Doom eternally out of ammo is a game about destroying, killing and brutalising demons in different hell-like environments. You play as the overpowered Doomslayer with an arsenal of weapons at your disposal to dismember all of your enemies. The game will appeal to two type of players: The people that loves punishing games and people that love brutal and gory games. You will be out of ammo for eternity at higher difficulties, and managing that ammo usage is more important than shooting mechanics. The game is almost more of a mechanically demanding puzzle game than it is a shooter at higher difficulties.
Presentation
Doom eternal’s best aspect by far is its presentation. It sells the theme of demons and hell in a fantastically brutal and gory manner that few other games can match. Every demon can be killed by glory-kills, that is to say to rip out their hearts and feed it to them, or something similarily grotesque. The variety of glory kills, gore and general thematic environmental design is fantastic. It is a reason alone to play the game if you enjoy these sort of themes alongside a good portion of gore and blood. The soundtrack and general sound design is on point and adds greatly to the experience.
Gameplay
The core gameplay loop revolves around exploration and combat. Exploration is tied directly to your characters strength and upgrades. This means that at higher difficulties exploration is almost required for the player to grow at an adequate level to keep up with the increasing difficulty of the game as it progresses.
Combat is very punishing at higher difficulties, and it is more punishing than challenging. The movement lacks the fluidity and grace that a fast paced arena shooter like doom requires; movement is very important in order to both dodge attacks and position correctly.
Every demon you encounter has a solution, a correct way to deal with it. Most of the demons are well designed, however Doom eternal features an enemy that is so poorly designed and implemented that I struggle to find anything that can compare in any other game I have played in recent memory.
The difficulty
The main challenge doom eternally out of ammo throws at you is resource management. You need to use your ammo efficiently or you will lose because you run out of ammo. This means that your shots need to hit and you need to use the correct tools at the correct times. You want to collect pick-ups at the correct time to maximise your ammo, and you want to scour the encounter once you are finished to ensure that you have as much ammo as possible. You need to use your tools at the correct time to boost your health and armour, and you need to continuously do glory kills to maintain a high health. You need to do all of this very quickly as doom eternal is a fast paced game, and if you use the wrong tool at the wrong time you will end up losing quickly at higher difficulties.
Going out of ammo is frequently the way you lose at higher difficulties and I find it to be a very frustrating way to lose. At lower difficulties ammo scarcity is not as prevalent, and the game plays very differently due to it. If you like punishing games, this game will scratch that itch. Especially with the DLC, however it does this by using a fair bit of gimmicky mechanics in the DLC.
Doom eternal is a competent game that has a lot of small flaws and some major flaws in the combat department which drags it down. The game shines the brightest when you are immersed in the glorious gore and slaughter of demons, and I think a casual play-through is probably the most enjoyable experience you are going to get out of the game, and not a try-hard one. Overcoming the challenge in doom to frequently feel like I overcame bullshit and arbitrary restriction rather than playing well.
A critique for Doom Eternal can be found here (Spoilers ahead).
| Playtime | 15 Hours base game at hard; 6 hours DLC at easy |
| Game release date | 20 Mars 2020 |
| Review release date | 31 July 2024 |
| Light sensitivity | No issues |
| Sound sensitivity | No issues |
| Motion sickness | No issues |
| Steam | Metacritic – Metascore (88) |