THE GAME:
I've been replaying my way through the single-player campaign of "Doom Eternal" [2020] for the last few weeks. What inspired me to do so was the release of "Doom: The Dark Ages" [2025]. I played "Dark Ages" for about 2 hours and then I'd had more than enough. I asked Steam support for a refund and I got it. To me "Dark Ages" doesn't feel like Doom at all. It is clearly aimed at consoles and the experience on PC is shit. It looks like a console game, it is controlled like a console game and the gameplay stinks. You may argue that 2 hours is not enough time to judge a game, but I am glad I made that decision and got all my money back. 109,99€ is a ridiculous amount of money for that shitty game.
It's been several years since my last playthrough of "Eternal". I selected one of the "easier" difficulties and took my sweet time to explore secrets and hidden treasures along the way. You can easily get 30+ hours of fun out of the campaign. The game doesn't look old at all. It has aged really well and it is still a fantastic game. The graphics are amazing, the gameplay is insanely fast paced, and the game is ultra violent as hell and lots of fun to play.
I didn't like the platform "Mario Bros." aspect of the game when I played it the first time. Now I fucking love it. Double jump, double dash through the air, grab or punch the wall. It creates some nice breaks in between the constant battles and it puts a satisfied smile on your face when you succeed with something that seemed impossible to do, but only took a bit of patience and getting your moves just right. It makes the level design much more interesting when you also have to think in the vertical directions. The beautiful level design gives you something to look at and enjoy while finding your way onwards to the next Battle.
I find the game pretty hard even on the easiest difficulties and some of the many insane battles against the hordes of Hell leaves you totally exhausted and wondering just how the hell you managed to get through all those enemies. The game adds more and more types of harder enemies as you progress through the levels. There is a rich upgrade system that makes sure that your Doomguy is always up for the task. That said it doesn't get any easier.
The game throws combinations of different enemies at you and every enemy is best killed with a specific weapon. This forces you to be strategic and think about who you kill first and how. Should you be using the scoped rifle with a precision shot, the plasma gun or maybe the rocket launcher? It almost becomes a ballet when you get all the moves and weapon selections right in the middle of an insanely wild battle against an overwhelming horde of furious demons. The only constant rule is: never stand still in a battle. If you ain't on the move then you'll die very quickly.
I am not a super fan of the Arch-vile that is a demon, who is able to summon other furious demons, and it can be a real pain in the ass. The Marauders can also be very annoying, because they are quite difficult to kill. It takes a bit of work to beat these fuckers and you can't solve all of your problems with a BFG-9000.
The only enemies that really stink are the last 2 bosses: The Khan Maykr and the Icon of Sin. They are extremely difficult and I don't think the difficulty is in balance with the rest of the game. Luckily you get an option of getting added special armor, when you have been killed enough times. This is almost like a God-mode and it makes sure that you can actually get past these 2 fuckers without spending several months doing so.
Chain-sawing your way through hordes of demons while punching them bloody and shooting left and right with awesome powerful guns. The game mechanics and gameplay is still outstanding and absolutely insane. It felt totally amazing to be back as Doomguy and if this remains the last great Doom game ever then at least it really was a fucking great one. According to Steam I have now been playing "Doom Eternal" for more than 100+ hours in total. A sure sign of an outstanding game indeed.
I did try the 2 Doom Eternal DLCs "The Ancient Gods" that came after the main game. I didn't like them. I think the difficulty was too annoyingly hard and the gameplay too repetitive. After completing the DLC-1, I lost interest with the DLC-2 and I abandoned it. I have no plans of playing the DLCs again. They didn't bring me the same joy I got from the main game.
THE TECHNICAL ISSUES:
Any issues with this game were fixed long ago. The game is still being patched now and then, and it is in perfect shape.
I did run into a problem with the game sometimes becoming unresponsive to my "Tab" (inventory/map) button, and also my "Mouse 2" (weapons mod) button. It was quite annoying, but it could be a temporary thing and it didn't prevent me from finishing the game. I guess I could have remapped to different keys and have solved the problem that way.
I was playing the game using the optimal settings from the Nvidia App.
MY PC SPECS:
- GPU RTX 4080 16GB VRAM
- CPU Intel i9-11900K @ 3.50GHz
- RAM 32GB
- DISK: PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 - 1TB
- GAMING MONITOR: 2560x1440(QHD) @ 165Hz
Rating: 
Content Type: Game Review
Language: 
Updated: 2025-06-14 19:29
Created: 2025-06-14 18:08
