For the silver medal this year, we turn to a game that I wasn’t expecting to like it this much, but Doom Eternal’s design won me over in more ways than one.
#2 Doom Eternal
I enjoyed Doom 2016: It wasn’t my favorite game of that year, but it was an impressive reboot of the classic franchise. The back to basics approached worked well in a market of cinematic (and often sterile) FPS games. Doom Eternal on the other hand jumps forward quite a bit in terms of tone and design, and felt like a betrayal for some fans.
The new over the top cartoon aesthetic may be a little much, as well as all the brightly colored effects on your HUD. But gameplay is king with the Doom series, and Doom Eternal wins me over with my favorite FPS design I’ve played in a long time.
“Push Forward” design was the name given by the developers at Id Software for this idea of always keeping the player in the action, and removing anything that takes them out of it. This is a FPS that essentially allows the player to regenerate health and ammo through combat, and is still hard as hell and challenging. As with the last Doom, combat becomes these hectic sprints of death and destruction, where Doom Eternal flips the script is that you now need to think as well as shoot.
This is perhaps the most controversial part of the design. While you can certainly hurt every enemy with every gun, there are preferred strategies: throwing grenades at cacodemons, the little “dance” you do with the marauders and etcetera. Personally, I love having to adapt on the fly to whatever is coming my way as opposed to just running backward shooting a rocket launcher (Hi Serious Sam).
As I said in my review, I’ve been dreaming of a FPS or shooter take on the Soulslike formula, and I think push forward design is the way to go. Doom Eternal is going to end up being a game that you either love or hate for its changes, but I want to see more of it and I’m excited for Ultrakill in 2021.
The top games this year all ran really close in terms of positioning, and my #1 game should come as no surprise to fans of the YouTube channel.
