Doom

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"Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil... prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon..."

– Terry Pratchett

The father of the first-person shooter, the original ass-kicking demon-slaying 3D slaughter-fest, Doom is a franchise that demands respect even in the hallowed halls of /tg/. It was actually inspired by a Dungeons & Dragons campaign played by the founders of id Software; John Romero had given a demon lord the key to overrunning the material plane in exchange for a magic katana because he's an edgy little bitch like that, and John Carmack (the DM and one of the many forms of Tzeentch) decided it made a good premise for their new 3D game. The katana in question would later be used in Romero's game Daikatana, which was a total failure for reasons that aren't important enough to go over right now.

The plot? In an FPS? Here's your plot: you are a Space Marine (no, not the 40K guy, a jumped-up soldier who is sent to fight on other planets, so closer to the Imperial Guard...though considering recent events he may be the equivalent of a standard Astartes, just much shorter.) stationed on Phobos. Somehow, demons broke through into our reality and slaughter everyone else. Your job? Fight your way to where, you hope, there's a ride off of this rock, and make bloody mincemeat out of everything standing between you and salvation. Standing in your way are armies of zombified fellow marines and eggheads, fireball-tossing imps, hulking flesh-eating demons, cyborg-demon monstrosities, and various other hell-spawned nasties who want to kill you horribly. Good luck. You'll need it...

Although not the very first of the FPS genre (even its predecessor, Wolfenstein 3D, wasn't the first, as the history of the genre goes back all the way into the '70s), Doom was definitive to the genre, so much so that "Doom Clone" was the standard nickname for many years afterwards. People are still playing it and making it even more awesome with their own custom modifications 24 years later, which isn't something you hear that often outside of /tg/; this is one of the main reasons why the franchise is so well-respected.

Fun fact: that iconic Doom monster, the Cacodemon, was actually inspired by the artwork for an Astral Dreadnought on the cover of the Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition Manual of the Planes splatbook. Also relevant to /tg/ is that Sandy Petersen, co-designer of Ghostbusters RPG, creator of Call of Cthulhu, and author of some RuneQuest stuff, worked on the game. He designed some levels (more in the sequel) and made some contributions to the monster design.

Classic DOOM (aka The Good Shit)

"Welcome to DOOM, a lightning-fast virtual reality adventure where you're the toughest space trooper ever to suck vacuum. Your mission is to shoot your way through a monster-infested holocaust. Living to tell the tale if possible."

– README.TXT, Doom 1.8 shareware

The original Doom was fast-paced and bloody compared to what came before but wasn't afraid to vary the pace with more labyrinthine levels or make you shit your pants by dropping you into a crowd of demons when you least expected it. (Fun fact No. 2: The extra levels included in the physical version of Doom (henceforth called Ultimate Doom) were built by the same guy who wrote Call of Cthulhu in just 10 weeks.) Doom II on the other hand was a circle-strafing explosion-rich gorefest and is what basically everyone thinks of when they think of both Doom and 90s FPS gameplay in general. The plot was bare-minimum: Demons took over Phobos and ate Deimos, kill them all. Or, in Doom 2's case, Demons are trying to infest Earth in revenge, kill them all AGAIN. But this time, it's personal. (No, seriously, they killed your pet bunny Daisy.) The Doom engine is extremely mod-friendly for a 90's game (as both Carmack and Romero had been big into software tinkering in their day) and the modding community is still very present and perhaps even more prolific than it was back in the day. In fact, id Software actually paid some modding groups for the right to sell their works as retail (Final Doom and the Master Levels for Doom 2).

There is something an ongoing memetic arms race among modders and hobbyists to find the absolute unlikeliest thing Doom can be run on. So far people have managed to get it to run on the following, among other things: literally any and every OS ever released by any software company ever, an ATM, a potato-powered calculator, an oscilloscope, several types of MP3 player, a computer built inside Minecraft, a pregnancy test, a piano, and itself (via a mod that installs a script tool in the game). If it has even a resemblance of a CPU and some RAM, it can probably run Doom.

Slightly more obscure but still relevant is Doom 64, which replaced the high-speed Explode-o-Rama with a stronger horror theme and more deliberate pace. It was a unique experience that was sadly locked behind only being on the N64 (officially, at least) until it was released alongside Doom Eternal.

id Software then for a time turned toward more multiplayer-oriented games with the Quake franchise and gave Doom a well-earned rest.

The Modding Scene

Being a game made by a bunch of fucking nerds, of course a modding scene grew up, one supported by the creators - especially after releasing the game's source code to the public. This is probably why the Doom modding community has been pretty consistent with its activity ever since, with people still making various level packs and total conversions and whatnot ever since. Hell, an agrument can be made for the modding scene being even better than it was back in the 90's.

Since we're not /vr/ or DoomWorld, we're not going to go in-depth about all the various mods that do exist, we'll just talk about a few significant ones.

• Abort: at first glance this is just a straight graphical replacement for all of Doom’s default weapons. However, it’s far more than that; every single weapon in Doom is replaced with a far wackier, and in many cases, far more potent weapon that radically changes how the game is played. Instead of a super shotgun, you get a gun that shoots other guns. Instead of a rocket launcher, you get a “magic trick” that gives enemies explosive farts (emphasis on explosive). And all weapons become radically buffed with the cowboy hat powerup. Even Doomguy’s head is an item, which is used as a way to clear the room with his rage. Lastly, as a bonus item, you have the titular Abort button, which if you use it, crashes the game.
• Aliens TC: So remember those rumors about Doom being based on Aliens? Well, some modder decided to turn it actually into an Aliens FPS. This was all back in '94, being the first major total-conversion mod in existence, so you've got proof of just how long the scene's been alive.
• Back to Saturn X: Three Megawads acting as one big Omegawad of 60 maps set in an alien environment. No new enemies, just pure Doom II, limit-removing gameplay. Expect to get lost a lot.
• Brutal Doom: Infamous for many things, though not all of them good. Started out as a vision to make Doom even more violent, it turned into a massive total conversion that adds in stuff like finishers, weapon mods, and improved monsters. Some of this was stuff that even inspired the newer Doom titles, which shows just how much it's influenced the original product. This has also led to a shitton of mods for this mod.
  • Now for the not-good stuff. The guy behind this project is known for being a massive egotist and an aimless jackass. There's also criticism about the game being a bit of a complete mess, which is why there have been competing projects with similar goals, such as Project Brutality.
• Chex Quest: What happens when someone decides to convert Doom into a non-violent licensed game made to promote cereal of all things. This was disturbingly successful despite being merely something that was packaged inside boxes of Chex cereal, enough so that sequels were made, as well as an HD remaster years later.
• DoomWare: Multiplayer mod that revolves around micro-games centered around Doom mechanics or monsters. Expect long nights of sheer chaos.
• Doom 4 for Doom: A neat little conversion mod that lets you play regular ol' Doom - with the 2016 weapons and mechanics. Sounds a bit cheap, actually kicks a lot of ass. A sidemod also lets you add the soundtracks from Doom '16 and Doom Eternal.
• Doom the Way id Did 1+2+Ultimate: A series of level packs essentially trying to recreate the original Doom games by imitating the level design styles of the original devs. These manage to pull that off and then some.
• Eviternity: Quintessential classic Doom-Megawad that teaches you everything about modern classic Doom-modding. Tweaking the engine just a little to add new monsters and textures, but keeping just enough to get the vanilla feel many players crave. A must for new players.
• FreeDoom: Completely open-source conversion of Doom 2 with unique levels and assets. As such, it's quite compatible with a lot of mods.
• Master Levels for Doom 2: A compilation of a bunch of smaller maps made by a group of level designers and licensed by id. While the designers were some great guys at the time, the opinion on the quality of this thing has aged pretty poorly, with complaints about the level design and lack of real consistency - no, seriously, these were just 30 separate, disjointed maps, so you'd best get used to hearing MAP01's music over and over again or try compiling it into a singular wad.
• Pirate Doom: Doom, with pirates. 'Nuff said. The bastard child of 90s Build Engine games and Monkey Island.
• Quake Champions: Doom Edition: Yes, it is inspired by the more recent arena shooter. It's also what happens when you combine said arena shooter (in Doom, of course) with a Super Smash Bros level of absurdity in crossing over a sizeable roster of FPS mascots from over the past 20+ years.
• Reelism 1&2: A funny and highly-replayable mod (which is itself moddable) that puts you in an arena with tons of monsters, items and weapons. The wheel decides of your fate and you must either survive five rounds and a boss, or survive as long as you can.
• Sigil: An unofficial episode 5 for Doom 1 made by John Romero himself as a 25th anniversary celebration for the game he helped create. Surprisingly ruthless, especially on higher difficulties. It has a free version as well as a paid version (that costs €6.66; real clever there, John) with an alternate non-midi soundtrack by Buckethead. A sequel to this is in the works.
  • One Humanity: A Doom 2 wad also made by Romero. Chiefly notable for the fact that it was released during the initial invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with proceeds going towards funding a charity.
• Scythe 1&2: Another legendarily difficult wad of renown.
• Sunlust: In case you thought Plutonia wasn't hard enough, this wad's difficulty is off the fucking charts. Only a devotee to Khorne might get through it.
  • Hell Revealed Saga: One of these wads which were specifically made for the sake of being difficult, only adored by masochists.
    • Dark Tartarus: In case you really hate yourself.
• TNT Evilution & The Plutonia Experiment: Better known together as Final Doom, these two mostly-unrelated projects (aside from the fact that the devs of Plutonia were also part of the team behind Evilution) were licensed by id and combined into a separate game that was sold with two different level packs to play through. TNT has more of the standard Doom fare and some aspects of it have been outclassed entirely by MegaWADs that came later. Plutonia is what you play when you want to experience a testicular torsion, being tremendously difficult with downright sadistic traps and no easy enemies anywhere in sight. Better get used to Chaingunners and Revenant, since Plutonia has a lot of them.
  • TNT Revilution & Plutonia II & Plutonia Revisited: Fanmade sequels in the spirit of the abovementioned.
• Valiant: Similar to Eviternity, with the added bonus of having tweaked weapons so now the chaingun actually feels like one. Good levels, good new enemies, and a ball-busting final episode.

The Doom Comic

"DYNAMITE! I'M COOKING WITH GAS! I'VE GOTTA HANDFUL OF VERTEBRAE AND A HEADFUL OF MAD! YEAH, THAT'S YOUR SPINAL CORD, BABY! DIG IT!"

– You, the moment you read that heading

The origin of Rip and Tear. Possibly the most ridiculously, amazingly, stupidly 90's thing that has ever been put to paper with the possible exception of Image Comics. It has to be read to be believed. So go read it.

Monsters

Limited-edition monster minis from Reaper Miniatures. Admit it, you want that Cyberdemon all of them for your Daemons of Chaos army.

These are the monsters you'll encounter in Doom 1, Doom 2 and their spinoffs.

