E3 2019 - Hands on with Doom Eternal
Doom 2016 was a game that surprise a great many people, not only did it reinvigorate the series, it proved to be one heck of a fun time and when Doom Eternal was announced last year, many people took notice, at E3 2019, the game was finally made playable for people and I made sure I got my taste of it.
The portion of the game that I was able to play through, was very much the same that Bethesda showcased on stage during their conference, but unlike that presentation, I was kind of bad at the game. The game provided a quick tutorial about how movement and weapons worked in this latest instalment, things are pretty similar, but there are a host of changes across the board, some of which make things more fun and easier to enjoy. The Doom Slayer is now equipped with a shoulder mounted flame thrower and a host of new abilities.
The flame thrower does not deal a lot of damage, especially to some of the larger enemies, but it does allow for smaller ones to be pushed back, giving you a moment of breathing room to recover and while that might not sound like a lot, with the intensity that the game is delivering, that is a much needed and welcome idea. In the tutorial, another aspect the game highlighted as movement as a whole, now you can run and jump as before, but you can also dash, twice in fact, letting you clear large gaps when jumping or close the distance to an enemy.
The other big aspect of movement is that you can now climb walls, or at least small sections of them, if they have the right look, the downside to this, you have to click in the right stick on consoles to begin. So if you are jumping over a large gap, dashing across to clear it and then fail to press the stick down, to latch onto the wall, you will fall and die and while in time it might become a second nature, during my time with the game, I forgot to do it all the time. But while the movement, might take some getting used to, the improvements to the gun combat, are done so well, that it makes it seem almost effortless, almost.
The effort is not from the combat, as that is as smooth as they have promised, instead it comes from the variety of enemies and weapons that you now have access to. The biggest change is that there is now no massive delay between wanting to get the chainsaw out and it being ready to use, while a few seconds might not sound like a long time, when you are surrounded by hordes of demons, those few seconds are quite precious. When you combine a move like that, with the ability to target parts of enemies, things get chaotic and in the best way possible.
In the tutorial, they paid a little attention to being able to shoot the weapons off enemies, leaving them easier targets for your slaying might, but while they remain stationary, doing it on an enemy in motion, whilst you, yourself are running around, is quite a bit more difficult. Thankfully, the satisfaction you get when you do manage to shoot a weapon of a demon, is very good and when that shot leaves them open to a finisher, it just feels so good.
Doom Eternal seems to be taking all the parts that made the last game so good and not ramping them up to 11, but instead taking it to 20, while the build was clearly a work in progress, it looks beyond epic and being able to hunt demons later this year, can’t come soon enough. The game is coming to PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Switch on November 22nd.
