Ok, so I completed Doom Eternal on I'm Too Young to Die last night. Even on this easy mode, Doom Eternal is still not a walk in the park. At least it wouldn't be if it weren't for the extra lives to be found in this game. Unlike Doom 2016, you can obtain extra lives in Eternal. Doom 2016 was so damn satisfying when making it through a battle because it was all or nothing. You die, you go back to the last check point and try again. Eternal takes some of that achievement away with the introduction of extra lives. I am luke warm on this decision, but it does seem that ID Software made some adjustments to account for this. After completing the game I immediately restarted on Hurt Me Plenty, and boy oh boy was that a reality check. Eternal throws high powered enemies at you much sooner than Doom 2016 did and they do massive damage. In Doom 2016 the player was eased into the action starting with zombies, imps and possessed soldiers, all enemies that do low levels of damage per hit. Eternal throws you right into the frying pan, facing off against enemies in the first level that you didn't see in Doom 2016 until the third level or later. Eternal is more difficult than its predecessor if it weren't for extra lives. Being able to accumulate extra lives is the caveat to that. Will you die more in Eternal than you did in Doom 2016? Probably so, but the extra lives offset that, and in a way this makes Eternal perhaps more accessible to a wider audience than the originals unforgiving nature of battles.
Doom 2016 vs Eternal in the graphics department is not a favorable comparison for Eternal. Doom 2016 while being very soft and blurry was still able to bring the games overall atmosphere to the Switch. The post processing effects and lighting were intact, just at much lower rending resolutions than the PS4/X1 build of the game. Eternal shines where Doom 2016 stumbled, and that is in the framerate department. Eternal holds tight to 30fps 99% of the time. I was shocked how well the game still ran even in the larger areas with far more enemies on screen than Doom 2016 ever presented. Where it doesn't shine is everywhere else. Eternal ends up looking very flat and washed out more often than not. Fully loaded textures look like they are two steps away from being fully loaded. The lighting and depth of field are basically stripped out of this Switch port. Many of the textures in Eternal would be right at home on a Wii game. Yes I said Wii, not Wii U. All in all, Eternal just isn't a good looking game on Switch. Far more so than with Doom 2016, its easy to see just how good the game should look, but the port just isn't able to do those environments justice.
Now that we got the ugly out of the way, Eternal is a fantastic port if you can look beyond the graphics. Somehow Panic Button and ID Software manage to transition a 60fps very fast paced game to 30fps and maintain the sense of speed and responsiveness. This game controls great. The gameplay is fast and your controller responsiveness are top notch. In terms of gameplay, Panic Button deserves credit for preserving the feel of a game designed to run at twice the framerate. The new gameplay elements are excellent and the player must quickly adapt to using these new mechanics in battle in order to succeed. Doom 2016 more more simplistic in combat, and I love that, but I can see why ID Software wanted to evolve it further. Learning to use the flamethrower often to obtain shield shards and the chainsaw for ammo are mandatory for success. Doom 2016 always had some Metroid Prime feels with the movement speed and double jump mechanic for platforming. Eternal takes that to a new level. There is far more platforming in this game, and for the most part it works very well. There are times it can feel cheap because you fell to your doom not knowing where to jump next, but overall I like the increased sense of exploration in this game.
I recommend this game to anyone who really enjoyed Doom 2016 on Switch. Unless you are a sucker like me, its probably worth waiting to see if they put this game on sale Christmas day. We see a huge sale every year during Christmas, and third party publishers have no problem with slashing the price of games that they just recently released, especially Switch ports of games that sell for $20 on PS4/X1.