• Former human: Wet toilet paper. Only dangerous until you get a shotgun.
  • Former Sergeant: Still wet toilet paper, but full of broken glass; if one of these assholes gets behind you before you find armour you're probably dead. Likely to be your first source for shotguns.
  • Former Commando: Unlike the other formers, this guy is no joke: he's durable enough to not die when breathed on and his hitscan chaingun is almost as powerful as yours. Using hordes of these guys in an open arena with no cover is the pinnacle of dick moves in Doom mapping.
• Imp: The first true demon you encounter with an easy-to-dodge projectile and more health than the formers. The first meaningful enemy you meet, and runner-up for the most iconic non-boss monster.
• Demon: Otherwise known as Pinkies. Giant hairless gorilla with a mouth that could give a squig lessons in eating. They can't walk and bite at the same time so you can just step out of their way, but they tend to come in large groups and dance around like spastic toddlers (which makes them harder to shoot) as they run up to you.
  • Spectre: Demon with Predator-style optic camo. An absolute bitch to deal with in dark environments, which is naturally where you find them.
• Cacodemon: Mr. Astral Dreadnought Head. These fuckers can fly (not entirely unlike a Beholder...) and you can't look up, so have fun fighting them in close quarters where they can float out of your field of view. Dangerous, but get a rapid-fire weapon and they become a joke as you stunlock them until they are all dead. The most iconic non-boss monster, partially because of its sheer WTFery but mostly because of how easy it is to chibi/make plushies out of.
  • Pain Elemental: Meatball demon. Like a cacodemon, but instead of shooting fireballs, it shoots Lost Souls. Has the opposite problem to the pinkies in that you can stand in front of its face and prevent the lost souls from spawning.
• Lost Soul: Floating flaming skulls that fly at you at approximately SANIC miles per hour. Fairly weak, but very fast and has a habit of nibbling at you while you focus on something more dangerous.
• Revenant: Agitating skeleton aka DOOT. One of the few monsters that can move anywhere near as fast as you do, plus he runs up and tries to punch your head off if you move inside the minimum range of the homing rockets he shoots. It is a fact that any given Doom map is automatically casuals-only unless the mapper adds at least 100 revenants.
• Mancubus: HELLO I'M FUCKING FAT. Slow, but very tanky, and he has dual heavy flamers for arms that hurt like hell. Fortunately, this also applies to any nearby demons, so you can make them kill each other for your amusement just by standing between a mancubus and another monster.
• Arch-vile: One of the few monsters that that's faster than the player at a full run. Sets you on fire with its mind and revives any monsters it comes across so you have to kill them all over again. Meeting one of these guys in a slaughtermap will make you hate everything forever.
• Hell Knight: Now we're talking. Space Marine sized and equipped with a melee punch and moderate projectile attacks (fireballs). Shooting him in the face with a shotgun will kill him pretty quickly.
  • Baron of Hell: Super hell knight with double the health. Big and equipped with nasty melee and projectile attacks. Shooting him in the face with a shotgun just pisses him off. Super shotguns will work though. Probably the best-known Barons are the "Bruiser Bros", the pair of Barons you fight as the bosses of the first episode.
• Cyberdemon: Is huge, and therefore has huge guts. Basically a (Chaos possessed?) Carnifex with a rocket launcher for an arm, and significantly faster than he looks. Without a doubt the fuckingest monster in the classic game, and practically tailor-made for soaking up BFG shots.
• Spider Mastermind: Doom 1’s final boss, despite being inferior in almost every way to the Cyberdemon you fight earlier. Go figure. Even more XBOX HUEG than the Cyberdemon, but has a super-chaingun instead of a rocket launcher and refuses to let up until either you or it are dead. Has the critical weakness of BFG shots up the ass due to the way its hugeness interacts with the mechanics of the classic BFG.
  • Arachnotron: Baby Masterminds that go fast and shit plasma at you.
• The Icon of Sin: Doom 2's final boss. A wall with a demon face on it and a hole in its forehead that serves as its weak point. Spawns monsters to attack you, but dies pretty quickly from a few well-aimed rockets... though, you need good timing to shoot them through the hole in its head. You probably know this, but the entity that takes damage is John Romero's severed head on a pole.

Weapons

"I do need a gun. I need a big gun. I need a really big gun..."

– Doomguy, Doom comic

Doomguy himself shows about as much personality as your average Murderhobo, (there is more to him, but you don’t see it until later) so the game's real main characters are the weapons.

• Fists: Only good at punching through the above-mentioned wet toilet paper, and complete suicide to use on anything stronger than an Imp. Should you find a Berserk pack, though...
  • Chainsaw: The great communicator. Stronger than your fists and capable of tearing through Cacodemons and below without much problem.
• Pistol: You start the game with this and 50 bullets. Gets overshadowed by every single other weapon.
• Shotgun: Now we're talking. The first gun you get that can actually kill stuff in a decent amount of time.
  • Super Shotgun: A double-barrelled version of the original. A complete rape machine at close range, delivering about as much damage per hit as a rocket, but falls off greatly at longer distances.
• Chaingun: WAAAAAAAAAAGH! Great at stunlocking enemies, especially the aforementioned Cacodemons.
• Rocket Launcher: Capable of reducing enemies to puddles of blood and guts from a safe distance. Also capable of reducing you to a pile of gibs if used from an unsafe distance.
• Plasma Rifle: Fires a stream of plasma balls that hit hard, move fast, and won't hurt you at close range. Unfortunately, it shares its ammo count with...
• BFG 9000: The most beautiful sight any soldier can behold, at least according to the Doom comic. The gun. The big gun. The. Big. Fucking. Gun. Anything it's fired at is in for a bad time, especially at close range.

Doom 3

In the early 2000s, Doom 3 came along. It blows chunks compared to the classics, but since the classics are so damn good it ends up being pretty good anyway. Since Valve had made "story-driven" shooters and "realistic" scripted encounters the in thing, id decided to rip off Half-Life, grafting on elements of the original Doom that had been scrapped at the concept stage. Unfortunately, the gameplay was too slow and similar to the rest of the genre, the scripting and story interludes just made the gameplay even clunkier and the big technological gimmick (per-pixel lighting) meant you had to choose between seeing what you're supposed to shoot with a crappy little flashlight and actually being able to shoot it. Supposedly the lighting effects were resource-intense during development and this was the "solution" (of course we know better that they wanted to make it a quasi survival horror). Naturally, the first mod for the game was duct tape so you can use the flashlight and a gun at the same time. This mod would eventually become official when the BFG Edition re-release came around about a decade later. (However, being designed from the ground up around realistic lighting and shadows and subsequently open-sourced would later make the Doom 3 engine the ideal basis for The Dark Mod, a fan-made successor to the classic early Thief games by Looking Glass studios, after the epic and utter failure of the official fourth Thief game).

Other issues include some very clear differences in enemy abilities between scripted events and actual gameplay, with imps in scripted events and jumpscares leaping around like they're high on crystal meth, only to start slowly shuffling around like a blind 80 year old as soon as they're free to move around on their own and "attack."

Perhaps Doom 3's biggest sin is the simple fact that the guns feel weak (even if they aren't), largely lacking in any kind of oomph and impact, and the shotgun is almost completely worthless.

The plot itself is essentially a reboot - You are a generic marine who just transferred to Mars and after pissing around with all your co-workers whom you will never see in one piece again, an experiment involving a portal to Hell (This time with no reason besides the head researcher, Dr Betruger, being kinda absolutely evil - in a typically subtle move by id software, his name is literally just the German word for 'cheat,' 'fraud' or 'con artist') goes horribly awry and now the facility is completely fucked. Your task then devolves into simply surviving, as you're cut off from any command and have to make your way to various checkpoints. Along the way, you come across an ancient artifact made by the original denizens of Mars, who made it to kill all the demons, and so the demons sealed it away in Hell. After a couple of trips in and out of hell, you manage to understand how the artifact works (by feeding off the souls of slain demons) and use it to kill the Cyberdemon, their greatest champion, and bail home. You'd think this is the end...except the mad scientist responsible for this is revealed to have turned into a full-blown demon.

Resurrection of Evil

An expansion to Doom 3, this game takes the original game and puts a few nifty spins to make it feel unique like the gravity gun (because Half-Life 2 did it too).

Following up on the original plot, you are now a nameless space engineer who comes across a different and wholly demonic artifact called the Hell Heart. This makes you more of a target compared to before, as Hell sends out three special hunters to reclaim the heart, each of whom gives it a special ability for you to abuse once you kill them. All throughout, the Maledict keeps taunting you through the artifact, insisting that he's coming to take it back.

The BFG Edition also has an additional expansion called the Lost Mission, but it's not really anything worthwhile or special.

Unique Monsters

Doom 3 and its expansions did have some demons and zombies unique to itself not featured in other Doom games.

• Flaming Zombie: A zombie. On fire.
• Fast Zombie in Medical: A weird bony zombie that darts at you when you see it. For some reason they only appear in the medical facility.
• Fat Zombie: A tankier zombie.
• Chainsaw Zombie: Zombie with chainsaw. Incidentally, some of the lore explains that those chainsaws weren't even meant to be there, as someone shipped them to Mars by mistake.
• Zombie Commando: Comes in two variants - one has a chaingun to shoot holes in you, the other has a lashing tentacle that can only be avoided by ducking.
• Maggot: An Imp variant with two faces and three arms. Pretty much a weaker but more spammable adversary.
• Tick: A dismembered head with spider legs. Very annoying.
• Trite: A slightly bigger and jumpier Tick that looks a bit less like a head.
• Cherub: Creepy insect-babies, because we needed it to be scary and what's scarier than demon babies.
• Wraith: Imps with blade-arms that can turn invisible at will.
• Vagary: A daemonic Drider with the upper half of what might have been a woman and the lower half of a spider. Surprisingly has some telepathic and telekinetic powers.
• Guardian of Hell: A giant blind demon that relies on floating orbs to see,
• Sabaoth/Sarge: Sgt. Kelly was a pretty significant NPC during the early plot, being your CO and trying to coordinate the survivors after the hell-gate opens. However, at some point, he managed to get fused into some nightmarish biomechanical monstrosity toting his BFG. Killing him is the intended way of getting your BFG.
• Forgotten One: A retro Lost Soul, as the actual Lost Souls were transformed into the still-bleeding severed heads of survivors. Appears only in Resurrection of Evil.
• Vulgar: Pretty much replaces the imp as the disposable mook in Resurrection of Evil.
• Bruiser: A cybernetically-augmented Hell Knight whose face got replaced with a computer monitor. Appears only in Resurrection of Evil.
• Hell Hunters: The sub-bosses of Resurrection of Evil. Each of them is a Hell-Knight with a special gift (Time-slowing, Extra damage and Invulnerability) that then transfers over to the Hell-Heart once you kill them.
• Maledict: The final stage of Dr. Betruger, a massive demonic wyvern with the man's face in its mouth all Xenomorph style. And unlike the original game, you actually get to kill this fucker as the final boss of Resurrection of Evil.

