Giant Bombcast 627: Final Fight Questions

No video this week?

@tehsteeb said:

There is a video for it.

Looks like I needed to be a bit more patient!

Brad moved your mouse

I think Jeff and Brad are exactly right when it comes to these SSD drives on the new consoles. It's still going to be better overall as far as traditional load times, but honestly I can only really see Sony 1st party titles actually designing anything around their hard drive speeds.

Huh - I honestly feel really different from the duders on both Doom Eternal and Half-Life. Doom was fantastic, and so far I'm feeling the same about Half-Life.

I've been really enjoying Doom Eternal on a one level per day-ish kind of pace. The stages seem like the perfect length so far, but I'm only on level 5 and maybe they drag on later. Their criticisms aren't necessarily wrong, but none of what they are talking about has really bothered me yet. Idk it's a fun quarantine game for me and it's keeping me sane while I wait for Persona 5 Royal.

Speaking of which, hope we get some coverage of that next week ;)

anyone know wat headphones jeff is wearing

I'm totally right there with Jeff in not liking Doom: Eternal much at all. Right now, I'd say it's a 3/5 for me. It's well-made in most respects, but it just not a very fun game. There's just so many little niggling issues where the design just doesn't fit together very well.

Glory kills and the chainsaw are good examples of this. Fundamentally, they work the same way as in Doom 2016, but they work so much less well in Doom: Eternal. In 2016, if you played skillfully you largely avoided needing to use them. This kept them fresh and stopped them from slowing down combat.

By contrast, skillful play in Doom: Eternal means requires using glory kills and the chainsaw all the time. The problem with that is that each one comes with an unstoppable 1.5-2 second bespoke animation. So instead of a sequence of mostly uninterrupted combat with the occasional use, it's now a herky-jerk sequence of hopping between animations. There's no flow to the combat anymore.

In 2016, the glory kills and chainsaw were the punctuation mark at the end of a sentence of combat. But. In. Eternal they're like. Having a. Period. After. Every. Other word.

Basically, Doom's combat went from being Charles Dickens to being Chris Cilliza.

The music in the background of the later portion of the Bombcast really got on my nerves for some reason.

Yeah I dunno what they're talking about in the Doom discussion. Did I play the same game? I enjoyed Eternal noticeably more than 2016. And hopefully I get to play HL Alyx at some point as a console owner .Looks excellent.

@nerozerohero99:

Looks like a pair of Astro A40 TRs

Worf is one of the most honarable & tenured Klingon warriors in history. There were shenanigans involved in his house being dishonoured. He hates birthdays. He was also Captain Picards' head of security, he saw over the crew of Starfleets' flagship, into the depths of uncharted space, and the diplomatic front of the Federation.

However, that person wasn't wrong in their observations.

Also yes, a lot of cool stuff happens on DS9.

<3 the segment sounds from Jan

Really weird to hear Jeff say Alyx is just another VR game. Pretty much everything in that game is on another level. There's tons of stuff to interact with and interacting feels so much better than any VR game I've played, especially using the gloves throwing stuff around and catching it in mid-air. Shooting guns is way more satisfying than even most "normal" games and the world building is fantastic, the city feels alive and you're just a small part of it. I had high hopes for it, but so far it is much better than I expected.

Playing through ultra violence in Doom Eternal on console, I really really love the combat. It almost feels like an fps character action game. But Jeff is 100% spot on about the tone and writing. It's like some kind of weak knock off of duke nukem. If Doom 2016 was RoboCop, Doom Eternal is RoboCop 3. Rather than the humor coming naturally, all the jokes feel obvious and desperate like a bad open mic. A lot of the slapstick elements still land, like goofy glory kills and the Doomguy dragging the UAC dude by his lanyard to swipe his keycard, but all the dialogue is at best ignorable and at worst Borderlands 3 level distractingly bad.

Right there with you with those opinions as well. I also found that the 2016 DOOM balanced the line between challenging and power fantasy. Doomguy it made to look like a bad ass in this game but to me he constantly feels under powered and weak.

Im 10 hours in now, and i feel like its about to overstay its welcome. I will see it through to the end, but i very much have to get it together to boot it up now.

I feel about as disconnected about the crews opinion on Eternal as I did with Death Stranding. It's exactly what I wanted out of the sequel to 2016. That is, not 2016, but something different. The Marauder is the only blemish I can think of right now, and I'm about 10 hours in.

The game still has that same almost cultish reverence for Doomguy, it's just shifted towards actual humans speaking in awe about him, rather than just inside codex entries. The recordings you find in mission 6 made me laugh at the absurdity of it, in the same way I did with 2016.

