Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited May 2021
Replaying the main campaign of Eternal to get set for the second DLC. Still 98% of a blast of a game, with that last 2% being the incredibly shitty Marauders.
And it's not just their premise, with them being non-boss enemies that somehow get to be totally fucking invincible most of the time for no damn reason, they really are made badly. Their implementation is straight-up assballs. I'm flying through a fight against a dozen enemies at high speed, lay out every enemy except the Marauder so I can focus him down, except the garbage code for them has the Marauder first throw out a wolf because it interprets a shot against another enemy as a shot against itself. Fine, kill the wolf. I give the Marauder a moment to catch up and attack and it just flings an arc shot at me. I dodge the arc shot...and now it charges too close and kicks into "free shotgun damage" mode, knocking me back. Then it flings another arc shot because I'm too far again. I tank this hit just so I don't fuck with the range AI on the stupid design and the Marauder runs up to me again.
Except this time it's fucked up on ground terrain and shuffles back and forth, not able to decide if it wants a bullshit shotgun blast or if it will finally do an axe attack. So I'm stuck there for a good five seconds waiting for the fucking awful code to decide what it will do. Hooray! Fucking shotgun blast!
Which knocks me directly back into a handful of zombies that have since spawned behind me, which kill me instantly because this is Nightmare and every melee hit halfway kills you and I've been soaking the moronic free damage the Marauder gets to deal in order to force it into the right range to let you fight it.
If you're gonna make a shitty enemy with arbitrary damage immunity based on ridiculously narrow range bands, polish the fucking code so the enemy works right.
I think in general the vulnerability-window play in Doom Eternal doesn't really work. The nice thing about the mainline combat loop is that you can either be efficient or inefficient, but everything eventually dies if you keep shooting it.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Yeah, the only other thing I don't like in combat against non-shitty enemies is the annoyingly-low ammo limitations. I am never a fan of a dev keeping ammo limits low to force you into switching weapons, and it's a little annoying that a big fight means I have to reserve certain weapons to make sure I've got enough ammo in them for certain enemies. It's a little thing, but I would've been happier with probably 25% more ammo for everything, if not 50%. Just let me fight with what I want.
And that Marauder combat sequence definitely has no place in regular combat. Mid-level boss, fine. Mixed in with other enemies that are all rushdown 110% of the time, can kill you in 2-3 hits, and most of them shoot something with perfect accuracy? The marauders are so out of place they don't even feel like a finished enemy half the time.
The music/action combo is still absolute top-notch shit, though. Not just the soundtrack being great, but it flows so amazingly into the combat and then settles to background vibe. It's always perfect music for smashing demons, too, just the sort of material you would expect if you were cruising through hell on a murder rampage. It's a genuine tossup for me whether I want the fights longer so the music keeps going or just for the sheer fun of fights.
If anything about nightmare ever feels remotely fair, that's the game failing to live up to the original. Yes, that's been a problem with the series for a while...
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
Nightmare does feel fair tho.
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
The only thing that kills me in Nightmare 95% of the time is Marauders not doing the shit they're supposed to do when they're supposed to do it or the game doing bullshit like spawning a Marauder, then spawning in other enemies behind me while I'm distracted. The other 5% is forgetting how a fight goes and/or not paying enough attention.
None of the other enemies pose a consistent issue because they consistently work right and don't get bullshit invulnerability slapped on them.
I wonder what the percentage of posts in this thread the Marauder Discourse has taken
It's not surprising, as it takes a really amazing game with a really amazing combat loop and just kinda shits on it for a large percentage of the fanbase.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited May 2021
So possibly the only actually semi-interesting thing about the Marauders: apparently they're a shitty enemy because the game uses a "token" system for enemy attacks. Basically, the more complex a fight, the less of a chance that any specific enemy will attack you because the action "budget" is being used by other enemies.
