Be Excellent To Each Other

It was what I used for Hell Knights in the early game. I found it quite effective.

Yes it'll take down a Hell Knight charging straight at you if you can get it on target whilst back-pedalling. (As I found out when an enemy spawned directly ahead of me in a narrow corridor that on HURT ME PLENTY was an Imp, but on ULTRA VIOLENCE was a Hell Knight )

Is that the triple shot?

Yes, if you're getting the name wrong.

Turns out it's called CHARGED BURST and not CHARGED SHOT. Therefore we'll just forget about the whole thing and learn some lessons, or something.

done. 3rd attempt.

Only remembered I had the on my second attempt! First time I'd used it since getting it!

Is it worth spoilering these things in here now?

I don't think anyone is going to be surprised at weapons and enemies from previous Dooms making their way into the new Doom. But then this is the internet.

I am about halfway through my second playthrough on Ultra Violence with more of a clean and sweep mentality this time picking up more of the collectibles. Also it turns out dying more often is not the worst thing in the world when the game carries over your challenge progress. Killing two monsters with the Super Shotgun if you respawn near some posessed is almost adequate compensation for when you fall off a ledge back pedalling from a Hell Knight.

You can sort of 'cheat' the challenges pretty efficiently. I say 'cheat' because it's clear they've designed the game to work the way it does, so that the challenges stay on the right side of being annoying.

But yes, in the simplest terms let's say you have a challenge to chainsaw five demons to death in a single level. The game checkpoints and you run into the next battle, you chainsaw three demons and then run out of fuel. Just let yourself die before you finish the battle (as the game would checkpoint again), load the previous checkpoint and your three chainsaw kills towards the challenge still count, so you can then get your final two chainsaw kills to complete the challenge, at which point you are immediately awarded the weapon upgrade token and can spend it if you wish - should you die again and go back to the original checkpoint once more, both the challenge completion and the token award will stick.

As there's no penalty for dying, there's generally no reason to get to the end of any level without having completed the challenges.

On a wider note it seems that everything with a 'count' on it works this way (weapon mastery unlocks for example), so if there's anything I want to do quickly and efficiently I just leave the campaign, go to MISSION SELECT, choose a level that allows easy access to whatever it is I'm after, quickly rack up what I need, and then back to the campaign. (Foundry is a good level to do a surprising number of the weapon mastery ones, and the second you unlock it you can return to the main campaign and the mastery will be unlocked in there too. I had to kill three Hell Knights with a headshot for (IIRC) the precision scope on the Gauss Gun. There's a Hell Knight about 90 seconds into Foundry. Just clear the first couple of waves of trash, the game checkpoints, a Hell Knight and a couple of Imps spawn, kill the Hell Knight with a headshot, let the Imps kill you, return to checkpoint, and repeat a couple of times.)

I'll be making a start on Level 8 ULTRA VIOLENCE this evening, the only sad thing is that the end of my grand DOOM adventure is in sight. I'm rationing myself to a level per day.

As for the spoilers thing, the monsters get bigger and the guns get bigger as the game goes on, no spoilers there IMO.

Also: Gloves! I meant globes.
Or Goves... maybe.

I did exactly what Doc did. Emptied my BFG into the guy in the first section, then struggled a bit in the second.

Dumping an entire clip of micromissiles into the fucker was satisfying.

Nothing compares to the Super Shotgun for me (maxed out with mastery is essential). Where possible I will do entire battles with just that, complimented by chainsawing where necessary to replenish my ammo.

Yes the Micro Missiles might be better, especially at range, but I'd much rather run to the enemy, shoot them in the face, and then rip their spines out.

I'd done the first bit of him before I remembered having the BFG

Then in the hell section of the fight it was a mix of BFG / Micro missile / plasma / rockets / grenades STRAFE STRAFE STRAFE

Very satisfying dropping him.

Yeah, use it till I'm out then its switch to Assault Rifle / Plasma gun depending on ammo levels.

I was super shotgun for most of the time, switching to rocket launcher, gauss gun, or chaingun for miniboss enemies and to mix things up.

Cyber demon has close in area of effect attacks, staying point blank isn't great

That's a boss fight though innit, so you have to play by the rules of the fight and follow the mechanics.

Both boss fights reminded me a bit of boss mechanics in WoW, where there are a few actions you need to perform at the right time. Miss them and you get badly hurt and/or die, get it all right and all of a sudden the whole things become rather easy.

uhhh this is all boss fights ever

Yes I guess so, there was just something about the boss fights in DOOM that felt particularly WoW-esque, in a way I didn't get at all with BL2 for example.

Your point is entirely correct though.

BOTH?!! OMFG I ONLY KNOW OF THE ONE I DID!!!!!!!

