Doom Eternal Review

If you are an avid gamer you must know about the famous Doom series. The game was one of the earliest to be developed for the PC platform and millions of enthusiastic players have played it over the years. The first Doom game came out back in 1993 and now after almost 27 years later, the fifth instalment in the game has been released.

The fifth iteration of the Doom series also known as ‘Doom Eternal’ has been developed by iD Software and published by Bethesda Softworks. The first-person shooter, released in March 2020, brings back the same pulse-shooting goodness that you must have experienced in the earlier games from the franchise.

Story

Doom Eternal has been set in the future where demons have overrun Earth killing all the humans in the process. The few who survived the slaughter left Earth in search of shelter and joined the Armored Response Coalition. The Demon Slayer as part of the coalition is destined to go into Earth and fight against the forces of evil keeping alive the hopes of humanity’s survival. What follows is an exciting yet gruesome adventure for Doom Slayer making his way to finishing the demon threat once and for all.

Gameplay

The game begins with you in the shoes of Doom Slayer, the hero who is destined to fight the forces of evil coming from the abyss of Hell. Doom Eternal is designed to be interactive for the player, which means you are encouraged and at times forced to fight against the enemy to get rewards such as ammo, health, and armor. Just like before, you have an arsenal of weapons at your disposal which includes shotguns, RPGs, plasma guns, knives, and more.

Each weapon has its special ability allowing you to get more of one stat like ammo or health if you use it. The chainsaw, for example, gets you extra armor from the enemy. The weapon’s special ability is meant to help you against enemies as well as help you conquer the terrain. In such a way, the game forces you to think out of the box and form tactics to tackle the enemies and conquer the terrain.

The fifth game in the series has several new demons while some have been resurrected from the earlier game titles. You get to fight against Marauders, Doom Hunters, Arachviles, and lots more. The good thing is that developers have introduced the concept of lives so you get reincarnated right at the spot you die, but only if you have spare lives. Furthermore, the demons have visible damage meaning you can destroy certain parts of their body eliminating their ability to strike with their special moves.

Graphics

To make sure you enjoy defeating the demons as Demon Slayer, the folks at iD Software have made sure that the graphics are top-notch. The Doom universe is set in the aftermath of an apocalypse and as such the artwork and the visuals have been accurately designed. The characters including the demons are built pretty close to reality and the stages are well set with enough room for you to maneuver around the enemy.

Doom Eternal makes you see how long the franchise has come since its early days. The earlier games had breakthrough graphics especially considering they were some of the first-person shooting games in the market. With Doom Eternal, you dive right back into the action with brilliant graphics worthy of any modern game and looks great on Stadia…Even at native 1080p…..

Performance

The game performs well on Stadia, running at 1080p at 60FPS, and upscaling for 4k displays. We didn’t experience any lag or other performance issues. As for performance overall – It’s disappointing that it the performance is basically capped on Google Stadia version when there is so much more power potentially available. Hopefully this changes soon.

Conclusion

Doom Eternal is a way to relive your childhood and play the once-famous game in a new guise with better graphics. The Doom story continues with this game and in seeing how this one will play out we should expect another one soon.