Doom Eternal

What is it?

Doom Eternal is a first person shooter that presents an adrenaline rush of brutal-but-slapstick violence set to a ripping metal soundtrack. With Earth in the grip of a demonic invasion, Doom Guy – an angry man in an armoured suit – works on wiping the demons out. Through destroyed cities, huge space ships and the sanctums of ancient civilisations, the player tears through the demonic horde, guns blazing and chainsaw revving. As players progress through a story that is both self-serious and self-aware, they can explore the various levels to find secret items which grant lore details, weapon and ability upgrades. In this way the game encourages exploration and repeat play. Alongside the single-player campaign, Doom Eternal has a challenge system, and a three-player adversarial multiplayer mode. 

What to expect

Doom Eternal presents one of the more detailed gore systems in video games, mitigated by its use on fantastical creatures. Under the sustained gunfire of Doom Guy’s sci-fi arsenal, demon flesh gives way to muscle, meat, and bone, blasted away in lurid chunks. This is a fast way to recognise damaged enemies, and also results in a mechanic where players can target enemy weapons to destroy them and limit their available attacks. In further examples of the game’s over-the-top tone, players can execute finishing moves, where the Doom Guy punches, pulls and stomps on his victims in an exaggeratedly amusing fashion. One of the highlights is where the Doom Guy pulls out the large green eyeball of a floating cacodemon – the accompanying stretch-and-pop sound effect turns what could have been a more gruesome act into a sequence of amusing but violent slapstick. In this way, despite the scattered corpses and bloody violence found throughout the game, Doom Eternal clearly veers away from the inherent cruelty which can easily accompany depictions of graphic violence. This is violence against exaggerated, almost-cartoonish demons, with the piñata-like bursts of health, armour and ammunition pickups which herald the demise of each opponent further adding to the arcade-like tone. As a result, Doom Eternal deals with its frequently gory violence in a manner which remains likely to shock younger audiences, but which can be properly contextualised by older teenagers and adults.