Doom 4 (aka DOOM aka DOOD aka Brutal Doom HD)

"They are rage, brutal, without mercy. But you? You will be worse. Rip and Tear, until it is DONE."

– A direct order from what is either God's seraphs or Khorne himself. Do you really need more of a mission briefing?

Listen to it here[1]

Then the latest Doom came out in May 2016. This rendition can basically be described as "3d Brutal Doom II" only sexier, with features like ripping enemies apart with your bare hands and having to stay on the move to avoid being torn to shreds. The plot is also as bare minimum as the original (albeit with a surprising amount of lore hidden away in the Codex...that makes one feel it’s set in the 40k verse), kicking the player straight into the action with waking up on Mars, immediately smashing a zombie’s skull, and basically being told: “demonic invasion, go kill everything.” Starts with a corporate big wig trying to talk you into being on his side and your answer is a solid "FUCK YOU" fist. Also, the player this time around is someone the demons call the “Doom Slayer", who has travelled through “Worlds and Time” (hinting that the Doom Slayer could very well be the original Doomguy from the first two games, having also survived Doom 64 and has been travelling Hell since, later all but confirmed in the sequel), and millennia ago kicked Hell’s ass so hard that the best the demons could do is seal him away so that he wouldn’t destroy Hell. The Slayers testament tells in sparse detail but leaves enough imagination to realise what the Legions of Hell were up against. A near-immortal being of pure hate, blessed by the Seraphims (or Khorne...which would make this a suicide attempt), capable of standing against Legions of Demons completely alone and harnessing their power as he slaughters them. THEN he fought a Titan of "immeasurable Power and Ferocity" with only his Sword (it was a laser sword though so there's that), killing and absorbing its power to turn them on the Demons. Desperate now, the highest Archdevils realized nothing short of a God will stop the Slayer (fitting since a god summoned it in the first place), so they prepared an elaborate Trap involving what may have been a Blackstone Sarcophagus. It speaks for itself, of what the Bait, which lured the slayer to the temple of the Blood Keep, must have been made of... or was. Now at the peak of his might, with sword and shield of "adamantine strength", he stood before the Horde, and split heads open, punched, maimed, killed, burnt until finally the whole temple collapsed on him and he was sealed in the Cursed Sarcophagus. Millennia passed until the UAC decided to deal with an Energy Crisis by quite literally slamming an Oil Derrick on a Hell Portal to siphon off Hell Energy for power, and just for giggles starts tomb raiding Hell for artifacts and treasures as well, ultimately running off with the Doomguy's sarcophagus. The demons see that the Doomguy’s prison/tomb is empty, and the subsequent invasion is actually a panicked attempt to stop the Doomguy from being woken up. Obviously, they fail and he butchers every last one of them.

Samuel Hayden is the guy in charge of the UAC, a cyborg the size of a 40k Space Marine. He and Vega, the Mars UAC AI, basically are quest givers for the most part. His subordinate Olivia Pierce pretty much ran a cult while Hayden was pillaging artifacts from Hell, being the only one to make it back from the expeditions. When shit hits the fan he decides to wake the Doom Slayer up with the hopes that this wild card could help take control of the facility without causing too much damage. Of course, once awake, he goes on a rampage and busts the UAC's shit, as Hayden's disregard for human life is too far for even Doomguy to take, expressing his outrage without the need for a voice actor.

So now it's up to the Doom Slayer in awesome power armor to rip and tear and dakka every demon he comes across to stop Olivia while wrecking the UAC's energy production. After going to Hell at least once due to Olivia breaking an Argent Accumulator and making it back to Mars, then after Hayden installs a "tether" to him, Hayden sends Doomguy on a quest to find the Helix Stone, picking up the most powerful version of the BFG 9000 yet on the way (more on that below). Once he reaches the Helix Stone it directs Doomguy to acquire the Crucible, a relic in the Titan's Realm. So Doomguy has to kill the Cyberdemon to get back to hell, make a long trek and fight the three Hell Guardians who guard the Crucible and returns to Mars again. To finally stop Olivia, Hayden, being the bastard that he is, even sacrifices his old creation, Vega, though unlike everyone else, at least our player character is nice enough to make a backup without anyone even bothering to ask. The Doom Slayer uses the Crucible to shut down Hell's energy wells and releases the spirits of his old friends, the Night Sentinels.

Once Olivia is found once again, she transforms into the Spider Mastermind. If you've been collecting all the stuff as you should have, she can easily be (along with the other bosses in the game) cheesed by the best weapons even on the highest difficulty, with the Rich get Richer Rune fully upgraded. Once she's dead it's the final cutscene, where Hayden steals the "Crucible" which turns out to be an energy blade that makes a Lightsaber look like a toothpick, then sends the Doom Slayer off to who knows where with the tether he installed into the Praetor Suit earlier, disposing of a potential threat before it decides to become one. After this, you experience one of the best credit sequences made for a video game in over a decade.

Mick Gordon's soundtrack gives the game the best metal music ever, having been described as "auditory violnce". BFG Division being the standout in the soundtrack. Used for two whole levels and the final boss music is a Glitch remix of it. There is also some inspiration from RPG style FPS a la Metro 2033 and Metroid Prime; collecting Argent Energy, weapon mods, elite guard tokens, and Runes allow them to upgrade the Praetor Suit and weapons to their preferred play style. The engine allows the Doom Slayer a wide range of first-person animations, as his destruction of UAC property and actions portrays an "I'm too old for this shit" attitude; having to fight demons for centuries doesn't make for a happy camper.

The damage of the BFG 9000 itself is notable. This thing instantly vaporizes every non-boss enemy on-screen! (and them too if you exploit a glitch. However what a player does that the devs didn't intend is dubious canon.) You read that correctly, you don't have to aim it directly at your targets to kill them. You just have to find the right opening to make it kill every demon you can. As the Plasma Bolt throws out lightning or much more likely, solar flares. That would mean the Plasma the BFG fires is likely firing a fucking miniature star with each shot! The F in BFG may stand for Fermentation, Grimdark! with science!. We can wait while you Google it.

Don't be impressed just yet. A Baron of Hell is 2000 pounds and because the BFG's ordinance turns everything it comes in contact with into gibs, that means it has to have 7 Gigajoules of energy and would have to be heated up to over 100,000 degrees Celsius! A temperature range which is only seen in small stars and nebula! That's not just GrimDark, that's just fucking cold in the most brutal way possible and speaks to the insanity of the UAC for building this thing. Are we sure somebody didn't screw up the name? Though Brown Dwarf Gun 9000 doesn't sound as cool. (Though why is it green? Because it's blue-green! As blue in space equals very fucking hot! Red Giant/Supergiants/Hyper-giants are (relatively) cold because they are old, a young blue star, giant or not, is insanely hot. Red Dwarfs are insanely long-lived because they are cold and slow-burning) In all possibility, if the Doom Slayer didn't wear his Praetor Suit, firing the weapon would instantly annihilate him too! (since Photons are their own particle and antiparticle the word is valid) No apologies for the science jokes. They are necessary evils in explaining how the BFG 9000 works.

It also says a lot of the bosses as a direct hit will merely stun them (without using the weapon wheel glitch) while shaving off large portions of their health. So you need either a very advanced Powered Armor or a significant amount of mass to survive a direct hit from the plasma bolt and its flares. The only real con to using the BFG 9000 is its limited ammo of four shots. Though a good player can get around that if they set up their Runes correctly.

Science and math mostly explained in this Youtube video . So yeah, the BFG 9000 shoots miniature stars.

DOOM Eternal

"Against all the evil that hell can conjure, all the wickedness that mankind can produce, we will send unto them, only you. Rip and Tear until it is done!"

– King Novik of the Night Sentinels

Doom Eternal was announced at E3 and a gameplay reveal was shown at Quakecon 2018. To say that it's awesome is an understatement.

"The only thing they fear... is YOU!" If the whole Warp, set for Khorne, actively shits their pants when the Slayer comes, you're in for FUN.

We are introduced to the Maykrs of Urdak, an elder race with a techno-angelic motif that serves as the Sentinels' patron. One of them was the so-called Seraphim that empowered the Doomguy even further, turning him into the nigh-godlike and unstoppable avatar of sheer Awesome that is the Doom Slayer (seriously, the Doom Slayer is compared to a Titan on the level of the Icon of Sin). They may actually be a group of C'tan, but we are not sure.

Sadly, all good things come to an end. The Sentinels were betrayed from within, the Doom Slayer banished to Hell again (eventually leading to him being entombed before the events of Doom 2016) and what's worse, it turns out the Maykrs were only using the Sentinels to further their own race's objectives; harvesting the souls of billions to convert into Argent Energy, so that they themselves would avoid undergoing a painful process known as "transfiguration", which is apparently like Alzheimer's except you also mutate into one ugly mofo. What's more, the current invasion of Earth was the result of one of their long-term plans, with humanity as simply one more race that was to receive "penance" in their place (read: the Maykrs are using Hell energy to prolong their lives, and willingly let Demons eat entire worlds to that end). Yet more evidence that these guys are C’tan.

The game picks up a few months after the end of the previous game with Samuel Hayden returning to Earth after the destruction of the Argent Tower on Mars that was the only way of getting free, unlimited energy out of Hell. But, he has the Crucible (confiscated from the Doom Slayer at the ending of 2016) with which he starts developing a synthesized form of Argent energy while the UAC begins to completely fall under the control of their leaders, the Hell Priests who entombed the Slayer so long ago. They start sacrificing humans left and right to start a ritual that will allow the demons to consume Earth, terraforming the land to living flesh and molten lava and killing all that resist. A full-scale demonic incursion is now underway on Earth, with billions of dead, over two-thirds of Earth consumed while half of the UAC has gone full Quisling to the invaders, with the other half putting up a token resistance as the Armoured Response Coalition (ARC). All hope seems lost...

"...We watched as the horde overwhelmed the very best and most advanced machinery and weapons technology that we could muster against the opposition. It was useless, they moved too quickly, they cared not for themselves, only sought out the blood of humanity. They were willing to sacrifice their own to get to the heart of our world. We slaughtered thousands and millions more followed, but then HE came - he cut through them like a sickle through a field - his fury surpassing their own. He is faster - more relentless - unyielding. I believe him now to be more than just a man - he is...DOOM." --Dr. Elena Richardson.

Equipped with his new PraetorPredator suit (3 guesses why it is called that, the first two don't count), he seeks his prey from his orbital fortress-monastery (fittingly called the Fortress of DOOM), with the now-recovered VEGA acting as his mission control from the station. Striking with merciless fury surpassing that of the Death Company, Flesh Tearers, World Eaters (Primarch included) and Skarbrand combined, he will stop at nothing to destroy the demonic hordes. Read: Personally kill. Every. Single. Demon. With extreme prejudice.

