I chainsaw what you did there

Doom is going medieval.

Let me tell you what it’s like.

In short, it hits heavy.

The player punches a tall demon while in a giant mech.

Just a normal Wednesday for Doombloke.

As forwhyhe’s doing any of this, I’m not 100% sure.

If theres flubber to this flyabout, its probably in the hovering moments.

A dragon flies above ancient city buildings as a war rages.

No, you go here!

The big stompy “Altan” mech is its own castle-crushing pleasure.

For each dodged attack you get the immediate chance to follow up with a severe counterattack.

The player fires machine gun bullets at a demon from his turret in the dragon seat.

There’s also a ground-closing charge that launches you towards your foe for a slammin' biff.

Its a straightforward salsa of suckerpunches, but it does the job.

I wasted a little demo time just wrecking stuff for no reason.

The player unloads a minigun into an enemy demon.

I have no regrets.

It’s down in the dirt where you’ll feel the biggest difference.

To be reductive, it wants to put a littleBloodbornein your Doom.

The mech of an ally stands in front of the player’s view, with bulky armour and an ornate helmet.

They’ve given you a shield to parry melee attacks from all types of enemies.

The common refrain from the developers at id Software is that you should “stand and fight”.

But youll have to thin the crowd around you first to prevent irksome crossfire from smaller foes.

The player raises his mech’s fist, ready to launch a strike at an enemy demon.

All this might take some getting used to ifDoom Eternalhas conditioned you to never stop moving.

Still it functions as part of nu-Dooms combat economy.

To shoot demon dorks you need ammo, to get ammo you should probably melee the scum.

A giant demon swings his sword at the player, glowing an angry green.

To melee you better wait for your fists to recharge (or scrounge nearby gauntlet pickups).

Its a familiar jam of slam and blam, but it has a subtly distinct tempo.

The bottled execution animations are gone, for one thing.

The player protects themselves with the shield from a swipe by a tall demon.

You now just boot or punch a demon to death in real-time, much like any other fast-paced shooter.

This allows for uninterrupted killing and a new sense of flow.

But it also changes the feeling of battle in a way that some people might not favour.

A spider like enemy gets ready to attack as the ground around it lies black with ash.

That does not exist in the same way here.

But it likely also saves on the expense of animating multiple executions for every single demon.

There are a lot of other alterations.

The player raises their shield to protect against glowing ball attacks from one enemy.

The smaller demons feel frailer than ever, mere “fodder” to slurp upon for health and ammo.

So far it still feels beefy, intense, high-pressure, and unwavering.

My body simply cannot handle mainlining this much adrenaline straight to the fingers and thumbs.

The player fires their chainshot gun, which knocks the enemy demon down in a swigt, hard hit.

There is one thing that slows things back down in a promising way, though.

There were even a couple of simple puzzle rooms where I could catch my breath.

Here you use the shield to smash metal chains to unlock doors and the like.

A tall demon approaches the player, who fires an impaler round.

The designers at id still want to pre-program the Doomba’s blood hoovering.

it’s possible for you to tell as much by how heavily they’re leaning into the story.

A shackling machine gives our guy the glowing yellow eyes of Frankensteins monster and keeps him following orders.

But that same devotion to story is also sometimes worryingly earnest.

Defensive and offensive, all at the same time.