With our world essentially shut down for the moment, it seems as good a time as any to play a video game catered around taking our stress away. One about a character coming out from their own little "castle" to make the world a cleaner, more organized, and brighter place.
Of course, we're talking about Doom Eternal here, what did you think it was? The number of collectibles in it is absurd and it's based on mastering the mechanics more than it is grinding for levels. The game is good, and time flies while we're playing it. But, there are a few flaws and rough edges that we noticed only after we finished our Ultra-Violence playthrough. So, here are the biggest things that stick out.
10 Doom Slayer Can't Mantle Onto Slopes
You wouldn't think this comes up too often, but it happens more than you think. Doom is built with platforming and combat in mind, and you'll always be able to tell what area of a map is strictly for platforming and which is a combat arena.
The combat arena's in particular are veritable jungle-gyms built specifically for having fun with while killing demons. But, a real fun-stopper are the ramps and slopes, as Doom Slayer can't seem to figure out how to mantle up onto them. And on the harder difficulties, anything that stops your movement for even a second could be a death sentence.
9 The Glory Kill Animations Get Old Quick
There are a lot of new enemy types in Doom Eternal, but they sort of pepper them in. First, its the Arachnotrons, then the Hell-Knights, and then Marauders start going thrown in there. And, in order to stay alive long enough to whittle down their health, Doomguy will be spending a lot of time using Glory Kills on mobs to get his health back.
And frankly, the glory kills are even less intrusive than they were in Doom 2016, but they're still a major mechanic of the gameplay. You can use a rune slot to make the animations faster, but nothing helps the fact that there isn't enough variation in the animation pool itself.
8 Where Did Hayden Teleport You In Doom 2016?
Up until now, we've primarily been talking about the gameplay elements of Doom Eternal, and for good reason. The gameplay has always been the main draw of the series since it seems a bit absurd to get hyper-absorbed into a plotline involving portals to Hell on Mars. But, the writing in Doom Eternal is pretty good! The only big complaint we have is how harshly we're dropped into new plot elements.
The game starts and Doomslayer is back in the action and has a castle in Space! Plus, the AI we apparently purged at the end of Doom 2016 is back and seemingly fine. If fans remember, Samuel Hayden, the 3-meter tall robot man, teleported us somewhere frigid at the end of Doom 2016, yet that and the mystery of Vega is hidden away or outright ignored plot-wise. It just gave most players whiplash for a bit is all, and it was an odd choice.
7 The Melee Sharing A Button With Interact By Default
To re-iterate, melee in Doom Eternal is how players execute both their Glory Kills and their Bloodpunch. It's also how they bust open walls and interact with objects out in the world. Frankly, that's fine, we're used to the "interact" key being used for more than one action. But, it's the action the key shares its use with that matters.
Honestly, it's a very small complaint that doesn't necessarily need "fixing" but the fact that melee is also on the interact button means that a lot of the time Doomslayer will elbow the air instead of interacting once or twice. Another game with a similar issue was Final Fantasy 15, where Noctis would jump almost every time before he picked up an item.
6 Doom Guy's Fists Aren't What They Used To Be
And speaking of the melee, it feels more satisfying this time around, at least to us, but is much weaker in comparison. In Doom 2016, players could almost entirely depend on their Super Shotgun and fists in any fight, against any villain.
But, in Doom Eternal, that's not the case. Melee attacks are much weaker in comparison, they don't really even kill basic mobs anymore. Honestly, it's fine considering all the other new mechanics as well as the Blood Punch. But it will take veterans of the series a bit of time to get used to.
5 Toy Preferential Treatment
Doom Eternal has an absurd amount of collectibles, a staggering amount if we're honest. And most of them are pretty worthwhile to gather! Cheat Codes are useful, Codexes tell the story, and Sentinel Crystals unlock tons of stuff.
But, what do the toys do? Well, they're cute, and they are put on display back at Castle Doom. But one thing we notice only after finishing out collect-a-thon is that the Doom Slayer toy is the only one that gets an extra little animation! How neat would it have been if Doom Guy had a sub-one-second little reaction to each toy like he did with his own?
4 Give This Man A Quick Turn
On Ultra-Violence and Nightmare, you'll get killed from behind a lot. Sometimes you'll be running away from an Arachnotron and not even notice you backed right up against a Hell Knight. The game has indicators for where the damage comes from, but unless your controller/mouse sensitivity is through the roof, you won't turn around fast enough to truly punish demons for laying hands on you.
The further we got in the campaign, the more we desperately wished Doom Eternal had a Quick Turn key or a macro like in the Resident Evil Games.
3 Some Of The More Tedious Weapon Masteries
Once you've unlocked all the upgrades for a specific gun mod, a mastery becomes available that requires a certain challenge to unlock. And, as we've unlocked most of them at this point, we can safely say that some of them are well implemented and others you have to grind for.
The first mod most people grabbed for example, which is the Shotgun's sticky grenades, requires you to destroy 25 Arachnotron turrets with stickies in order to master it. This either means you can only kill these robo-spiders with the Shotgun for the foreseeable future, or you grind out the 3-5 with them in the first level.
2 Those Unavoidable Tutorials
Out of everything in Doom Eternal, this was the only thing we could find that was a "step back" in terms of design. So, every time you unlock a big movement ability like dashing or a new move like Blood Punch, Doomguy gets pulled into the "tutorial zone". This area lets him try out the new mechanics once or twice before being thrown back into the thick of it.
The only problem is, on subsequent playthroughs, this still happens. In Doom 2016, if a player was dumb enough to try and play on Nightmare or harder, the game understood and skipped past the tutorials, which is how it should be.
1 Why Can't We Find Isabelle In-Game?
We looked far and wide, we truly did. We searched at the bottom of every Hell Pit and scanned the horizon of earth from our Doom Castle. We checked in all the Demon entrails and even dug through our other Praetor Suit in the wash. But no, nowhere can we find her.
Who is her you ask? Why Isabelle of course! Isabelle from the hit series Animal Crossing, to be more precise. Why else would Doom Eternal and Animal Crossing: New Horizons release on the exact same day? But alas, we've found nothing yet, so here's hoping a teensy chibi Doom Guy washes up in New Horizons sometime soon.