I’m going to start this off by saying I absolutely love Doom as a series and Doom Eternal is probably my favorite of them all. Fighting hoards of demons at breakneck speed to a brutal heavy metal soundtrack is one of the best gaming experiences I’ve ever had.
And I even enjoyed the latest DLC, The Ancient Gods Part 1 but there was one thing that almost made me quit. To my surprise it wasn’t the fights with 2 Marauders at a time, something I thought I would hate. It was actually the final encounter of the Blood Swamps, also known as the Trial of Maligog.
In this fight, you must destroy a demon in a floating box while enemies swarm you from all sides. However, the box is closed for most off the time and only opens up to attack. It’s only vulnerable to damage when it’s open and doesn’t stay open for much longer than 2 seconds.
The problem here isn’t just that this is absolutely tedious but that it takes away a crucial element that makes Doom games enjoyable for me; player agency. At basically any time in Doom Eternal you are in control of the situation. You can kill anything ahead of you with whatever tool you want, and when there’s a horde of demons you can take them out however you want. Maybe take out the weaker ones first or get rid of the bigger bads right away, whatever you like.
Having that choice is empowering. You’re always doing what you want to do! In the base game, I thought the Marauders were pretty bad about this, given that they’re only vulnerable when they do a melée attack. Indeed they are taking away some agency but there are ways around it. You can use grenades to make them vulnerable or a perfectly timed shot with the BFG will take them out. You aren’t forced to wait for his attacks, you’re never forced to play his way.
The Ancient Gods’ new enemies are not like that. The Maligor boxes are just one example. The Spirit enemies also force you to play a certain way. They possess other enemies to make them more powerful and materialise once you’ve killed whatever they’re possessing. Once they’re free you must use the plasma rifle’s microwave beam to destroy them. There is no other way. This isn’t even a challenge, you’ve already defeated the most powerful demon in the room and it only take a few seconds to take it down. It’s not much more difficult than using the blue key on the blue door.
The new Blood Makyrs are another example of this kind of enemy design. Like the regular Makyr enemies they can be easily killed with a single shot to the head. It has one key difference in that like the Maligor Box, it’s invulnerable until it decides otherwise. While it is still easy to take down, you’re at its mercy until it gives you a chance to kill it.
You’re the God Damned Doom Slayer! You shouldn’t have to wait for permission from the demons to let you hurt them. It’s not at all satisfying to kill these guys because they let you do it. That’s so antithetical to what the Doom Slayer should be and how enemies were designed up until now. Sure, there are the Marauders with their unbreakable shields and the Doom Hunters who almost force you to use the plasma rifle to take down their shields before you do big damage but those are different.
While they encourage a certain style of play, they don’t force it. When you take out the Doom Hunter’s shields you’re choosing to do it. You could fuck him up with rockets or a BFG if you wanted, but unlike the Blood Makyrs, the Maligor Box and the Spirits, they never tell you “now it’s your turn, follow these instructions to win” because in Doom, it’s always your turn and you’ll win however you like.
I’d love to hear your opinions too. Feel free to leave a comment below. You can also contact and follow me on Twitter.
COMMENTS
I like multidimensional difficulty and new challenges. I think it’d be more disappointing if the developers kept these games 100% blow-everything-away-with-whatever, and never introduce different tactical situations. I understand that you want to keep the spirit of old doom games, and I agree that you have to keep changes like that in check if you don’t want to undermine the mood of the game and the slayer’s character.
I did enjoy the new challenges brought about in the DLC and I’d be happy to see more innovation in future DLC. I guess I just hope they don’t go too far in the future with enemies that can only be killed in one or two specific ways. I think if there was too much of that it would feel less like Doom and more like a puzzle game where you solve your problems with guns :p.
Maykr*
Uh, no.
You didn’t like the box boss. Did you not like the gladiator? What about Khan makyr fight? It’s fine if you do. Just wondering because those bosses are identical.
You don’t have to kill the spirit. You can kill every other demon except the possessed one. The spirit has nowhere to go and disappears. You have a choice.
The blood angel can be handled just like a marauder. You can just ignore it until you get rid of the pressure demons. It moves slowly and most places you encounter it there is plenty of cover. Like the marauder, it’s looking for you to be in a certain range to give you the “green eyes” and be killable.
Doom isn’t about doing what you want. It’s about being able to improvise and overcome. You still have a choice, even in those fights where you feel like you dont. It’s fair to say all the bosses suck because they are only sometimes vulnerable. Because this is how almost all bosses are. But you just don’t like the box fight. That’s fine. You’re reason just isn’t convincing to me.
Good luck in ancient gods part 2.
