ammo/ability management. I got through the Super Gore Nest level last night and I’m not finding this terribly intuitive, and I’m not sure when it will become second nature to me. I feel like I’m constantly fumbling, trying to get my head and my hands around a game’s mechanic and then poof, I’m introduced to a new one!
It’s not that I’m not enjoying myself exactly, more than I feel like I’m on this crazy rollercoaster ride without a seatbelt and I’m barely hanging on. I don’t really feel in control at any given moment and I definitely don’t feel like a badass. I guess I’ll keep plugging along and see how things go.
Oh and I forgot to mention, I’m just playing on Hurt Me Plenty difficulty. No way am I ready to bump up that up.
Difficult is difficult regardless of the difficulty! It took me quite a while to get into the game’s frantic groove but the combat becomes a thing of beauty when it all clicks.
So I may have upped my game - I ran through the Arc Complex level tonight, and things felt different. I’m not sure what it was exactly, maybe I’m getting a little better handle on things? or I’m a bit more powerful? or just more combat options to handle different situations? or some combination of the above. Still, while I couldn’t say I dominated the level, I felt much more in control of the flow of combat, even in the slayer gate. This level just felt far less challenging than the Gore Nest for some reason, maybe partly because it took me several attempts to escape the end of that level. But I feel a little better, a little less intimidated. Though that last boss was a handful, pretty much ate all my ammo. Still, a win is a win!
I finished the campaign up. I’m not entirely sure what I think of it. I was ready for it to be over, so I guess it didn’t click with me. I didn’t really enjoy running frantically through arenas, getting shots in when I could, and running out of ammo all the time. It was smooth and frantic and pretty cool, but I wasn’t really having fun.
I enjoyed the combat in Rage 2 a lot more. In Rage 2, I started off weak and fragile, but by the end I was complete badass. In Doom Eternal, I start off weak and just felt weak the entire game. I don’t remember enough about Doom 2016 to compare, but I don’t remember feeling the same. Maybe I wasn’t in the right mood…
I got through another couple of levels last night, finally got my ass to Mars and picked up the BFG! Had a lot of fun with that mission, starting from picking up Hayden just before this and being told, ‘You can’t just shoot a hole into the surface of Mars!’ followed immediately by the objective: ‘Blow a hole in Mars’. Definitely feel like I’m getting a better handle on things, in that I’m not dying a lot - I guess at this point, people would say I should bump up the difficulty but I think I’m ok where it is, there are still spikes now and then. And I’m still a little uncomfortable with the peaks and valleys my health goes through - I’m at full, then suddenly getting the alert that I’m near death, then I glory kill some creature and I’m full! But for how long? (Not long at all). I’m getting a handle on this, but it remains a constant source of low level stress. You definitely can’t let your guard down, anything can kill you.
And then the next level was a little mindblowing from a lore perspective - I guess we get the definitive answer that this Doomguy is that Doomguy, and the events of the 2016 Doom game picked up at some point after Doom 2 (though not too sure if Doom 3 fits into this continuity). And then - Doomguy speaks! “Rip and tear! Huge guts!” So maybe even those silly comic books are part of Doomguy lore now? And there were books written by Flynn Taggart in his mancave, so the actual Doom books are canon as well? It’s all too much! It is kind of cool to see that Doomguy is basically Spartacus, able to win his freedom from the gladiatorial arena by his pure ferocity.
Ran through a couple more levels today, I feel the end is in sight (or maybe I just hope it is) and I’m pushing through. I’m back to feeling like I did in the early game, in fact a little worse. When I started, I felt like the game was throwing mechanics at me and pushing me to keep up. I felt good when I did, and there was a bit in the middle levels where I was starting to feel almost competent. Maybe. Just a little.
But then I hit Taras whatever, and another wall. I read you guys talking about the Marauder, and that’s a challenge no doubt about it. But I kind of hate the archvile even more, with its constant summoning of buffed opponents - if I see there’s an archvile in play, I can be pretty sure to use one of my extra life tokens. Usually because the enemies just bum rush me and pin me in a corner I can’t get out of. I really hate this, and I haven’t figured out a way around it. I have to just throw everything I have at the archvile and suck up the loss of ammo and life and hope for the best.
But, all that said, I did push through the Nevakul, or whatever two Hell levels are called, then the Khan Maykr level. That last one is the first time I’ve felt real frustration from the jumps. There were a few times when I just could not stick the landing and had to start all over again. And that bit where you have to jump, aim and fire at a target, then hopefully dash into the opening you made? I don’t want to tell you how many attempts that took.
I found the actual Khan Maykr fight a bit anticlimactic after all that - I mean, they straight up tell you how to beat her at the beginning of the fight so at that point it’s just execution. I don’t think I died at all (though I forgot to mention that at some point in the preceding levels I dialed the difficulty down to easy and I’m still struggling). So it’s on to what I believe is the last level, and I gotta say I’ll be glad to be done. I think I’ve enjoyed it? But I’m pretty sure it’s raised my blood pressure too. Maybe I’m just not cut out for these kinds of games.
Yeah, I had more trouble with the Arch-vile than the Marauder too, especially in that first encounter in the ruined palace courtyard area. God that was a tough fight and I kept getting cornered and pounded by everything. I was a ball of rage after that fight.
Was that a video tip? I think it was around the time the game told me to fire grenades into the Cacodemons’ mouths that I decided to turn those off. They just felt a bit too generous and early with information. I think you can also access those video tips via the lore book if you really struggle with certain enemies.
Yeah, I was wired after most sessions. That’s why I had to shift gears to something a lot more chill after I finished it! Then you’ve got crazy @krayzkrok who went from Doom 2016 straight into Eternal. That’s some serious ripping and tearing.
I really want to do a Nightmare run but there’s so much else to play! Kind of the same situation with a Hard Bastard run of Void Bastards with the DLC.
It was one of those tooltip type things that pops up when you run into a new enemy, maybe it had a video? I don’t remember. But in retrospect yeah, I should have turned those off probably. I remember one time I was walking down a hallway and randomly one of those tips popped up telling me to shoot the Doom Hunter’s rocket sled out from under him to make killing him easier. OK, guess I’ll be running into a Doom Hunter pretty soon!
But I did it, beat the campaign today, took out the Icon of Sin. I was expecting worse, to be honest - it was difficult, but not insanely so. I mean I died a few times, but I would have been surprised if that hadn’t been the case. I think there was only one archvile in that last level and I saw him spawn in, so luckily I killed him before he could do his summons. Overall, my opinion is pretty much how it’s been for most of the game - I’m glad I played the game, but it’s hard to say how much I actually enjoyed it. It felt like work at times, fitting my style of play around what the game wanted me to do. I gather from reading comments upthread that this is where most of the complaints arise from, that the game had a way it wanted you to play it, and you’d have a much easier time if you just fit yourself into that mold. Maybe not much easier, since it was pretty hard either way, but there definitely seemed to be a method that the developers were guiding us toward. Keep moving, switch up weapons, don’t be afraid to go all out - full on aggression, just like Doomguy. No hanging back, no taking cover, that’s not the Doom way. And that’s fair, it just doesn’t come naturally to me and I had a tough time with it. But I’m done, so that’s that.
Not sure if I’m excited about the DLC or not though - if it picks up from here and just gets more difficult, I may not be able to hang. One thing I’ve enjoyed is looking up the speedruns for this game on Youtube - folks are playing on Ultra Nightmare (you get one life) and running at sub-3 hour times. It’s just nuts.