Doom Eternal Final Review

Now more than ever, I’ll take any chance I can get to feel like a demigod – even if it’s just in a video game. Doom Eternal offers that power fantasy in spades but is always ready to check your first-person-shooting ego around the next corner with a bigger, faster, nastier demon from Hell. This evolved followup takes everything good about the fast and punchy 2016 reboot and proves it wasn’t a fluke. In fact, it’s largely ruined the first game for me in retrospect because the addition of Eternal’s mid-air dashes make the last thrillride of a game feel like wading through waist-high molasses by comparison. Even multiplayer’s been innovated on, with 2016’s forgettable vanilla DeathMatch replaced by Eternal’s inventive 2v1, Demons-vs.-Slayer Battlemode. The full package is expertly crafted from both a design and technical perspective.

So far I’ve done in-depth reviews of both the single-player and multiplayer modes. First, here’s what I said about the campaign:

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Doom Eternal Single-Player Campaign Review

Simply put, Doom Eternal is one of the best first-person shooter campaigns I’ve played in years. As the second game of its kind it’s lost some of its novelty but none of the joy of its intense and furious combat style. This excellent refinement of the already outstanding 2016 reboot makes you an unspoken deal: if you can keep up with it, it will keep up with you. It continually teaches you how to play faster, smarter, and more efficiently, with lots of options at every step of the way to tailor fights to your prefered slaying style, and it’s an absolute blast along the way.

And here’s my Verdict on multiplayer:

Doom Eternal Battlemode Multiplayer Review

A quick Battlemode walkthrough intro and bare-bones tutorials for each playable demon give you a quick look at what each bad guy can do in your hands, but the fun of Battlemode is getting out there and figuring out how to best put each Demon’s abilities to work. Doom Eternal is a game that demands and respects player skill, and while Battlemode doesn’t allow you to put yours to the ultimate test on a traditional level playing field, it is nevertheless a clever mode that’s a lot of fun if you’re willing to give it a try and get to know its nuances.

Verdict

Overall, it’s not surprising that Doom Eternal is excellent in following up Doom (2016), but after playing its 15-or-so-hour campaign it’s delightful to see just how much better Doom has gotten just four years later. Eternal tips its cap to Doom 2 specifically while also building off of what made the modernized reboot a breath of fresh air for the genre. Whether you’ve been playing Doom for a few years or a few decades, Doom Eternal demands your attention.