Thanks for reading the article and commenting. Honestly, I barely remember the Gladiator and Khan Makyr fights. Looking back on them I guess they weren’t so bad because they were one offs where the entire encounter was designed around them.
I disagree about the Blood Makyr though. I understand that it’s quite easy to kill, especially because the shotgun grenades and the rifle’s sniper shot can kill it in one hit. My problem with it isn’t the difficulty, rather just that it makes you wait. Maybe for you Doom isn’t about doing whatever you want but I’ve always felt that was what I enjoyed most about Doom. Even in the earlier Doom games you could theoretically take down anything with just a pistol. So you were always in control of the pace of battle.
Doom has always been a power fantasy kind of thing for me and being forced by enemies to wait until they decide they’re vulnerable takes away from that. For me, they weren’t satisfying to play against.
The spirit doesn’t disappear, it actually jumps ahead to the next area and possesses something there if you don’t kill it
Not much difference between this and the Icon of Sin fight in Doom II 🤷🏾♂️
Oh please just don’t
This doc is absolutely amazing
And you can take down Marauders with shotgun grenade ballista in 5 seconds you don’t need to waste your bfg ammo
So in my opinion it’s not the doc thats bad it’s you that don’t play the game the way it was intended to be played
So git Gus lmao
Git gud
you can take down the Marauders with shotgun grenadeballista in 5 seconds
It’s not the doc thats bad it you
You don’t play the way it is supposed to be played
So git gud
Well they maybe want to make doom with some dark souls approach. You have to know when the enemies comes out, what kind of those, and how to deal with them. Before you figure out, you will die.
I agree that dls is too hard to play for not-skilled people(totally no offense. They have rights to enjoy the game) even in easiest difficulty. But the truth is doom eternal’s direction point is not same as doom 2016. You can’t just destroy everything and i think that is reason some people don’t like some elements of doom eternal enemy design
Unfortunately you may be right. Doom Eternal’s encounter design is going in a direction I’m not happy with and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m glad other people are enjoying it and I’ll probably still get the Ancient Gods part 2 anyway.
I have an Ique of 69 and this article made me more dumb and more mad. Doom and dark souls combo dlc made me one sort of happy boy! Cant believe you had such a hard time on a good fun time game. Please play on tuff guy difficulty, and then re-pen your article bout how you used to be a gamer babby who plays games on “im too young to die”. Sersly, do a hard mode, get good, praise the music mans of the game, then get back to the vidya game journalism. Do a cocaine’s, play ultra nightmare, then right a hunter s Thompson article about you beating the first room. See you in hell bish. <3
lol only 69 i’ve got an ikyoo of 420! I played on ULTRA NIGHTMARE and beat the game blindfolded!
thanks for reading the article and commenting ^_^
I think that they obviously had to come up with something new, but atleast with the spirits its didnt play out in their favor. I still haven’t beaten the dlc, honestly starting to doubt i will, but every time I give up its due to a spirit. Dooms meant to be played fast pace and these things literally just stop the game
Nice to see someone else who agrees about the spirits at least.
Yeah the spirits are annoying as hell. I’m currently stuck on the stupid box boss and jts so annoying to fight because if the sheer quantity of other shit I have to basically ignite if I want to kill the box. Then a other on spawns. The two more and when it adds two, it doubles all the other enemies in the area. Which means you’re never sage from a charging pinky or a hell knight. I legit got put in a spot where the four if them just bounced me around, but still technically being off the ground, my second jump and both dashes werent recharging. .
Pro tip, ignore ALL other demons, dodge around the arena and hit the eye with the ballista. Kills one in like, 5 shots. When your health and ammo get low, flame belch and chainsaw a fodder demon. Took me like 3 tries with this strat on UV.
Under the Mayo is Triggered! 😀
You don’t have to wait for blood makyrs. You just shoot them when they open up. Once you get good at handling them they are just a part of the flow and make the game more fun. The forced use of the microwave beam makes for tense moments during combat while your movement is limited and you are focusing on one enemy. it also breaks players away from the heat blast and encourages them to use the microwave beam. These are both good things. The boxes are really easy and I don’t understand how you can complain about them. Just dodge the pinkies and hell nights while shooting at them. Based on these complaints you are in no place to say what doom should be.
I think you may have missed the point about the Blood Makyrs. Having to wait for them to open up was exactly what I didn’t like about them. I realise I may sound like an impatient child saying that, but the fact they decide when you can attack them made me feel less empowered. It felt like I was no longer in control of the rhythm of combat, rather it was the Makyrs who dictated what my next move was going to be.
