These are random pieces of paper on the floor I’ve only seen once in a totally unimportant part of a level. You will probably miss them but look at this detail - and this is an iPhone picture of my TV, obviously. I can’t get over this game.

Adjustments.jpg
 
Well this is a fucking blast.

Honestly, this game has no right to look this good while running so fast. At times I just stop and marvel at the sheer amount of geometry, the round surfaces that are actually ROUND (I’m looking at you FF7R) and I just don’t understand how no other game or engine can do this. The textures? Zero pop in, and sharp even up close, as they should be.

I mean, there is an insane amount of detail in the most unnecessary places you’ll only ever glance at for a split second, if ever.

Like.

This kind of weird decoration in an unspecified wall somewhere.

View attachment 3791

This thing, with of lots of circles, each made with actual geometry. And they’re all nice and round.

And *other games* can’t even have one pipe made out of 6 polygons across. While running at half the frame rate.

Or this:

View attachment 3792


Not only the tunnel is, of course, perfectly round, it the texture. Just look at that surface.

There are so many other examples, I’ll post them when I find the time.

FF7R is using whats probably stock Unreal Engine.
 
Yes its mighty impressive what they have done, they even optimized loading times (no loading at all) when using an nvme SSD. Oh and yes its a multiplatform game running at a rather stable 60 FPS across all. Let's see what they can create on next generation consoles, going to be intresting.

The loading of the levels, and after every death, can get a bit long though.
 
He must be too young to know dopefish. :|
Not really. But no PC back then. So Flashback on Amiga instead Commander Keen on PC.
And although Flashback was awesome, 16bit era became really boring with all those similar sidescrollers and point and click adventures, and having no interest in other genres. Similar boring than it is now.

Then i saw Blake Stone on the BW laptop, which was a Doom clone. I was blown away and started to learn 3D graphics, after making some 2D games on 8bit machines before as a kid.
I think this time was the eclipse of gaming: Quake, Descent, Magic Carpet, MDK, tomb Raider, Half Life. It all happened within few years.

Now, with modern games, and no new technology... well, i did not expect much from Doom Eternal. And initially i saw only the bad things that i did not like (glory kills, chainsaws... that's too much for me! Video tutorial every 10 seconds? Too much! Power fantasy voice acting? -No, give me that cool moderating voice from Quake 3 back! Skill trees in a Doom game? wtf!?!). I even totally hated this game.

But next time i played it i disabled tutorials and camera shaking, increased fov. Felt much better. Platforming puzzles pretty hard, restricted and annoying, but also less boring than the searching for keys or the right door in the original Doom.
And i enjoyed watching the levels. id's SF - diabolic crossover art style is still unique and cool, and i really liked those levels passages entirely within the innards of monstrous creatures. Have not seen something like this made so well.

Next time, after learning the mechanics a bit better, i realized the fights became really tense. I felt like a killer machine and could not stop playing. Awesome! How do they do this in 2020? IDK, seems i know nothing about game design.
I also realized the music adapts to gameplay very nicely. Seems an important factor for giving this ecstatic feeling. Probably also glory kills and other stuff i did not like initially.

At this point, and to be fair, this new game seems better than the original Doom? It's more fun?

Last time yesterday, after killing 3rd priest it seems it becomes really hard. I still have not learned all things, e.g. which weapon for what or how to change them quickly.
I'm curious if i can finish the game without frustration now...
But in any case i'll memorize it as the game which changed my mind. Can't remember another one which did this so far.
 
And this in 2020, when i already saw the downfall of gaming coming because very most games in recent years were so bad for me. :D
It's not top 10 of all times for me, but i love it too.

Yeah I think “normal mode” on Eternal is probably harder in some parts than hard modes on the last one. Just a few too many demons coming at you in some later stages, but honestly I went from finishing Nioh 2 to Doom Eternal (with a short FF7R run which just didn’t do it for me) and thankfully it just isn’t the same level of frustration you get with Nioh 2.
 
This is a terrific three minute review even without the Dunkey, but should it be spoiler tagged or does the game give you those strategies?

Edit: That NoClip interview you posted really laid out the game’s philosophy: Mandatory Fun (—Weird Al, prophet).
 
Last edited:
Nit pick: Graphics-wise I’m only really disappointed in the lack of player shadows from environment lights. It’s only in cut-scenes.
 
Nit pick: Graphics-wise I’m only really disappointed in the lack of player shadows from environment lights. It’s only in cut-scenes.
I'm still confused as to why so many FPS do not have player shadows. I find it so strange, and it seems to be that the majority of FPS do not have them.
 
Last edited:
I'm still confused as to why so many FPS do not have player shadows.
I do not miss them. They always look really shitty to me, because they expose the mostly terrible animations of 1st person avatars. (Thinking of indie horror games)
But even if animations are good i still don't miss it and it's more distracting than helping my immersion. Probably another topic where different people have different preferences.

What i dislike about recent id games is: The baked GI seems somehow wrong, and SSAO is too dark. Doom is pretty surreal / metallic most of the time so it's no big issue here. But there are some office complex sections, and here the game looks really bad in comparison to others.
I mostly noticed this in Wolfenstein games. (I suspect them to save baking time and doing only 1-2 bounces or something like that? And nobody complains, so it works.)
I also see this in other games and engines. Correct counter examples would be recent CoD or HL Alyx.
 
I don't mind if the animations are simple for the shadow, but it's jarring when walking past a light in the environment and there's just nothing. Most of the time it's just going to be the walking/running animation anyway. I don't mean that all light sources should be casting shadows, but there seem to be enough corridor passages where it might give a bit more dramatic feel. The arenas are high enough in ambient lighting that noticeable dynamic shadows aren't much of an issue from what few obvious strong light sources would exist.
----
I'm complaining about the lighting. :p At times, it just feels cartoony, although I guess that's the art direction.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top