DOOM Eternally Waits For Us All

The World Has Gone To Hell
We are two days away from the release of DOOM Eternal and at least two sites have had a chance to play through it to let you know what to expect and if it is worth buying at release. Over at Ars Technica they tested with a Core i7-8700K CPU, RTX 2080Ti and 32GB of DDR4 memory which could provide decent frame rates at 4K on Ultra; dropping to 1440p gave a solid 60fps on normal monitors and significantly smoother performance on a 144Hz monitor with variable refresh rate. As for the game itself they had a blast apart from a certain problem with Marauders that they felt broke the pace of gameplay.
As for Rock, Paper, SHOTGUN; they had a blast with the Plasma rifle and were overjoyed to discover the Super Shotgun has a grappling hook.
For the most part, it succeeds. Doom Eternal returns us to the familiar feel of its run-and-gun predecessor, with just enough variety to keep the new game from feeling like a mere expansion pack. But a few changes throw off the game's flow so badly that they threaten to derail the whole experience.
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“….We are two days away from the release of DOOM Eternal and at least two sites have had a chance to play through it to let you know what to expect and if it is worth buying at release…..”
If these sites had a chance to play the game before release, there’s no chance they’ll tell people not to buy it. More likely, they’re part of a native advertising campaign. Zenimax needs more money, since their main cash cow franchises – Elder Scrolls and Fallout – haven’t had a mainline release since 2015 (2011 for ES). These franchises probably won’t have a major release next year, and FO76 is/was a major flop, which leaves possibly a brand new Bethesda Game Studios IP (Starfield) as their only hope for big money next year. While nuDoom will never be a source of revenue like those two franchises, they’re going to want to squeeze as much out of it as they can now in what will certainly be a major down year. ESO might be making them money, but probably not big money. And I would imagine their expenses have been increasing rapidly as they try to overhaul/upgrade their tech, and expand their workforce to complete a new ES game since it’ll be more than a decade as is for a mainline title, which is insane to think about.
Citation needed please.
It’s an opinion/feeling. A citation isn’t needed (not that you’re entitled to one, in any event). It goes like this: Game “journalist” gets game ahead of release. Game “journalist” has two choices:
1. Recommend game.
2. Don’t recommend game, and receive no further advance play from this publisher, and possibly other publishers who become aware of their review, and don’t want the same treatment.
Does this mean recommendation is guaranteed to be illegitimate? Obviously not. But can a reader trust them knowing the dynamic at play here, and the history of video games having this crop up? I’m trying to recall the name of a game reviewer and (I believe) a pro game player who’s famous for having this happen to him; an Asian-american I believe, but the name escapes me. It was on an episode of the “Triangulation” podcast on the Twit.tv network a few years back. Just an example I found interesting. There are many others that are more contemporary, but I will avoid that rabbit hole.
As for Zenimax, obviously opinion/gut feeling. They’re a private company. Nobody outside the company would have verifiable detailed insight.
That’s fair … just personally annoyed by “SHILLS!” comments which yours gave me a gut feeling it was about. 😉 RPS for sure and Ars most likely don’t care if a company decides not to send them any more advanced play because that, in and of itself makes for good content and a great way to tarnish a publishers reputations.
RPS did not like falldown 76 at all, and were sometimes not even diplomatic about it. They might miss out on a pre-releases from Zenimax in the future but they don’t seem to care and are doing just fine with that.
As for twitch/youtub ‘reviewers’ and anyone who thought gamersgate was about video games reviewers on the other hand, I fully and completely agree with your original point!
Zenimax, well they are special aren’t they? I love companies who blame the lack of sales on the consumers who refuse to buy their crap as opposed to realizing they are releasing garbage and need to change that in order to do better.
Well, I for one is as excited as fuck. Plus something to do will be nice. It’s not gonna look as good on my system, but Fuck yea, Lets’s do this