The Marauder design is specifically crap because this system designates which action it can take. Because it moves so fast it can move into axe attack range and then not have the "tokens" available to do an axe attack, leaving it stuck doing nothing until the player moves into a different range band. Then it will suddenly do a shotgun blast or arc throw despite very very clearly being in axe range first. But if you reduce the fight to the Marauder and a couple zombies at a distance, the Marauder can attack freely and finally conform to how it's supposed to act (in a fully aggro state), thus allowing the playing to actually counter it without having to wait multiple seconds in one spot.
So yeah, it's not us. They built an awesome system to balance enemy actions versus enemy numbers, then built an enemy with an extremely specific counter where the token system breaks the Marauder's behavior with increased enemy numbers in play. The Marauder actually does shit directly on the combat loop.
Nightmare in Doom 1/2 isn't about fairness, it's about changing the dynamic from 'Murder everything' to 'survive long enough to get to the exit'
It's less of a difficulty setting and more of an alternate gameplay mode.
Ohh I love this line of thought.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
edited May 2021
I mean, we have proof that switching up gameplay mechanics can result in really neat experiences.
The Dancer from DS3 is the only boss that doesn’t follow the flow of the music, and it throws people off. Mr Freeze in Arkham making it so you could only do a thing once was awesome. I loved the helicopter battle in HL2 though I may be alone in that.
Even the Icon of Sin kind of switches things up a bit.
Why they doubled down on the marauder and then tripled down on it in the DLC as a middle finger to the fans who didn’t like them to begin with is beyond me.
jungleroomx on
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited May 2021
Cos it doesn't switch things up. It enforces it.
I know I'm just talking to walls here, but whatever, I'll just say it again.
The core of Doom Eternal is never stand still. If you never stand still Marauder isn't scary. Marauder can't hurt you. It's true, that really is Doom Eternal. It's game about quake 3 arena looping. But people don't like being forced to do it.
They also have a somewhat mistaken belief that the move -> stop and kill something -> move is the gameplay loop. It's actually not. The stopping part is the mistake you are making on the way to learning the real gameplay loop.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
After replaying the main campaign, I think what sticks with me the most is that Eternal may be my number one pick ever for music that matches the gameplay. Every single level, the soundtrack has that atmospheric low level track, then you get into a fight and the game sounds just like it plays. Then you jam away ripping enemies to pieces, wipe out everything, and the music settles down right beside your pulse rate.
And the way you come out of that fight against the Icon, music hammering into the cutscene, the Icon drops, and Doomguy just walks away to the great classic bass riff? Fuck is that some tasty, tasty goodness for my ears.
And after damn near every fight at this point, I'm slightly disappointed there isn't more fight. When you've got the weapons figured out and a nice mix of runes, you hit that zone of flying limbs and gore where it's amazing how the devs make you really FEEL like Doomguy. I end up wanting a mode where it's like a Total War game with Doomguy versus an actual demon army and you get to rip and tear through the whole thing with you entire arsenal.
Aside from the usual Marauder complaints, I want to be able to unhinge my jaw and devour the game whole.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited May 2021
It actually slightly randomises the fight tracks too. You don't always hear the same thing. It's got layers.
By that I mean like, super gore nest. There are lots of little chunks of super gore nest it can play in a fight, even for the same part of the song.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
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ThegreatcowLord of All BaconsWashington State - It's Wet up here innit? Registered Userregular
So I finally finished the Ancient Gods DLC
Thoughts:
If they wanted to jack the final boss fight stressfulness up to 11, they goddamn succeeded. That was one of the most grueling, tedious boss fights I've ever encountered in any game. the fact you have to use your movement skills up to your maximum capability to avoid healing the dark lord was just nuts. Probably would not have been possible without the meathook on the super shotgun due to how fast that bastard moves. It also didn't help that he was goddamn stingy with either summoning dogs or queuing up his proper green-flash attack to actually harm him, so the fight felt extra long if for no other reason than I simply couldn't get him to queue his trigger attack.
