Author: TheAleosha

Completed Doom Eternal.
In the end, I got into it. Even managed to collect all secrets, including assembling Unmaykr, the new version of BFG (taken from Brutal Doom?)
Khan Maykr is a trick boss in a trick game. I’m happy they added a few unique bosses, but still, it just shows how the entire game is build around very particular way of playing. You can damage the shields with any weapon, thanks at least for that. But then you need to pull yourself using the shotgun’s hook, and to punch her with the blood fist. And do that six times. What’s more, the only way to replenish your ammo is to headshoot infinite drones. As I said, a trick game.
Marauder is the one most annoying enemy in the entire game, because it’s the only enemy that has that repeated counter mechanic.
Icon of Sin is a great reimagining of the Doom 2 finale. But it’s also a complete chaos, with the screen flashing and shaking so much I could hardly understand what’s going on.

The game is a still a beautiful single-player shooter, quite rare. But they did try to milk it all the way, didn’t they? The online features are so annoying that I had to block the game in firewall to avoid them. And all the hints Samuel gives you are behind a paywall of two DLCs.

Completed Doom.
I don’t plan to play the extra episode, as I read it was mostly just bunch of levels hastily put together.
Third episode is even more hellishly designed than the 2nd one. But then some secrets are sometimes just doors. Not really a secret, are you?
My problem is that if I don’t play one game after the other, I forget the experience. But if I do, I get tired of it by the end. So, I got tired of hunting all the secrets without a guide in this last episode. First, because on House of Pain the door script got stuck, so I had to use IDCLIP cheat, but it annoyed me.
And then the secret in Mt. Erebus where you need to basically do a rocketjump in order to get in is ridiculous as well:

The secret level is fun, though. It starts same as the first level of this episode, but then there’s again that “fake exit” moment, and you need to fight a cyberdemon and backtrack to the start of the level.

Final boss battle isn’t particularly hard, but for two factors. It has a hitscan attack, so you’re constantly getting some chip damage. And there are no healing items on that level. Only later I discovered it takes just 2 shots from BFG to take it down.

Second episode is rather tight on ammo. Barons of Hell are now regular enemies. And there are also Cacodemons. And you get the plasmagun. So, there’s a bit more variety.

But the level design is somewhat hellish, with mazes for the sake of mazes, and endless amount of crates. Crate mazes:

And there are again some one-time-secrets. Containment Area is especially nightmarish in this sense.
“Halls of the Damned” is funny, because they added a false exit, that is actually a trap.
The cyberdemon was first introduced as the boss for the second episode as well. Which is a lot of investment, to have that huge sprite just for a boss. And as a kid playing from a keyboard, I would have been scared shitless by that. Although now it’s such an easy fight on a large arena with a lot of pillars for cover.

After my success with Doom 2, I decided to give Doom a try, since I never actually finished it. When I was a kid, I started with Doom 2.

It is definitely slower paced. But also it’s secrets structure is crazy. Consider the 3rd level of the 1st episode, Toxin Refinery. You find the yellow key, but you don’t need it to exit the level. Instead, the yellow door is behind a secret.
One element that I like more in Doom is how they show you progress on a map:

The first episode is rather boring. There are just a few weapons: shotgun, chaingun, rocket launcher. And only a few enemies. Two barons of hell are the final boss.

It’s a very weird design decision to first pit you against a boss, and then immediately throw you against two weaker versions of the same boss.
Also, those Purple Levels, whatever they’re called, pit you against enemies that you haven’t yet even met before. One pits you against two cyberdemons at the same time. This one was brutal. Then there’s a later one, that is mostly soldiers.
I don’t like the episodes where the researchers worship the Doomguy. But I’m glad that they didn’t try to voice him, and how his actions always show impatience: in cutscenes, he pushes every triggers multiple times until the turret fires. That’s a nice detail.

I’d be honest, the entire BFG episode made me smile, and like the game a bit more. The whole concept of Doomguy without asking anyone blowing a hole in Mars, then catapulting himself through that hole is hilarious, and so over the top it hits the tone perfectly.

