Hard Mode V.2

            Years ago I watched an anime called Bakuman. It’s basically an anime that follows two characters who work on a manga together. At one point they get writers block and are having a hard time deciding where to go with their story. They get the idea that they should read their fan mail and maybe get an idea or suggestion from the letters. The two come up with a story they thought would work and showed it to their editor. The editor takes one look and says something like “what is this!?” The two tell him that they used some fan suggestions and he comes back with something along the lines of “never use what fans say. No one ever knows what they want.” I always think about that when I write my own suggestions in my blogs or when developers say thinks like “we took thecommunity’s feedback.” or “we listened and we learned.” That always results in an eye roll from me. Must be why Ubisoft thought we liked paying money for basic cosmetics (You eye rolled right then! Admit it! Either because you agreed or because I somehow weaseled Ghost Recon back into a post. Boom baby!).

            The reason for the above is because even when I get something closer to what I’ve said I want I’m still unhappy. I’ve complained in the past about games being stagnant, not really evolving and just using the same formula year after year. I understand from the developers perspective that any given game could be someone’s first but when you’ve been gaming all your life you expect games to grow with you. I mean if you follow a certain franchise that has a multitude of sequels, you could get bogged down from starting with nothing to go and retrieve all the same items from the last iterations of the game. Now there’s been a game that has been out for a while that I haven’t played much until lately because it’s doing something different than the norm and is quite different than it’s last entry.

            The game I’m talking about is Doom Eternal. I feel like I’ve talked about this a little bit somewhere else but I’m not sure. I really enjoyed Doom (2016). I was really in the mood for a new FPS, saw Doom, bought it on an impulse and I’m glad I did. I didn’t know what to expect because I didn’t see anything about it really leading up to its release. It was just so nice to go back to an FPS that felt like a real PC FPS like Unreal Tournament. It was fast and hectic, no reloading, no hiding somewhere to let your health regen, just enough of a story to have a clear and focused objective. I was very impressed with it. Doom Eternal has pretty much done everything I’ve asked for a game to do in my first hard mode post but has also left me unsatisfied.

            When I saw the gameplay trailer for Doom Eternal I was pretty excited. I was very much ready to have more of 2016 but that’s not what I got. It opens with the Doom Slayer being on a spaceship of sorts and Earth being invaded by the demons. There’s no correlation between the end of 2016 to the beginning of Eternal. I didn’t really care too much, it was very big scale and over the top, I could forgive it. I was hoping to pick up from 2016 though. I just imagined at the end of 2016 being similar to the end of Halo Reach where your Spartan fights waves of Covenant until you eventually get overwhelmed. I really didn’t like that you could see the Doom Slayers head with his helmet off. I would have rathered his head be off screen and the helmet being in the background. I also didn’t like that when they show him put the helmet on you can see his eyes and some facial features. I don’t know, I don’t want to humanize him too much y’know?  The first thing that kind of shook me was the art had changed. The enemies were a little brighter and from what I’ve seen elsewhere, they were made to look more like they did in older games. I wouldn’t know; 2016 was the first Doom I played, so seeing these slightly less gritty enemies was kind of weird. Then one of the kill animations on the weaker zombie enemies was you punching their heads down into their chest and they peer at you with these kind of sad, pathetic eyes that makes it look a little comical. I don’t necessarily want comical here, I want brutal. The game is also more arcade-y. The secrets, power-ups and 1-ups (why lives, whyyy) all look very old school and out of place coming from 2016. 2016 did have a handful of power-ups floating in the air in fight areas but since they weren’t around all the time it I didn’t mind. Probably the thing that bothers me the most is that most enemies are weak to a certain weapon and weapon mod. You constantly have to juggle through your weapons depending on what enemy shows up. It defiantly brings a degree of difficulty but only because certain weapons are more effective to certain enemies. You HAVE to use the sticky grenade on the spider-bots’ turret, you HAVE to use the pulse rifle on enemies with shields, you HAVE to use the scope on the assault rifle to take out the revenants cannons. And I am sooo sick of fighting the spider-bots, I really am. I think I had enough of them by level two.

            I do applaud id Software for making a more challenging and difficult game then the norm. It’s just too bad, for me anyways, that it had to be Doom. So don’t mind me, I’m just one of those people that will find something to complain about 🙃, like a hack and slash using X as a light attack and Y as the heavy attack yet when a game does something different I hate it. My brain is just used to those buttons being the thing that when they’re not I can’t adjust. I’ve seen Doom Eternal on some “best of the year” lists so thought I should try it again. I’ll continue to plug away at Eternal in between Cyberpunk. Alright, I’ll leave you with that. It’s sleepy times. Bye bye.

                                 @AztecSauce                               @H4mmerBros