Just finished taking out the second Hell Priest on Nightmare difficulty.
The good:
Dashing is really fun and compensates well enough for the lower movement speed.
Lots of demon variety, combat feels frantic as fuck. The savagery rune is an absolute must-have now.
The boss fights are much better designed and substantially more challenging than their 2016 counterparts. Getting my ass kicked repeatedly should not be this fun.
Having secondary utility for the Super Shotgun is pretty neat.
The story is exactly the kind of pulp grimdark I'd want from a Doom game.
Soundtrack sounds a lot less like Nu-Metal and a lot more like actual metal.
The bad:
LOTS of controls, feels overwhelming.
Weapon swapping is much slower, even when upgraded. In 2016 you could get it down to a split second. That is no longer the case. That is the one major issue I have with the game so far.
As I thought, Demon-on-player glory kills are gone, at least for now. Hope they return eventually.
This game is seriously CPU heavy. I'm running an i7-7700 and getting bottlenecked.
Hearing that stupid Hell-Priest's taunt every single time I died to the Doom Hunter... they weren't kidding when they said they were fine with frustrating the player as long as the player had something to learn.
I'll be honest, I would have been just fine with a Doom 2016 expansion that contained modest gameplay changes coupled with better graphics/music and new storyline. I didn't really want a total overhaul.
All in all though, it fundamentally feels like a Doom game and a pretty damn good one at that. I'd say I've gotten my money's worth, if nothing else. I don't disagree with the sentiment that the control kit feels a bit bloated initially, but with a few rebindings and some time it everything starts to fall into place. Strangely enough, the combat feels more flexible than the previous game, just in a much different way. It feels much more focused on risk vs. reward. I'm actually legitimately seeing what they were getting at with "combat puzzle" after the first boss encounter. You definitely have the best experience when you swap through your weapons more frequently based on range and enemy type. The more I play it, the more sense it makes and the more I like it.
Taking on those twin Doomhunters actually forced me to think much more strategically than I am inclined to do. Whittling both Doomhunters down such that I could kill them within a short span of time and not get swamped by the wave that killing one unleashes was not easy, especially on Nightmare. But once I pulled it off, it made the 20 times I died trying to beat both the single and twin doomhunters feel completely worth it.
For the record, I did not use that Sentinel armor feature, so I don't know what effect that would have on the boss fight. Don't ask why.
Good to know switching from a 6600K to a ryzen 3700X was the right call. Didn’t realize that AMD’s default fans had heat pipes, which is nice.
I don’t know if I agree with @BrunoMattei about the weapon mods being half-useless again. The plasma gun locking for a second after using the heat wave has killed me already, the combat shotty’s mods are both pretty strong to the point that the full auto seems to do more sustained DPS than the Super Shotgun, and both the chainguns seems fairly good (though the shield probably needs its upgrades more than most of them). The ballista’s charge shot makes me hate the slow time rune.
Several enemies being super weak to a single weapon is bad design since it removes having to consider your situation and pick the most efficient weapon because the weakness is always the most effective choice.
The key part of that is thinking of the optimal weapon and how to use it in the middle of Shit Fuck Everything Exploding. It's why I like the Marauders; they really shake up your ability to think straight and force a new set of priorities.
I am also really glad Hayden is treated with the level of respect he deserves.
jesus the marauder glory kill where he doesn't stop stabbing them. I know it's personal dude but chill out!
Favourite story beat:
He's implicitly human, not from Argent D'nur. He is literally too angry to die.
I don't think there is any enemy that is harder than Marauder. Even a BFG to its face doesn't seem effective (though maybe firing it next to him is better). I couldn't find a better strategy than firing 2 Super shotgun shells and the dashing away, it seems his stagger time increases as he loses health but its not guaranteed.
Is it just me or is the Nightmare of this game significantly harder than Doom 2016 Nightmare? I beat it a while back all in one sitting and while some parts did take me multiple deaths I eventually came out on top and finished it. Mission 3 on Eternal and I’m already regretting picking Nightmare even though I desperately want to beat it on that difficulty. I am just getting stuck in certain fights that are ridiculous and I’m not even on any boss fights yet. Am I too pleb to beat Eternal on nightmare?
Is it just me or is the Nightmare of this game significantly harder than Doom 2016 Nightmare? I beat it a while back all in one sitting and while some parts did take me multiple deaths I eventually came out on top and finished it. Mission 3 on Eternal and I’m already regretting picking Nightmare even though I desperately want to beat it on that difficulty. I am just getting stuck in certain fights that are ridiculous and I’m not even on any boss fights yet. Am I too pleb to beat Eternal on nightmare?