Immediately after defeating the guardian of Hell Priest Deag Nilox off-screen, the Slayer pinpoints his whereabouts on Earth, teleports onto his Hell Barge (a giant church carried on the back of a thrall-titan), kicks all doors in and vice grips the head off of the Priest, immediately reducing the demonic consumption of the Earth by 36.8%. He then gatecrashes the nearby Citadel, interrupting the ritual of the Priests with Nilox's severed head, before scaring them away by pumping his shotgun. He is then confronted by the Khan Maykr, the C'tan by any other name telling him even he goes too far this time.

Since the Hell Priests classify as Alpha Plus Psykers (the first one being able to command his own legion of Titans AND shield himself from even nuclear bombardment), they can only be found with a Celestial Locator, which the Slayer's Fortress is currently missing. To construct a Locator, the Slayer goes to Exultia (an Argenta city) to retrieve the Celestial Casing, only to be scolded by the late King Novik for killing the Priests; despite their transgressions, they were once Argenta themselves and it is against Sentinel Law to kill one of their own. When Novik decrees that Humanity are "no longer your people to save", the Slayer realizes that no ordinary individual will help him and enters Hell, and it's even more magnificent than Doom 2016, with gigantic walls and corridors made of flesh, abandoned Sentinel Atlas Mechs and the remains of the Titan Demons that were killed by them, and near everything you could think of; even the Tower Of Babel is in the background. Here the Slayer finds Valen, known by most as the Betrayer, repenting in his exile. After telling the Slayer that saving humanity will only make his burden worse, the Betrayer nevertheless installs the Celestial Power Core for the Slayer, as well as giving him a nondescript device he may need later.

Now able to locate the other Priests, the Slayer goes to Deag Ranak's UAC Cultist base in the Arctic to retrieve a relic from his past. That relic is none other than the Super Shotgun. The Diabolical Musket. Lucifer's Bane. Two ornately carved barrels of buckshot-spewing glory complemented by the Meathook; a pair of demon-gouging blades attached to a chain and possibly the most metal interpretation of a grappling hook to date.

After thoroughly wrecking Ranak's operations, Doomguy takes a cultist monorail to the neighbouring Doom Hunter base situated over an ancient Sentinel city. As yet more proof the Maykrs are C'tan, the priest recovered an extinct race of Earth-native creatures once bred by the demons to destroy the Slayer (take a wild guess why exactly they went extinct) and, with nothing better to do, turned these things into Semi-Organic Necron Destroyers, labelling them “Doom Hunters”, and calling him a heretic...which is BLASTPHAMY. After losing them and complaining about it, the Priest, in the face of his impending DOOM, tries to bribe the Slayer, which literally costs him his head.

Now furious, the Khan Makyr leads the last Priest to safety, while demonic activity on Earth skyrockets. Realizing Earth needs immediate backup at the Super Gore Nest in Europe after a failed attack from the ARC Resistance Forces (with a casualty rate of over 87%), the Slayer arrives at what can only be described as a border between Slaanesh's and Nurgle's Domains. Every building in the vicinity has grown flesh, teeth and openings that look like both mouths and birth canals, the air is filled with toxicity and tentacles have sprouted everywhere in pools of nukage and pus. But after a nuclear meltdown of the local reactor which conveniently houses the heart of the Super Gore Nest, the problem is quickly taken care of.

Back to searching and destroying the last Priest, VEGA is sure that Samuel Hayden would be able to locate him immediately. However, a combined Demon attack on his headquarters, the ARC Complex, left him badly wounded. Fighting his way through the demon-infested complex and up its tower, the Slayer reaches the remains of Hayden's mech body, throwing it through the portal back to the Fortress of Doom and pocketing the Demonic Crucible that Hayden took from him for good measure. Just as the Slayer himself is about to leave, the Earth beneath him quakes and a red portal opens up, and from it emerges the Marauder. Imagine a heretic Custodes empowered by Khorne but with battle tactics from Tzeentch, the endurance of Nurgle and the speed of Slaanesh. These guys are absolutely no joke (yes, there are more of them) and if you haven't been playing like your life depended on it, prepare to be absolutely curbstomped.

Meanwhile, its clear that Samuel Hayden knows *way* more about the Slayer, Hell, and the Maykrs than he let on in the last game, strongly hinting that Samuel may in fact be a Maykr himself (which begs the question of what he was up to if he understood just how dangerous Hell was and how Argent Energy was made). He tells us that the last Priest is hiding in Sentinel Prime - the Sentinel Capital of Argent D'Nur - and that the last Slipgate into the city is in the lost city of Hebeth, hidden deep within the core of Mars. But instead of calling the Mechanicus to help, the Slayer enters the Martian moon of Phobos, where the battleship-sized BFG 10,000 is stationed, takes the gun over, targets Mars and blasts the Core open... despite Samuel’s protests. He then steals the BFG 10k's power core (which is none other than the BFG 9,000) and navigates the spaceborne chunks of Martian terrain and UAC facilities to reach the core, at one point hopping into a giant mass driver and blast himself to his next destination, streaking across the ruined Martian sky like a rage-fueled missile.

Now on Sentinel Prime, the game goes into who the Doom Slayer really is. It turns out the Doom Slayer really is the classic Doomguy from Doom 1, 2, and 64, who after staying behind in the Warp Hell he is eventually spat out, half-delirious and nuts from his experience of fighting off its hordes for an eternity, unto the world of Argent D'Nur, where he is found by the Night Sentinels, an order of techno-Viking paladins dedicated to fighting demons. He is nursed back to sanity, and joins their order, eventually rising through their ranks due to the sheer Rip and Tear he was capable of.

The final Priest, Deag Grav, is hiding in the Colosseum. Despite being the one who ultimately corrupted the Betrayer, he is confident that the Slayer would never kill him in the arena, as breaking Sentinel Law would forfeit his sovereignty amongst the Argenta. He then sends out his guardian; the Gladiator, a goatlike classic Hell Knight carrying a shield that imprisons the soul of its former master, and one that effectively renders its bearer immortal. However, with the generous application of Doomblade to the shield's eye, the Slayer frees the soul and destroys the shield, and soon also destroys the Gladiator's face for good measure. Sacrificing his sovereignty with the Argenta, the Slayer finally shoots Deag Grav to death. And by "shoot to death", we mean blow his head clean off with the Super Shotgun as he smugly declares how "Earth will be consumed, regardless of what--" KHSPLAT. The Khan Maykr is rather pissed about this, declaring the Slayer a "fool" as he teleports out of the arena, warded off by now-hostile Argenta soldiers.

As soon as he gets back home, the Khan Maykr hacks into the Fortress of Doom, turning off the power and flooding the bridge with Demons. The attack obviously fails like so many other attempts, Hayden mocking her as the Slayer restores power with the Demonic Crucible he retrieved earlier. Now the plans of the Khan Maykr are ruined, as there are no more priests to maintain the Hell gates, giving the remnant Earth Resistance a chance to prevail if they manage kill all the remaining demons. As a desperate last resort, the Khan Maykr declares her intentions to resurrect the Icon of Sin to devour Earth in its entirety. Of course, the prospect of seeing another Earth brought to ruin has made the Doom Slayer rightly pissed, and suffice to say, the Maykrs have no idea what they've just unleashed.

So it's time for the Doomslayer to recover his own Crucible in Taras Nabad, an Argenta city where the Slayer ruled over as a warrior-king (as Sentinel Law dictates that only the mightiest warrior can rule the Argenta) and the site of the first recorded demon attack on that world. It is also here where the Slayer was granted his powers from the Seraphim, who utilised the Divinity Machine - a device typically used to cleanse impurities from Sentinels - to imbue Doomguy with godlike speed and strength on the eve of the first demon invasion.

The Crucible itself was stuck into the heart of a Titan during the last battle, and has remained so since removing the blade would cause the Titan to rise once more. As such, the Doom Slayer simply breaks the blade off from the hilt to permanently prevent the Titan's resurrection, though now a new blade must be reforged for the Crucible. The Slayer travels further into the city, retrieving a Crucible energy medallion from his personal vault, passing through his throne room (complete with a massive demon skull for a throne) and working his way to the forges at the city's Power Core. Having reforged the blade in a scene straight out of He-Man, he jumps down into the chamber below to test the blade on fresh demon meat.

Once again making a lightsaber look like a glorified glow stick, the Crucible is a one-hit kill on all but the strongest (boss-tier) enemies, with each kill consuming one of three Crucible charges that can only be replenished by non-respawning pickups that appear at pre-determined points in each level onwards.

With Crucible reforged, Doomguy sets out to assault the Khan Maykr in her home dimension of Urdak, bringing along VEGA so that he may create an exit portal for him. To make it to Urdak, however, Doomguy must fight his way through Nekravol, the City of the Damned. It's a place of biblical torment, fire and brimstone, cages bursting with humans piled up like livestock, their souls awaiting judgement by the sightless brain-demon Kalibas. Those that are judged unworthy are discarded to the toxic wastes of the Blood Swamps. The rest are sent to the Tower of Babel in the centre of the city, a place where human souls are "tenderized" and tortured until all hope is broken and every sense but the pain is gone. Only then are their souls extracted to form Hell Energy which is refined further with Sentinel Energy (provided by the Elemental Wraiths seen in 2016) to form pure Argent Energy, with their soulless bodies being left to eventually corrupt into new demons. It's a process that every Haemonculus pays respect to. As it is, things that are worthy of being called "holy" are often more horrendous than the horrors of Hell itself. The Slayer rips and tears through all of that mercilessly, destroying the Argent conduit at the apex of the soul spire within the tower. Its destruction results in uncontrolled Argent energy being cast into the sky, which the Slayer uses to surf up to the portal to Urdak.

The Slayer has now reached his destination. Urdak, "Heaven", a completely unnatural location in true H.R. Giger aesthetic, littered with technological grey stone, constructs of white/gold/crimson metals and blood-red trees. In true Doomguy fashion, he interrupts the ritual that will resurrect the Icon of Sin, using the device given to him by the Betrayer - a dagger - to stab the heart of the Betrayer's son, with which the Maykrs planned to control the titanic demon with. The Icon wakes up, corrupts the entire realm, and invites all sorts of demons to ravage Urdak before leaving for Earth. Making his way through the corrupted realm, he sets out to create an exit portal for Earth with VEGA's help, though the latter question to Hayden if he is "the Father" upon interfacing with Urdak's computers. With the portal ready, Doomguy is interrupted by the Khan Maykr herself. In true Eldar fashion, she accuses Doomguy of all the bad things that SHE did which broke the seal to Urdak, and that the use of countless souls from thousands of other species as Argent Energy for her race is justified in her traditions. Doomguy then slaps the shit out of her, and even in her final moments, she tells us that we have doomed all of creation. It’s likely she’s lying to hide the fact that she’s a C’tan.

