Despite the ongoing havoc that the Coronavirus has caused recently, one thing that has not been affected thankfully is the release schedule for games that are almost about to come out. While 2020 did not exactly kick off with much momentum as far as game releases are concerned, things have started to finally roll along with some really big games starting to come out now.
One of these big games is the latest entry in the iconic shooter franchise, Doom. Called Doom Eternal, the 2nd entry in the reboot of the series turns things up a notch to 11. If Doom 2016 was a toddler finally learning to walk, Doom Eternal is Usain Bolt sprinting towards the finish line.
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Doom Eternal takes things back to the good old planet Earth which has essentially been turned into hell with demons reigning supreme across the planet. However, it is not the story where Doom Eternal shines the brightest.
Instead, the main forte of Doom Eternal is its ability to dish out relentless and bloody violence at a pace that can even feel overwhelming at times. Everything from the gun play to the incredibly flexible movement feels on point. Furthermore, Doom Eternal perfectly encapsulates the frantic feeling of always keeping you on edge with no remorse.
All of this makes Doom Eternal the perfect game to play at a time when the entire world seems to have shut down and there’s not really much else to do. However, when you’re being a responsible citizen and practicing social distancing, you do tend to miss your friends as well.
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Thankfully, Doom Eternal also comes with a multiplayer mode that manages to replicate the great gameplay of the single-player mode. However, early players have found that it lacks one of the most fan-favorite multiplayer game modes of all time, Deathmatch.
Games like Doom and Quake have defined the deathmatch genre and it wouldn’t really exist as it does today without them. So, it was rather peculiar that Doom of all games would not have the iconic multiplayer game mode.
However, according to Bethesda’s Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communication, Pete Hines, the Deathmatch game mode is obsolete and we should move forward into other things. Here’s what he said in an interview with Shacknews when asked about the absence of Team Deathmatch.
No. That mode is eons old. We don’t want to do something just for the sake of doing it, or because something has always been a certain way.
The biggest problem we thought we had with Doom 2016 was that [multiplayer] wasn’t done at id, and felt really disconnected from the base game that everybody loved. Whether you’re playing by yourself or with others, we want it to feel like you’re all playing the same game. That’s as opposed to, ‘I’m a badass demon slayer in single-player, but when I go over to multiplayer, there are no demons, and it’s just Deathmatch.’ I don’t know what that has to do with [Doom] other than that, well, a couple of decades ago we had that, so we should just have that again.
So, it really does seem like id Software just wants to recreate the feeling of being an overpowered demon slayer in multiplayer as well, which doesn’t seem like a bad thing at all. The new multiplayer game mode in Doom Eternal called BATTLEMODE features a 2v1 best of five fight between a Doom Slayer and two player-controlled demons. You can check it out down below.
However, it still feels like the omission of a classic head-to-head deathmatch from a game with such great gun play and fluid movement is a missed opportunity.
Doom Eternal is out now on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
Will you miss the Deathmatch game mode in Doom Eternal or does it not bother you? Let us know down in the comments below!