Doom Eternal

The greatest FPS of them all returns, a little closer to home

PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One

Put down the shotgun, pressure-wash away the dismembered corpses and Doom is really a puzzle game, albeit a perfectly tuned, tremendously tachycardic one. Despite its new, somewhat loftier setting, Eternal is no different. So while the resting heart-rate may have been punched up another two-dozen BPM or so, the dazzlingly pure framework that Id Software built for 2016’s reboot is still firmly, intoxicatingly intact.

“If you meet people’s expectations, you haven’t done enough,” says Hugo Martin, the game’s co-director, as he explains the nuances of refining a series like this. The answer, he acknowledges, is not just to meet expectations, but to surpass them. Id’s aim with Eternal is to provide players with the exact mechanics, weapons and combat scenarios they never knew they wanted. “It’s a tall order,” he says, “but we’re all really excited to do it.”

Beneath all the fancy particle effects and piled-up giblets, the core loop of Eternal is managing three vital survival resources (up from the previous game’s two), each requiring you to commit to a different offensive attack to restock. Running low on life? Perform one of Eternal’s expanded suite of glory kills to bring forth health. Low on armour? Burn your enemies with the new shoulder-mounted flamethrower. Ammo reserves near-dry? Chop through flesh and bone with your chainsaw.

It’s breathlessly simple, really – a diverse combat puzzle with three straightforward solutions – but feels so wonderfully dynamic in motion. It feels tougher than before, but perhaps we’re out of practice. Regardless, a sparse weapon set ensures focus and, in time, something approaching mastery.

“We make a very conscious design decision to have a limited number of weapons,” Martin explains when we ask how much precision goes into refining the arsenal of a new Doom. “They work very specifically, and we spend time, effort and iteration making every single animation, every single effect and every single impact. All of it has to work together.”

Job done. Flicking through the arsenal on offer in our demo’s radial wheel has the splitsecond immediacy of a gearbox on a raceready motorcar. Even the plasma rifle, which felt limp three years ago, has been augmented with the force-feedback you want from a gun that has the rapidity of a collapsing quasar.

Combined with those three essential skills for resource management – of ripping, burning and cutting through your enemies – Eternal has a far broader skillset than its predecessor. The FPS has progressed apace since the 2016 game, and Bethesda’s own Rage

recently sought to elevate Id’s signature combat using a suite of ludicrously powerful abilities, but Eternal reasserts itself as the best and purest shooter that Bethesda has to offer.

A more indulgent aesthetic palette helps, too. Eternal depicts an Earth under the ravages of Hades, and it’s a welcome departure from the relatively similar arenas and corridors of the previous game. Levels are much bigger, introducing traversal mechanics that see the slayer scrambling up walls and using a jetpack double jump to cross larger gaps. It makes combat more vertical, more open to flanking manoeuvres, and gives you ample opportunity to use the new grappling hook to zip across a battlefield to deliver a brutal killing blow.

The more expansive approach to worldbuilding seeps into the narrative direction, too: the action is even more bombastic and absurd. We didn’t think it was quite possible, and then our hero punts an enormous shell from the barrel of a planet-cracking BFG, before climbing into the firing mechanism and launching himself into the middle of the collapsing planetary core of Mars. As you do.

So, all the pieces are here for a worthy follow-up to one of the best shooters of the last ten years. It feels essential, even before we learn more about the invasion multiplayer mechanic which, when we speak ten days before E3, remains a mystery. At first we think that’s where the Eternal name comes in: a nod to a sequel that’ll chase the games-as-service bandwagon but, thankfully, no. “It’s the eternal battle between good and evil,” Martin says. “Your fight is eternal, like the slayer’s.”

Levels are bigger, introducing traversal mechanics that see the slayer scrambling up walls

The one thing you want playing Eternal: three undead goons with the same look of glowingeyed shock as you strip their flesh away with a lightning gun

Publisher Id Software Developer Bethesda Format PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One Origin US Release TBA

RIGHT Not much to say about this one, really, is there? Yes, the chainsaw is back. Yes, it’s even more gory than before. Yes, it’s as gruesomely delicious as ever

TOP If Doom could be criticised for having too heavy a reliance on similar mini- and main bosses, we’re not sure the same could be levelled at Eternal. Id has gone to town on enemy art.

ABOVE The Mars Core level sees the planet falling in on itself. It’s the perfect opportunity for Id to show off its new thirdperson cutscenes

ABOVE The new enemy types come with specific new ways to screw you over, including worm tendrils that spurt out from gooey crevices on the floors, walls and ceilings.

TOP Eternal promises a wider array of locations to shoot, hack, saw and punch through, including Id’s glorious interpretation of heaven.