DOOM: The Dark Ages

Watching Shroud play it now. He's not a fan so far. 3 or 4 chapters in.

I've played 4 chapters because I had nothing to do this week and was curious. It's not bad but it's certainly pretty bland. Would thus far agree to wait for it to be on sale.

Honestly, just play Witchfire for a better experience.

This was funny; 45m vid of the guy crashing:

Zindan said:

Honestly, just play Witchfire for a better experience.

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Or Doom 2016. Or Necromunda Hired Gun.

Im gonna get gamepass for 1 month to try it, but I recently played through Doom 2016 again and its such a blast. I started Doom Eternal a few weeks later and it is very fun, but doesn't have the same replay value that 2016 has. I've beaten 2016 a handful of times and Eternal only once.

I havent tried Witchfire but Ive been waiting for a steam sale. Is it on par with Doom 2016?

INTHEMIDSTOFLIONS said:

Or Doom 2016. Or Necromunda Hired Gun.

Im gonna get gamepass for 1 month to try it, but I recently played through Doom 2016 again and its such a blast. I started Doom Eternal a few weeks later and it is very fun, but doesn't have the same replay value that 2016 has. I've beaten 2016 a handful of times and Eternal only once.

I havent tried Witchfire but Ive been waiting for a steam sale. Is it on par with Doom 2016?

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Not like Doom 2016 at all, though it can have the same frantic pacing the further you get into it. I consider it a modern Hexen in a rogue-lite style, check out gameplay vids (newer ones as the game has a LOT of updates in the past year).

Zindan said:

Not like Doom 2016 at all, though it can have the same frantic pacing the further you get into it. I consider it a modern Hexen in a rogue-lite style, check out gameplay vids (newer ones as the game has a LOT of updates in the past year).

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sick. thanks! Havent tried Hexen, either, but ill check out more recent gameplay. Anyone youd recommend particularly?

For example, I know for Souls-games always to trust fightincowboy.

INTHEMIDSTOFLIONS said:

sick. thanks! Havent tried Hexen, either, but ill check out more recent gameplay. Anyone youd recommend particularly?

For example, I know for Souls-games always to trust fightincowboy.

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A guy named Mr.Fruit made a set of 4 90min-ish vids of his playthrough (going through all current content / systems) around 7 months ago. He had played its initial EA on Epic Store a year prior, so he got to experience before/after the big update(s) that occured with the Steam EA launch.

If Dark Ages is just more Eternal, I'll probably like it though I too have my reservations about the emphasis shown on melee in the trailers, but I'm sure it'll be fun times.

I agree that Doom 2016 felt very much like a modern remake of the early Doom games as far as gameplay went, with not a lot of story in the way and just a lot of fun and slaughter. After thoroughly enjoying 2016 I grabbed Eternal on release and was very turned off by the rainbow colors everywhere for "loot", kind of broke the immersion that I thought was great in 2016. I came back to it some months later though and persevered and was really gripped by the lore and worldbuilding. I think Eternal and its two DLCs make for an awesome epic story, and Dark Ages seems to continue exploring that direction as the trailer also mentions story elements.

I'll wait for it to get a bit cheaper, not feeling impatient to play this but definitely will at some point, love me some Doom.

Doom 2016 was so goddamn good. I did get tired of hallway -> arena -> hallway -> arena, but sometimes it just works. Eternal had WAY too much rainbow puke and I hated that direction,.though the intro cutscene on eternal was so good.

This game looks pretty lifeless to me, but maybe I'll check it out on gamepass.

Noodleface said:

Doom 2016 was so goddamn good. I did get tired of hallway -> arena -> hallway -> arena, but sometimes it just works. Eternal had WAY too much rainbow puke and I hated that direction,.though the intro cutscene on eternal was so good.

This game looks pretty lifeless to me, but maybe I'll check it out on gamepass.

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I felt the same way my first play through of Doom 2016. But my most recent play through I did about 1-2 levels every few days and maybe just pacing it out like that made it very enjoyable and didn’t feel repetitive.

INTHEMIDSTOFLIONS said:

I felt the same way my first play through of Doom 2016. But my most recent play through I did about 1-2 levels every few days and maybe just pacing it out like that made it very enjoyable and didn’t feel repetitive.

