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Doom 2016 vs Doom Eternal vs Doom: The Dark Ages

Which of the modern Doom trilogy is your favorite?

  • Doom 2016

    Votes: 257 63.5%
  • Doom Eternal

    Votes: 108 26.7%
  • Doom: The Dark Ages

    Votes: 40 9.9%

  • Total voters
    405
It's a great game isn't it, can't emphasize enough how good TDA is.
yeah! fucking great, I regret not buying it sooner, I don't remember having so much fun with a 1st person shooter in a long time!
the combat is awesome! I love the fact that there's a lot of exploration to do!
this would be my game of the year if it came out this year ehhe
 
Poll results pretty much align with the order I enjoyed them. I enjoyed all 3, but 2016 > Eternal > Dark Ages. It feels like a gradual decline. I ended 2016 thinking "That was a GOTY contender". I left Dark Ages thinking "That was enjoyable, but glad I played it on Game Pass"
 
I think I would rate both 2016 and Eternal about the same, these were almost perfect shooters.

2016 was such a breath of fresh air when it launched, fast paced, extremely fun, a bit of challenge.

Eternal, this has the fans divided, I understand some of the complaints. It was a natural evolution of 2016's gameplay and they tried making the player use all the game has to offer.
The challenge was amazing as well, playing on normal, every fight was exhilarating, the DLCs kicked my ass a bit.
The real negatives for me are that it has too much platforming for a shooter and a DOOM game and also a bit too much story, 2016's minimalistic one was perfection.

TDA, I don't even want to replay this game, a dumbed down hybrid of action and shooter with matching colors for blocking, just mashing block and melee, rinse and repeat.
Sure it's sort of fun in a challengeless kind of way, it looks good, spectacular scenes and moments and ideas, but ultimately for me a letdown, not necessarily a bad game.
 
So I finally played Dark Ages
As expected, it's a disaster. Not a bad game, but they fucked up big time

A whole set of problems:
1 - Not enough speed and edge moments, failed core gameplay mechanics. Eternal >>>>>>> Dark Ages. They said they wanted to change things for the sake of variety, but I am sure that is PR bullshit. Even this poll shows that a group of loud haters of the super-successful Eternal clearly influenced them
2 - Terrible, unnecessary characters, a terrible, unnecessary world, and a terrible, unnecessary story. All of this is pure trash that should not exist. It looks like Painkiller, not Doom
3 - The music is average. Not bad, but for Doom this is extremely important. They screwed up badly by losing Mick Gordon
4 - Terrible optimization, especially considering that the game does not look much better than Eternal, I would even say worse in some places

They made four fatal mistakes, even though a single one could have buried this game
I am not a big FPS fan, but Eternal is unquestionably a breakthrough and the best modern FPS. I despise everyone who hated Eternal, you are low skilled losers, and because of you they made the new Doom so awful

Eternal >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 2016 >>>>> Dark Ages
 
So I finally played Dark Ages
As expected, it's a disaster. Not a bad game, but they fucked up big time

A whole set of problems:
1 - Not enough speed and edge moments, failed core gameplay mechanics. Eternal >>>>>>> Dark Ages. They said they wanted to change things for the sake of variety, but I am sure that is PR bullshit. Even this poll shows that a group of loud haters of the super-successful Eternal clearly influenced them
2 - Terrible, unnecessary characters, a terrible, unnecessary world, and a terrible, unnecessary story. All of this is pure trash that should not exist. It looks like Painkiller, not Doom
3 - The music is average. Not bad, but for Doom this is extremely important. They screwed up badly by losing Mick Gordon
4 - Terrible optimization, especially considering that the game does not look much better than Eternal, I would even say worse in some places

They made four fatal mistakes, even though a single one could have buried this game
I am not a big FPS fan, but Eternal is unquestionably a breakthrough and the best modern FPS. I despise everyone who hated Eternal, you are low skilled losers, and because of you they made the new Doom so awful

Eternal >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 2016 >>>>> Dark Ages
Agree to all you said, except the gap you put between Eternal and 2016, imo it's too big.
As much as I like Eternal I can understand some of the complaints. For me was it was the platforming, not saying it should have been removed, but it's way too much and made the pacing suffer.
 
