My YouTube feed is filled with nothing but overwhelmingly positive reviews. All I did was watch the trailer a while back, then a review with gameplay from some influencer that got early access.
I’m a huge doom fan dork, since the 90s. I’m old. But the trailer and gameplay had me thinking… meh.
I’ll wait for a sale. But I’m curious if anyone else feels the same. Anyone normal play it? Specifically fans of 2016. Are these influencers getting paid to hype the game?
Anyone normal who bought day one, tell me I’m wrong and the hype is warranted. Just curious.
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It’s so sad to see. I’ve spent way more time listening to the soundtrack than playing, I’ve listened to it working out, I’ve listened to it at work, I listen to it when commuting - his work is just amazing. All that lost because a higher-up fucked up and didn’t care enough to mend the relationship. Whilst straight up lying about the events of what really happened on reddit, of all places.
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I almost feel like deeming Hulshult a scab/fink for doing the DLC soundtrack.
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Can you elaborate? I wasn’t aware of this.
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Holy shit that was a ride to read. Thank you for posting this. I remember the post from Marty shitting on Mick but had no idea he had responded nor the depth of fuckery that occured. It’s a damn shame Mick was treat that way
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conpletely agree. That’s a hell of a lengthy post with facts and proof to back it up
Wow, holy shit. Fuuuuck Marty Stratton. Straight up childish and vindictive behavior.
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Wow man that marty guy what an extremely unprofessional dickbag. Im off to find a way to purchase something Mick has released and hopefully to leave an encouraging comment. Will report back.
Something like this does not bode well for bethesdas reputation. This other company, ID software? Purchased by zenimax or whatever, are they considered contractors for bethesda? They seem to be behaving like shell companies
His GDC presentation on how his work happened is an excellent watch
Doom: Behind the Music, GDC 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4FNBMZsqrY
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2016 had the perfect balance between story and gameplay to me, in that the player character expressed flagrant disregard for any narrative elements. This was doom 1 af.
Just keep moving and turn the bad guys into chunks. Need nothing more.
I fucking hated the loop in eternal. I get that the developers wanted you to play in a specific way, they partially achieved this through arbitrary mechanics like ammo scarcity. I can appreciate that it’s a good game, but I didn’t get on with it.
The art style went full Hollywood horror, and the exposition was kinda dialed up to eleven by contrast to its direct predecessor. Very much disliked that you couldn’t crouch (definitely more of a me issue, though I think sliding is a missed opportunity in Eternal’s movement repertoire).
2016’s PvP was imperfect but still fun and much appreciated. Snapmap was super underrated and has many sick community made levels.
The later games are a phenomenal technical showcase; the absolute posterchild for the Vulkan gfx API, but it’s not very ‘doom’ in spirit to me any more
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the player character expressed flagrant disregard for any narrative elements
They don’t. Doomguy does like two things in the very beginning, but it’s not like they don’t care, but rather about what Hayden has to say and his justifications for everything that has happened, that’s the part which he doesn’t want.
You meet Hayden later in his office, with a few minutes unskippable “cutscene,” but it’s not like Doomguy ignores him or jumps out of a window in the middle of it.
fair enough, it’s still in stark contrast to all of eternal’s exposition, which was pretty hard to watch (the Colosseum scenes especially).
That’s not to say the story isn’t good or interesting,
I’m currently playing the game, got like a handful of levels left. It’s a good game, but with the way the Doom games have evolved and changed over the time, I don’t think you can really say “if you like that Doom, you’ll like this Doom.”
I definitely enjoy the gameplay of Eternal more, but Dark Ages is really good.
The feel of running around is great. You sound massive, your jumps create shockwaves and kill enemies. If you’ve played Boltgun, it’s like that.
The shield is feels great. The charge is awesome, just like the Meathook was in Eternal to get right next to your enemy, and fodder demons just explode on impact.
Parries feel good, but are extremely easy. The timing is super forgiving and the range is massive.
I think a big thing, that not many people are talking about, are the difficulty sliders. You can change so many things, but ID just ignores 90% of them with their presets. You can change so much stuff, and make it feel like a completely different game. Crank up the game speed and just zoom around. Increase your and the enemies damage, so it’s all about dodging, or you get one-shot. Make the projectiles slow, but a lot more deadly.
There’s still some ammo management, but it’s not like Eternal, not even like 2016. Your melee attack, that you can use for the execute drops ammo, just like the Chainsaw, but you’re using it regularly anyway. Some guns also have upgrades that shooting demons with it also drops ammo for the weapon.
The game is a lot more story heavy, but just like in Eternal you can just skip it and not read the Codex entries.
The mech stuff is alright, but pretty basic, but also really short segments. The dragon is cool in theory, but I really hate these parts, and they just drag on for far too long. Flying around just isn’t fun.
