Hacker News Reader

Comment by agentwiggles | Hacker News Reader

I liked Eternal, I know that a lot of people felt the new mechanics were too much of a departure from 2016, and I'm sympathetic to that, but I had a hell of fun time beating the game on Nightmare.

It turns it into something like Hotline Miami, where there's a room full of guys who can kill you almost immediately, so you wind up playing the encounter over and over until you have the perfect path of devastation through the enemies.

The main thing I disliked about Eternal was the added story elements, the very minimal story in 2016 was so perfect (it's basically: you wake up, you're badass, you hate demons, go rip and tear). Eternal tried to go for some sort of Doomslayer lore - spelling it out makes it lame.

Overall, both games are great, and I very much enjoyed them.

View on HN

> It turns it into something like Hotline Miami, where there's a room full of guys who can kill you almost immediately, so you wind up playing the encounter over and over until you have the perfect path of devastation through the enemies.

I call it Mario-ization, and I hate it.

I also hated Eternal. It wasn't Doom. It was a "first-person jumper."

Based on the previous game, I pre-ordered the deluxe whatever version, and then couldn't stand the game, even on the easiest setting. This was the game that finally ended pre-ordering for me.

As always, TACMA and YMMV, etc., et. al. I wish I could enjoy these kinds of games, since a lot of effort is devoted to them these days.

After finishing Gordon's essay, the jagged and at times uneven feel of DOOM Eternal seems to make a lot more sense now. This circular creative process (give me the music so we can design the level ... no, you give me the level design so I can write the music) seems to explain what felt so wrong about DOOM Eternal, this "fantasy platform puzzle" idea that Id was driving toward.

I feel the same way about pre-ordering AAA games, but FWIW I think pre-ordering is really context dependent. Pre-ordering the next DOOM? Hell no. Pre-ordering KSP2 or something like that? Yeah probably.

Really? KSP2 is not being made by Squad. Squad got bought by Take-Two and Take-Two is having a different studio build the game... or was until they cancelled the contract and poached most that studio's talent. This is a project that seems like it has a high likelihood of failing to capture what made the original one great. I'd wait to see some demos and lets-plays before putting your money down

Whoa … perhaps I’ve been living in a cave, but I was not aware of all of this. When did this happen?

Take-Two bought Squad in 2017. Here's a couple of article that cover some of the key events.

https://screenrant.com/kerbal-space-program-2-delay-2022-sta...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-03/kerbal-sp...

https://www.eurogamer.net/after-more-than-a-decade-developme...

It looks like Squad did get re-involved in KSP2 once they closed out development of KSP with v1.12

I'm not saying people shouldn't check out KSP2 and I have high hopes it will be a worthy sequel. It just isn't the sequel I would call out as a specific example of a safe one to pre-order.

>Based on the previous game, I pre-ordered the deluxe whatever version, and then couldn't stand the game, even on the easiest setting. This was the game that finally ended pre-ordering for me.

Same here. 2016 was perfection in so many ways that Eternal is just...bizarre by comparison. Nearly every aspect of Eternal was just plain mediocre or bad to me.

Totally agree. I didn't like Eternal at first, but then suddenly the combat loop just clicked and I couldn't get enough.

They added too many mechanical things to fiddle with and it drowned out the positional combat aspect. It felt like playing starcraft in the mid to late game

It definitely gets more mechanically heavy in the late game, in a way that kinda diminishes the pure combatness of the whole thing. At first it feels sorta like "you've given me a small set of murder tools, and I need to use them to build a glorious rampage", and towards the end you have so many options that it feels less artful. I still had fun but I definitely understand the thrust of the criticism - especially given how perfectly DOOM 2016 lets you compose a symphony of destruction with just the guns you have.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com