Doom Eternal
There’s a demon or two inside each of us
Power fantasy. A lot of shooters are all about that, and perhaps none more so than Doom, casting you as the lone-wolf hero ready to throw Hell right back at the demons and give them something to fear. It’s fantastic. But something about that fantasy never really translates well to a simple deathmatch multiplayer mode. If we’re all Doom Slayers, are any of us really Doom Slayers? Doom Eternal’s fresh approach works much better, and is a Hell of a delight.
The brave step Id Software has taken is to make sure that even in multiplayer there is only one Doom Slayer, and for the most part that player is doing the same as always – blasting the forces of Hell six ways from Mars with an arsenal of overpowered weapons, using glory kills, flame belches, and chainsaws to stock up on health, armour, and ammo respectively. But you’re not just going up against a neutral, grudge-free computer, you’re butting heads with two extra-powerful demons controlled by human players in this
2v1 battle mode.
DOOM FOR TWO
As one of the demon players, you can call on one of five fiends to be your avatar: the fire-spewing Archvile; the shambling, gunarmed Mancubus; the floating redhead Pain
Elemental; jet-pack gunner the Revenant; or the dual-wielding Marauder with its laser-axe and shotgun. Each of these has its own controls and skillsets, as well as a summoning wheel that can spawn useful minion demons like Arachnotrons and Hell Knights. The wheel can also introduce extra hazards for the Doom Slayer. More demons to play as should be added
YOU CAN REALLY UNDERSTAND HOW TERRIFIED SOME OF THOSE DEMONS MIGHT BE OF THE SLAYER.
over time, but even with these five the variety on offer would make any devil-summoner blush. To succeed as the Doom Slayer you need to keep pushing forward, just like in the main game, though at the same time ensuring you take out both demon players before they can respawn.
You’d think the demons’ ability to command legions against only one player would stack the deck against the Doom Slayer, especially as, once killed, the demons can respawn with less health. But if you thought that then, well, you might not have seen a proper Doom Slayer in action. Some of the best moments are when you end up fleeing for your life as a demon against a particularly good player. You can really understand how terrified some of those demons might be of the Slayer. A good Slayer player is an unstoppable armoury of fiery death.
VERDICT
With six maps and five demons, this is one great asymmetric multiplayer mode that works much better than you’d think. Time to climb back into our Pain Elemental. Oscar Taylor-Kent