Back on Earth, the Slayer navigates through a city where the Icon is rampaging, its mere presence generating a black hole that threatens to drag Earth and the rest of the universe into Hell. After chasing the Icon through skyscrapers, the final fight against the Icon of Sin begins. Now with a full-body, it is no longer a static wall boss fight but a semi-static torso. The fight is split into two stages; the first focusing on destroying the Titan's Maykr armour, and the second on blowing the Icon's body parts into chunks of viscera, tendons and bone, until you finish it with your Crucible, by slamming it into its forehead and breaking the blade off from the hilt.

DOOM Eternal: The Ancient Gods Part 1

The first half of a two-part campaign DLC for Doom Eternal.

The Icon may be dead, but now that the demons have free reign over Urdak and have yet to let go of whatever fleeting hold they have on Earth, it's up to Doomguy to clean up the mess he left behind. This cleanup begins on the UAC Atlantica, an oceanic climate and environmental research station where the body of the Seraphim is hidden. Samuel informs the Slayer that only the Seraphim can provide a long term solution to the demons (besides killing them all). After acquiring the key to the Seraphim's chamber, the Facility AI self destructs the whole platform to prevent the Slayer from leaving, which only serves to mildly annoy him. Navigating the destroyed platform, the Slayer then travels to the bottom of the Ocean with only his pure rage against the pressure, reaching the underwater portion of the facility and fighting in a Kill Room with TWO Marauders. He then reaches a chamber with a Maykr in it, where Samuel declares that he will transfer his consciousness into it, stating that he is there to help the Slayer, as he has always.

Big surprise; Samuel Hayden - or rather, Samur Maykr - is the Seraphim and VEGA is the Father, the creator of the Universe. However, Samur transferring his consciousness back into his old Maykr body was not all that well thought out, as he is now beginning to undergo transfiguration, a process that all Maykrs eventually succumb to without either a steady supply of Argent Energy or the physical presence of the Father.(Might have been going insane because of said transfiguration, since his personality did a whole 180.)

It is revealed that when the Universe and the Father came to be, he created Urdak and a second greater realm, Jekkad, alongside Davoth - the first of many godlike beings known as Primevals - to rule and guide it as the Father had led Urdak. However, Davoth and the people of Jekkad grew to loathe Urdak, jealous over not being made privy to the latter's secrets of eternal life. Davoth defeated many lesser gods created by the Father, absorbing them and becoming more powerful than originally intended, forcing the Father to seal Jekkad away from the rest of the realms. Henceforth, Davoth became the ever more power-hungry, hateful and bloodthirsty Dark Lord, whose corrupted will eventually transformed Jekkad into the very same Hell that we know today. Aware that the continued existence of both him and the Dark Lord would eventually tear creation apart, the Father confronted his first creation in Hell and tore Davoth's soul out. With Samur's assistance, the Father also withdrew from the physical plane, placing his life sphere in the Hall of Souls atop Ingmore's Sanctum.

To resurrect the Father, the Slayer must travel to Ingmore's Sanctum, located in the heart of the Blood Swamps in Hell. While it sounds incredibly stupid to put the soul the creator of the universe in what can only be described as the worst excesses of Nurgle's private Garden, the Sanctum itself can only be accessed by those who pass the Trial of Maligog, Maligog being an extremely enormous and ancient thrall-Titan. The Slayer carves through the foetid wasteland, dealing with toxic plants and tentacles the size of skyscrapers, and completes the trials with ease.

Maligog grants passage to the sanctum by carrying the Slayer to it, where Samur is already awaiting him to retrieve the Fathers life sphere for the sake of Urdak and Humanity. However, the rapid procession of his transfiguration causes Samur to let out a slip of his tongue; He only seeks the Father's resurrection to save himself. Doomguy has other plans; he denies Samur the Father's life sphere and destroys it right in front of him, leaving the Maykr to scream in agony. While one may consider it heresy of the utmost order to deny God a physical form, there is a method to the Slayer's madness.

When the Father tore out Davoth's soul, he could not bring himself to destroy the life sphere he held, as he still harboured love towards his first creation. Instead, he elected to place it in the Hall of Souls alongside his own. If the Dark Lord were to ever be resurrected, only a primeval like himself could ever hope to defeat him. Defeating Davoth in this manner would also strip Jekkad of its bindings to him, forever scattered the stars and destroying all demons outside of Hell.

Thus was the Doom Slayer's intentions; destroy the Father's life sphere so that he cannot interfere with the Slayer, then summon the Dark Lord with his life sphere of pure darkness, and face him mano-a-mano. With the assistance of an ARC Intern, the Slayer returns to Urdak and navigates the crimson forests of the Holt, guided by the AI remnant of the Father and facing off against Hell-corrupted Blood Maykrs along the way. He reaches the oldest and most holy place in the realm, the Luminarium, where life spheres may be presented to reconstitute their owners to physical form. It is here where Samur fully embraces his transfiguration, becoming a purple Lovecraftian abomination in a desperate attempt to stop the Slayer, only to be bailed out by the Fathers remaining presence when brought to the brink of death. Presenting the life sphere to the Seraphs of the Luminarium, the Dark Lord is restored to his physical form, with the biggest surprise of all being that the Dark Lord is literally Doomguy's Hellish doppelganger!

Bad News: Mick Gordon isn't coming back this time around (due to some internal issues, he was let go). Good News: Andrew Hulshult and David Levi, another rather well-known composers who helped compose for some other shooters (Dusk, Amid Evil, Rise of the Triad 2013) are coming to take his place. While it's clear Hulshult and Levi might not be able to imitate Gordon, it's obvious they don't disappoint.

DOOM Eternal: The Ancient Gods Part 2

The second half of the two-part campaign DLC for Doom Eternal.

With the Dark Lord fully restored, Doomguy attempts to end things quickly with a single blast from the Super Shotgun. This, unfortunately, doesn't work, with the Dark Lord pointing out that blood can't be spilled in the super-sacred Luminarium. He then makes his exit, challenging the Slayer to face him in the city of Immora. The only known entrance to the city is the Gate of Divum, a portal that sits unpowered on Earth.

To that end, the Slayer returns to Argent D'Nur, seeking passage to the World Spear; an enormous crystal that pierced the planet before the time of the Sentinels, which had brought forth the Elemental Wraiths that gave life to the planet. Passing through an Argenta city, Doomguy is contacted by the Betrayer, who offers his Sentinel Hammer as thanks for freeing his son's soul. After riding a goddamn dragon, the Slayer enters the World Spear and discovers that it is, in reality, an enormous spaceship housing millions of Wraiths in stasis.

Retrieving a Wraith crystal as a power source, the Slayer then travels to the Reclaimed Earth, where nature is healing and returning from the hell-blasted wastes that Earth once was during the demonic invasion. Navigating through the abandoned city and eventually, the UAC facility housing the Gate of Divum, the Slayer activates the portal and heads through it, arriving on the hellscape outskirts of Immora.

The battle of Immora can best be described as laying siege on Khorne's Brass Citadel, breaking in, seeing him get up from his throne, dig up his own oversized suit of power armour that is clearly compensating for something and fight you to the death. On the opposite end, the Slayer was ready to siege the citadel on his own, getting support from the remaining Night Sentinels bringing their entire army and join him in smashing the Dark Lord's shit (and we finally get to see those fuckhuge mecha in the fortress and Exultia actually walk, AND hitting equally huge Titan demons in the face), having been rallied by Valen offscreen (presumably over the several months between Eternal and Ancient Gods Part 1).

The Dark Lord faces you with his immortal body, his own set of Praetor Armor, and worst of all, he has all of your best abilities (he's got his own, bigger sword; and if he hits you, he regenerates his own health back).

In the middle of the final duel, the Dark Lord reveals the awful truth to the Slayer (which the player can spoil for themselves if they read the codex entries): he was the original Father. Davoth was the first being, Jekkad the first realm, and he had created Urdak, the Father and the Maykrs to unlock the secrets of eternal life. The Maykrs were indeed successful in uncovering this secret, but deemed the knowledge too dangerous to share, ultimately betraying him and sealing away Jekkad. History was rewritten, painting VEGA as the bearer of the title "the Father"... whereupon the true Father became evil, renamed Himself the Dark Lord, and tried to destroy the universe as revenge. Whoops.

In his efforts to destroy the Maykrs, the father sought to undo them from within. Planting a seed of suspicion within the Khan Maykr that a "chosen one" would usurp her, Davoth guided the construction of the Divinity Machine to help rout out this Beast, imbued with a portion of his essence hidden prior to the Dark Lord's fall. During the siege of Taras Nabad, the Dark Lord whispered to the mind of Samur Maykr, convincing him that the Khan Maykr would lead them to ruin. This prompted the Seraphim to free a random individual from the holding cells and give rise to the Slayer; a pawn in the Dark Lord's grand plan to eradicate the Maykrs, which came to pass as foretold.

However, there was one small flaw in this plan: The Dark Lord had such astoundingly poor luck that, out of all of the imprisoned menials that Samur could have shoved into the Divinity Machine and ascend to godhood, it was the one angry foreigner whose previous experiences with Hell had manifested into an absolute, rage-induced, zero-tolerance stance on anything remotely demonic in origin or association. The Doom Slayer remained predictably unswayed by this revelation, and the battle resumed. Two personifications of unrestrained Rage, potentially fighting for all eternity, able to heal themselves as they inflict unspeakable carnage upon creation until the Dark Lord finally goes down. Even near death he still reaches his sword to fight on, but finally gives in, having created the Slayer in what amounts to an incredibly convoluted but awesome suicide by battle. With his final words, Davoth asks the Slayer if he has anything to say to his Creator before striking him down, to which Doomguy responds with a generous application of Doomblade to the Dark Lord's heart, followed by a simple "No".

After slaying the Dark Lord, you'd think everything would be good right? Well, for a moment it is, as demons all around Earth, Argent D'Nur and Urdak all go up in flames. But then something strange happens. Remember how the Divinity Machine basically upgraded the Doom Slayer with a piece of Davoth's essence? Turns out that with the Dark Lord dead, everything associated with him has gone inert, including the Doom Slayer. As he falls unconscious, we see him interred into a sarcophagus by the Seraphs, sealed away in the Hall of Souls atop Ingmore's Sanctum.

"So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again." - Corrax

Demons

Doom 2016 by itself has more demons than the classic games do, even though not all of them return from those games. Doom Eternal ups the count even more, although not all demons from 2016 return. Some demons are upgraded versions of a base model and have been sorted as such. Doom Eternal also introduces a classification system, which sorts each demon into five distinct classes: Fodder, Heavy, Super Heavy, Ambient and Bosses.

Fodder

Weak, easily-dispatched demons and your chief targets for Glory Kills, the Chainsaw, Flame Belch, Ice Bomb and all the other ways with which to keep your health, armour and ammo stocked up. While not entirely non-lethal, these demons (typically) have low health, easily exploitable weaknesses and, in Eternal, only consume a single fuel unit when Chainsawed.

