2023-05-21: Doom Eternal Is Just Okay
Why can't you be more like your big brother?!
In a vacuum, I think Doom Eternal is a pretty good game, but I don't think it holds up well in comparison to Doom 2016. Doom Eternal loses a lot of what made Doom 2016 Capital-G Great. The combat is much more polished, but seemingly at the expense of its predecessor's incredible soundtrack, excellent art direction, rock-solid level design, great atmosphere, and surprisingly good writing.
Doom Eternal is one of the least immersive games I've ever played. The art direction and level design in particular contribute to this — it feels like the game is constantly going out of its way to remind you that YOU ARE PLAYING A VIDEO GAME, and it completely destroys the atmosphere. Everything glows like a Christmas tree, levels just feel like arenas strung together with hallways and platforming sections, and it comes together to feel less "real" than even the original Doom games.
The writing is also profoundly bad. This wouldn't be a problem if not for two things. Firstly, Doom 2016 set a much higher standard for writing, and secondly, Doom Eternal places much greater emphasis on its story and characters. The plot and script of this game feels like it was snatched from a canned Marvel movie. The story is trite, the characters are one-dimensional, the background lore is stupid, most of the jokes aren't funny (and get repeated until they're annoying). All of this is constantly crammed down your throat, and the game simultaneously expects you to care while the main character couldn't give less of a shit. Sure, you can skip the cutscenes, but you won't have any context for anything, especially exacerbated by the game's dearth of environmental storytelling.
The soundtrack is markedly worse. Mick Gordon published a statement concerning it, and explaining why he didn't return for the DLC soundtracks (which were instead produced by Andrew Hulshult, and are quite good). Doom Eternal's soundtrack really only has about five songs. Each of these five songs has about a dozen remixes, mashed together from demos and cut content. They're mixed by Chad Mossholder, mostly quite badly. If you have decent headphones or speakers, this sticks out like a sore thumb — the dynamic range on most of the music is just absent. It sounds like it's been sat on. Shameful stuff.
Lastly, the combat. Doom Eternal polished up the combat a lot from Doom 2016. Each weapon feels useful and distinct, you have tons of movement options, and the balancing is overall much better. Unfortunately it's also a lot more restrictive than Doom 2016 was. There's a very specific "correct" way to deal with most enemies, and unless you use that correct method for each enemy, you're not going to get very far. The lackluster level design bogs down the experience too — most of the time, you'll just be doing laps around the arena taking potshots at enemies. The vast majority of combat takes place inside of closed circuit-style arenas. Once you realise this, you get bored fast.
I wouldn't call Doom Eternal bad. I wouldn't call it great either. If I had to pick between Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal, I'd pick the former every time.