Weapons are pretty good, and I have some favorites. The normal Combat Shotgun with upgrades is great this time and not just outshined by the Super Shotgun immediately. That Ball-on-a-Chain gun is also really nice, with some cool upgrades. Because you don’t really have any ammo issues if you use the melee regularly, I’ve just used one gun for long stretches of time, because there’s just no reason real reason to switch, and you can just use what you want.
The devs always said in Dark Ages you’re like a tank, but with default settings on Nightmare difficulty, you’re made out of paper. Projectiles are extremely dangerous, and enemies like to spawn behind you and shoot you in the back. The game is actually not great on telling you where you’re getting attacked from, and there’s just always tons of enemies around and some deaths can be kinda frustrating.
Then there are also some minor UI/UX issues. You get small icons in the middle for your melee charges, but they don’t show the progress like in Eternal with the Blood Punch. There’s no dedicated Map button, just open your Dossier, which remembers your last screen, which is annoying, because you want that map 99% of the time. Sprinting has this terrible vignette effect around your screen, and you want to sprint all the time, but you can only disable all screen effects, which includes some stuff I’d like to see.
For some dumb reason, the Fast Travel option, at the end of a level has been removed, so if you miss a secret, you’ll have to play the level again. There’s also tons of points-of-no-return, so you’ll have to stare at the map constantly, to make sure you haven’t missed anything, which makes the lack of a map button so terrible.
After I’m done with my Nightmare run, I want to do another one, where I play around with the sliders a bit. I want to turn up the game speed, but will probably lower the damage and projectile speed to compensate.
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Fwiw it shows the charge % to the next pip down next to the ammo counter
Yes, but it would still be nice to have in the middle.
I went back to check in Eternal, and I was wrong about that game showing the progress on the icons in the middle of the screen. Just like Dark Ages it just shows charges that are ready to use, and the progress in the full HUD on the edges of the screen. Seems like I just need to get good and look at the full HUD, like I did in Eternal.
The gameplay looks fine. It looks like a Doom game. But I won’t buy a game with DRM, so I won’t be buying it until that gets removed (at earliest).
Yeah I would have bought it at launch if it weren’t bundled with denuovo, which is now locking out users on linux
It’s a great game but it runs like ass and uses Denuvo so I can’t recommend it.
Dude, what are you on about? Sure, it’s not as easy to run at 300 FPS, but it’s a new boundary pushing game and for what it’s doing it runs astoundingly well.
Absolutely gorgeous, and must rely on black magic because even DF reports it never has any stutter, traversal or shader, despite having massive levels with ridiculous fidelity and not even having a shader precompilation step. Hell, I can’t even understand how they got Denuvo to not introduce stutter.
Not to mention it’s somehow fairly light on the CPU despite huge enemy counts with good AI, raytracing, the best destruction physics I’ve seen in ages, and the streaming demands of massive levels. I’m completely GPU limited with a decent CPU and a 7900XTX.
Hell, it even hits 60 on consoles while doing all of this, the game’s performance is witchcraft. Eager to see the path tracing and how far we’ll be able to push this game a decade from now, like how I can run Eternal at native 4K/120 now.
The fun thing about PC is everyone is using different hardware.
I dunno what DF is but I assume they’re running Nvidia cards on Windows, in which case you probably won’t have a problem.
My 6800XT doesn’t go above 40 FPS.
I think you may want to look into DF’s recommended settings (just skip to the table and read from there if you aren’t interested in the details), touching base with my friend who I sold my previous 6700XT to, he reports a rock solid 60FPS targeting native 1080p.
That said, they don’t claim a performance increase that drastic, so you may have some other performance issues?
Oh, and DF stands for Digital Foundry, often considered the best source for benchmarking new games these days. They have several recent videos on Doom: The Dark Ages, graphics nerds always take an interest in a new idTech title.
you may have some other performance issues?
The game has forced Ray Tracing and FSR is broken. Both of which lead to terrible performance on AMD machines. Those are the issues I’m having.
he reports a rock solid 60FPS targeting native 1080p
…am I supposed to be impressed by that?
… am I supposed to be impressed by that?
It’s better than you’re getting on the tier-up card from the exact same generation as what you’re running, so… it pretty clearly indicates something is going wrong on your end.
And that’s with the forced ray tracing. Regarding FSR, DF recommends using XeSS, which I’ve had no problems with even using performance mode to play on a 4K display.
It’s only really fair to judge the performance cost of the ray tracing if you’re actually running the game fairly. If you’ve maxed out every setting to ultra nightmare at native 4K or something to get that “can’t go above 40FPS” figure, then I have no sympathy for you or your performance complaints.
It’s better than you’re getting
It’s not. I’m running in 4k.