Also Lore-wise I'm a bit confused. So based on those texts I guess we got our twist that the Dark Lord was the actual original father and his creations rebelled against him? Or something? Also the ending kinda feels a tad anticlimactic after all that buildup and explosion in those final hours. You're sealed in a coffin by those floating clerics in the same altar that the dark lord was imprisoned in? And you were somehow created by the dark lord to enact his revenge??? I guess that explains why the doom slayer killed the father sphere and resurrected the dark lord but I'm still confused as to what this all means.
Overall, Eternal is a mixed bag for me honestly. I really felt that too many "gimmicks" or tools were given to the doom slayer, to the point that I felt like that overly thick swiss army knife with too many tools to make it practical. So many fights and mechanics just screamed "oh shit our analytics showed that no one was using this weapon attachment in the base game, better shove this mechanic in so folks use it then!" (looking at you microwave beam and auto-shotty) which just made fights more annoying rather than inventive. Still a fantastic shooter overall, but it somehow feels a bit lacking from 2016 and I'm not sure how.
AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
I am in the same boat. Other than the Marauders, I was enjoying Doom Eternal all the way up to the final, final part of the 2nd DLC. And then it was like.. I see exactly what I need to do, now it's just a ton of execution and my hands hurting. And then, IMO...
the ending really shit on the plot and what they'd been building. There could've been something there with the dark lord and you being a reflection of it, but the manipulation of everyone? That he was the source of EVERYTHING? just... ugh.
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
I don't mind Marauders, but they are pretty bad design overall. They feel like the one enemy in the game that is less subjected to skill as it is being purely buggy and annoying. If the token system above is correct, then they are flatly objectively poor design in the game because that ensures their behaviour won't be correct for dealing with them. Unless the intent from ID was to literally make an enemy whose only counter is to completely ignore until they are the only one left.
It does explain why they are so buggy and weird when they appear with larger groups of enemies at least.
If they wanted to jack the final boss fight stressfulness up to 11, they goddamn succeeded. That was one of the most grueling, tedious boss fights I've ever encountered in any game. the fact you have to use your movement skills up to your maximum capability to avoid healing the dark lord was just nuts. Probably would not have been possible without the meathook on the super shotgun due to how fast that bastard moves. It also didn't help that he was goddamn stingy with either summoning dogs or queuing up his proper green-flash attack to actually harm him, so the fight felt extra long if for no other reason than I simply couldn't get him to queue his trigger attack.
Also Lore-wise I'm a bit confused. So based on those texts I guess we got our twist that the Dark Lord was the actual original father and his creations rebelled against him? Or something? Also the ending kinda feels a tad anticlimactic after all that buildup and explosion in those final hours. You're sealed in a coffin by those floating clerics in the same altar that the dark lord was imprisoned in? And you were somehow created by the dark lord to enact his revenge??? I guess that explains why the doom slayer killed the father sphere and resurrected the dark lord but I'm still confused as to what this all means.
Overall, Eternal is a mixed bag for me honestly. I really felt that too many "gimmicks" or tools were given to the doom slayer, to the point that I felt like that overly thick swiss army knife with too many tools to make it practical. So many fights and mechanics just screamed "oh shit our analytics showed that no one was using this weapon attachment in the base game, better shove this mechanic in so folks use it then!" (looking at you microwave beam and auto-shotty) which just made fights more annoying rather than inventive. Still a fantastic shooter overall, but it somehow feels a bit lacking from 2016 and I'm not sure how.
