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Doom Eternal is exhausting to play

I recently booted up Doom Eternal on Extra Life Mode(cleaning up for Platinum trophy) and man...now I realize why I shelved this game in the first place.

This game is mentally and physically exhausting to play. I can’t play more than two levels per day. It was the same way last year. The game has many niggling issues(ammo, too much damn platforming, getting stuck or overrun by enemies in tight spaces) but I’ve narrowed it down to the art style. It’s...garish? It makes my head hurt after long periods of time.

The game is good on an audiovisual level, but it’s fucking with me to the point where I don’t know if I ever want to play it again. Funny enough, I haven’t had a problem like this with any other game except Wolfenstein New Order.
 

Justin9mm

Member
Well I think the game being a little more challenging than Doom 2016 was a good change. I say a little because once you learn the mechanics, it can be done on Easy without too much trouble.

I laugh at people that complain about a game being too hard on anything higher than easy.. That is what the difficulty setting is there for. I'm considered a pretty average gamer, I'm a slow learner, my reaction times are not that quick, I miss a lot of things because I have attention issues and I still managed to finish Doom Eternal on Easy(I'm too young to die). I actually completed a second play through on 'Hurt Me Plenty' which is the one up from that easiest difficulty and then both DLC's after that on Easy.

I will admit though Ancient Gods Part 1 DLC is ridiculously hard on the Easy setting.. I'm really not sure what happened there because Part 2 wasn't like that.
 

NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
Yes, it is.
I played and finished Doom 2016 on Hurt Me Plenty, but Eternal? That’s another story.
The levels are ridiculously long right from the start.
You have to be constantly moving or you’re already dead, and even while moving you’re getting hit by something you don’t even know it’s there.
You have to switch weapons all the time because of seriously limited ammo and an endless variety of sub-weapons that the devs absolutely wanted you to use. They’re not optional, at all.
Enemy weak points are anything but simple to aim at on console, and if you don’t get rid of them asap, you’re already dead.
Most encounters are at least 2x longer than in Doom 2016, right from the first level.

Like other people have noticed, Eternal is a game that wants to be played in a certain way. There’s very little room for personal strategy, and it’s so fast and relentless, it’s exhausting.
I dropped it without looking back.
 

TonyK

Member
Yes, it is.
I played and finished Doom 2016 on Hurt Me Plenty, but Eternal? That’s another story.
The levels are ridiculously long right from the start.
You have to be constantly moving or you’re already dead, and even while moving you’re getting hit by something you don’t even know it’s there.
You have to switch weapons all the time because of seriously limited ammo and an endless variety of sub-weapons that the devs absolutely wanted you to use. They’re not optional, at all.
Enemy weak points are anything but simple to aim at on console, and if you don’t get rid of them asap, you’re already dead.
Most encounters are at least 2x longer than in Doom 2016, right from the first level.

Like other people have noticed, Eternal is a game that wants to be played in a certain way. There’s very little room for personal strategy, and it’s so fast and relentless, it’s exhausting.
I dropped it without looking back.
I joined to write this, but you explained it perfectly :messenger_clapping:
 
Doom Eternal at high difficulties is Eternally painful.

Don't laugh but I still got my ass handed to me on easy.
Yeah easy isn’t so easy in some parts. I play on that difficulty too, but the marauder isn’t that bad there, the enemy swarms could fuck off tho.
Well I think the game being a little more challenging than Doom 2016 was a good change. I say a little because once you learn the mechanics, it can be done on Easy without too much trouble.

I laugh at people that complain about a game being too hard on anything higher than easy.. That is what the difficulty setting is there for. I'm considered a pretty average gamer, I'm a slow learner, my reaction times are not that quick, I miss a lot of things because I have attention issues and I still managed to finish Doom Eternal on Easy(I'm too young to die). I actually completed a second play through on 'Hurt Me Plenty' which is the one up from that easiest difficulty and then both DLC's after that on Easy.

I will admit though Ancient Gods Part 1 DLC is ridiculously hard on the Easy setting.. I'm really not sure what happened there because Part 2 wasn't like that.
Once I heard the enemy spawns were buffed and changed in the dlc, it cemented the fact that I would never buy it.