I really liked the resource management in Eternal, kept the pace up at all times. I like 2016 cause it's just the best all-rounder/overall.
Haven't played Dark Ages. Last time I checked it was still €80. I'm not paying that for a videogame.
 
I finally finished The Dark Ages, and it's definitely the best doom game in the trilogy. Doom 2016 was OK; nothing special compared to the classic Doom or Quake games, but I'd still rate it 8+/10.

Eternal was 7/10 to me because I didn't like the jumping mechanic and was constantly running out of ammo for my favourite weapons.

The combat in The Dark Ages is much more refined and dynamic. I didn't have to worry about conserving ammo (except for the BFG), the shield was extremely useful and fun to use, and the scale of the fights was truly epic. Levels were much bigger and interesting too. My only complain was the texture quality. IDK why developers keep using x360 like textures in 2025.
 
I despise everyone who hated Eternal, you are low skilled losers, and because of you they made the new Doom so awful

Eternal >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 2016 >>>>> Dark Ages
The jumping mechanics in Doom Eternal reminded me of a circus — a truly silly idea for a Doom game. I'm not surprised you liked it, though — this mechanic is appealing to apes.
 
1 - Not enough speed and edge moments, failed core gameplay mechanics. Eternal >>>>>>> Dark Ages. They said they wanted to change things for the sake of variety, but I am sure that is PR bullshit. Even this poll shows that a group of loud haters of the super-successful Eternal clearly influenced them

3 - The music is average. Not bad, but for Doom this is extremely important. They screwed up badly by losing Mick Gordon

I personally think these 2 are the most egregious mistakes, the Music is such an immediate turn off for me, I played it on release with the glitched triggers and ended the game without a single track stuck on my mind, it felt like those AI songs you hear once and forget about it.

And the gameplay felt clunky with the forward run and no dash, I spent my entire playthrough trying to dash sideways. I understand trying to reel in the speed after Eternal, since that gets ultra fast and it's hard to follow all the action, but I feel like they went too far and ended up with a clunkier game.
 
Finally went through and beat eternal, then went back and replayed 2016....

Thinking of making a thread about it because I owe my eternal bro's an apology
 
The gave up balancing the monstrosity and just put in sliders. "The customer will do it". Despite 2016 poking fun at FPS games with too much story, Hugo couldn't resist the smell of his own farts and gave us 45 minutes of cut scenes that would make Halo 5 cringe.
 
The jumping mechanics in Doom Eternal reminded me of a circus — a truly silly idea for a Doom game. I'm not surprised you liked it, though — this mechanic is appealing to apes.
Eternal is about movement, first and foremost about not standing still. You do not have to jump around like a monkey in the game. Every idiot who complained to id Software about "jumping" is responsible for the awful Dark Ages.
Finally went through and beat eternal, then went back and replayed 2016....

Thinking of making a thread about it because I owe my eternal bro's an apology
Exactly. I was also a fan of Doom 2016, but after Eternal it is hard to play it, the game feels too slow and dull compared to Eternal
 
The gave up balancing the monstrosity and just put in sliders. "The customer will do it". Despite 2016 poking fun at FPS games with too much story, Hugo couldn't resist the smell of his own farts and gave us 45 minutes of cut scenes that would make Halo 5 cringe.
Sorry but no. The difficulties are very well balanced especially Ultra-Violence. UV may be even a little bit on the easy side but for me it is perfect since i'm not the best Doom player.
I haven't noticed any drawbacks on the difficulty compared to 2016 and Eternal.
 
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Sorry but no. The difficulties are very well balanced especially Ultra-Violence. UV may be even a little bit on the easy side but for me it is perfect since i'm not the best Doom player.
I haven't noticed any drawbacks on the difficulty compared to 2016 and Eternal.
I found it way easier to play on autopilot than Eternal. You can just kinda lay back and cheese Dark Ages in many spots. That rarely if ever flew in Eternal. Early in Dark Ages I felt less powerful than Eternal and then way more powerful to the point it trivialized a lot of the sweat that I enjoyed. The game was never hard, but I didn't feel like an F-16 on meth early on, and late game it's more of the powerful feeling an opulent and fat baron would feel. I'm slow but I have great toys. The parry windows are beyond generous. You can lazily slap away the majority of what the game throws at you.
 
