Originally posted by Estacado
This game is phuckin awesome!Gotta agree on the strategy thing...enemies can tank Way too much even on the lowest difficulty. By the end of the game previous bosses appear As mini bosses like ín every 2nd fight which can be a bit annoying...
Right now im at mission 12 I stopped and back tracked got all the remaining collectibles actived some cheats...etc
Btw using cheats still allows you to get the trophies...
Also heavy cannon is easily one of the Best weapons in the game the mini missiles are crazy good...
This, along with a recent review on Steam and certain online reviews, confirm my worst fears:
This is not a good DOOM game.---I will preface this review by saying at the time of writing, I have 100%'d the main campaign on Nightmare difficulty, and feedback will be based on such. I have not done nor especially care about the multiplayer.---
Original review was 4,500 characters too long; it has been condensed.CHANGES:
The core gameplay loop has changed, significantly, from a game about slaughtering demons to a heavy emphasis on resource management and using certain weapons to kill certain demons. Every enemy you fight now has a very specific manner in which the game wants you to kill that enemy. 'Throw a grenade into this enemy's mouth to insta-kill it'. 'Use a heavy punch on this enemy to do 50% of its HP and make it vulnerable to all other damage.' These, at least on harder difficulties, are not suggestions. Trying to fight the enemy without using its specified weak-point will see you taking five salvos of rockets to bring it down, or emptying huge chunks of ammo into it. The game expects you to use X weapon to fight Y enemy.Because of this, you can no longer be trusted like in DOOM 2016 to have the 'correct' type of ammo when a fight starts. So the chainsaw now has infinite (recharging) ammo, and one-hit kills most 'trash' enemies. To compensate for this change, 'trash' enemies now infinitely respawn, every fight. To begin with, this is limited generally to imps, zombies and soldiers. Later on, more dangerous 'trash' enemies will be added to the infinite-respawning pool, enemies you cannot chainsaw for ammo and must either kill with a single headshot from a charged rifle, or teleporting enemies who are just there to harass harder.
PROBLEMS:
Combined, this is the problem. Ammo, health and armor are drastically reduced in frequency in the world because it is expected you use enemies as your walking dispensers. It is up to you to manage your flamethrower, glory kills and chainsaw to keep yourself topped up while the fighting is occurring. However, because of this much heavier focus on weak-points, running around with your favorite weapon slaughtering demons is no longer viable. When the Cacodemon pops up, you either switch to your shotgun-grenade or lob a grenade in its mouth. There also happens to be a snake-demon under it, so now it's time for the rocket-launcher lock-on to deal with that. And this repeats over and over as instead of running around an arena blasting away at demons enjoyably, you are forced into a loop of switching weapons to what the GAME deems appropriate for each enemy, not what YOU deem useful in the current situation. The difficulty doesn't come from the threat of the enemies you face; the first fight where you are dealing with a few spider-demons and soldiers is going to be functionally the same as the last fights. Use weapon on weakpoint of given enemy, avoid trash. The difficulty is only how many variations will be thrown at you in one fight, and thus how quick you have to be to dance into the 'correct' loadout as each enemy comes into view.There are 3 bosses, which is similar to DOOM 2016. The game will quite literally pause itself, instruct you on how to beat that boss, and then kick you into the fight. The first boss is a 'dodge when the Sekiro flash shows up then counter', the second is 'Shoot it for a bit, then use [Specific Weapon] to deal damage', and the last is 'Shoot it in specific weakpoints until it breaks, then shoot another weakpoint'. Even on NIGHTMARE difficulty, if you happen to die too many times to a boss, the game will pause again and plainly ask "You seem to be having trouble; do you want us to give you enhanced armor for this fight to reduce the Boss' damage? This won't affect progression, don't worry." The most infantile kind of hand-holding I have ever seen from a shooter of this calibre, especially one that focuses on being difficult by nature.
COLLECTIBLES:
This blew my mind in the worst way. Challenges are still here, nothing different or wrong with that. You still have suit-points, weapon-points, toys, etc. However because collecting is... hard, apparently, the game gives you more than you need. Something that shows either an incredible lack of respect for its audience, or is a sign of heavy dumbing-down. At 100% completion, I have 12 armor points I can do nothing with and 4 'battery' items used to unlock doors on your citadel, except all of my doors are already unlocked. Whereas before it was 'Can't find the upgrade? Well you don't get the upgrade then.', now the upgrade points are thrown at you to the point of you having too many to even use. All challenges except the 6 bonus-arenas can now be done with cheat codes on after beating the level once, eliminating all actual challenge. Turn on infinite ammo and lives and go nuts. The reward for those elite arenas is also just a weaker shotgun-version of the BFG that shares its ammo pile. That's all.THE MARAUDER:
He starts as a 'boss' fight, and then simply becomes an enemy which spawns during/after random fights for the rest of the game with no fanfare or upgrades. His mechanics are as such;
1. He is invincible to everything.
2. He is only not invincible when using a specific attack, during which you have about .6-.9 seconds to shoot him.
3. He will only do this specific attack if you are within a sweet-spot range; too far or too close, he will use a highly damaging, sometimes instant, attack instead.
4. He will summon a spectral wolf to attack you that drops no health or ammo, will try to circle behind you, and dies in a couple shots.
5. He takes about 6 shots from a rocket or gauss-cannon to kill.
Fights with him are not fun. They are certainly challenging, and get easier with time once you learn his mechanics more in detail, but they are not -fun-. Enemies will constantly spawn around you in case you run out of ammo, harassing. You are forced to use the super shotgun, rocket launcher, or gauss-cannon to damage him as anything else will do no damage in that .8 second window. Anytime the wolf spawns, you either have to waste a massive shot or try to rapidly switch to smaller weapon to deal with its fast-moving nature. You then essentially must deal with parry/counterattack mechanics in a shooter, dodging back or to the side once baiting the specific attack you want, and firing once in the window before resuming the pattern. I should not, ever, in a DOOM game, be forced to stop my gameflow in order to engage in a parry-dance with an invincible enemy.SUMMARY:
This isn't a bad game. I would still give it a solid 7.5/10, 5 being an average game. The graphics are lovely, the gameplay and shooting is both solid and has weight to it, and there is fun to be had.This is, however, an AWFUL Doom game.
You no longer have the freedom to run through arenas using multi-weapon flavors of death to destroy your enemies. The maps are no longer even slightly open 'explore whichever section you want first', and have changed to heavily linear 'move from one battle arena to the next' experiences complete with fast-travel near the ends of missions. You are forced to play the game the way the developers want you to play it, every fight becomes a technical and finicky mess of managing resources rather than enjoying the killing, and by the last few levels any appeal of the brawling is lost in just massive waves of difficulty and varied enemies that far outstays its welcome, and is ABSOLUTELY NOT worth the 70$ asking price this game currently goes for here. After 17 hours, I can absolutely state that you should wait a few months for the price to drop to the 30~ area before buying, and if you do buy, DO NOT expect a DOOM game. This is needless over complication of the DOOM formula, and a straight and marked downgrade from 2016.
As I suspected, they took a good concept and utterly ruined it.