Doom Eternal was one of the playable games featured at EGX London 2019. It was without a doubt the highlight of the experience for me. The game doubles down on the intensity of Doom (2016) with more enemies, deadly weapons, new abilities, platforming and a higher difficulty. EGX attendees played through the Phobos segment that was previously revealed at the QuakeCon demonstration of Doom Eternal.
Doom Eternal amps up all of the returning enemies whilst including new demonic foes to battle. Players must adapt to all demons on the battlefield and play around them, they have to quickly react and learn to battle the new enemy types using the most suitable weaponry for them.
The Doom Slayer is also equipped with new abilities: the flame belch, a dash, parkour and the blood punch. The new abilities are all a very natural progression for the Doom Slayer since we last saw him in (2016). The Doom Slayer’s arsenal leads into a new four point combat system where the player must manage health through glory kills, ammo through chainsaw kills, armour by flame belching enemies and area of effect melee attacks with the blood punch.
The introduction of platforming was surprisingly brilliant. It helps to break up the combat and provide the player with additional challenges that use the Doom Slayer’s entire kit. The platforming segments were both well designed and intelligently creative.
Doom Eternal will surprise both returning and new players, the game’s combat difficulty has definitely been drastically increased. The demons can dispose of you as quickly as you can dispose of them. To truly excel, players must balance their health, ammo, armour, the enemies on screen (prioritising the right demon), the demon weak points and the 3D movement of the Doom Slayer (parkour and dashing). If the player fails to do so, they will die. However, the introduction of the extra life mechanic will assist those struggling to clear combat areas and will reward those who wish to explore to find more lives.
You cannot talk about Doom without talking about Mick Gordon’s masterpiece of a soundtrack. It is definitely safe to say (from what was heard in the gameplay demo) that Mick Gordon has hit another home run with an epic and ferocious soundtrack that will get your blood pumping whilst forcing you to headbang.
Doom Eternal is a masterpiece in a making, playing it only furthered the hurt from the delay.
DOOM Eternal is being developed by id Software and will launch on March 20th 2020 for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Google Stadia and Microsoft Windows. The Nintendo Switch version is being worked on by Panic Button and will arrive at a later date.