DF recommends using XeSS
Which also does not work. I am not alone here. Tons of people are reporting this. It’s not on my end.
If you’ve maxed out every setting
I haven’t. It’s the same settings I use for most games.
I have no sympathy for you or your performance complaints.
I’m not here for your sympathy. I’m here to answer OP’s question.
Alright, fair enough. The brand new AAA graphical showcase doesn’t run above 40FPS if you’re insistent on native 4K from a 6800XT. I’m not sure that qualifies as “runs like ass” like your original comment, but it’s a fine thing to qualify.
I will add however that there’s no mention of XeSS issues on the “known issues” page, so I’m unsure what you’re referring to. Only an issue with FSR frame generation and manual window resizing, and frankly I wouldn’t recommend frame generation in any circumstance anyway. Perhaps the issue you’re referring to has already been resolved?
Same reason I still haven’t played Black Myth Wukong
Yes, it’s very fun. I’m not sure why you’re so pessimistic on it, it’s another good DOOM game and vast majority of reviewers never get paid to hype something up. I’m not too far in it yet but first impressions is that it’s closer to Doom 2016 than Eternal, there isn’t much platforming or acrobatics.
The only thing I’m not sold on is the story. They added a lot of story and cutscenes. I have no idea what’s going on honestly. Feels a lot like they added too much Warhammer 40k to the Doom franchise.
Thanks. Glad to hear this. I’ll definitely be buying it, just depends how long I can wait.
not sold on is the story
This was how I felt about eternal. The lore was overdone, didn’t have the doom “feel”. 2016 had simpler lore, very well done, that kept with what I felt the doom theme feels like.
That being said if the gameplay is fun, that’s what’s important.
Not talking about any reviewer in particular, but in general, even if they don’t get payed, they get the game for free and usually have affiliate links to buy the game, so there’s at least a couple of incentives to do a better review.
Again, not accusing anyone, but the potential for bias/conflict of interest is something to keep in mind when watching those types of reviews.
If anything has Denuvo, I’ll skip it
I’m playing it right now, and ots actually a lot of fun. Exploration feels fun still like doom 2016 and Eternal, and you have different murder mechanics to choose from in the midst of a hundred enemies. I’d say the reviews are right.
Now, that being said, I think i still like 2016 better, but they both have a very different feel from each other.
I’m loving Doom Dark ages, I’m on about level 8 out of 22. I like that there’s enough room in levels to move around. Movement is awesome, you can just run everywhere. The weapons are extremely effective and your toolkit is reduced so you have shield-block shield-slam shield-throw melee and then guns. It’s pretty easy to remember everything you have and then select an appropriate attack for the situation.
I really love it. Hopefully there aren’t any more Mech-pilot missions because that one sucked. The dragon wasn’t my favorite either but you can make it through without much difficulty and it didn’t take forever.I’m a huge fan of Doom Eternal. It really proved what movement shooters are capable of.
Haven’t played Dark Ages yet, and I’m not super eager to play it.
I expected Dark Ages to be a middle ground of 2016 and Eternal, but it seems like they’re straying away from movement shooters with the ”stand and fight” tagline. That’s disappointing, because I feel like there’s so much more to explore with movement shooters. Just look at Ultrakill for example.
I will wait it out a bit. It still seems like a fun game. Next on my play list is Expedition 33.
I honestly think its really damn good. I love using the shield. It just feels amazing.
I absolutely love Doom Eternal, it’s my favorite shooter of all time by a landslide.
Dark Ages still hasn’t sold me, parries are the last thing I ever wanted from a Doom game and they seem to be the game’s main focus.
I can respect Id Software for trying new things with every game, but taking away movement and focusing on parry mechanics isn’t really innovative to me.
The 80 euro price tag doesn’t help, there is no way in hell I’m paying that much for a game.
This is basically LGR’s review summarized.
I haven’t watched it, I guess we just feel the same about the game.
Yeah, sorry, I didn’t mean to accuse you of plagiarism or anything; I just found the comparison apt.
In case you find yourself interested, feel free to compare and contrast: https://youtu.be/imFr96t_XuA
Oh good, I wasn’t really sure what you meant with your last comment. I’ll give the review I watch, I didn’t know the YouTuber.
No worries, sorry for being unclear.
IMHO he’s pretty good to watch. “LGR” stands for “lazy game reviews,” which I guess is how he started, but these days he mainly talks about retro hardware with an occasional game review (such as the one above). He gained popularity recently after being impacted by a weather event that unfortunately damaged a lot of rare hardware he was storing.
Hope you like him!
I just watched the review, it’s really good and sounds honest, thanks for the recommendation!
My pleasure!
OT: Funny thing, everytime i see the “New” Doomslayer i have the game “Witchhaven” in my mind…
Can’t wait for that one modder who makes games look like shit to disable the raytracing.