Maybe my opinion will change by the time I finish the game, I'm still in the honeymoon phase. But currently I'm loving it, and actually think I prefer it over 2016.

Also, "The only thing they fear is You" is a superior track to BFG Division, I gotta say.

Aside from the writing in Doom Eternal I have had none of these problems with the game. I played through the entire game on ultra violence and I think its the perfect level of hectic. Every time I chainsaw a dude my brain releases a burst of dopamine because it means I get a 2 second break from some of the most intense and fun combat I've ever played in an FPS game. It's great, but it requires all of my focus so a 2 second breather is nice. I also find the flame belch + blow shit up combination so satisfying. The flame belch is not largely meant for big monsters, you group up the small ones and belch + nade for armor rain.

I also disagree with the weak points being crucial, they are not. I think the only one I break consistently is the arachnotron because its so easy. Also I don't ever use the snipe for any weak points, the shotgun sticky bomb is the way to go. If you do want to snipe though but struggle with it, the slowmo rune is the thing for you. I love it just in general to get that tiny breather to assess the situation in the middle of combat. With the shoulder cannon dudes and mancubus' I found it way faster to just blast them with the super shotgun up close or empty a full clip of mini rockets in to them and then glory kill. Those guns are so strong the enemies will flinch and won't have the time to shoot you anyway.

I'm surprised people seem to think 2016 is the better game. I think Eternal is better in every way. I found 2016 to drag on the latter third, exactly because the combat is so samey all the way through. In 2016 I'm always using the same weapon because why would you ever switch, I'm never chainsawing because why would you ever need to. I'm always wiggling around because there are no movement options. I think Eternal fixes all of this with the dashing, fire belch, nades, super shotgun meat hook and constant weapon switching for different purposes makes it feel so dynamic and fun that I can't think of a single FPS game that gets even close to that levels of fun for me. I was so focused on playing the game that after every session (granted, each was about 5-6 hours long) I was so tired I took a 30 minute nap :D I've never played a game that requires so much focus from me.

I do agree that in the first lets say 3 hours the game can seem overwhelming because they throw A LOT of stuff at you. Luckily it then evens out nicely.

Bummer it didn't click for folks the same way it did for me but it happens, hopefully everyone still enjoyed it to some degree :D

I don't like putting the crew on blast, but I feel like if Jeff is going to have that HOT TAKE he should at least back it up with actual games. Feel like the laziest criticism is to say "This is nothing new!" and then not give comparisons. I'm no VR expert but I watched all of GB's VR videos and followed what else is out there for years and I haven't seen anything quite like Half-Life: Alyx. The closest thing is RE7. In many ways, this feels like a much, much better RE7 from a VR perspective.

Also, going to say I wasn't hot on Doom 2016 but Doom Eternal is instantly my GOTY-to-beat. I love platforming in FPS and insanely complicated combat systems so this game speaks to me. Playing it on ultra nightmare is one of the best gaming experiences I've had. Freezing enemies, launching into the air to chain on to a cacodemon, slowing down to blast them in the fast, and double jumping to glory kill an enemy across the arena is just so insane. I watched some Doom 2016 the other night and it looks so simple by comparison. I think a lot of this will be the crew hitting the limits of console controls. Doom 2016 was well suited for it but I can't imagine playing this with controller on highest difficulty.

@applegong: thanks dude, im always looking for a nice pair of headphones and they look pretty good on jeff

Streets of Rage music 😍

How about instead of new or old Artifact, you just play Gwent?

Them not knowing who Daisy is in DooM hurt my soul.

Also everyone who is not liking DooM Eternal, I have to ask are you playing on console?

I feel people who don't like DooM eternal are either having immense trouble with the many keybinds, or just don't understand the tools available to them bc DooM 2016 had three guns (SSG, Gauss, Rocket Launcher) and two get out of jail free cards (chainsaw and BFG).

You didn't use the chainsaw in 2016 to get ammo, you used it to burn a heavy down immediately, but in Eternal it's got the purpose I believe the developers intended, especially how they make the first pip recharge.

Idk how lower difficulties work, but Ice bomb is excellent for the whiplash monster, and the game even says so.

I'm playing on UV and can't wait to see how Nightmare kicks it up, and none of them even brought up the actual bad part of the game, the Maurauder, which turns DooM into a Dark Souls 1 pvp parry match with footsies.

The movie that Jeff saw as a kid that fucked with him. (may be LOUD)

I enjoy a crisp Anjou pear, but I am totally on board with the anti-pear sentiment in the podcast. Pears are used as cheap filler in so many fruit-based foods (jelly, juice, fruit snacks), in flavor blends where they have no business setting up house. Various randos on Reddit claim that this is due to pears' relatively neutral flavor and abundance due to their non-usage in standalone juices and ciders - in other words, because they don't taste like anything and no one wants them. (I'm curious about Jan's red fruit antipathy, though.)

