I basically loved Doom Eternal from the start. There are issues here and there, but the combat and the movement felt so good, I didn't mind them. Then the Marauders started showing up in regular combat encounters, and all that changed. It blows my mind how they could have included this enemy in the game as more than a single boss encounter (even that one was terrible, but at least it was only once). He totally ruins the flow of every combat encounter he's in, because you have to constantly stare at him while staying at him and stay at a certain range from him, so you can't jump around and do all the fun "Doom" stuff. Or you do, and you just try and kill everyone else and leave The Marauder till last, but then he's just gonna spawn a bunch of shitty dogs (that you can't glory kill or put on fire, thus removing them from the resource loop!), and he's still miserable to fight.
And there's basically just the one way to kill him: stare at him at the correct range, then blast him with the Super Shotgun when his eyes flash. There's no variation. With the rest of the enemies you can improvise and have fun, like "I jumped over the Mancubus and shot him with the Super Shotgun, then turned around and fired missiles at the two Arachnotrons, dashed to the group of fodder dudes and set them on fire and then blasted them with the grenade..." etc. There's endless variation, which is what makes the combat so good and satisfying. Not with this dude: stay at mid-range, wait for the flash, Super Shotgun. Every time. Over and over. Unless his shitty, non-resource generating dogs kill you first, in which case: start the fight over. I'd rather fight 10 cyberdemons at once than fight a single Marauder: at least that's an interesting challenge.
I'm nearing the end of the game, but I'm just done at this point. I'm not going to finish it. If the game is just going to throw more and more of these miserable guys at me, then I'd rather just play something else. I guess I could bump down the difficulty, but I can't imagine this guy is any less tedious at the easier levels. Also: I'm loving the rest of the combat at the difficulty I'm on, and bumping it down would make those parts less enjoyable.
I can't remember the last time a single enemy like this totally sapped all the enjoyment I had in an otherwise incredibly well-designed game. What the hell were they thinking?
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