RUINED EVERYTHING

Deal of the week on PSN £29.99

https://store.playstation.com/#!/en-gb/ ... we-5-89521

Or £49.99 for the digital deluxe version

Some of the rune challenges are a definite step up on ULTRA VIOLENCE, as the harsher damage model carries over into the challenges.

The ARMORED OFFENSIVE challenge, where you start with 1 health and are expected to survive any hits by scavenging scraps of armour, whilst eight enemies try to hunt you down, and you're armed only with a shotgun with a base-level CHARGED BURST mod on it, is quite a tricky one.

In addition to that, the final main-game battle of Level 8 was pretty brutal, I was trying to do it without resorting to the BFG (which almost feels a bit cheaty) but in the end I had to loose off a couple of shots to thin the herd.

I may have just figured out why this was so hard... I didn't think you got weapon mods in challenges.

Knowing when to use the mod was pretty key. As it's un-upgraded it takes a fair while to get the three charges activated, and then the recharge time is long too. (I mean, long in DOOM terms, which is like 2.4 seconds or something.)

Of the eight enemies only two are really dangerous (the Pinky and the Hell Knight), and the time limit isn't that harsh, so the technique that worked for me in the end was hunting down the six slightly less dangerous baddies first, and then taking on the Pinky and the Hell Knight.

Wait wait that means I can do the last two rune challenges on Can I Play Daddy mode.


You get whatever mods the game gives you, not "your" mods; often you get nothing. For example, the rocket launcher one that's boiling my piss (for the Rich Get Richer rune) gives you the remote detonation mod.

Blimey, so the RICH GET RICHER and SAVING THROW rune challenges are as harsh as you'd imagine on ULTRA VIOLENCE.

Of the two I'd say RGR got perilously close to being irritating, even though I knew it was my mistakes that were causing me to fail, rather than random game mechanics or shitty controls or general unfairness or anything like that, but even so - just about at the limit of what I'd tolerate these days in terms of FAIL TRY AGAIN FAIL TRY AGAIN FAIL TRY AGAIN FAIL TRY AGAIN.

Saving Throw however was a massively exciting and surprisingly tactical affair, daring to plant oneself to the ground with a the Gauss Gun in Siege Mode, as a Hell Knight charges you down with what will be a lethal amount of damage if he pretty much gets anywhere near you, is rather exciting. And then there are two of those 'ghost' Pinky things to take care of as well. Oh yes and you need to be picking up ammo from around the map too. I enjoyed this one though, whereas RGR I was happy to just get done.

The final mega-arena battle at the end of Level 9 is all sorts of crazy on ULTRA VIOLENCE, but in a good way.

Managed both phases of the CyberDemon boss without resorting to a single BFG shot, which I was quite pleased about. If anything it's a better fight on ULTRA VIOLENCE because a good number of his attacks are one-shot lethals, so you really need to focus very tightly on the mechanics, whereas on HURT ME PLENTY I did kind of feel I kludged through the fight a bit.

I'll save Level 10 for tomorrow.

Not really used the Gauss gun much until last night. Realised you can drop big baddies like the Mancubus with only a couple of precision shots.

Pew! Pew!

I love the Gauss Gun. Maxed out siege mode is the boss.

I have my 'Holy Trinity' of Super Shotgun, Assault Rifle & Plasma but I'm really warming to the Gauss Gun now.

'Holy shit trinity'

The Oh, Shit Kit.

Edit -- also, for my money, the gauss gun was a much better place to use cell ammo than the plasma gun. (Ditto for the chain gun over the assault rifle.)

Sod the chain gun, you'll pry my micro missiles out of my cold dead hands.

The micro missiles are great, but not for all situations.

I'm nearly done on my second playthrough now (just Levels 12 and 13 left, sob), and having done the whole thing twice, including now on ULTRA VIOLENCE, I've realised that there's more subtlety to the combat that I originally gave it credit for.

Whilst the game is basically one arena fight after another, connected by little skirmishes and having a look around for goodies, there are huge differences in the composition of both the arenas themselves, and the baddies found therein.

Also on ULTRA VIOLENCE, splash damage really is a big thing, so you don't want to be getting too up close and personal with anything that's particularly explodey.

As I've got 100% of the weapon upgrade tokens on this run I've been able to get the 'not so good' weapons maxed out earlier than on my first run, and a couple of surprises as to what turns out to be really good, even stuff that I'd basically ignored such as the plasma rifle's stun bomb, which has a surprising amount of utility. Oh yes and remote detonation on the rocket launcher, that's great when maxed out with the mastery.

So I take each battle very much on its own merits, and choose my weapons accordingly, there are some where the micro missiles are insane (a decent sized arena with a quad damage available for example, although I have a soft spot for the chaingun in those situations too), but others where they're just not an efficient way of getting the job done, and I won't use them at all for the whole battle. There is definitely a divide between battles where you want to lean more towards ranged weapons, or more towards close quarter weapons. The gauss gun's siege mode can be fucking insane too.