It is much harder. As mentioned, I had to lower it from Nightmare to Ultra Violence. No shame there. At least they give you the option of adjusting the difficulty on the fly.
I would say the #1 culprit for the difficulty is a lack of ammo on the good weapons and just getting whacked out of the blue by a Revnant rocket or an Aracnotron.
Is it just me or is the Nightmare of this game significantly harder than Doom 2016 Nightmare? I beat it a while back all in one sitting and while some parts did take me multiple deaths I eventually came out on top and finished it. Mission 3 on Eternal and I’m already regretting picking Nightmare even though I desperately want to beat it on that difficulty. I am just getting stuck in certain fights that are ridiculous and I’m not even on any boss fights yet. Am I too pleb to beat Eternal on nightmare?
Not really, feels a bit easier since you don't have to give a shit about ammo thanks to the RECHARGEABLE chainsaw, just run circles around the arena and as long as you don't stop moving you'll be fine. Honestly it feels way worse than the first reboot, at least you kinda had to think about what weapon you want to blast what demon with, not so much here since the unlimited ammo means you can just spam the strong weapons as much as you want.
Honestly it feels way worse than the first reboot, at least you kinda had to think about what weapon you want to blast what demon with, not so much here since the unlimited ammo means you can just spam the strong weapons as much as you want.
I think "you want" are the key words here. If you find yourself doing this and don't like it then you have the power to stop doing it. Not saying you are doing this but its always been a pet peeve of mine when people complain about broken tactics in single player games but keep doing them and complain. To me its like complaining there is an easy mode setting in a game but refusing to play normal or hard.
I haven't played Doom Eternal yet so maybe the developers intended this behavior and designed around in which case it is entirely their fault.
I've been playing this in short and controlled bursts. I still greatly love it but each level is such a time sink and when you have a job it can be difficult for time management. The checkpoints are generous and I've yet to encounter that issue that I had with Doom 2016 where the game would freeze when loading a level at 95% and the only work-around was to manually back up your saves and reload a previous save.
My last death in this happened because I tried to switch to my shotgun to stagger a fodder enemy for a glory kill because I was low on health. My shotgun was out of ammo so the game helpfully switched me to the rocket launcher, which I shot at the zombie point blank and killed myself. Can we get Doomguy a bandolier or something?!
Ah yes, found it. Slayer's room is funny generally.
Man, fuck whomever decided what Doom needed was more jumping puzzles and obscure ways to advance a level. One part of older level design that definitely did not need to come back.
Best parts of the game remain for are some of the huge arena fights that actually work. Sometimes they can be a bit obnoxious, but the ones that work feel great - the Slayergates seem particularly well designed.
I think "you want" are the key words here. If you find yourself doing this and don't like it then you have the power to stop doing it. Not saying you are doing this but its always been a pet peeve of mine when people complain about broken tactics in single player games but keep doing them and complain. To me its like complaining there is an easy mode setting in a game but refusing to play normal or hard.
I haven't played Doom Eternal yet so maybe the developers intended this behavior and designed around in which case it is entirely their fault.
I’ve gotten to Taras Nabad now andI have some questions for the people that are further in. Is there an ammo replenishment point in the hub? I went to the training area and used all of my BFG ammo; and does anyone feel like they’re too stingy with BFG ammo? They probably had to be careful considering you were swimming in it sometimes in 2016 if you were lucky with the ammo rune. How do you do the first secret encounter in the crucible mission without BFG ammo? The pain elemental and doom hunter seem a bit much for 30 seconds.
Edit: Also the Gladiator boss fight fight bugs out, a lot.
I played a little bit of Doom 64. I played EX before so I skipped right to the new levels. Not sure if you can do it right from the get go or you have to beat the Heretic secret level and then you can do it.
Ah yes, found it. Slayer's room is funny generally.
Man, fuck whomever decided what Doom needed was more jumping puzzles and obscure ways to advance a level. One part of older level design that definitely did not need to come back.
Best parts of the game remain for are some of the huge arena fights that actually work. Sometimes they can be a bit obnoxious, but the ones that work feel great - the Slayergates seem particularly well designed.
Jumping puzzles were never a part of old school Doom. Hell, it didn't even actually have z-levels. The game used the coding equivilent of optical illusions to have multiple levels.