Completed Doom 2.

“Citadel” has this feeling of abstract art. It’s not that you absolutely couldn’t build something resembling the real world with the Doom Engine. The creators of Doom 2 just didn’t want that.

“Gotcha”, the level where you’re pitten against Cyberdemon and giant spider at the same time, almost “got me”, as that last secret was super hard to find.

Turned out to be a hidden door near one of the teleporters in the winding tower.
And following “Nirvana” felt like someone didn’t have enough time to finish it properly. There are no secrets on that level, and you can literally pass through blue bars without the blue key.

I thought I remember that “Monster Condo” level had some kind of a crazy secret. And it actually does! In has a room that’s open only for the first 30 seconds of the level.
Interesting how in the pre-final level, Living End, you can just run past the final Cyberdemon.
When I was a kid, I thought that the final level is just a phylosophical message, neverending wave of demons. Once you know where you need to shoot, though, it isn’t that hard. That, and the mouselook.

Speaking of which, it’s easy to say how brilliant I am now, compared to how I was struggling with this game as a kid. But it’s important to remember that now, with the GZDoom, the game looks like this:

As a kid, the game looked like this:

And I was playing it on a shitty monitor, so it was even more blurry and dark and distorted. And I didn’t know about the Doom engines limitations, like the fact there are no rooms above rooms. And there was no mouselook, of course. Just arrow keys, and the strafe was on Alt.

I can’t even blame this game for being too hard. I expected to spam save/load all the time, but I actually do that very rarely.
I think there are a couple of no-escape pits here and there, “Tricks and Traps” final room for one. And in the “Factory” you’re teleported in the middle of imp cluster.
In “Inmost Dens” I find it puzzling that they simply forgot to count secrets as secrets. There are still secret walls and all, but the number of secrets on that level is 0.
Speaking of secrets, I’m still going strong, and even found the secret and the super-secret Wolfenstein levels.

I wasn’t joking when I said I prefer to play the original Doom 2 to Doom Eternal. I got the GOG version first, which is called Doom 2 Enhanced. It supports horizontal mouse look and autorun, but not much else. Then I tried the original Doom 2 with GZDoom. This one has full mouselook and the ability to jump, which makes getting some secrets easier. The original Doom didn’t have jump, so you had to do awkward run-jumps instead, which are still hard to pull out sometimes, even with WASD. Imagine how hard those were on arrow-keys.

My favorite levels yet are “Dead Simple” and “Tricks and Traps”. I think “Tricks and Traps” is one of my favorite levels ever, with its hub design.
Speaking of the level names, when I played Doom my English was mostly nonexistent. So even “Downtown” was something I hardly understood.

I also surprisingly remember all the secrets until now, completing every level with 100%.

Speaking of secrets: fuck you, Refueling Base, for having 18 of them. No, really, fuck you.

“I see what you did there.” Doom was technogenic. Doom 2 was more occult. Now, Doom 2016 was technogenic, and Doom Eternal is more occult. At least some of us are old enough to remember that the Doom series tried to make a game in a modern setting, but it was canceled. It’s ironic that they managed to pull it off in the end.

You can carry very little ammo, so the game forces you to use the chainsaw all the time since enemies killed with it drop ammo of all kinds in a rainbow explosion. Similarly, you need to execute enemies to get healed and to burn them to get armor shards. While performing executions, you’re invulnerable as well. So the game quickly turns into this repeating spree of animations.
Then there’s the power punch, the double jump, the double dash, and double dash refills. With all that, the game feels to me more and more like a trick-shooter than Doom, which makes it harder and harder to convince myself to play it.
Also, they added “extra lives,” which, for me, completely breaks the flow of the game. I would prefer if I were given a choice whether to use the extra life to respawn immediately or to save it for later. Instead, you get respawned from an enemy appearing nearby, and even if you reload, the extra life is lost. Infuriating.