This game is mental. In a good way. It’s one of the most intense FPSs we’ve ever played, as well as one of the best in a long old time. Are we doomed?

DOOM Eternal

American developer iD Software is responsible for the Doom series. Bethesda publishes the titles.

There’s the classic Doom from 1993 and various other incarnations, such as the underrated Doom 64.

But the series got a violent reboot in 2016 from iD with DOOM. The developer did a great job with it, despite a few flaws.

It introduced all manner of wickedly imaginative ideas and a hell of a lot of violence. The gore rating went through the roof.

And for DOOM Eternal (2020), it ramped up the crazy further still for release on PC, Xbox One, PS4, and Nintendo Switch.

The plot? Well, there is one. Earth is under siege from demons. And it’s your job to wipe all the bastards out with guns. Good, eh? Behold!

Right from the off, DOOM Eternal doesn’t hold back. What follows is an absolute sucker punch of an experience.

The game is breathless. You launch in and rarely have a moment to think, instead relying on gut reactions and the survival techniques you learn over the first few levels.

And those levels, incidentally, are goddamn enormous. Some of them take up to an hour to complete, during which time you’ll be clutching your controller for dear life.

Wave after wave of demons surges in, some of which require specific tactics to wipe out.

Thankfully, as the Slayer protagonist, you’re packing some seriously insane weapons to take down the Hellspawn. Hurray!

We include level three below in full from someone’s YouTube channel as a demonstration of what you have to bloody well deal with.

We’ve been very critical of the FPS genre in recent years due to its overuse by developers, who we think lazily tap into the market.

But DOOM Eternal is exceptional—no doubt about it. This is a demonstration of how amazing the FPS genre can be.

It’s brutal but exhilarating. Intensely difficult, but rewarding.

Due to time constraints, we normally play video games on easy mode. But for this, we went with your normal. Shocking, eh?

This led to a lot of death and frustration, but when you do complete a section of the game it’s thrilling. The comedown off the adrenaline spike.

Such is the ferocity of the onslaught, it does make DOOM Eternal mentally exhausting. Not that it’s a bad thing.

In fact, the intensity reminds us of Valve’s Half-Life 2. What we’d class as easily the greatest FPS ever!

But that did mean we typically only played DOOM Eternal in short spells.

And iD’s effort isn’t perfect. The ammo system is frustrating and we frequently found ourselves running out of the stuff at crucial moments.

As with the 2016 reboot, it also gets a little bit repetitive just crazily gunning down everything that homes into view.

But those issues aside, this thing is a modern marvel.

Clever and engaging level design, relentless mayhem, crunchy and satisfying gameplay, and masses of exhilaration.

Highly recommended in every department. We think this will probably go down (to Hell) as a modern classic.