Yes, it is.
I played and finished Doom 2016 on Hurt Me Plenty, but Eternal? That’s another story.
The levels are ridiculously long right from the start.
You have to be constantly moving or you’re already dead, and even while moving you’re getting hit by something you don’t even know it’s there.
You have to switch weapons all the time because of seriously limited ammo and an endless variety of sub-weapons that the devs absolutely wanted you to use. They’re not optional, at all.
Enemy weak points are anything but simple to aim at on console, and if you don’t get rid of them asap, you’re already dead.
Most encounters are at least 2x longer than in Doom 2016, right from the first level.

Like other people have noticed, Eternal is a game that wants to be played in a certain way. There’s very little room for personal strategy, and it’s so fast and relentless, it’s exhausting.
I dropped it without looking back.
Are the fights really longer? Because the levels make me think that they are.
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
I would add - it's annoyingly exhausting compared to excellent 2016.
You onstantly have to glory kill, flamethrower and chainsaw. If You don't do one of these every 30 seconds, you are dead or out of ammo.
It gets tiring and annoying fast imo. Where s the combat puzzle? Where is power fantasy? It felt weird and I did not liked all that micro management all the time
 

Rikkori

Member
We feel the same. Honestly I have no issue with the difficulty at all but just thinking of playing the game makes me want to turn the computer off. Doom '16 was a joy to experience but I just don't want to play Eternal at all. It's like having too much cake, you just get sick, except here it's from the first slice.

Rainbows Vomiting GIF by Meet Aiko
 

Valt7786

Member
Yep, very much agreed. Doom 2016 was perfection. Eternal was good, I enjoyed my run through of it, but i definitely regret paying full price for it and didn't have any desire to play the DLC's. It's just constant mental gymnastics all the time. Great if you're 15 and riddled with ADHD I guess though.
 

Kuranghi

Member
Yep, very much agreed. Doom 2016 was perfection. Eternal was good, I enjoyed my run through of it, but i definitely regret paying full price for it and didn't have any desire to play the DLC's. It's just constant mental gymnastics all the time. Great if you're 15 and riddled with ADHD I guess though.

Visual garishness aside, I've already decided when I play it I will use the infinite ammo cheat straight away to avoid this making you play in certain way part of it, I just want to shoot everything with whatever gun I happen to have chosen, not constantly switching or being "forced" to fight them in a certain way and if you don't the game becomes much less fun.

I loved that about Doom 2016, just blasting the shit out of everything with whatever I had selected, learning the best way to fight each enemy with each gun. Why is shooting a grenade into a cacodemons mouth 900x more fun than just doing whatever you want? You'll still die in 2016 if you play really arogantly, but theres more scope for fun imo.
 

SnapShot

Member
I dunno, after I got used to the new options Eternal gives you I found it hard to go back to 2016, the Ballista + SSG trick still works most of the time, and you're not really required to aim for the weak spots unless you're playing the game on Nightmare difficulty, definitely requires going into it with a certain mood and mindset though. I'd say play it on ITYTD or HMP if enemy reaction times give you trouble.
 
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Golgo 13

The Man With The Golden Dong
It's a demanding but incredible action game. Not for the feint of heart or spirit. It asks a lot of the player but it also is EXTREMELY rewarding once mastered.

Playing through the game on Nightmare did give me heart palpitations though, particularly the Slayer Gates.
 
I had every intention to play both DLCs when the second one was released, but after finishing up the first one on Nightmare I decided to tackle DLC2 some other time. Exhausting indeed.
 

Sygma

Member
Utterly destroyed the game in nightmare / extra life and yeah I can't really agree on this take, Eternal is a joke in terms of difficulty if you don't play in nightmare / ultra nightmare. I will however agree on the exhausting bit if you're not good at playing fast - efficiently
 

Excess

Member
Buddy, you've just upped my vocabulary to describe why I hate every fucking game that uses this kind of art style. I can never understand wtf is going on in these kinds of games. It's like "HEY KIDS! I HEARD YOU LIKE COLORS?! HOW ABOUT SOME COLORS AND MORE COLORS. BTW, DO YOU LIKE COLORS?"

Overwatch, Valorant, Fortnite, and Every. Single. MMORPG.
 

MiguelItUp

Member
I love it!

give me that oldschool quake multiplayer feeling.. in singleplayer

amazing stuff - but sure i guess you need to like being on your feet and constantly react to what happens

it is no cover shooter - and for that i am grateful
Yeah, that's exactly how it felt to me.

If you're not in to extremely fast/chaotic FPS and arena shooter-like gameplay, then you're probably not gonna dig it at all.