I enjoyed seeing Annie!

I feel like I'm exactly the opposite with Doom. I didn't care for 2016, but find that the addition of the dash gave me what I was missing from the first game.

Also, I never really liked the tone and story as much as the crew did, so I just ignore it.

@ketsrob: I am playing on a console, but I don't think my distaste for what the game is doing is really affected by that. I'm not really fumbling with the controls all that much or forgetting to use any weapons. My issues are with things that would span console and PC. For example:

• The combat UI is garish and ugly and too damn small. Even turned up to the maximum size I can't really see it without looking away from the combat, which given the pace at which everything moves, is really bad. The color scheme also makes it almost impossible for me to actually read it.

• The menu UI is much the same. It reminds me of an original XBOX dashboard, with big chunky text that's put in boxes too small for it. It's hard to navigate, which is odd, because DOOM 2016 had many of the same systems but organized them in a much more efficient way. All they've done here is invent a crappy solution to a problem that never existed to begin with.

• The sound balance seems off. The music is fine, but it's too loud. Same for the guns noises. It's covering up sounds that would be much more useful to me as a player, like notifications that the flame belch or grenades are coming off cooldown. I've tinkered with settings in the menu, but haven't hit on a balance that feels good yet.

• The story is bad and badly told on top of it. The cold open might have worked if it was the lead-up to the final boss and the game then took place in flashback, but nope. When did we escape hell? Who cares. How did Vega come back? Shug. When did we get a big gothic space fortress? Dunno.

• Platforming. Why? Who thought anyone would want to do that when playing DOOM?

• As I mentioned above, the pace of combat has been thrown off by the games insistence on constant glory kills and chainsawing. It breaks the flow of combat and actually makes those things much less cool because you're cycling through the same 2 or 3 animations constantly (I really wish Cacodemons would just blow up when you shot grenades in their mouths. I am sick to death of the pull their eye out animation).

Doom Eternal provides you with a large toolbox to work with and it all flows with each other but you have to use your tools.

I dunno, not be a dick but when I hear people complain about the combat it always comes down to "the thing I wanted to work didn't work and I didn't want to try anything else so it's bad"

The combat is like Dark Souls (I know, I know, bare with me). You can't just mash to beat Dark Souls and you can't just mindlessly roll through Doom Eternal super shotgunning everything in the face to beat it.

Add me to the list or people who disagree with the Doom Eternal opinions of the crew. These guys are , in my experience, seem generally more negative than the average consumer but holy hell I do not follow the doom arguments at all (except about the story which I agree is a bit too Duke Nukem’ish that was pretty spot on)

But I used every single tool in the game from weapons to mods to runes to grenades. None of them felt useless. By comparison I barely use half the moves in a bayonetta game. The same goes for Doom 2016 when I think about it. I rarely switched weapons there and I even forgot about using Grenades.

The combat is, in so few words, the most exciting FPS-combat I’ve experienced in years. Having recently played through Doom 2016 again I feel like a slug going through that. The only thing I appreciate more about 2016 is some of the more (kinda) grounded level design and the irreverent story.

Kinda baffled by their takes on the game to be honest. Though I find more and more that my opinion differ from the Bomb crew as the years go by. Maybe it’s a generational thing or maybe it’s the kind of nitpicking that comes with having worked so long as an actual critic? Either way, I’m just not seeing the same problems at all.

@therealturk:

Thanks for the reply, my thinking on the console point is I am snapping so fast to shoot off a weak point and moving fast that I can't do it on console, in addition to turning DoomGuy into a gymnast speeding around the arenas.

