The Doom Slayer is back with DOOM Eternal, the follow up to Bethesda’s 2016 release, DOOM. Now let me just say, DOOM Eternal absolutely delivers on the fast pace, over the top, rip and tear violence any DOOM fan has come to love.

Since DOOM (2016), our good friend Doom Slayer, never really let up continuing his fight against the demonic. Now taking residency on his ship, “The Fortress of Doom”, his base of operations you could say, the game opens up with him receiving a message warning him that hell has arrived on planet Earth and it’s up to you, yet again, to hunt down the cause of this mayhem, put a stop to it and save humanity.

You soon learn the cause of all this is by the ‘Hell Priests’ and you must travel through hell and back to track them down and kill them, one by one. Of course, this means there’s going to be a lot of demons to slay on your travels. If you thought DOOM (2016) had a lot of demons to rip apart, DOOM Eternal has double the amount. Let the good times roll, or rip.

The combat is much like DOOM (2016); it’s fast paced with a lot of enemies trying to kill you at any given moment. Now turn that up to 11, because as mentioned before, there are twice as many enemies which means it’s tough, a lot tougher. DOOM Eternal is definitely not for anyone with slow-reflexes, even on the normal/easy difficulty this game can be a challenge. Then add in that fast, pumping heavy metal soundtrack; shit WILL get crazy!!

Doom Guy comes fully equipped with a fancy new armour suit, complete with a turret on his left shoulder that can light your demon friends on fire. “TOASTY!”. As you play through the campaign, you’ll collect a nice little array of weapons for ripping apart demonic scum as well as Doom slayer’s iconic double barrelled shotgun, which now has a small upgrade, a grappling hook. This grappling hook isn’t for getting to high to reach places, no..no..no, it’s used to bring your enemies to you for some sweet up in your face violence.

Speaking of up in your face, glory kills are back, and in DOOM Eternal there are quite a few more different glory kill animations compared to previous titles. Performing glory kills will have enemies drop crucial items like heath packs or shields. Other than health and armour, you’re going to need ammo, and a lot of it. While ammo, health and armour is scattered around the map, you will find yourself running out of ammo pretty fast, and all the time. Fear not, if you run out you’ll pull out your trusty chainsaw. After getting a kill with your chainsaw, you’ll be rewarded with a small amount of ammo to get you going again.

Shooting and performing glory kills isn’t the only thing you’ll be doing in DOOM Eternal. The game breaks things up with levels requiring some platforming type challenges. Surprisingly, these were not only a bit of a challenge, but fun. You’ll need to use all your abilities, dash, double jump, swinging on bars and climbing walls to complete these obstacles. And if you’re like me, and like to collect everything, you’re going to want to find and complete these to be able to find collectables like DOOM soundtracks, extra lives and even little toy figures for your collection back on “The Fortress of Doom”.

Your ship, The Fortress of Doom, is not only a place for you to head to your next mission or admire your toy collection. It’s here where you’ll be able to head down to the Demon Prison to practise your combat and slayer skills without the fear of wasting ammo or health. On your ship you can also unlock additional Doom Slayer skins using Sentinel Batteries collected as you play through the story.

Runes also make a comeback and you can select up to 3 of them at the same time. Runes give you abilities such as being able to slow down time while in mid air, or a boost of speed after finishing a glory kill. I know this all seems like a lot, and I guess it is, but DOOM Eternal does do a good job of easing you into everything so you can become the biggest and baddest Doom Slayer ever to have lived.

Also out of the box is Battle Mode, a new slayer vs demons competitive multiplayer mode. This is where 2 players play as demons and their opponent controls the Doom Slayer while trying to take them down. Unfortunately, the servers for this mode don’t go live until launch, so we didn’t have a chance to test this out. Once they do, i’ll be sure to update this review, so check back at launch for that one.

In closing, DOOM Eternal doesn’t disappoint by delivering an amazing single player story experience along with some of the best first person shooter action with it’s fun, super fast paced gun-play, complete with those juicy glory kills.

Written by: MKAU Gaming