Well, I did it, I beat the second DLC. And it did definitely add some complexity and difficulty after the first level - mainly with some tricky new enemies. There’s an infected imp that shows up and always gives me hell when it does - if it hits you, you’re cursed and can’t boost and have impaired damage, both giving and taking. Additionally, the only way to lift the curse is to kill the imp that hit you - and the only way to kill it is with a blood punch. So, often you’re stuck seeking out this one particular imp trying to find someone to glory kill to charge the blood punch. I got wiped out more than once by this trap.
And oh god, that final boss. If you don’t like marauders then you may want to skip this, because it’s basically the king of the marauders. It’s not even really all that hard once you suss out his attacks, and how to draw him out so you can attack him. No, the problem is how dragged out the whole thing is, it’s such a battle of attrition for two reasons: first, he’s got five health bars you’ve got to wear down. Second, if you hit him at the wrong time, or if he manages to hit you with an attack, he’ll heal himself. It’s such a tug of war. Luckily, there’s a checkpoint after the third health bar, you can quit out at that point if you need. And I did, I just got frustrated and stepped back. I still think the boss of the first DLC was more difficult overall, but this second DLC boss was just too much in my opinion.
But overall the whole thing was fun, challenging in (mostly) the right kind of ways, and an interesting learning experience. The game taught me how to play it, even if I wasn’t always the most attentive student. I will set it aside for a while, but I could see myself trying it out again. And in the meantime, there is always Doom 64.
I’d suggest digging in the mod discord, because there’s lot of player-made master levels and horde modes. There’s ton of stuff beside the official content.
(installing/removing mods is also easy)
Rebought this on Steam with both DLCs and some ‘deluxe’ content for less than what the DLC costs on the Bethesda store. Biggest plus is that I can now cast the Bethesda launcher into the fires of hell where it belongs.
I have to admit now that I’ve seen the video, I stopped noticing the reflections almost right away when the action heated up. It reminds me of when I saw screens of Quake 2 RTX and it looked great, but when I played it myself I immediately stopped noticing and it made no difference.
It’s a good reminder though that I need to jump back into Doom Eternal and try it again. Unlike Necromanda this game has physics and enemies have weight and stuff.
Exactly this. And Doom (Eternal) is the kind of game where I’d happily sacrifice fidelity for extra 50 fps, assuming you have a monitor that supports high refresh rate.
Ah that sucks. I suspected that might be the case which is why I stopped playing the PS4 version a few months ago, but I still had some decent progress.
Did you ever try this demo? I just played some of it this morning and thought, “krayzkrok should play this,” and behold you posted about it months ago.
I fired up Doom Eternal last week, on Ultra Violence, just to see the ray tracing. And although I didn’t notice the ray tracing, I had a lot easier time with the game. I don’t know if they changed something, but it felt like I had more time to think and react than before, and therefore wasn’t dying as often. (Gamepad).
They did nerf a few things, most noticeably the spiders who are both waaaay less spammy and less accurate with their plasma guns. They were the primary early game threat and I guess they misjudged how often people would actually snipe off their turrets.
Anyway, I also took the RTX plunge and didn’t really notice much difference. It’s reflections only, which I didn’t know before coming into it but explains why its seldom noticeable - outside of the shiny cultist base levels most textures in Doom Eternal just aren’t reflective anyway.
That said, it wasn’t a wasted reinstall as another level has got the master level treatment - Taras Nabad (the one wherein the Slayer gets a sword). It got the full Super Gore Nest treatment with its own set of achievements for completing it with the various game difficulty configurations. Super Gore Nest was a challenge to say the least but this goes even further. Perhaps too far - there are a couple of really vicious battles set in small spaces which couple your lack of cover and maneuverability with much tougher ‘ambient’ spawns than the usual imp chaff; lots - lots - of shield guys. I kinda overlooked how deadly those dudes were in the main game, those automatic shotguns they pack tear through you when they get the drop on you. Keep that plasmagun handy, and don’t forget a punch in a pinch will briefly stagger them.
That said there were a couple of other surprises in there which were quite cool and demonstrated even with a done-and-dusted fixed level layout there’s plenty of scope for trickery.
My main complaint with the master levels is that there’s no resuming if you need to quit, and progressing through it is arduous and lengthy work. The game would benefit if they were moved out of being tied to a campaign save slot, especially given that they now have their own independent difficulty settings anyway.