The Dark Lord was in fact the original and true creator of the universe. His Maykr creations betrayed him, seemingly after he became obsessed with creating a realm more perfect that Urdak, and sealed him away in the realm that would become Hell. He was also apparently the source of the Doom Slayer's unnatural power, since he created Urdak and the machines that empowered the Slayer, so his death caused the Slayer to fall into a coma. The Dark Lord wanted to unmake all of his previous creations out of vengeance, and I guess the implication is that he might've been influencing the Slayer through their connection, hence the Slayer destroying the Father's Life Sphere and devastating Urdak. But that could also be interpreted at the Slayer wanting to eliminate all the gods and cosmic powers that have been threatening Earth, taking them all off the board. Properly destroying the Dark Lord also makes it so Hell entities cannot exist outside of Hell for whatever reason, so that was another reason he wanted to give the Dark Lord back his tangible, killable form.
Storywise, I feel like 2016 did a better job of it, presenting a much more curated experience, with the greater cosmology being hinted at only vaguely. Eternal dumps a lot of stuff all over you like a shotgun blast to the face, and frankly some of the way they present Hell and the other realms isn't especially creative or inspired. They punctured the great mystery of how the cosmology was organized, and had the major figures in Hell just be these three old goobers for the main chunk of the game. There was a lot of good stuff though, I like the Father and the Makyrs and the Night Sentinels, but I think 2016 told a better story overall.
It's absolutely wild how story wise the franchise went from "You're a space marine who got sent to Mars as punishment for kicking the shit out of your CO after he ordered you to fire on civilians. There is a distress call from a nearby base, and you're piloting the ship taking a strike team to investigate. They all enter the base while you wait in the ship. After a while they're all dead so you go into the base alone" to "whatever the hell it was that I just read in those spoilers".
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ThegreatcowLord of All BaconsWashington State - It's Wet up here innit? Registered Userregular
If they wanted to jack the final boss fight stressfulness up to 11, they goddamn succeeded. That was one of the most grueling, tedious boss fights I've ever encountered in any game. the fact you have to use your movement skills up to your maximum capability to avoid healing the dark lord was just nuts. Probably would not have been possible without the meathook on the super shotgun due to how fast that bastard moves. It also didn't help that he was goddamn stingy with either summoning dogs or queuing up his proper green-flash attack to actually harm him, so the fight felt extra long if for no other reason than I simply couldn't get him to queue his trigger attack.
Also Lore-wise I'm a bit confused. So based on those texts I guess we got our twist that the Dark Lord was the actual original father and his creations rebelled against him? Or something? Also the ending kinda feels a tad anticlimactic after all that buildup and explosion in those final hours. You're sealed in a coffin by those floating clerics in the same altar that the dark lord was imprisoned in? And you were somehow created by the dark lord to enact his revenge??? I guess that explains why the doom slayer killed the father sphere and resurrected the dark lord but I'm still confused as to what this all means.
Overall, Eternal is a mixed bag for me honestly. I really felt that too many "gimmicks" or tools were given to the doom slayer, to the point that I felt like that overly thick swiss army knife with too many tools to make it practical. So many fights and mechanics just screamed "oh shit our analytics showed that no one was using this weapon attachment in the base game, better shove this mechanic in so folks use it then!" (looking at you microwave beam and auto-shotty) which just made fights more annoying rather than inventive. Still a fantastic shooter overall, but it somehow feels a bit lacking from 2016 and I'm not sure how.
The Dark Lord was in fact the original and true creator of the universe. His Maykr creations betrayed him, seemingly after he became obsessed with creating a realm more perfect that Urdak, and sealed him away in the realm that would become Hell. He was also apparently the source of the Doom Slayer's unnatural power, since he created Urdak and the machines that empowered the Slayer, so his death caused the Slayer to fall into a coma. The Dark Lord wanted to unmake all of his previous creations out of vengeance, and I guess the implication is that he might've been influencing the Slayer through their connection, hence the Slayer destroying the Father's Life Sphere and devastating Urdak. But that could also be interpreted at the Slayer wanting to eliminate all the gods and cosmic powers that have been threatening Earth, taking them all off the board. Properly destroying the Dark Lord also makes it so Hell entities cannot exist outside of Hell for whatever reason, so that was another reason he wanted to give the Dark Lord back his tangible, killable form.