I appreciate the developers’ efforts to bring the microwave beam into play but I found it to be tedious to use on the Spirits. It never took very long and you actually can move around a lot while you’re using it so it didn’t really put you in a dangerous position. I would welcome some enemies that made better use of the beam, though I admit I’m not sure how that would be achieved.
And yes, I hated the boxes. My issue there mostly is the tiny window of time you have to do damage to the boxes. Maybe I’m just to slow but I could barely get the crosshair on them before they’d clamp up again. Even with the super armour on, that encounter dragged on for me because you’ve only got a second or two to deal damage.
I appreciate you reading my article and commenting on it though.
Ok so I see your point and I respect your opinion it’s just I don’t agree with it and it doesn’t convince me.The marauder, the blood maykrs,the trial with the boxes are meant to break your play style and focus your attention on them ,in doom your supposed to kill hundreds of demons fast paced right?.But With the marauder and the blood maykrs they make you wait for an opening to kill them.They make you wait. something you normally don’t do in doom games but it’s that unique aspect with the marauder and the blood maykr. There supposed to make you force your attention onto them.Because there gonna put pressure on you and there gonna make you switch your play style. It isn’t taking control away from you.Its just saying “this is the best method to do so”.And me personally I like the cube boss because it’s different and unique like I said it makes you wait and shoot. it teaches you timing and patience.Would you rather fight a completely different boss with a completely different play style than any of the bosses in the main game or would you rather fight a re-hashed boss like the doom hunter for blood swamps.And me personally it’s that uniqueness with the enemies in doom eternal that makes it so fun and immersive because of the different variety of enemies and how they are all different.Its that,that makes Doom a doom game.Its the different variety that what makes it fun.I do agree with the frustration of the blood maykrs being able to get one shot I thought that was disappointing.But it’s that difference that changes the pace of the game that makes it immersive.I would be bored if I did the same thing the entire game with all the enemies being the same with the pace being the same .The change of pace and variety in playstyle makes it fun game.If you were to play doom(1993) with just the pistol would you get bored?This is just a question because me personally I probably would. It’s the difference that makes the game unique.And I don’t see how it takes control of the game from you and how it ruins the game(sorry if I’m wrong about this) by making you play a certain way.Its not that big of a deal in my opinion.For example you can still kill almost every demon in the game your way it’s just with the spirit that demon is different and it’s the fact that it has you use the microwave gun, is what makes that enemy unique.If you could kill every demon the same way would that not be boring?Wouldn’t that be underwhelming and too simple?And when you talked about killing the spirit with the microwave fun was too tedious and how the boxes and the marauder and the blood makyrs change the playstyle,and takes the control,and makes you wait.This is just my opinion so correct me if I’m wrong it seems to me that you almost don’t want too put effort or have a challenge .Because do you want a challenge or do you just want a quick easy play through with no troubles?Because if doom 2016 and doom eternal were like doom (1993) that would be boring and re-ashed yes it would be fun with the graphics and guns but after that it’s the same experience.(And I’m sorry if it seems I’m insulting you or belittling you I’m not I’m genuinely asking and like I said I’m sorry if I am ) and back to the trial boxes the boxes seemed to be frustrating for you because of the time window. For me the boxes had reasonable time windows it’s just you need to take advantage of the second they open.They require you to divert your attention to them because if you don’t they’ll just beat you down and prolong the fight and like how I kept saying it’s that playstyle that makes the boss unique and different.So for me personally I see what your point is and I respect your opinion it’s just that your article isn’t convincing me.But it’s ok because it’s both of our opinions will never be facts and were both fellow doom brothers.But thank you for taking the time and reading this and sorry if it seemed I insulted you and have a good day.
Thanks for taking the time to read my article. I’m not offended or anything by your post, don’t worry. I appreciate that you’re adding to the discussion and I respect your opinion too.
Just one point I want to correct. I do want the game to be challenging. That’s one of my favorite things about Doom Eternal and the reason I played on Ultra Nightmare. I enjoy the challenge. I just didn’t enjoy the new challenges introduced by the DLC. Also when you say about only using the pistol in the original Doom being boring. You are right, it would be boring and I would never play that way. My point there was that it shows how you could play the game in whatever way you wanted. Perhaps I should’ve said instead that you could beat the game using any weapon you wanted.
You’re definitely right too that it would be boring if they just rehashed existing enemies for the boss fights. I didn’t really enjoy any of the bosses in Doom Eternal and I struggle to remember actually playing them. Not because they were difficult, though. They didn’t make as big an impression on me as the Blood Maykrs or Spirits because you only have to do the boss fights once each time, rather than fight them multiple times throughout the campaign.