• I haven't had any issues with the UI, but again I wonder if this is my PC monitor being pretty close to my face, and I feel you don't need to worry too much about the exact amount of ammo you have in a given gun, I mostly only pay attention to when the audio cues for low ammo and the message in the middle of the screen to chainsaw an enemy to get more.
• Same opinion on the menu UI, i have Q and E to navigate the top menus and A and D to move through sub menus, but I realize a lot of UI is opinion. The map is 1000x better in eternal though.
• Music is another opinion issue I guess, when everything picks up in a battle it gets the adrenaline going in me. This may be another PC (with headphones) vs a console with TV, I feel I hear every sound cue very clearly, dash, low ammo, grenade refills, low heath, hitting weakpoints, even headshots.
• "Story is bad", it's not really people seem to forget how off the rails the lore around the 'Slayer' got in the hell levels, this is actually more leaning into the stuff at the very end of 2016. The only detriment I really feel is that is kinda feels like we missed a game between them. I'm not through the entire game so I wonder how this plays out, but a lot of the lore/story isn't all that different. On Vega, in 2016 when you blow him up you first download him into one of the USB-esque keys like the armor upgrades. DooM has always been this ridiculous, Eternal just has actual humans around that react to how fucking nutty the DoomGuy actually is. It's cranked up to 11 the entire time, which in storytelling for other games can be too much, but to me it fits all of Doom (save 3, which tried to be way too serious, imo)
• On platforming, I agree it is weird to have platforming in a game that notoriously did not have jumping at all in the beginning. Giving DoomGuy a double jump in 2016 was also weird, but gave that gave some verticality and options, which I liked. Eternal I feel the arena fight are so fast and intense that the platforming sections are a small breather in-between. I laughed when I saw Mario fire bars in the game, but mobility in this game is so fun that the platforming sections do not bother me at all, but I can understand if I'm in the minority here.
• Like the platforming, I like the flow of the combat, chainsaw/glory kill is a second I need to plan the next step, at least on UV so far, and the dash refill on glory kill literally changes the game. I do feel there are less glory kill animations overall, especially on the caco, so minor points off there. The faster glory kill rune is there, but I can also see using 1/3 of the rune slots to 'solve' this 'issue' as unappealing to people.

I feel the combat in this game is as close to perfect I have every played in an fps, and I'm using weapon mods that were useless in 2016 (scope might be the best upgrade in this game, next to meathook)

And my GOD the meathook is without a doubt the best thing about Eternal. Once you realize you can do more than just chain and shoot and you can fling yourself around the arena, I knew this game would have a place in my top 10 of all time. To me, it's just that fun to play.

@loktarogar: my man

I think my biggest criticism of the new Doom are the gore nest challenges. The checkpoints before I find them, at least for most of my experiences, tend to be minutes away, and the only challenge to ALL of them are that they're on a timer. If you fail them, any health/armor/ammo you drained are now used up so you have to re-initiate them at a bigger disadvantage, unless you reload a checkpoint from a bit ago.

This is all assuming your auto-checkpoint didn't already have you disadvantaged with your health/armor/ammo. And this would be easily solved if the game let you plop down your own quicksave.

Other than that, I've been having a blast with it. I've been scratching my head at them claiming the humor wasn't as good when everything in it, from the Doomguy's bookshelf to his desktop icons, are basically on the same level as 2016's and continue painting him as a kinda goofball with a heart.

Also the rabbit in the painting in his office is canonical.

Shame they're down on Doom Eternal. Seems like their "tone" argument just led to a negative first impression of the thing, which tainted their views on the rest of it.

I fucking love every bit of it. The combat's pitch perfect and the traversal even felt great to me. The humor is dumb and campy while the story is optional if you're not into the tone. The levels are long, but since the environments now are so varied I feel like they maximize the use of each new area. I disagree with a lot of their points but ah well, differing opinions. 2016 was a hell of a game and has a sense of simplicity that will still lead me to play through it again after Eternal. Both have things they do better.

Kind of feels like the jump from Portal 1 to 2. 1 was very focused and executed what it went for flawlessly. 2 was big and bloated and tried a little too much while changing its tone a bit. And in that case, I vastly preferred the original to the giant sequel so I can see where the crew is coming from.

But yeah, Doom Eternal rules, 10/10 in my book. The further I got, the more I felt like an overpowered Dante from DMC 5 with endless combat options (which was also overwhelming at first).

Half Life Alyx is incredible. I just plain disagree with Jeff.

Shame they down on most video games.

I love these guys but i dont think they enjoy video games anymore.

They so salty about everything.

I couldnt believe they talking about the same games i played.

Can someone fill me in on why having GDC in August is scoffed at in that extreme fashion? Is it San Francisco in Summer or do they think that Virus situation won’t get better by then?

Just taken by that extreme mock of the idea by Hegf without no explanation

I think this is a great way to illustrate the sentiment what the crew (and my impressions) of how they've changed the gameplay.

The tone shift from Doom to Doom Eternal is definitely noticeable, but it didn't really bother me. I play both of these games almost entirely for the gameplay. But I can definitely see the shift irking people.

That said, I disagree with most of their comments about the combat. GB said that they feel like the weak points are mandatory. But past the 30% mark or so, I never really felt that way. Yes, I could launch a grenade into a cacodemon's mouth and get the free glory kill. Or I could just 1-shot it with a charged ballista shot or kill it in 2 seconds with the chaingun. Yes, I could snipe off the revenant's shoulder launchers. Or I could use a locked on triple rocket to stagger it. Or just freeze it and then super shot gun it down. Etc. The 1 demon that truly sucks is the marauder. And that's because it feels like he really does have 1 way to effectively deal with him. Counter and then spam SSG and ballista.