• The Possessed/Zombies: In 2016, Possessed were humans that underwent horrific mutations due to the Lazarus Wave released by Olivia Pierce on the Mars Outpost, with the standard ones coming in Worker, Scientist and Unwilling (Hell) sub-variants. In Eternal, Zombies are the emaciated husks of humans stripped of their soul and mutated by demonic corruption, coming in Earth, Hell and UAC Cultist subvariants. In both cases: wet toilet paper. They are some of the weakest enemies in the games and can easily be dispatched.
  • Possessed Soldiers/Blaster Zombie Soldiers: Unlike their gormless lesser brethren, Possessed Soldiers move faster and with more tact, are hardier and can use a plasma gun fused to their arm to lay down suppressive fire or launch exploding energy balls. They're still not much of a threat. Eternal's Blaster Zombies are little more than Possessed Soldiers with a Classic Doom Zombieman coat of paint and jet boots for jumping large gaps/heights, so make sure to keep some distance.
  • Possessed Security/Shield Zombie Soldiers: Wet toilet paper with shards of glass. Equipped with shields and shotguns, these can really ruin your day if you let them. The most effective strategy against them in 2016 is either to chainsaw them or use the Plasma Rifle's stun bomb to disable their shields. While Eternals Shield Zombies still hit just as hard, their threat level dropped off the abyss thanks to their energy shields violently exploding in response to absorbing too many Plasma Rifle bolts, creating an especially powerful blast if detonated via Microwave Beam. Also received a similar Classic Doom paint job, resembling the bald Shotgun Sergeants.
  • Hell Razer: 2016 exclusive, Hell Razers fight at a distance with arm-mounted laser cannons, which are actually parasites converting a human into a Hell Razer. Fire slowly and have distinct tells to their attacks. Don't pose too much of a threat: dodge their attack, get close and shotgun them.
  • Mecha Zombies: New in Eternal, these gore-covered terminator knockoffs are armed with metal claws, a plasma gun and a flamethrower, the latter of which they will flail about to hit you. Still fairly ineffectual.
  • Screechers: Introduced in TAG Part 2, these purple-recoloured Hell Zombies have bugger-all health and produce an annoying scream on death, providing short-lived attack damage, speed and damage resistance buffs to all nearby demons. In other words; shoot these guys first if you want a real challenge in TAG Part 2's fights.
  • Riot Soldiers: HOLY SHIT, TAG PART 2 BROUGHT BACK THE CHAINGUNNERS and they're pathetic. Basically Shield Zombie Soldiers, but with an invincible shield, immunity to headshots and frontal attacks, a laughably easy-to-dodge minigun and an embarrassingly pathetic weakness to explosives from the sides and behind.
• Imps: The fodder from the original game, now quick as a hiccup. They jump all over the place, pelting you with fireballs and clawing at you if you get too close. Because they're one of the first enemies you face they don't pose much of a threat; your Combat Shotgun makes quick work of them (especially with the Explosive Shot/Sticky Bomb mod), and they gain an explicit weakness to bullet weapons (Heavy Cannon and Chaingun) in Eternal.
  • Gargoyles: Added in Eternal. Pretty much Imps with wings and scything talons, they jump around and spit acid at you. They'll occasionally hover in place to fire off an acid volley, causing them to become instantly staggered for a Glory Kill when hit during this attack, so take your opportunity.
  • Stone Imps: Introduced in TAG Part 2. These once-dead Imps that have been ritually cast into magma and reborn with grey, rock-like skin. Their stony hides offer stupidly high resistance to all but the pounding impacts of the Combat Shotgun's Full Auto mode and the Sentinel Hammer. They also spindash around like grey, fireball-chucking Sonics.
• Lost Souls: Horned, burning skulls that scream, fling themselves at you and explode for an annoying amount of damage. At least in 2016; in Eternal, they also appear when summoned by a Pain Elemental which is when they function more or less the same.
• Makyr Drones: The generic rank-and-file of the Maykrs. Annoyingly resilient for Fodder demons (to the point that it takes three Chainsaw fuel units to kill them as opposed to one) and armed with rapid-fire laser turrets, headshotting them with (almost) any weapon is a guaranteed insta-kill that provides ammo as well.

Heavy

Making up the bulk of Hell's forces, these brutes run the gamut of heavy-hitting bruisers, powerful glass cannons and bullet-soaking tanks. Using a chainsaw on them in Eternal uses up its entire tank of three fuel units, making it an absolute last-resort option.

• Hell Knights: Big dudes who revel in wrecking your shit. They are fast, closing the distance to pummel you or to perform a leaping ground slam for a short-ranged area of effect attack. Keep your distance and pump them full of lead to take them down quickly if you don't want to be taken out yourself. In Eternal, they gain a crippling weakness to Chaingun fire.
  • Dread Knights: Cybernetically enhanced Hell Knights. These super-soldiers are rigged with a chemical delivery system, which constantly pumps the demon full of adrenaline to keep them in a state of perpetual rage, and rewards them with massive dopamine hits for every kill they make. Appearing only in Eternal, their most prominent feature is a pair of energy blades, which considerably extends their melee range and causes their ground slams to leave a lingering, damaging energy pool for a bit. Can fire lasers from their blades at you, and shares a weakness to the Chaingun, as with other Hell Nobles.
• Revenants: DOOT. Made from humans in a gruesome process, the Revenants have jetpacks that let them fly around to put themselves in the perfect position to launch missile barrages at you. They can also claw at you for significant damage, so keep your distance and take them out. In Eternal, you're able to shoot off their shoulder cannons, and doing so both permanently grounds them and restricts their attacks to the easily-evaded claw swipes. Surprisingly classified as airborne demons, making them into potent Ballista chow. Their meme potential is so great that a trumpet-equipped Revenant Battlmode skin was included as a pre-order bonus for Doom Eternal.
• Cacodemons: They fly now! Their spit attacks slow and disorient you, and their bite attack does a lot of damage. But because they fly now you can easily pick them off with your rocket launcher or gauss cannon. In Eternal, they decided to min-max; their bite takes off a surprisingly large chunk of your health and is often paired with an aggressively distant lunge, while their shock-balls can be fired in a multi-shot volley. But it comes with devastating weakness: a single Combat Shotgun Stickybomb or Equipment Cannon Frag Grenade into their mouths causes them to swallow it, instantly staggering them for an easy glory kill. As airborne demons, they also gain a weakness to Ballista attacks, dying in one Arbalest bolt.
  • Pain Elementals: Meatball Daemons Returning in Doom Eternal, they endlessly summon/chuck the homing suicide bomber Lost Souls at you. While they don't swallow any grenades like their Cacodemon compatriots, they do share the innate weakness of all airborne demons against the Ballista. Despite this, they are still more of a threat than their vestigial-limbed buddies could ever be, especally because they will usually be flanked by one or two of them.
• Mancubi: Big fat bastards equipped with heavy cannons to blast you with fireballs and flamethrowers to keep you at a distance. They're big, slow targets with slow attacks so if you can keep your distance they're not too big a threat. In Eternal, these Heavy demons got faster (and fatter) but you can blast their arm cannons off, stripping them of their flamethrower attack and severely nerfing the damage of their fireballs. After that, sustained Chaingun fire or a few rockets/Super Shotgun blasts will easily take them out.
  • Cyber-Mancubi: Heavily armoured versions of the Mancubus. They fire globs of acid that linger on terrain for a bit, limiting your movement options, but lack the flamethrower attack. In 2016 you just pour more damage into them to take them out. In Eternal, their armour is destructible and can be stripped instantly with a single Blood Punch, making it easier for you to deal with them. But because their cannons are armoured you can't blast them off like you can with the regular Mancubi.
• Pinkies: Ol' faithful is now covered in chitinous natural armour (which is harder than you would think), turning them into living battering rams (in more ways than one). They (still) roar and charge in on you, dealing significant damage upon impact. The armour soaks most damage they take from the front, so circle behind them and attack their weak point for massive damage. In Eternal, they gain the Heavy demon classification and a crippling weakness to the Blood Punch, being the only attack that can kill them without deliberately striking their weak point.
  • Spectres: As the Pinky, but invisible, meaning that lock-on attacks won't register them as targets. A bit harder to deal with because of this, but thankfully a lot less common and lack the armour plating...in 2016 that is, in eternal they have there armor back but are slightly easier to spot. blood punch them to kill them quickly.
• Summoners: Only appearing in 2016, Summoners are pared-down versions of the Archvile. They possess lithe bodies that let them easily zip around and set up a summon circle away from your location, allowing them to call in aid. Sustained fire from just about any weapon will take them down.
  • Harvesters: Unique to 2016's multiplayer, the only demon to be so. Harvesters move around and instead of summoning other demons will shoot balls of plasma and drain life from other players, allowing them to supercharge their regular attacks.
• Arachnotrons: Back in Doom Eternal, the Arachnotrons are walking gun platforms that can cling to ceilings to get a better vantage point to shoot at you. Their plasma turrets are mounted on an exposed, scorpion-like tail, which can be destroyed to limited their attacks to the more manageable and telegraphed bomb volley. Their resemblance to the Spider Mastermind from 2016 is intentional: the UAC cloned them using the Spider Mastermind's genetic material. and when the demonic invasion began, the automated facility making them was taken over by the possesed...Which was planned
• Carcasses: Debuting as Heavy demons in Doom Eternal, the Carcass' attacks are not that powerful and they don't have a lot of health. What they do have is the ability to summon energy barriers, blocking your ability to move around freely, home in on them, glory kill other demons and use explosive weapons safely. Your primary target in an encounter because eliminating them makes a fight a lot easier. Thankfully, these barriers share the same explosive vulnerability to plasma fire as the Shield Zombies' Shields.
• Prowlers: Originally added in 2016's multiplayer, they were promoted to regular enemies in Eternal. They function the same as Imps but with more health and they can teleport, often right behind you to claw at you.
  • Cursed Prowlers: A thing that can only be the product of Nurgle's diseased mind, introduced in TAG Part 2. The attacks of these mercifully rare green Prowlers curse players with a necrotic, blood-magic poison that deals damage over time and prevents dashing. The only way to break this curse is to kill the offending Cursed Prowler; easier said than done since, while cursed, the Prowler cannot be locked-on (so no easy Meathook for you) and can only be killed by a blood punch.
• Whiplashes: The first all-female demons introduced in Doom Eternal resembling lamiae, but don't expect any monster girls. They are as nasty as any Heavy demon in Doom, and they use their great speed to slither in and around the battlefield, dodging heavy-hitting weapons before hacking away at your health from a distance with a pair of chained whips. Difficult to hit, but once you start hitting them they'll go down eventually. That, or use a Lock-On Burst from the Rocket Launcher to delete them.
  • Spectre Whiplashes: Introduced in TAG Part 1. As the Whiplashes, but invisible, meaning that lock-on attacks won't register them as targets. Now you can't cheese them with Lock-On Rockets (unless you Ice Bomb them first) and they don't even have the courtesy of being weaker like the Pinky Spectres.
• Blood Maykrs: Definitely not Blood Angels. The normal Maykr Angel population after getting corrupted by Hell. They shield themselves with a golden aura that negates all damage and attack with energy volleys from their spears. Once they notice that such things would never work, they will lower their shield to perform powerful attacks with Argent energy discs and spears, which drastically slow the player on-hit. A headshot instakills them like their Maykr Drone counterparts, while sustained gunfire on their body works too.

