What Makes Doom ET so Replayable
In today’s games industry replayability and encouragement to keep grinding is one of the most difficult things to do. The doom series is notorious for its hardcore rock music and run and gun craziness in a world full of demonic monsters. Doom eternal released as of late and it got me thinking about replayability in games that would be considered super simplistic in comparison to some of the RPG games that come out with hundreds of hours of content to explore.
After getting a good grip on the game I started to really grasp what makes the game a great replayable game and fun to play even after seemingly doing the same thing for 20 hours. One of the biggest additions to the series with this one is there is a lot more lore, exploration and just new things to find which is typical in a game but in comparison to past doom games this one takes it up a notch. The most notable effect here is that the new areas effect your gameplay and learning a new area in order to kite enemies and sustain your health, armor and ammo in the most efficient way possible in order to succeed.
Many people see the doom series as just a mindless blasting type of game especially in comparison to a lot of intricate unique games today but there will always be an audience and a niche for this type of game. Where doom excels in replayability is a just a few things from my experience, but they are done very well. New combos in correlation with body parts falling off and exploding as well as the new melee abilities called glory kills really spice up the combat system. The variability in the maps in terms of verticality and climbing capabilities are another addition that make the maps more interesting to try new things and challenge yourself by taking new routes and taking the example of jumping off a cliff trying to quick scope an enemy, for no reason other than because it’s fun and cool really. Varying difficulties are a staple for making repayable games more fun but the more the difficulty changes the better, whether that be harder to get ability points, ammo, movement types there are tons of limitations a difficulty setting could place and doom eternal hits it right on the money. In addition one of the last changes that stood out to me was the vast array of weapons, modifications and suit upgrades you could apply, two of the most satisfying things in the game were getting a flame thrower attachment to the suit as well as a chainsaw for some gory melee kills.
To close out, doom eternal came out swinging with some new changes to a series that has been around forever and with replayability being so important in a game that is a repetitive shooter it seemed to me that they upgraded and changed up a lot that just made the game simply better. In addition to doom eternal briefly I began thinking of what makes a replayable game so great and to a lot of us those come down to level design, enemy variability, person progression (abilities, upgrades, new weaponry) and new combat additions are what makes a great game replayabable.