Storywise, I feel like 2016 did a better job of it, presenting a much more curated experience, with the greater cosmology being hinted at only vaguely. Eternal dumps a lot of stuff all over you like a shotgun blast to the face, and frankly some of the way they present Hell and the other realms isn't especially creative or inspired. They punctured the great mystery of how the cosmology was organized, and had the major figures in Hell just be these three old goobers for the main chunk of the game. There was a lot of good stuff though, I like the Father and the Makyrs and the Night Sentinels, but I think 2016 told a better story overall.
Gotcha, ok yeah that puts it in better perspective. It does at least explain
why the slayer destroyed the father sphere and resurrected the dark lord in the prior dlc in that moment but it didn't come across properly. I also at the time interpreted it like you did, that the Slayer was so goddamn pissed at Father for "Creating" the Dark Lord in the first place in a sort of "Because you created this son of a bitch, he created hell, which created all these demons, which sealed me away in hell, ergo, you're ultimately responsible for all this shit" logic chain and figured he'd smash the Dark Lord on his own terms because the Slayer is slightly unhinged like that, but now it seems the Dark Lord was sort of pulling his strings the whole time. Honestly I just wish that kind of twist had done a better job of building that reveal in the game rather than discovering it through the codex texts.
When you resurrect the Dark Lord at the end of the part 1 DLC and Vega says essentially "he is you", I was hoping for some metaphysical "for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction" or some kind of soul copy mirror thing that could have been investigated more. Especially given that he's basically a tatt'd up, demon eye version of you, but NOPE. He's the real big bad, he made you and he played the ultra-long keikaku "BUT IT WAS ME DIO!" level of long game that we only get to find out in scattered codex entries. I guess thinking on it more is probably why I feel the ending is so underwhelming. I know it's a shooter first and all, but if you're crafting this epic story with that kind of twist, I just wish it had been displayed a bit better.
It's absolutely wild how story wise the franchise went from "You're a space marine who got sent to Mars as punishment for kicking the shit out of your CO after he ordered you to fire on civilians. There is a distress call from a nearby base, and you're piloting the ship taking a strike team to investigate. They all enter the base while you wait in the ship. After a while they're all dead so you go into the base alone" to "whatever the hell it was that I just read in those spoilers".
I mean as soon as they decided the Doomslayer was the Doomslayer instead of just some random Doomguy we were already there.
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augustwhere you come from is goneRegistered Userregular
Doom 2016 was like DREDD 3D, but with demons.
Doom Eternal is like a season of Metalocalypse that takes itself seriously.
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augustwhere you come from is goneRegistered Userregular
You want a thorough deep-dive into the technology behind Quake? DF Retro to the rescue!
One very noticible tidbit here is coverage of the very first 3D accelerated version of Quake, VQuake running in DOS for the Rendition Verte. There's no way to emulate this right now so Linneman of course built a period-appropriate PC with an actual Verte card. He actually praises this version for staying truer to the grungy look of the software renderer, so its nice that he's provided some footage of it that's pretty hard to get otherwise.
I finally started this up, but I’m finding each mission seems much longer than I remember from Doom 2016, and a good bit harder. Maybe I’m misremembering, or maybe I’ve become an old man, filled with regret.
I finally started this up, but I’m finding each mission seems much longer than I remember from Doom 2016, and a good bit harder. Maybe I’m misremembering, or maybe I’ve become an old man, filled with regret.
That soundtrack tho.
Nah, you're correct, the missions do tend to run a bit long sometimes, and it's definitely harder. Like every difficulty class should be treated as the next higher class in Eternal compared to 2016.
I finally started this up, but I’m finding each mission seems much longer than I remember from Doom 2016, and a good bit harder. Maybe I’m misremembering, or maybe I’ve become an old man, filled with regret.
That soundtrack tho.
