Doom Eternal Review: A Perfect Blend Of Old And New; 10 Starting Tips

ID Software’s Doom Reboot back in 2016 was an excellent revival of the original shooter formula that made the franchise famous. The gameplay was intense and fast-paced, with you running around while shooting and executing huge monsters, under a scorching metal soundtrack. While Doom 2016 brought the original game back to life, Doom Eternal decided to up the ante and bring something new to the table: you would still be a monster-shredding badass, but now you would have to be smart about it.

While the story is nothing special compared to the previous games, it is still serviceable. The events of the game happen 2 years after the previous Doom Game, with the Doom Slayer coming back to stop the three Hell priests from creating a ritual to consume mankind. In his quest, Doom Slayer's origins story is revealed gradually - with the guy eventually confronting his creators and stop them on their tracks.

Kicking up the difficulty

In Doom Eternal, you would have to cycle through every tool at your disposal to sustain and progress. Unlike previous games in the franchise, health, ammo, and armor pickups are rare in Eternal – and the most reliable way for you to acquire them is not exploring but killing and executing monsters in different ways. To get a health refill, you have to tear a monster apart with a glory kill after staggering them. For armor, a flamethrower is required… and finally, if you need ammo, the chainsaw would be your best bet.

Each enemy type would also have their own particular strengths, weaknesses and weak points – you have to rampage in moderation while trying to figure out the weak spots of the tougher mobs. Once you figured out how to chain everything together, Doom Eternal’s combat would be similar to dancing – with you coming inside the battlefield, assessing the situation, picking your priority targets and take them out based on whatever resources you need to gain.

An exciting battlefield with intricate level design

Besides the enemies, you have to make use of the environment to boost your mobility. Overall, most big battles would take place in a huge multi-leveled arena, dotted with jump pads and monkey bars to further boost your movement – with the Doom Slayer already has access to abilities like double jump or horizontal dash. Mobility is the name of this game – and standing still behind covers would get you nowhere in Doom; a close and personal fight is a must.

Navigating the environments can be a pain sometimes, however, they are actually much more forgiving than the usual games: Falling down a cliff would penalize you with just a small reduction in HP instead of instant death.

New multiplayer mode

The new Battlemode is very different from the usual Deathmatch in Doom 2016. This mode is a 2 vs 1 battle, with 2 players working together as demons against 1 Doom Slayer. This mode is an interesting take on Doom Eternal’s combat – while the Demons are much weaker, they have the advantage in number: if you focus down on one person, the other would be stabbing you behind your back. The demon players would have the ability to summon lesser mobs and various supportive skills such as traps, disable heal, disable loot…

Overall, it would take a while for players to get the hang of the game – as it is somewhat harder than the 2016 version. Mastering the gameplay is very rewarding, of course. Below are our 10 tips for starting out in Doom Eternal.

1 – Constantly moving

As mentioned before, this is very important in Doom Eternal – only by moving around constantly or even stay airborne could you keep the mob from focusing all their attention on the same target.

2 – Abuse the Flame belch

Enemies that are on fire would spit up green armor shards over time. The shard spawned would stay there for a while, so it is best to just set everything on fire then run around to do your own thing – when you came back, there would be quite an amount of armor drops ready to be picked up.

3 – Farm up resources using the zombies

You rarely come out of a fight with all 3 resources intact. To fill them up, you should use the usual flaming/chainsaw/glory kill combo on those zombie piles lying around – it is vital to enter a fight with as many resources as possible.

4 – Prioritize Ammo upgrades when using Sentinel Crystals

Health and armor are pretty much the same things – if you are carefully moving around, it is not hard to keep both stats above the danger threshold. Ammo is a different matter – as they can only be regained by using the chainsaw with a limited fuel reserve.

5 – Counter the marauders with the Super Shotgun

Marauders are actually designed to counter the usual arena shooter tropes – they control the fight, not you. In fact, you would lose even more control if you can’t prevent their green attack on time. The Super Shotgun is the most useful here, as its wide pellet spray would have an easier time to hit the marauder’s weak point than the rest of your arsenal.

6 – Read the Codex to find out more about demon weaknesses

The information section “Codex” is actually filled with useful information that can make your life easier. It might take quite a while for you to realize those details on your own.

7 – Don’t bother doing everything on your first try

The game is filled to the brim with secrets, challenges, and collectibles, more often than not lying in the dark corners of every level – however, it is better to save time and just rush through the game normally. After you have beaten Doom Eternal for the first time, you would get to replay the game using cheat to clean up all the collectibles and secrets on the map. Sentinel Gates are exceptions, however. These are extremely hard arenas that would unlock a superweapon upon complete. You would have to pucker up for this one.

8 – Spend your Sentinel Batteries

These items can be spent on skins and upgrades in your base, the “Fortress of Doom”.

9 – Tinker with the UI to get the options you like most

You can change the colors of the UI with an array of presets and transparency options – most of them are really nice and would spice up your game even further.