DOOM Eternal (2020) (PC) (id Software)
0DOOM (2016) was an awesome comeback for id Software's classic FPS series, but in the weeks prior to the launch of its inevitable follow-up I've been oddly uninterested in the prospect of a new set of insanely fast-paced combat arenas to wreak havoc in with my trusty double shotgun. It's not just that the covid-19 crisis has made the prospect of "Hell on Earth" somewhat less appealing; it's also that there's just not that much you could possibly add to the reboot formula in order to meaningfully expand the experience and give the player something new to look forward to.
If my first few hours with DOOM Eternal are any indication, id Software likewise didn't quite know what to do with the gameplay recipe that made their 2016 release such a phenomenal success. The new game adds tons of upgrades, meters and gadgets which all bleed together into a confusing mess, and the cutscenes and dialogue veer closer to brawny Darksiders fan fiction than the unexpectedly clever, self-referential tone of the previous game. The action is still great, but it's not fundamentally different from the DOOM I played 4 years ago.
Also, I'm really beginning to miss the peculiar atmosphere of id's original 1993 shooter; that menacing melancholy I've described in an earlier video as "the infinite sadness of Doom". Playing Doom used to mean stepping into an uncanny facsimile of the real world - a dark and twisted universe of demon-infested anguish and sorrow which made such a good fit for the game's dauntingly monosyllabic title. The supernatural violence in DOOM 2016 and DOOM Eternal is as cheesy as anything in Paul W.S. Anderson's 1997 sci-fi shocker Event Horizon (a cult film that feels completely unseparable from the PC FPS series), but unlike that movie and the original Doom games there's none of the menace and existential horror that comes from wading knee-deep in the dead...