I mean, you don’t NEED to kill the spirits immediately. If you mow down all the demons that can be possessed in one area, the spirit will kill itself. And on that note, you can also use the BFG to disable a blood maykr’s shield. And for the boxes, they’re easier to defeat than you think, it’s just a simple matter of taking out your ballista, staring at the box, and when the eye comes out you pull the trigger immediately. Only a few ballista shots will kill the eye, not all that difficult. The only problem I had with the dlc was the spirit sections in the Samur fight since you had to take care of 2 spirits and they would never run out of demons, but I was able to beat Ultra Nightmare in the end so it’s not all that bad. The DLC requires actual skill, this isn’t DOOM 2016 anymore. The game isn’t here to babysit you, it requires you to master the movement and the combat more than any other DOOM game. If a certain enemy gives you trouble, instead of blaming it on the game and calling it bad, you need to figure out for yourself how to can overcome the issue.
I guess you’re right about the Spirit. You don’t have to use the microwave beam and you do have one other option for getting rid of it but I don’t like how you only have one way of doing direct damage to it.
I did overcome the issues in the game. I also beat it on Ultra Nightmare. I think the DLC overall is good but I just didn’t enjoy the play style the new enemies encouraged.
Doom Eternal is TRASH. Bethesda is forcing players to adhere to specific techniques and methods for disposing of demons. The doom slayer is strong enough to do the same move repeatedly if he wanted to and would still be victorious against any demon. Also, you know who uses grappling hooks? Cat woman and Batman. Why is it in a doom game? Trashhhh
Buddy, go troll somewhere else.
You realize Bethesda didn’t make it, right? DooM is still made by id Software.
Good article. I have to disagree, but I respect your opinion. I absolutely love DooM, I have been playing since the shareware version. Each game has a different flavor and it has been extremely difficult for me to pick which one I like best. I’m not exceptionally good at these games (my first playthrough was on Nightmare for both 2016 and Eternal/DLC), but I didn’t find the elements you spoke of bad. They were annoying, because yes, it did require you to change up your play style, but I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. I get you didn’t like it, but I found it a breath of fresh air. Yes, the spirits were a PAIN, especially on Nightmare. Yes, mauraders are obnoxious. Yes, the boxes weren’t just “shoot it until it dies”, BUT they did introduce you to this long before the fight using those turrets. Those turrets required two shots, so they trained you early for it.
From one mega DooM fan to another, be open to new ideas. Based on the ending to part 1, we’re going to be in for one hell of a different kind of fight than we’ve already experienced in part 2.
Thanks for reading the article and I’m glad you enjoyed it. I’m totally open to new ideas but I can’t guarantee I’ll like them all. That said, I’m still looking forward to the next DLC. I have no doubt it’ll be awesome too.
I really appreciate how well you managed the hostility in the responses. While some folks were respectful to you even when differing, others with their “git goods” and flame language was poor, and I appreciate your empathetic responses and unwillingness to fall to their level.
I feel like someone gave credit to learning over git good in the past and sure that is a part of it, but I agree with what your saying on a level beyond skill and mechanics and around fun. I don’t have a ton of time to ‘git good’, but up until Blood Swamps, I felt like the game forced you to improve. Expecially the first level of this DLC which felt great and knocked the rust off. I noticed something dumb though, they added some lazy turrets. Ok… Fine. Once I arrives at Blood Swamp though, it was a real ramp up of stuff that didn’t just increase difficulty, it increased frustration. Areas where you can’t see. Fights where there were just way too many rounds. I beat it on the first try, all the way through, but I wasn’t enjoying it. I didn’t feel great after running through overly annoying sequences like putting a turret in a wolf fight with the marauder. I was just psyched to get the level over with, something I didn’t feel in the main campaign. Then that box fight… There is just a laziness to an object being a boss, turrets, spirits which are skinned from Doom 2016 summoners… Invisible Whiplashes.. nothing truly new or exciting, just augments to the meta… And easy or hard, I just didn’t enjoy it. Your agency comment a good indicator to me on why. So as I’m getting rammed in the back by pinkys and using plasma rifle heat blast / flame to keep shields up taking the pot shots at the boxes, I just didn’t enjoy it. I found pulse / heat blast matched my need to keep enemies off the board just as fast as the ballista shots. Goes back to play style. Good for you putting this out here, I play game for the fun of it, that’s my primary metric. If something interupted your fun, then that happened regardless of skill or need for basement competition. Completely agree with you here.
Thanks, it’s so nice to see someone accepting criticism for a game they like instead of just trolling.
It’s also nice to see at least a few other people had the same experience I had. I definitely think a high level of challenge in a game is a good thing, for me anyway, but The Ancient Gods just didn’t seem to be able to balance challenge with engaging design.
Lots of Slurs in here who like to gargle IDs ballsack in here.