Hell yeah, DOOM Eternal has buckets of blood and a grappling hook shotgun!

In the almighty word of Dethklok, 2016’s DOOM was simply…brutal. A vicious tour de force of run ‘n gun action from the good ol’ days that took the right elements from modern gaming and baked them in an oven at 666 degrees, DOOM was action perfected when it was released. What could have easily been yet another corridor shooter was instead reworked and retuned to be a highlight reel of evisceration and action from a bygone era, while also being a reminder of the value that the past had to offer.

Naturally, a sequel had to be made. With the reboot ending on a cliffhanger that saw Mars introduced face-first to the business end of a shotgun and Earth about to receive a case of demonic possession that even an army of exorcists couldn’t stop, somebody has to pick up a big f*cking gun and save the day. Fortunately, you can’t keep a good slayer down, as DOOM Guy is back with a few new tricks up his sleeve in this footage from Quake Con 2018 of DOOM Eternal.

It just so happens, that one of those tricks happens to include a shotgun that now comes equipped with a grappling hook. Oh my yes:

I’m so glad I wore my white pants this morning. DOOM Eternal looks like a case of doubling down on what made the 2016 game so special, emphasising movement, agility and versatility with its arsenal of guns and gory finishers. One thing you won’t see in the sequel however? Snapmaps. Originally intended to be a suite of map creation tools for DOOM, Snapmap was a competent toolkit but it never caught on with players in the manner that it was intended to.

Instead, players will be able to invade the games of other slayers and take possession of the demons that they’re currently battling. Dank souls yo, as the feature is pretty much replacing the Snapmap idea entirely. “We’ve kind of moved away from SnapMap at this point,” executive producer Marty Stratton said to GameSpot.

We loved it, it was great, but it didn’t quite scratch the additional content itch for people in the way that we had hoped it would, in a broad sense. I know there’s some unbelievable SnapMap content out there, but we’ve chosen to reassign those resources and the time spent on that into things like the Invasions. Also, to a new PvP component that, in addition to the invasion, is also very Doom and very connected with what you experience in the game.

And as [creative director, Hugo Martin] says, we just want to make the Doom-dance social. That’s one of our big goals. We’re going to do a lot with the Invasions, along with the PvP component which we’ll talk about more down the road, and we’re also developing that internally. We’re doubling down on things to make sure they’re done exactly how we want them to be done, and to make sure that they’re connected with the campaign.

Old school action with new school visuals that keeps the action dialled up to 11 at all times? Hell yeah. DOOM Eternal has no concrete release date yet, but you can expect to perform a shotgun exorcism in 2019.

 

Last Updated: August 13, 2018