Doom Eternal Hands-On, New Slayer vs. Demon Multiplayer, DOOM 1, 2 and 3 Re-Released #QuakeCon2019
Over the weekend, Bethesda’s QuakeCon took place and for the first time ever, the event was brought to Europe, in London England, as well as simultaneously taking place in the US. I attended the London event myself and I got to play some Doom Eternal and it was fantastic! It was more of the same, but with some added tweaks. Such as being able to traverse on walls by climbing and jumping from wall to wall (Lara Croft style), adding an extra layer to how you explore each level. Albeit, you can only cling on to certain walls, but it still added something extra none the less.
There also seems to more weapons to pick up and I got to see how the body dismemberment worked. Basically, not including basic grunts, some of the bigger enemy types such as the Cyberdemon and the Mancubus, will have armour and weapons that you can dismantle off their body parts. This alone adds an extra layer of strategy to a very chaotic shooter by nature. Much of the story during the demo was cut-out for spoiler purposes, but we were thrown into several battle arenas.
As with the previous game, even the normal difficulty was challenging, but the more I died and restarted, the more I learned with paths to take and which enemies to eliminate first, and how to slay them. From my brief time with Doom Eternal, as a fan of the series and the 2016 reboot, I’m very excited for this new instalment set to release later this year.
Also over the weekend, during the live panels, we also got to see some new gameplay footage of the asymmetrical multiplayer mode known as Battlemode. In Battlemode, a single player will take control of the Doom Slayer, while two other players will take control of two demons in a best out of five series. There will be a total of six maps specially designed for Battlemode (new laps will be added for free following launch), and the demon controlling players will have the choice of the Pain Elemental, Revenant, Mancubus and the Marauder.
The demon controlling players will have access to all their abilities and augmentations, as well as being able to deploy AI controlled demons for a brief time, as well as activating “hazards” in attempt to bring down the Doom Slayer, they can even activate a special move that stops the Doom Slayer from picking up resources for a brief time. However, the player controlling the Doom Slayer will have access to his weaponry, equipment and mods to kill the demons, with the brutal glory kills dropping ammo and health just like in the singleplayer.
In order to win the best out of five series, the Doom Slayer must kill both demons to win a round. However, once killing one out of the two demons, you have twenty seconds to kill the other demon; otherwise the demon you just downed will re-spawn with half of its health restored. The demons are also able to see the Doom Slayer through walls, but if the Doom Slayer loses their line of sight for a few seconds, the Doom Slayers outline will disappear until line of sight is restored. You can check out some of the new Battlemode gameplay via the keynote video below.
Finally, as a nice surprise to new and veteran Doom fans alike, the original Doom and Doom II were re-released over the weekend for PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Android and iOS devices at a cost of £3.99/$4.99 each. The two classic Doom titles both come with split-screen, 4-player multiplayer.
Additionally, Doom 3 was also re-released for PS4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch for £7.99/$9.99, and comes with the Resurrection of Evil and The Lost Missions expansions; you can watch the announcement trailer below.
Doom Eternal will release for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch on November 22nd.