Doom Eternal: The Ancient Gods – Part One
Hell boils over in DOOM ETERNAL: THE ANCIENT GODS— PART ONE.
If the Doom Slayer is a race car, as id Software has described him, then The Ancient Gods—Part One is a series of victory laps around three new courses. It picks up right at the finish line of Doom Eternal, and the experience is akin to waking up at the wheel of a Ferrari screaming down the track at 200mph. While it’s possible to play without having completed its parent game, you’d be foolish to try.
You inherit the Slayer plus all the extras, souped up with weapon mods and ability runes picked up during Eternal’s original campaign. And despite having completed it, I spent the first 20 minutes embarrassing myself, thumping at a reload key that doesn’t exist. It’s the shooter equivalent of flicking into sports mode, and realizing you’ve activated the wipers instead.
id Software, like the Slayer, is at the height of its powers. Doom 2016 saw the studio reinvent the wheel—quite literally, building the game around spinning arenas that set you in constant motion. Ever since, it’s been coming up with inventive ways to thrust a stick in the spokes, tripping up players by disrupting the formula.
Doom Eternal’s most notorious example was the Marauder, a relentless runner who pursued the Slayer like a shadow, if your shadow owned an axe and a bright-orange attack dog. He returns in The Ancient Gods, and exemplifies id’s trend towards enemies who can only be defeated in highly specific fashion. Take the Turrets, new fixed placement shooters that appear like miniature Eyes of Sauron. A couple of shots through the scope of your assault rifle will burst the orb—but take too long during targeting and the ball will retreat inside its pillar, surviving until you can loop around for another try.
The truth is that The Ancient Gods regularly frightened me
HOST WANTED
Then there’s the Spirit, which makes a ghostbuster of the Slayer. Mostly invisible, you’ll know it by the blue aura that encircles its host—as well as the super-speed, hyper-aggressive assaults on your person. Once the host is killed, the possessing Spirit bursts out, and you have a few seconds to zap it with the plasma rifle’s microwave beam. If you’re tardy or get distracted, then the Spirit will hop into another host and you’ll have to begin again.
You would think this kind of step-by-step enemy disposal would trap you into a process—as if shooting by instruction manual. But the Spirit presents more tactical choice, not less: Do you focus your firepower on the host, and hope you can follow through with the plasma? Or demolish the most powerful demons on the periphery first, ensuring there are no large homes left for the ghost to haunt?
The biggest worry going into The Ancient Gods was that Doom’s momentum might be stalled by the absence of Mick Gordon, its composer since 2016, whose hell choirs and industrial crunch have become central to the series. It’s a fitting compliment to Gordon’s work that he’s been replaced by not one man, but two—and while there’s nothing as striking as BFG Division soundtracking the Ancient Gods, Andrew Hulshult and David Levy do an admirable job.
This is Doom at its most oppressive and intimidating. There’s a little respite outside combat, and you certainly won’t find any in the centerpiece battles. There were moments, after several minutes in the mosh pit, where the appearance of a charging Marauder, or two towering Tyrants or three Barons of Hell left me buckling emotionally, not knowing how I’d keep up the act that I was the Slayer, the only thing the demons fear. The truth is that The Ancient Gods regularly frightened me with its intensity.
The Ancient Gods—Part One is a virtuosic display, then—and demands that you rise to its level. After finishing the campaign missions on Ultra-Violence, I was so exhausted I couldn’t quite tell whether I’d actually enjoyed myself—synapses fried by the sheer mental and physical challenge.