Super Heavy

The toughest, most lethal demons this side of Doom's Gate, these beasts are the deadliest standard troops and are often summoned in as mini-bosses. They also can't be cheated out with an instant kill from the Chainsaw, meaning you'll need to put some actual effort into taking them down.

• Barons of Hell: Big red bastards who are the toughest regular enemies in 2016. They hit like trucks and can blast you with powerful balls of green fire. The best way to deal with them is a heavily upgraded chainsaw or the BFG to not deal with their bullshit. In Eternal, they return as the Fireborne Barons; a Super-Heavy class demon that is immune to the chainsaw and cannot be one-shot by the BFG, so you'll have your work cut out for you. Befitting their name, Fireborne Barons are also coated in flames with obsidian skin and have burning blades coming from their lower arms, which fits given how much more dangerous they are. The Fireborne Barons are described as a clan of Barons who have merged with the flaming inferno of Hell itself and their blood is replaced by lava.
  • Armoured Barons: Introduced in TAG Part 2, these Fireborne Barons are encased in grey/cobalt armour provided from the city of Immora, granting them outright immunity to all weaponry besides the Plasma Rifle (especially its Microwave Beam). Armoured Barons have had their right hand replaced by a studded morning star, which they will launch at the player at terrifying speeds. However, said mace also flashes green when preparing to launch, allowing a player to snipe it and instantly shatter the Baron's armour. The player only has a short window to damage and kill the Armoured Baron before its shell regenerates, which can be lengthed via the application of either the Ice Bomb or Sentinel Hammer.
• Doom Hunters: First introduced as a boss in Eternal. A species of earth-native demons driven to extinction by the Doom Slayer and brought back by the Hell Priest Deag Ranak, the Doom Hunters resemble Necron Destroyers with a cannon and a dual-chainsaw for arms and missiles that can be fired from its hover sled. They have an energy shield that you need to deplete to be able to damage them directly, though it's possible to attack their Blood-Punch-vulnerable hover sled directly first to disconnect the main body from it. Infamous for being a boss that is lazily reused during the course of the game, as early as THE VERY NEXT COMBAT ARENA AFTER FIGHTING THE FIRST ONE. However, the mook versions don't have immunity to Ice Grenades.
• Marauders: Former Night Sentinels corrupted by Hell, the Marauders are fast, deadly and a pain to kill. They possess energy shields that block all incoming damage, including the BFG, Crucible, and Unmakyr (though not splash damage from explosives), can pelt energy beams from long-range, blast you with their own Super Shotgun at close range, and can summon spirit wolves to hunt you down if you shoot their shield too often. If baited into sprinting at you and brought into mid-range, their eyes will flash green as they swing their axe at you: use this as an opening to blast them with your Super Shotgun or Ballista, then quickly switch between the two until their stagger expires. Repeat this, rip and tear, done. Becomes kind of a joke in TAG Part 2, since the Sentinel Hammer can lengthen the period that they remain stunned enough to kill them without resistance. This is balanced out by the fact that they will double, and even Triple team you.
• Archviles: OH FUCK NO, NOT THESE ASSHOLES AGAIN receiving a buff from its previous appearance (yes you read that right) an Archvile can put up barriers of fire to keep you away while they Summon more demons. If you don't interrupt them you'll be facing a more difficult fight, especially if they summon a MOTHERFUCKING MARAUDER. Even when not summoning they are tough and can dish out a lot of damage, setting the ground beneath you aflame or throwing massive fireballs or sweeping fire waves in your direction, while any friends they successfully summon receives a buff that lasts until the Archvile's death. In short, after taking out all Carcasses in an area, they are your next target if you want to win a fight, and no the daemons they summon do not go away after the Archvile dies, rip and tear it before it rips and tears you a new asshole. The buff is their ridiculous amount of health (for what they are); hit them with your BFG or crucible to save yourself the trouble.
• Tyrants: Pretty much downgraded Cyberdemons (Looking more like the classic Cyber rather than 2016's beefy Balgaar monstrosity) and one of the most powerful common enemies in the game. Packing a powerful hybrid rocket launcher/laser cannon, a laser blade, and the ability to fire missile barrages, paired with a MASSIVE pool of health, these Super-Heavies should be eliminated as fast as you can so that you can deal with the rest of the demons. The fastest way to do so is with the Crucible, which will hack a Tyrant up in no time. Just make sure that you actually hit the Tyrant itself and not the fodder running around it. Otherwise, just exploit its slow turning speed to dedicate as much ammunition you have on hand to shoot at it until it dies.

Ambient

These demons aren't active participants in a fight, acting more like obstacles that can disrupt and, rarely, help the Slayer in his crusade.

• Possessed Engineers/Cueballs: Little more than walking bombs in 2016. Either shoot them to detonate them or melee them to launch them and have them detonate on impact. Returning as Cueballs in Eternal, these demons replace the "walking" part with "standing gormlessly in one spot, ignorant of any fighting going on around them". This allows the Slayer to use them as flying, explosive barrels if shot at the right angle.
• Tentacles: Introduced in Eternal, these annoying bastards pop out of fleshy glory holes from Slaanesh's wet dreams to take cheap swipes when the Slayer comes near. Takes advantage of purple goo and other shallow puddles of liquid to conceal themselves.
  • Giant Tentacles: No. This skyscraper-tall pile of Slaaneshi-fueled bullet sponge can fuck off back to the Blood Swamps where they're introduced.
• Buff Totems: Unholy crosses with eyes in their centre, introduced in Eternal. Will spawn in pre-determined spots in a given arena, buffing nearby demons with enhanced speed and attack damage while also constantly summoning in additional demons until the totem itself is destroyed. Its effects can also be temporarily nullified by the ice bomb, not that this would be pertinent information to know.
• Turrets: Introduced in TAG Part 1, these fell-steel columns house a demonic eye that will occasionally pop out of the top to take cheap potshots at you, not unlike a long-range tentacle. They'll duck back into their containers if the player's reticle lingers on them for too long, encouraging flick-shots from the Heavy Cannon's Precision Bolt and/or the Ballista to eliminate quickly.
• Spirits: The ghostly Remains of 2016's Summoners, introduced TAG Part 1. The Spirit will spawn in possessing another demon, taking away their fear and ability to feel pain. In effect, Possessed demons are immune to the Chainsaw, Ice Bombs and faltering, while also gaining a massive buff to movement/projectile speed, damage resilience and aggression. If a Possessed Demon has any destructible weakpoints, like the Mancubus or Revenant, said weakpoints are also rendered permanently invincible. Even so, Possessed Demons will still give in with enough Dakka, causing the Spirit to escape its fallen host and begin to possess the next toughest demon in the field after a short while. There exist only two methods to destroy a Spirit; Ghostbusting it with the Plasma Rifle's Microwave Beam, OR by killing every other demon remaining on the field and watching the Spirit, unable to manifest itself in Realspace anymore, fade out of existence.
• Demonic troopers: The Imperial Guard of the city of Immora, and the greatest of Hell's warrior-caste in TAG PArt 2. On paper, if the Night Sentinels were an Astartes chapter, these troopers would be their Chaos Astartes equivalent. In gameplay, these red-clad chumps aren't even worthy of being called pushovers. Being immune to the Chainsaw and Glory Kills sounds scary... until you discover that they die in one hit from almost any source of damage, even including the marginally non-lethal Meathook and Flame Belch. A recent Update gave them more health and resistance against weapons but they still get pretty much slaugthered. This could also show just HOW deadly the Slayer has become, as only beings that are nearly completly fueled up with Hell energy are able to stand only seconds longer against him.

Bosses

The bigwigs of Hell, ranging in power and influence from greater daemons to Chaos Gods/C'tan-tier entities in their own right. These enormous creatures are characterised by having their own dedicated health bars on the UI, fights that often go into multiple phases, dedicated arenas and resistance or outright immunity to the Slayer's superweapons.

• The Cyberdemon: A Baalgar-class Shadow Lord, reclaimed from the UAC's expeditions to Hell and the crown jewel of their Demon weaponisation program. Also hinted to be the original Cyberdemon slain by Doomguy atop the Tower of Babel all the way back in Doom 1, having brought himself back to life out of sheer psychotic hatred at Doom Guy. He does it again in the middle of the boss fight after the Slayer teleports to hell, though the kill after this sticks as the Slayer impales its head with its own horn.
• The Hell Guards: Three armoured suits powered by wormlike creatures, tasked with defending the Demonic Crucible from those who seek to claim it from its resting place in the Necropolis. The Slayer destroys the suits and tears the worms.
• The Spider Mastermind: The Aranea Imperatrix, resurrected via the unholy union of the Dark Lord of the Fourth Age and a female "keyholder", Olivia Pierce. Gets her head blown apart by being forced to deepthroat the BFG-9000, killing the Dark Lord of the Fourth Age and putting Pierce out of her misery.
• The Gladiator: The Last Living Hell Knight of DOOM II and, unlike the Doom Hunter, has survived the extinction event that is the Slayer. In fear of the rampage suffered by the old Hell Knights, the Gladiator killed his master and imprisoned his soul in his shield, making it almost invincible without an exorcism. Its fight is split into two distinct phases.
  • Phase 1: The Gladiator is armed with a flail attached to a retractable chain for close and distant attacks, and bears a gargantuan soul-vessel shield. The shield itself blocks all incoming damage, can fire a ghostly afterimage of itself when forcibly coaxed, and can be slammed on the ground as either a close range AOE attack or to summon demons to the arena. Like the Marauder, if the Gladiator's eyes blink green you have an opening to shoot him with any weapon, though the Ballista or Super Shotgun is still preferable. A headshot will stagger him for a glory kill, but the Slayer will simply beat the shit out of him. One thing to note is that his shield will also blink way before the Gladiator actually performs an attack; once for a quick attack, and twice for a heavy attack. Phase 1 ends with the Slayer knocking the Gladiator down for long enough to stab its shield in its eye, destroy it outright and freeing the dead masters soul stuck in it.
  • Phase 2: Now vulnerable, the Gladiator goes ballistic with TWO flails, spinning one as an attack-deflecting shield before chaining all-out flail whips and leaping slams. The best approach now is to shoot at it when it isn't spinning its flail, especially when its trying to force you into a game of energy jump-rope by boxing you in with both its flails. After weathering down the beast to its bones, the Slayer finishes off the last Classic Hell Knight by crushing its skull beneath its own flail.
• The Khan Maykr: The supreme ruler of Urdak following the Father's disappearance, whose speech, mannerisms and goals make her come across as a haughty, insufferable fusion of an Eldar and a C'Tan. Once her energy barrier is down due to sustained firepower, Slayer needs to get close to her to Blood Punch her in her Energy Sphere five times. During the encounter she has a tendency to deny Slayer the ground (quite literally) by temporary making it damage him with power surges, that get bigger after every punch. Also, the only ammo source during that encounter (not counting few ammo boxes) are Makyr Drones.
• The Icon of Sin: A legendary titan, resurrected into the body of the Son of the Betrayer, deformed and warped beyond recognition, his very existence in Realspace causing destruction and madness. It's described that, if left unchecked, it will drag the entire dimension to Hell through a supermassive black hole - so basically if one of the Chaos Gods themselves manifested in Realspace. The Khan Maykr thought It could be controlled using the Soul of the Betrayer's Son, putting it into Power Armour for insurance. But then, the Doom Slayer stabbed the heart containing the son's soul with a dagger provided by the Betrayer (though without carving the Name of the Betrayer into it), setting the soul free and, with it, releasing the beast from Maykr's control. The battle itself is, on paper, pretty easy: eight pieces of the Icon's armour must be destroyed (head, both upper arms, both forearms, both pectorals and abdomen) using your whole arsenal. While doing so, lesser demons will try to harass you and distract you from the Icon. Just don't forget, you're fighting a Titan, and fists that big tend to hurt. With the armour's destruction, the whole process starts again in the second phase, but this time, you chip away at the flesh and bone of those same regions until the Icon collapses, giving you time to ram your Crucible into Its Brain.