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Eternal is about movement, first and foremost about not standing still. You do not have to jump around like a monkey in the game. Every idiot who complained to id Software about "jumping" is responsible for the awful Dark Ages.

Exactly. I was also a fan of Doom 2016, but after Eternal it is hard to play it, the game feels too slow and dull compared to Eternal
The world doesn't revolve around you. Just because you didn't like Doom TDA doesn't mean that everyone has to hate it, or that it gives you the right to call people idiots because they like the game. Personally, I didn't like Doom Eternal, but I see no point in calling people idiots because of their gaming preferences.
 
I found it way easier to play on autopilot than Eternal. You can just kinda lay back and cheese Dark Ages in many spots. That rarely if ever flew in Eternal. Early in Dark Ages I felt less powerful than Eternal and then way more powerful to the point it trivialized a lot of the sweat that I enjoyed. The game was never hard, but I didn't feel like an F--16 on meth early on, and late game it's more of the powerful feeling an opulent and fat baron would feel. I'm slow but I have great toys. The parry windows are beyond generous. You can lazily slap away the majority of what the game throws at you.
I mean yeah kinda but Doom 2016 was also on the more "easier" side on UV but no one said its balanced badly just because you can adjust the difficulty by yourself.
Also in Doom 2016 the double shotgun was also OP.
 
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I mean yeah kinda but Doom 2016 was also on the more "easier" side on UV but no one said its balanced badly just because you can adjust the difficulty by yourself.
Also in Doom 2016 the double shotgun was also OP.
2016 felt tight and concise though. My problem with Dark Ages is it's all over the place with ideas that don't fit together. The parry is a perfect example. Trying to shoehorn a concept they thought up completely detached from the systems the game already had in place. It's like the brass thought up Doom Prequel: medieval shit, man! And threw it into the laps of developers to shoehorn together. If you tighten the parry window to an industry-standard amount, the game becomes cheap because the only way the developers could figure out how to challenge the player was zerg rush. What if parry's just don't work in the modern Doom systems? 2016 and Eternal felt like each room was really thought out. Enemy placement, type, volume etc. Hand crafted. They built those with a scalpel and Dark Ages with shovel.

Measured against other games it's fine. Good even. But all the great artists are measured against their own work. I can get good first-person shooters. But I couldn't get the inspired, high budget shit they gave us with the first two entries. It's like the industry forgot to screw us over there and two great ones slipped through. They didn't make Dark Ages bad like full on slop, but they cut off the proverbial wings.
 
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2016 felt tight and concise though. My problem with Dark Ages is it's all over the place with ideas that don't fit together. The parry is a perfect example. Trying to shoehorn a concept they thought up completely detached from the systems the game already had in place. It's like the brass thought up Doom Prequel: medieval shit, man! And threw it into the laps of developers to shoehorn together. If you tighten the parry window to an industry-standard amount, the game becomes cheap because the only way the developers could figure out how to challenge the player was zerg rush. What if parry's just don't work in the modern Doom systems? 2016 and Eternal felt like each room was really thought out. Enemy placement, type, volume etc. Hand crafted. They built those with a scalpel and Dark Ages with shovel.

Measured against other games it's fine. Good even. But all the great artists are measured against their own work. I can get good first-person shooters. But I couldn't get the inspired, high budget shit they gave us with the first two entries. It's like the industry forgot to screw us over there and two great ones slipped through. They didn't make Dark Ages bad like full on slop, but they cut off the proverbial wings.
I like The Dark Ages, that's all i can say :messenger_smiling:
 
2016>>>>>>>>>>Eternal>>>The Dark Ages
Pointing Up Morgan Freeman GIF by MOODMAN
 
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