Nah, you're correct, the missions do tend to run a bit long sometimes, and it's definitely harder. Like every difficulty class should be treated as the next higher class in Eternal compared to 2016.
Ah interesting. I’m going to try to leave it where it is unless it gets too grueling, and come back later for the Slayer Gate, since I think it even suggested waiting.
I finally started this up, but I’m finding each mission seems much longer than I remember from Doom 2016, and a good bit harder. Maybe I’m misremembering, or maybe I’ve become an old man, filled with regret.
That soundtrack tho.
Nah, you're correct, the missions do tend to run a bit long sometimes, and it's definitely harder. Like every difficulty class should be treated as the next higher class in Eternal compared to 2016.
Ah interesting. I’m going to try to leave it where it is unless it gets too grueling, and come back later for the Slayer Gate, since I think it even suggested waiting.
Yeah, you might be like me and get used to the difficulty. That plus getting all the upgrades and stuff means by the end you just sorta go into a trance and then everything dies.
This Doom themed dating sim reimagines the brutal first person shooter as a romp through a high school that happens to be in hell. https://t.co/56fwcTQC6n
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
edited June 2021
i played the base game on nightmare when it came out, got my 20 hours, put it down
started playing the dlc on nightmare having not touched it in a year or so last week and been having a jolly time albeit feeling my self-imposed difficulty sliders even more (no powerups no bfg no pb no lockon), in particular the lack of a fastswap instant kill on weakpoints but ayyy stikky life. i said before the holt slayer gate "i bet the meme here is a ghosted marauder" and i manifested him into existence and then yakety sax played as i ran around the arena for 3 minutes repeatedly failing to glory kill enemies
however i have had 3-4 crashes where the game hitches briefly then about a minute later crash to desktop, no error. anybody had anything like that?
also the hardest difficulty slider of all? swapping ur ssg and melee buttons. it turns out the greatest enemy of all is inside ur head😔
here was a fun fight where object permanence was my enemy
o god all the slow combos where im trying to remember my ssg button
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That just... ended, huh?
Hmmmmmm....
God I laughed so hard at the 20:00 mark.
Oculus: TheBigDookie | XBL: Dook | NNID: BigDookie
And it's not just their premise, with them being non-boss enemies that somehow get to be totally fucking invincible most of the time for no damn reason, they really are made badly. Their implementation is straight-up assballs. I'm flying through a fight against a dozen enemies at high speed, lay out every enemy except the Marauder so I can focus him down, except the garbage code for them has the Marauder first throw out a wolf because it interprets a shot against another enemy as a shot against itself. Fine, kill the wolf. I give the Marauder a moment to catch up and attack and it just flings an arc shot at me. I dodge the arc shot...and now it charges too close and kicks into "free shotgun damage" mode, knocking me back. Then it flings another arc shot because I'm too far again. I tank this hit just so I don't fuck with the range AI on the stupid design and the Marauder runs up to me again.
Except this time it's fucked up on ground terrain and shuffles back and forth, not able to decide if it wants a bullshit shotgun blast or if it will finally do an axe attack. So I'm stuck there for a good five seconds waiting for the fucking awful code to decide what it will do. Hooray! Fucking shotgun blast!
Which knocks me directly back into a handful of zombies that have since spawned behind me, which kill me instantly because this is Nightmare and every melee hit halfway kills you and I've been soaking the moronic free damage the Marauder gets to deal in order to force it into the right range to let you fight it.
If you're gonna make a shitty enemy with arbitrary damage immunity based on ridiculously narrow range bands, polish the fucking code so the enemy works right.
And that Marauder combat sequence definitely has no place in regular combat. Mid-level boss, fine. Mixed in with other enemies that are all rushdown 110% of the time, can kill you in 2-3 hits, and most of them shoot something with perfect accuracy? The marauders are so out of place they don't even feel like a finished enemy half the time.