• The Trial of Maligog: An endurance test involving giant eyeballs housed in giant cubes, and the final challenge before one may be allowed passage to the Hall of Souls.
• Samur Maykr: The Seraphim, the right-hand man of the Father who imbued the Slayer with the power of a Primeval, now having undergone total Transfiguration into a purple, winged monstrosity with an exposed brain.

• The Dark Lord, Davoth: The original Dark Lord created by the Father as a Primeval, one of the first gods. Doomguy's equal. Designed to truly care about his People, he spiralled out of control in the search of eternal life, to save his people from death. Formerly a caring guardian, he tortured everyone who slightly deviated from this goal. After Davoth got imprisoned in his soul sphere by the Father, demons apparently fought one another to claim his title while he still whispered his influence to them. The Dark Lord of the First Age after Davoth made the deal with the Khan Maykr and the most recent one, the Dark Lord of the Fourth Age is implied to have been the Spider Mastermind that possessed Olivia Pierce before getting her head blown off by BFG-9000. Davoth himself apparently prevented anyone from becoming Dark Lord of the Fifth Age as he was released from his soul sphere several months later. Currently only seen in one cutscene after his soul sphere was unlocked and everyone hoped the final fight was the same as an Unreal Tournament/ Quake Deathmatch.
  • Turns out the backstory from the previous paragraph was propaganda from the Maykrs. He's actually the original Father, God of all creation. The Maykrs betrayed him, stole his power to create a new Father (the one who would become VEGA), but that turned out to be a really bad idea. He's been scheming various ways to get revenge for over a decillion years, up to and including engineering the decay and downfall of the Maykrs from within, ascending one lucky individual into becoming the Slayer for revenge-by-proxy (unluckily for him, that person happened to be the incorruptible Doomguy), all the while trying to turn Hell and its capital city of Immora into the immortal paradise he always envisioned. But unfortunately, his plan still involves lots and lots of demons roaming free across the universe, and the Doom Slayer can't have that. Gracefully accepts his death in battle, and is actually so serene in his final words it is kind of implied that he knew that the Slayer would kill both him and the traitors but he had spent so much time in prison it is worth dying to see the bastards get killed first.

Trivia

• The Fortress of Doom is the personal fortress-monastery/mancave of the Slayer, once used for the Galaxy spanning Crusade of The Night Sentinels. Features a Teleportarium with an absurd range (teleporting the Slayer from Earth's orbit to the Hell-absorbed Argent D'nur, which is on a completely different dimensional plane to the Sol system), a Hangar bay with a Sentinel "Atlan" Mech, and a prison named the "Ripatorium", filled with Demons the Slayer undoubtedly abducted, to slaughter them for sport.
  • On at least one occasion, the Slayer seems to have fought against Noise Marines, as his personal quarters feature a guitar made of flesh.
  • The Fortress has a shit-ton of easter eggs and even a few unlockable weapons. Such as a redesigned Unmaykr (unlockable) from Doom 64 and the Soul Cube of Doom 3(just a prop, could be turned into an actual weapon in the next game a few years from now). You'll want the Unmaykr whether you want to slaughter demons with it or are just a completionist. The Slayers own room also displays all the weapons and toys players have collected over the game. There is a bookshelf that references other franchises, a cage for his dead rabbit Daisy and even a painting of said pet and the Slayer.
• It is said that the "Wretch" who gave the Slayer an adamantine armour, forged from the Fires of Hell, was in fact Khorne Himself. Even if he can't corrupt the Slayer, he doesn’t need to. The carnage he brings upon demons is the equivalent of centuries of war.
  • Doomguy and Khorne may have flat-out teamed up, as Doomguy wants to kill demons (Khorne technically isn’t a demon), and Khorne wants to take over Hell. The two of them have become fire-forged friends since then, to such a degree that, according to a legend passed down among demons, Khorne has a stasis pod containing the Doomguy stored deep in the heart of his personal fortress. Possibly underneath the skull throne itself.
    • Khorne is Doomguys equal. In the ancient Gods DLC, the life essence of the true Ruler of Hell gets resurrected, and he takes on the form of Doomguy. The Dark Lord of Hell is the leader of Hell`s armies. Not a King, but a warrior of the Dark Realm. The fiercest among all, as only the strongest could rule. He is you. Wait a minute that sounds familiar, Hey if you're going to steal, you may as well do it from the best.
• While the act of cutting down demons with a chainsaw is a game mechanic to get your ammo refill, there is a very 40k explanation of why it even works. Doomguys Chainsaw houses an insanely powerful Obliterator Demon wo can instantly turn Blood and flesh to Amunition.
• Since the Night Sentinels went to war against the Demons eons before Humanity came to be, they are effectively the first Space Marine Chapter (preceding even the Thunder Warriors), since they are to an extent Psykers, deploy with Argent (warp) using Weapons, have their own Titan Legion, use a Space fleet of Flying Castles, have an Arena for duels to the Death, and only The Strongest among them can become King, they even had a mini civil war. The only thing they are missing is DNA from the God-Emperor...and even then, Doomguy may have it.
  • The Sentinel Titans are called "Atlans" and are the Ultimate Example of a Babycarrier done right. Armed with one or two shoulder-mounted Giant Plasma_Annihilator, the Palms of the Hands featuring the same sort of plasma weapon but weaker. The Melee Weapon being an ECKS BAKS HUEG Energy Spear for impaling equally huge Titans.
• The Makyrs in Doom Eternal bear a surprising resemblance to the C'tan (even being unable to show their true forms outside of Urdak). They also possess a sort of metal skin on all castes of their race, resembling necrodermis.
• Sometime between the events of Doom 64 and Doom (2016), the Slayer was subjected to the Divinity Machine, given his new abilities from that point forward, it's possible he had a fragment of the Warp hell itself imbued within him, thereby making him a man uplifted with psyker argent powers. This might make him this dimension's equivalent of The Emperor... if this is a separate dimension.
• In Doom Eternal, the Slayers new armour is not fully sealed, giving a look Upon His Arms, like a certain Swell Guy.
  • Said Swell Guy may or may have not been probably is a Descendant of The Slayer's "friend" Valen, the previous holder of the title of "Betrayer". The best guess would be that the Emperor used his Genetic Code for The Basics of Angron, and later the World Eaters Legion.
• The Crucible uses pure Argent energy to create its blade. This means it's soul-powered and therefore, since the Doom Slayer absorbs the power of the demons (giving them a true death), uses the life essence of demons to kill more demons.
  • Because the Doom Slayer does give true death to demons, this may mean he can do what every single eldar, necron, and psychically adept human thought was impossible...actually kill the chaos gods. He would probably choose Slaanesh first.
• The forces of Hell seem to be a serious threat even judging from the absurd standard of 40k. Samuel Hayden gave the surviving humans insane technology (full functioning AI battlesuits for infantry, and colossal Titan mechs, Dark Age Technology so to speak) and still couldn't get the upper hand. The only viable solution to gain ground seemed to be total nuclear annihilation.
  • This seemed to be simply because of Hells literally infinite numbers since they multiply by both ordinary breeding and turning the aforementioned bodies of the mulched human souls into demons. Even if they took out one thousand demons, one billion would take their place. It seems this was the only reason for their defeat since, once all of the avenues for invasion are cut off, the remainder are mopped up without much fanfare. One wonders if all of the priests were on Sentinel Prime how things would go since there would be no cut off for the entering demons.

Doom: The Board Game

Yes, there is a Board Game - made by Fantasy Flight Games no less - giving the vague '/tg/ related' qualifications this site uses. It was released around the time Doom 3 was released, though it wasn't that remarkable and is pretty hard to find nowadays.

One guy plays the baddies, the other 1-4 players play a band of unfortunate marines. The heroes start with 2-3 powerup cards, and the baddies get 5 cards from his own deck and during the game, he gets to draw more (the rate of which is equal to how many marines there are) and if his deck is empty, he gets to insta-kill one of the Marines. His guys are more varied in their movement but they can only shoot once.

The marines have three options: move 8 spaces without shooting, move 4 spaces and shoot once, or shoot twice without movement. They need to explore the board, find computers and other events as the board provides. The baddies, meanwhile, can either upgrade his monsters or bring more to the board. Either way, his goal is to score 6 kills on the Marines.

A new board game got released shortly after May 2016 Doom, which, to my understanding, is basically just the same shit as before with a new coat of paint.

• It's different, but not too different. Similar in concept and design, with the main differences seeming to be in how the Marines play, and victory conditions for certain scenarios. Absolutely beautiful models, however, and incredibly fun. Highly recommended.

Movie

Also (roughly) around the same time as Doom 3 was a movie starring Karl Urban and former WWE superstar Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. It pretty much replaced the whole Hell plot with some genetic experimentation to give people superpowers that only succeeds in creating hyper-aggressive mutants, and a squad of Marines sent to investigate the mayhem. It wasn't that good, with the only really 'good' scene being this one scene where it's all FPS-style like the original games and has monster killing.

Another movie was released in 2019, named Doom: Annihilation. When asked what they thought about this, id Software simply replied: "We are not involved in the movie." But the last five minutes of CGI demons was fucking phenomenal.

Rumor has it that an Doom: Annihilation sequel is in development.

Gallery

If the Setting of Kharn would continue like DOOM, he would`ve already challenged Khorne!

External Links

• Doom Wiki for all your Doom-related needs
• /idgames/, the home of pretty much every Doom mod worth playing (and pretty much every Doom mod that isn't worth playing) since 1994.