Yeah, it can be exhausting, much like an intense match of Quake, Quake 2, or Quake 3 online. It ain't for everyone, but I adore it. Constantly moving, using abilities, swapping weapons, etc.

Not standing far away, using the same weapon, etc.
 

Valt7786

Member
Buddy, you've just upped my vocabulary to describe why I hate every fucking game that uses this kind of art style. I can never understand wtf is going on in these kinds of games. It's like "HEY KIDS! I HEARD YOU LIKE COLORS?! HOW ABOUT SOME COLORS AND MORE COLORS. BTW, DO YOU LIKE COLORS?"

Overwatch, Valorant, Fortnite, and Every. Single. MMORPG.
Dev's cant win sometimes lol. Now it's too colourful? 10 years ago everything was too brown.
 

Renozokii

Member
Yes, it is.
I played and finished Doom 2016 on Hurt Me Plenty, but Eternal? That’s another story.
The levels are ridiculously long right from the start.
You have to be constantly moving or you’re already dead, and even while moving you’re getting hit by something you don’t even know it’s there.
You have to switch weapons all the time because of seriously limited ammo and an endless variety of sub-weapons that the devs absolutely wanted you to use. They’re not optional, at all.
Enemy weak points are anything but simple to aim at on console, and if you don’t get rid of them asap, you’re already dead.
Most encounters are at least 2x longer than in Doom 2016, right from the first level.

Like other people have noticed, Eternal is a game that wants to be played in a certain way. There’s very little room for personal strategy, and it’s so fast and relentless, it’s exhausting.
I dropped it without looking back.
Great to see a rare example of someone agreeing with your super minority opinion to a tee. Some of the most celebrated and revisited games of all time did was with an addicting core gameplay loop. In most games that gameplay loop is short, sweet, has room for small variances. Old halo, destiny, cod, and borderlands are good examples of this. Doom achieved this. Doom eternal extended the length of that loop by 2-3x, increased the difficulty of every second of said loop, and took variances away to where you cycle the same guns every time.
 

Renozokii

Member
Utterly destroyed the game in nightmare / extra life and yeah I can't really agree on this take, Eternal is a joke in terms of difficulty if you don't play in nightmare / ultra nightmare. I will however agree on the exhausting bit if you're not good at playing fast - efficiently
Best returnal in 3 deaths, every souls game, and a ton of bullet hell games. It’s not just that eternal is difficult, it’s just too much going on every second of a combat engagement.
 

Sygma

Member
Like other people have noticed, Eternal is a game that wants to be played in a certain way. There’s very little room for personal strategy, and it’s so fast and relentless, it’s exhausting.
I dropped it without looking back.

Yeah except, this is not true at all. The way to play Eternal well is to actually use stuff your own way. The narrative around this game is amazing, since the release its like "YOU HAVE TO USE THIS TO BE GOOD" and literally one week after, the meta changed, and it changed again a couple of times after that with the power of ... personal thinking / experimentation

I gave that one away once but, the most jarring example is the cacodemon. At release the narrative was "you have to use the weak spot shot to kill it fast and efficiently", turned out that the fastest way to kill any is a locked on triple rocket burst (since it just melts it down and you dont have to rely on the glory kill animation either), then the whole quick weapon swap with the sniper mod on the battle riffle was found out and people managed to actually go through the whole game under 2 hours in ultra nightmare, by using this and the arbalest charged bolt to take out multiple enemies at once (and the yeet hook, between other things but you get the idea)

A bit later on, the whole ice grenade lobbed shots into a caco also was found out, and so on and so forth

Its just, fascinating. All that shit has been debunked yet keep popping in every single thread as if it was remotely true. There is no "one way" to play the game or some imaginary "the devs want you to play this way" thingie.

Guess you could make a case about the ammo replenishment tho, and thats fine
 
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HF2014

Member
Lol. This thread remind me of the one iv started a few weeks ago, guess it will go the same way!

Dont force yourself to enjoy this game, if you need to force it, it mean its total shit.
 

Sygma

Member
Best returnal in 3 deaths, every souls game, and a ton of bullet hell games. It’s not just that eternal is difficult, it’s just too much going on every second of a combat engagement.