GB felt like a lot of the suit upgrades were pointless, whereas I feel like a lot of them are super useful. The dash reset on glory kill? Amazing. Chain grenades? Secrets unlocked on the map? Double frag grenades? Health from frozen enemies? All awesome. Though I'll admit there are some duds (the automap station appearing by default and a couple of the exploding barrel ones come to mind).

I agree that there are a lot of different currencies / upgrade systems in place, but I never really felt like they were pointless. The vast majority of upgrades I felt were helpful. Weapon mods are obviously the most noticeable. But even the health/ammo/armor upgrade system has a lot of good stuff in there.

I agree with the people comparing the game to DMC. They feel very similar at their core. You look at Dante in DMC5 and he can be super overwhelming with a ton of stuff to juggle. He has 8 different weapons with a ton of different moves. And then you throw the styles on top of that. And then you throw super devil trigger mode on top of that. Similarly, Doom Eternal gives you 7 core guns with multiple mods, a handful of side tools, and then a couple super weapons. The combat in both is about using all of your tools in the coolest way to kill everything. In my mind, the chainsaw fills a similar gap as the taunt (or reading V's book). It's a brief break in the action to look cool and refill your resources (ammo in Doom, devil trigger / style in DMC).

Anywho, thank you for listening to my TED talk. :)

I have an Index, Half Life Alyx has been great for me.

Given Jeff's has never been the biggest fan of the Half-life series. I'm not surprised at his more tepid response at Alyx. He did also put an up-front disclaimer that his VR set-up was not ideal which would impact his opinion on it.

I think the factor that's missing is within VR, you're fully 'immersed' and instinctively when I see something of a 'threat' and something I can swing, I will, without thinking try and swing to attack. This is what Jeff was talking about. It doesn't matter how much warning you prompt the player before hand, VR is marketed and developed to be fully immersive. So one cannot say the player is wrong for doing what feels natural in the environment. VR devs have to take human behaviour into account for this medium.

Man even Ben sounds like a crotchety old man this week when talking about Doom with Brad and Jeff. Eternal has the same amount of upgrade systems they praised 3 years ago. Runes, tokens and weapon leveling through mods and points.

I like how all the people who criticize DOOM Eternal over it's "excessive" use of upgrade trees (not just the GB crew, but others as well) completely forget that all of the same stuff (suit upgrades, runes, and weapon upgrades including their master challenges) were ALL in DOOM (2016). With a couple exceptions that relate to the more movement related stuff, they are mostly the same. It is just dressed up in a different styled UI and locked behind doors in the hub. But it was ALL in the last game. I mean WTF, did they even play the last game?

The tone stuff didn't bother me, but I get where they are coming from. I think they were just trying to be metal as fuck, but maybe go too far with it. I liked it though.

Also complaining about mission length is dumb. It is all mostly high quality. The only stuff I didn't like was the toxic water stuff which felt out of place.

I just don't understand the criticisms here. The combat complaints? WHAT? It feels perfect once you get good at it (not trying to be that "get gud" guy). The weak points are a genius addition and adds so much more thought and tactical thinking than just, "Oh, hey a demon, let me just point and spray it until it dies." They are literally complaining about added complexity that is implemented well. I struggled at first with the difficulty, but once I had adapted I could absolutely NEVER go back to the previous game. The combat feels amazing in this.

From my point of opinion, ID took DOOM 2016' combat as a base and took to expanding it in a lot of interesting and cool ways and built something that requires learning and mastery to get satisfaction from. And that is my shit.

Idk, It feels like they just wanted something else, and that's fine. But the game is good! Come on man don't trash it! Fucking bumming me over here. It is the best shooter I have played in years.

@therealturk: I'd have to disagree on the glory kills there. In Doom 2016 I felt the constant need to use them on higher difficulties to survive tough fights and scrap together any healing. Also, for what it's worth in Eternal you can equip the rune to make the glory kills basically instantaneous.

Wow, thank you for this. I was trying to figure out why I thought the combat felt off at times and amazing at others. I was having a blast when it was non-stop combat but would get annoyed when the game would automatically switch my weapon when I ran out of ammo, which felt like it happened all the time. Most of the game was just cycling weapons until I couldn't use what I wanted and was forced to use the chainsaw. I can't tell you how many times I accidentally fired the BFG when I was trying to conserve its ammo. I don't remember that happening as much in Doom 2016.