In other news, the second boss on ULTRA VIOLENCE, that's a bit of a spicy meatball. I found phase one quite a bit harder than phase two - definitely a tough fight.

And that's game complete on ULTRA VIOLENCE.

Would have had it finished last night but I was determined to get the last combat challenge nailed which is 'Kill two Barons of Hell with a single shot' (which also got me the 'What Else Ya Got?' achievement as I'd done every other combat challenge on this playthrough), and there's basically only one area in the last level where you can get that done, and last night I just didn't quite manage to get my eye in on it. (I knew what I had to do, but I couldn't manage to pull it off somehow, including getting ANNOYINGLY CLOSE several times.) I could have got the fight done fairly easily without completing the challenge, but of course the game checkpoints at the end of every major battle, so I'd have had to fight through the entire level again to get back to that point.

This is a remarkably good game, for example from one extreme to the other, it had me shitting myself on HURT ME PLENTY the first time I clamped eyes on a single Hell Knight, and yet by the end of the game second time around on ULTRA VIOLENCE I'm actually rounding up Barons of Hell like naughty demonic sheep just to try and get a challenge completed. (And from start to finish it's ruthlessly harsh, and yet scrupulously fair, which is sort of a contradiction in terms I know but still makes sense.)

Also, the final boss fight is tough on ULTRA VIOLENCE as well, no two ways about that.

Only achievements left now (which aren't multiplayer) are IDDQD which I might do but is pretty much a routine stacking up the numbers affair, of more interest might be 'A Toe Into Madness' which is 'Complete The UAC on Ultra-Nightmare' - I think I'll have a crack at that.

This game is properly up there IMO, absolutely stellar stuff, wasn't quite expecting such a straightforward guts 'n glory FPS game to really get me going at my ripe old age - but this has been a fantastic blast every step of the way.

DOOM - I doff my cap to you.

Very good. Now do it on a pad.

Oh you are funny.

Bet you had your lag switch on max.

Curio does these days.

Title of your sex tape.

DOOM update rolled out on PC today that supports the Vulkan API, apparently there are pretty substantial performance gains to be had across the board, which would be great if I hadn't just finished my two full playthroughs. Nothing fancy involved, just select the alternate API from the graphics options menu.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/0 ... rt-update/

Also, someone has done an ULTRA-NIGHTMARE playthrough without using any upgrades at all. So, erm, yikes at that.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016- ... y-upgrades

Jeez, the weapon switching to avoid reload time is amazing. (see, for example, the cyberdemon fight at 135:00.)

I'm inspired to play through the whole game again, on NIGHTMARE difficulty.

There's nothing else that's really interesting me at the moment, or at least, nothing that I fancy more than another DOOM playthrough.

I have finished this. What a bloody great game it was. Some really frantic mass carnage melees, the one when you get off the train on the penultimate level was batshit.

Should have it rattled off myself this week. Been nice playing through it in chunks rather than hammering through the whole lot.

I'll be giving it another bash on a harder setting I'm sure.

I would strongly recommend ULTRA VIOLENCE as it's genuinely a better game at that setting IMO.

I'll reserve judgement on NIGHTMARE until I've given it enough playtime to pass comment.

Watching the videos of the ULTRA NIGHTMARE playthroughs though, I think it'll be doable, even by an old fart like me. (ULTRA NIGHTMARE and NIGHTMARE are the same except ULTRA NIGHTMARE has permadeath.)

Romped through Hell some more and got to the Crucible.

Took a few goes getting boss fight(s) done, very good though.



Back on Mars (again) and taking a lovely train ride now.

Nice piece about the game mechanics design of glory kills: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/0 ... -mechanic/

Some amusing butthurt in the comments, too. Apparently the glory kills aren't Doom... if you're a tit.

That's a nice piece, interesting read.

From a very different perspective but also a good read IMO is this technical interview with iD at Eurogamer.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digit ... -interview

It applies to all platforms, so it's not PC-centric or anything like that.

DOOM has been a real eye-opener for me, I'd been forlornly accepting that the time had come to either drop down to 1080p and/or make graphical compromises to keep 60FPS in games on my PC (or spend £1500-£2000 on a new PC), and then along comes DOOM, 1440p@ULTRA@60FPS right out of the gate, and I'm like, 'What are iD doing that everyone else isn't?'

Equally of course, the game is a technical tour de force on consoles as well.

Anyway, the piece linked above give some insight.

Still have THE BIG END BADDIE to kill. Gave up due to time/knackeredness but had sussed out the patterns and what best to do after several attempts. Had her down to under 1/4 health left a few times.

Seems the Plasma rifle turns into a water pistol in this fight for some reason ...still the super shotty, micro missiles, rockets and BFG still do the hurty.