Serious question, ever played classic doom above hurt me plenty ? ultra violence was funky and nightmare literally had enemies popping up via teleportations all the time, some levels had WAY MORE of than the busiest ones of Eternal. Especially in Thy Flesh Consummed

I'd say people should play the original Doom II at the highest difficulty and come back if they think that Eternal is somehow too much to handle lol, they'll be in a for a ride. Even just the very first level of it

edit : a classic

 
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MiguelItUp

Member
Dont force yourself to enjoy this game, if you need to force it, it mean its total shit.
Truth. It's okay to not like something. Hell, there's been a TON of games that people have ADORED that have done absolutely nothing for me. At some point you just have to accept that there are gonna be things people love and you don't, and that's more than okay. Why make yourself suffer? Lmao.
 

DAHGAMING

Gold Member
I had the same issue, went to the dr and told him my feelings when i play this game. He fucking give me a great right back hander and told me to stop being a pussy. I carried on and got sectioned put on all sorts of wacko drugs. My family banned me from playing when i got home and all beat the shit out of me. Next time il just smoke a reefa before i play .
 

GameSeeker

Member
Fully agree with the OP. Even on easy mode the game can only be played one way: Non-stop movement, platforming, aggressive combat, weapon switching, etc. If you want to play any other style, you can't beat it. I dropped it like a hot potato. I will never buy another DOOM game if they keep this style of gaming.
 

Renozokii

Member
Serious question, ever played classic doom above hurt me plenty ? ultra violence was funky and nightmare literally had enemies popping up via teleportations all the time, some levels had WAY MORE of than the busiest ones of Eternal. Especially in Thy Flesh Consummed

I'd say people should play the original Doom II at the highest difficulty and come back if they think that Eternal is somehow too much to handle lol, they'll be in a for a ride. Even just the very first level of it

edit : a classic


Yes but the player is focusing on positioning and shooting. Not having to do certain things to be allowed ammo, not grappling, no executors, just shooting mostly. Enemies are more simply designed, colors are more muted. Eternal is just literally straining on the eyes to me.
 

Dacon

Banned
Dont force yourself to enjoy this game, if you need to force it, it mean its total shit.

Or that it's just not for you, and that's ok.
Fully agree with the OP. Even on easy mode the game can only be played one way: Non-stop movement, platforming, aggressive combat, weapon switching, etc. If you want to play any other style, you can't beat it. I dropped it like a hot potato. I will never buy another DOOM game if they keep this style of gaming.



yU cAn oNlY pLaY oNe WAY

On easy mode you can literally breeze through this game dude, and I'll have you know you have to stay on the move constantly in every DOOM game. It's literally a staple of the series, it's not a stop and pop cover shooter.
 

tassletine

Member
I agree. It's not varied enough for me which is my main problem with it. If you're going to do sparky levels like this, just load them in, have more variety and don't have me walk to the next one.
I find the up / down nature of that sort of gameplay -- ie: periods of walking / nothing followed by intense battles -- pretty draining.

And it's not because of the gunplay, you may as well have a three minute loading screen for all I care -- either make the game flow or don't -- But I hate this 'modern' style where absolutely every gameplay arena is bookend either by walking or cutscenes or something that someone who would rather be working on films has dreamt up.

Just get me in the ZONE as that's all I care about. Take me out of the zone and force me to watch one of your sparkly animations again and I may very well put your game down never to pick it up again.
 

Sygma

Member
Yes but the player is focusing on positioning and shooting. Not having to do certain things to be allowed ammo, not grappling, no executors, just shooting mostly. Enemies are more simply designed, colors are more muted. Eternal is just literally straining on the eyes to me.

positioning and shooting is what you also do in Eternal, with the added bonus of having at disposition every single movement tech (outside wallruns) you can think of in a 3D fps. You don't HAVE TO do glory kills. The only one requirement is the chainsaw killing to replenish ammo, which they changed in Ancient gods part 2

There's literally nothing muted about classic doom either




Not gonna talk about the poisonous areas where you gotta have the hazard suit, turning the whole screen green or the invulnerability pick up, or even berserk mode. I don't know what people are thinking of when they talk about Doom's design but its clearly not what is on screen
 
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jaysius

Banned
Yup, been saying this for a long time, too many dumb meters filling all the time that you NEED to use, and too many required weak points. Oh sure you don't HAVE to hit those weak points, but do you want to die?
 

IKSTUGA

Member
Yeah Doom Eternal is definitely not for everyone. One of the most intense games I've ever finished. The level of focus needed is just off the charts.
 
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