“If you were an F22 fighter jet in Doom Eternal, this time around we wanted you to feel like an Abrams tank.” […] ”You’re heavier, more powerful, and grounded,” he says. “We’re making strafing-to-aim a thing again. You’ll be weaving between projectiles, just like you did in the original Doom, to deliver that Super Shotgun blast to the chest… It almost creates this three-dimensional 'shoot ‘em up’ puzzle that you’re weaving your way through.”
Hell yes. I’m still going to be cautious with my hype but this sounds like what I want. I know many people liked the acrobatics of Eternal but it was not for me.
Eternal was a recipe for stress for me. I enjoyed Doom 2016 much more, personally.
I had a similar experience. Doom was pure shooting fun, while the platforming component they introduced in Eternal altered the essence too much for me. I finished Doom in a very short time but I never finished Eternal.
Tbh, even letting the platforming aside, the difficulty levels were pretty glossed over in Eternal.
Choosing hard for the pushing yourself for fast paced gaming turned the health of every enemy to 11, making some weapons pretty useless instead of leaving them satisfying gameplay parts. Enemy animations were rather broken, too. In 2016, you could see every attack being prepared no matter how quick they were. In Eternal, it felt like playing an online game where animations were simplified and as if you were playing through a tick rate game where the game skipped cues for next enemy movements. A scrawny, naked possessed taking several melee hits wasn’t fun at all.
On easy, it is not even Doom.
There’s a moment of flow state I had with Doom Eternal. Like John Wick running on pure focus with the most intense music, as I eat fire and shit bullets, carefully balancing out my kill rate with my ammo and health and refilling as needed.
And you’re right. It is stressful. It’s 100% “fuck it we ball” and see where we land.
And after playing some Doom mods recently, it’s no where near as chaotic.
Long COVID left me in a state where I can’t handle too much physical or emotional stress. At least half a year ago or so playing 2016 was no problem for me. But Eternal was too much. Even on lower difficulty levels. But I actually liked Eternal. Especially later when you’ve got all the mechanics unlocked and can play through an arena on some kind of ultra instinct.
I fear that this new game will be similar in stress levels.
See this and the dark ages theme makes me think we actually are going to see them try to pull off a complete FPS arsenal with no hitscans, or at least no pure hitscans.
If it works I could see it being a bold new direction for FPS design, why worry about balancing snipers if even your longest range weapons are still projectiles, also, why limit your arsenal design only to guns now that you don’t actually have the need to create that point and shoot sensation the same way. You could build an entire “FPS” that’s just snowball fighting and the different “weapons” in the arsenal are throwing implements.
Sounds kiddish but imagine being able to crack open a cozy game fps with some hot cocoa.
FPS and Snowball Fight give me South Park 64 flashbacks. I can’t allow us to go down that road again.
Honestly my first mental picture was something more like a really low rate of fire Splatoon except more about knocking down enemy “fortresses” instead of just coating the other side since… it’s snow, it’s already on both sides.
Different weapons would be stuff like slings for range, or a shovel for busting down snow castles, maybe it has a charged up projectile where your character gets a whole shovel full of snow and then lops it overhead to try and nail someone with an air mailed avalanche.
Also have an actual gun sometimes show up on the map but if you grab it all your shots miss for like ten seconds because funni.
The thing is, id Software has landed in this medieval war against Hell not out of convenience but out of a need to change the fundamentals of play. To return to where Doom became legend two decades ago.
I have bad news for the author of this article regarding what year it was two decades ago.
I just can’t wait to try out the shield as a frisbee of destruction!
I’m just glad some talent people are still making single player shooters. Doom and Doom Eternal were so much fun to play and I look forward to this next instalment.