The music/action combo is still absolute top-notch shit, though. Not just the soundtrack being great, but it flows so amazingly into the combat and then settles to background vibe. It's always perfect music for smashing demons, too, just the sort of material you would expect if you were cruising through hell on a murder rampage. It's a genuine tossup for me whether I want the fights longer so the music keeps going or just for the sheer fun of fights.
It's less of a difficulty setting and more of an alternate gameplay mode.
I mean I haven't played eternal so probably. If so that's a problem! (Although there's ultra-nightmare? )
Just like if you're complaining about how frustrating certain select aspects of the top difficulty are... I feel like the point has been lost.
The only thing that kills me in Nightmare 95% of the time is Marauders not doing the shit they're supposed to do when they're supposed to do it or the game doing bullshit like spawning a Marauder, then spawning in other enemies behind me while I'm distracted. The other 5% is forgetting how a fight goes and/or not paying enough attention.
None of the other enemies pose a consistent issue because they consistently work right and don't get bullshit invulnerability slapped on them.
I hard disagree that improving game design across decades is a problem.
It's not surprising, as it takes a really amazing game with a really amazing combat loop and just kinda shits on it for a large percentage of the fanbase.
The Marauder design is specifically crap because this system designates which action it can take. Because it moves so fast it can move into axe attack range and then not have the "tokens" available to do an axe attack, leaving it stuck doing nothing until the player moves into a different range band. Then it will suddenly do a shotgun blast or arc throw despite very very clearly being in axe range first. But if you reduce the fight to the Marauder and a couple zombies at a distance, the Marauder can attack freely and finally conform to how it's supposed to act (in a fully aggro state), thus allowing the playing to actually counter it without having to wait multiple seconds in one spot.
So yeah, it's not us. They built an awesome system to balance enemy actions versus enemy numbers, then built an enemy with an extremely specific counter where the token system breaks the Marauder's behavior with increased enemy numbers in play. The Marauder actually does shit directly on the combat loop.
Ohh I love this line of thought.
The Dancer from DS3 is the only boss that doesn’t follow the flow of the music, and it throws people off. Mr Freeze in Arkham making it so you could only do a thing once was awesome. I loved the helicopter battle in HL2 though I may be alone in that.
Even the Icon of Sin kind of switches things up a bit.
Why they doubled down on the marauder and then tripled down on it in the DLC as a middle finger to the fans who didn’t like them to begin with is beyond me.
I know I'm just talking to walls here, but whatever, I'll just say it again.
The core of Doom Eternal is never stand still. If you never stand still Marauder isn't scary. Marauder can't hurt you. It's true, that really is Doom Eternal. It's game about quake 3 arena looping. But people don't like being forced to do it.
They also have a somewhat mistaken belief that the move -> stop and kill something -> move is the gameplay loop. It's actually not. The stopping part is the mistake you are making on the way to learning the real gameplay loop.
And the way you come out of that fight against the Icon, music hammering into the cutscene, the Icon drops, and Doomguy just walks away to the great classic bass riff? Fuck is that some tasty, tasty goodness for my ears.
And after damn near every fight at this point, I'm slightly disappointed there isn't more fight. When you've got the weapons figured out and a nice mix of runes, you hit that zone of flying limbs and gore where it's amazing how the devs make you really FEEL like Doomguy. I end up wanting a mode where it's like a Total War game with Doomguy versus an actual demon army and you get to rip and tear through the whole thing with you entire arsenal.
Aside from the usual Marauder complaints, I want to be able to unhinge my jaw and devour the game whole.
By that I mean like, super gore nest. There are lots of little chunks of super gore nest it can play in a fight, even for the same part of the song.
Thoughts:
Also Lore-wise I'm a bit confused. So based on those texts I guess we got our twist that the Dark Lord was the actual original father and his creations rebelled against him? Or something? Also the ending kinda feels a tad anticlimactic after all that buildup and explosion in those final hours. You're sealed in a coffin by those floating clerics in the same altar that the dark lord was imprisoned in? And you were somehow created by the dark lord to enact his revenge??? I guess that explains why the doom slayer killed the father sphere and resurrected the dark lord but I'm still confused as to what this all means.
