The result is a dozen levels that span an incredibly diverse range of locations that eclipse everything you can see in DOOM (2016) in just the first couple hours. Double jump, dash, and wall climbing create the opportunity for platforming puzzles and sprawling worlds that the developers have maximized to their full potential.

If you loved DOOM 2016 I think you’re are going to love DOOM Eternal. It takes the best parts of 2016 and somehow finds a way to improve on them. Throw in some amazing easter eggs, new enemy types, movement mechanics and level design and you have a formula for amazing. Sure it’ll take a level or so to figure out this new combat rhythm but once you find it, you’ll never want to go back.

Doom Eternal is a ceaseless, panicked nightmare that pushes you to point and click with more skill and style than ever before.

DOOM Eternal is an fast-paced, gory and excellent game. The weapons feel great, the new systems and gadgets make the combat flow even better than the previous game. The levels are bigger and easier to navigate, and when the combat flow hits you nothing is better. Shooting, freezing and blowing up hoards of demons have never been better.

Doom Eternal kicks ass. It's smarter than it looks, faster than it looks, and somehow even more fun than it looks. A triumph—except for the platforming.

Doom Eternal’s combat encounters are, quite possibly, the best in the genre. Snappy movement, a varied arsenal and executions, alongside a soundtrack that mixes atmospheric synths with pounding drums and devastating downtuned guitars all feed into the game’s trademark frenetic action. There’s unrivaled euphoria in crushing a demon’s head underfoot before moving on to kill hundreds more of his friends in equally brutal ways. Really, the only thing holding Doom Eternal back from reaching its full potential is its platforming which – although improved – take up too much time that could have been spent doing what Doom Eternal does best: letting you shoot the literal Hell out of scores of demons.

It can be tedious and exhausting. Its faux angst and exuberance and hellstory can be grating. It’s probably a level or two too long. But in the end, there’s something so lovable about Doom Eternal, so endearingly goofy about the gory glory kills, so affectionate in the way a monster looks at me cross-eyed as I shove a blade up through its chin and out of the top of its skull. The conventional wisdom is that the monsters in this rebooted Doom gameplay are resources, and what I call shortage is just the necessary harvesting of a monster crop. But more to the point, they’re my playmates in this hopped-up jungle gym with its trampolines and swing bars and tunnels. We’re all in this together to make a colorful over-the-top playground with blaring metal music and blazing quick movement and splatter gunplay and chainsawyering. It’s enough to win over even the coldest critical heart.