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That may be part of it. I think I went hard and beat it in 2-3 days

I haven't played it, but in watching streamers it feels a little TOO retro in terms of FPS design.

Tasty The Treat said:

Anyone else just not a fan of Doom Eternal and therefore don't really care about this?

I mean I loved Doom 3, still enjoy the classic 1 and 2, and I even liked Doom 2016, but Eternal just never did it for me.

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Add me to the list, I never even bothered to play it after they completely changed the gameplay from 2016, and then they fucked over Mick Gordon.

amigo said:

+1.
For me, 2016 was enjoyable except for ammo acquisition (chainsaw melee), and then they doubled down on that in Eternal + too much rainbow puke (if the screen ain't painted red, it aint Doom) + platforming. Eternal was the first Doom game I haven't played. If they are gonna Diablah4 the new one (Diablah4 = Diablah3 DLC), I won't bother.

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Doom Eternal's art design is such a dramatic downgrade from Doom 2016:

Tasty The Treat said:

Yeah IMO Eternal signaled a significant change in the Doom games. If you compare Doom 3 to Doom Eternal they basically have nothing in common outside of being FPS where you shoot demon creatures. While 2016 felt like sort of a throwback to Doom 1 and 2, Eternal felt like they turned it into a game where you simply platform around until you get to arena areas where you need to need to do a mini horde survival challenge basically, rinse and repeat with things getting more difficult until the game is over.

It's just not focused on what I liked about Doom games. If this is just more Doom Eternal I'm just not interested, feel like I have experienced enough of that when I tried to play through it on Gamepass while I had it.

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I loved Doom 2016 because it had this terrific balance of gameplay pacing and its tone that eschewed the narrative focus every other game was doing. It was refreshing that the main character was a faceless, voiceless guy who didn't give a damn about anything other than killing demons, and that's exactly what the gameplay was about. It was simple and intuitive enough on its surface, but still had depth and room for mastery.

2016 wasn't perfect and I could see new ways to expand upon the gameplay without diverging too far from the general formula, and there was room for better replay value in the best sense because I just wanted more Doom 2016 when I was done.

Eternal could have been an entirely different IP because they completely switched gears and even doubled down on plot until the series closer resembled Marvel shit. That alone has me a bit worried about the "story" side of Dark Ages, which from the small bits I've seen really feels like they went full retard on "lore" over what used to just be a pissed off space marine killing demons.

Back to gameplay, either before or early after Eternal's release, Hugo Martin was talking up about how they designed the game to force people to play a certain way in order to enter what he called (I had to refresh my memory on this) "the fun zone." To me, it just came across as bitching about how no one was switching weapons enough in Doom 2016, although how the hell he would know when it was a single player game is beyond me, and not playing "the right way," so they designed it around that mentality.

Again, maybe it was just me, however I did switch weapons in 2016, but don't go blaming me, id, that some of your weapons fucking sucked compared to the pure satisfaction of others. I think if they reworked weapons that were lagging in either purpose or fun to use, while touching up the enemy/combat design to reward creative utility of weapons rather than railroaded, hyper-specific purposes, it would have been enough to build off of 2016's foundations. I didn't need adderall-fueled air-jumping or extreme rock-paper-scissors just to kill demons, and all of that would be perfectly fine if they didn't try to pass it off as some sort of direct sequel to Doom 2016 (even that was poorly done because I guess you just start in a stupid space base/slayer cave instead of where 2016 left off).

Instead of ever getting a true follow up to Doom 2016, it comes across as some different id shooter wearing the skinsuit of Doom now that Dark Ages is clearly doing its own thing as well. At least the art design is little better than Eternal since it doesn't look like rainbow puke, but it's still so off from Doom that I would rather play Witchfire or Necromunda Hired Gun as mentioned above.

Well put.

The whole Slayer ship was a huge downgrade in Doom Eternal. Doom 2016 worked well bc it felt tight knit and had almost no cut scenes. The story was in the log books if you wanted it but you’d have to look for it.

As for the weapons, pistol, plasma rifle, and pretty much the laser guns were useless. There’s not a “right way” and “wrong way” to play a game if you are selling copies and people are buying them.

Thatd be like From Software making you play magic and not unga unga strength/melee build because “the game isn’t in the fun zone” whatever the fuck that means.

ID fell off HARD. This is really disappointing.