Overall, Eternal is a mixed bag for me honestly. I really felt that too many "gimmicks" or tools were given to the doom slayer, to the point that I felt like that overly thick swiss army knife with too many tools to make it practical. So many fights and mechanics just screamed "oh shit our analytics showed that no one was using this weapon attachment in the base game, better shove this mechanic in so folks use it then!" (looking at you microwave beam and auto-shotty) which just made fights more annoying rather than inventive. Still a fantastic shooter overall, but it somehow feels a bit lacking from 2016 and I'm not sure how.
Wud yoo laek to lern aboot meatz? Look here!
It does explain why they are so buggy and weird when they appear with larger groups of enemies at least.
Storywise, I feel like 2016 did a better job of it, presenting a much more curated experience, with the greater cosmology being hinted at only vaguely. Eternal dumps a lot of stuff all over you like a shotgun blast to the face, and frankly some of the way they present Hell and the other realms isn't especially creative or inspired. They punctured the great mystery of how the cosmology was organized, and had the major figures in Hell just be these three old goobers for the main chunk of the game. There was a lot of good stuff though, I like the Father and the Makyrs and the Night Sentinels, but I think 2016 told a better story overall.
Gotcha, ok yeah that puts it in better perspective. It does at least explain
When you resurrect the Dark Lord at the end of the part 1 DLC and Vega says essentially "he is you", I was hoping for some metaphysical "for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction" or some kind of soul copy mirror thing that could have been investigated more. Especially given that he's basically a tatt'd up, demon eye version of you, but NOPE. He's the real big bad, he made you and he played the ultra-long keikaku "BUT IT WAS ME DIO!" level of long game that we only get to find out in scattered codex entries. I guess thinking on it more is probably why I feel the ending is so underwhelming. I know it's a shooter first and all, but if you're crafting this epic story with that kind of twist, I just wish it had been displayed a bit better.
Wud yoo laek to lern aboot meatz? Look here!
I mean as soon as they decided the Doomslayer was the Doomslayer instead of just some random Doomguy we were already there.
Doom Eternal is like a season of Metalocalypse that takes itself seriously.
One very noticible tidbit here is coverage of the very first 3D accelerated version of Quake, VQuake running in DOS for the Rendition Verte. There's no way to emulate this right now so Linneman of course built a period-appropriate PC with an actual Verte card. He actually praises this version for staying truer to the grungy look of the software renderer, so its nice that he's provided some footage of it that's pretty hard to get otherwise.
That soundtrack tho.
Nah, you're correct, the missions do tend to run a bit long sometimes, and it's definitely harder. Like every difficulty class should be treated as the next higher class in Eternal compared to 2016.
Ah interesting. I’m going to try to leave it where it is unless it gets too grueling, and come back later for the Slayer Gate, since I think it even suggested waiting.
Yeah, you might be like me and get used to the difficulty. That plus getting all the upgrades and stuff means by the end you just sorta go into a trance and then everything dies.
started playing the dlc on nightmare having not touched it in a year or so last week and been having a jolly time albeit feeling my self-imposed difficulty sliders even more (no powerups no bfg no pb no lockon), in particular the lack of a fastswap instant kill on weakpoints but ayyy stikky life. i said before the holt slayer gate "i bet the meme here is a ghosted marauder" and i manifested him into existence and then yakety sax played as i ran around the arena for 3 minutes repeatedly failing to glory kill enemies
however i have had 3-4 crashes where the game hitches briefly then about a minute later crash to desktop, no error. anybody had anything like that?
also the hardest difficulty slider of all? swapping ur ssg and melee buttons. it turns out the greatest enemy of all is inside ur head😔
here was a fun fight where object permanence was my enemy
o god all the slow combos where im trying to remember my ssg button