DOOM: The Dark Ages (2025)

Dan_D said:

I get where this is coming from and you kind of have a point.

However, there is a fine line between evolving the gameplay and keeping a franchise fresh and changing it so completely that the gameplay becomes unrecognizable from what it was. The latter leads to cases where fans of the franchise end up losing interest at best and feeling betrayed at worst. In this case, I thought Doom 2016 was a solid entry into the series and rebooted things nicely. However, even then I thought the gameplay was a bit too dated in some respects and didn't evolve the game in the right way. However, I still enjoyed it. Doom Eternal felt entirely different with its platforming and grappling mechanics. Not only did that not feel like Doom (essentially totally changing and reinventing world / map traversal) but the ammunition economy is such that you have to depend on melee kills and glory kills far more than you should have to.

It's a Doom game. It's a shooter franchise. I should have enough ammo to fucking shoot things. It feels like I had to do the shooters equivalent of trying to get as much fuel economy out of my vehicle as possible. I had to be way too stingy with ammo and it felt like most of the weapons I had on me never got drops. Only the shotgun and basic rifle ever got ammo and it never lasts. Some of this comes down to a lack of ammo spawns and some of it comes down to enemies being too spongy for the ammo you get. To me, it just wasn't an enjoyable experience as it felt too far removed from what made Doom 2016 feel like a modern interpretation of the classic games. There is a fine line between updating a game and fundamentally changing what made the earlier games in the series unique or popular to begin with.

Sequels should be extensions of the original game in that they should be familiar while evolving the experience.

Click to expand...

That part of eternal I hated as well, forcing me to use the chainsaw and have guys pop like loot pinatas was a very odd design choice. The platforming didn't bother me at all as it was fairly minimal, and some of the super jump stuff was actually kind of fun. I don't think it's different enough of a game from 2016 just because it had a design philosophy around cycling weapons and ammo scarcity. When you're in the shit killing stuff it feels like doom 2016, it's not like you're suddenly in third person mode or something using a sword. I think their intention was admirable in that they didn't want people to just stick to using the same couple of guns over and over, they wanted them to all be used. However, it just ended up feeling clunky and too forced. Saying it's unrecognizable is wrong though, it's very clearly a doom fps with some additional restrictions and mechanics that force you into a play style they intended.