James Davenport: I could fill a bathtub
with the palm sweat Doom Eternal milked
from me this year. It is easily the most
intense shooter of 2020, and not just because it
throws dozens of demons at you at once.
Arenas are filled with hazards and demon
compositions designed to test FPS habits, old and
new. The most hated enemy of 2020 might be the
Marauder, who inverts your embedded Doom
habits with melee duels. The expansion continues
the trend: the Spirit possesses and buffs fellow
demons, while the giant tentacle
pancakes whole arenas while the
ants (you and co) below duke it
out. Pointing and clicking alone
won’t cut the cake. Eternal
demands sharp situational
awareness at 1,000 mph.
All the while you’re treading
water, topping up resources with
glory kills, fire and chainsaws.
Doom Eternal is a violent give-and-take that tests
endurance, reflex and wit in equal measure.
Evan Lahti: One of the interesting criticisms of
Doom Eternal is that it’s ‘overdesigned’. Id
scattered piles of stuff to collect across Eternal’s
hellscarred worlds: Sentinel Crystals, Sentinel
Batteries, Slayer Keys, Runes, one-ups, Doomfish,
character and weapon skins, weapon mods... you
can’t walk 50 feet without stumbling into some
kind of floating, glowing pickup. I did feel like the
overemphasis on these resources took some of the
purity out of the action, but the bigger point
remains: Doom Eternal is one of the only
singleplayer FPSes that draws out that rare,
electric feeling of genuine improvisation. Every
other major FPS campaign of the last few years,
pleasant as they might’ve been, doesn’t produce
spur-of-the-moment reactions as a baseline.
And despite that very modern
progression system, Eternal
achieves this the old-fashioned
way: by empowering you with
progressively more agility and
throwing stupid amounts of evil
at you. Whatever cocktail of bad
guys Eternal spills into the
environment, mindlessly
spamming your favourite weapon
isn’t going to cut them down. You’re going to have
to move continuously, juggle your weapons to
preserve ammo, and find the right moment to
refill your armour and health. When you pull it
off, you feel like your motor skills are driving
Doomguy faster than you can make sense of
what’s happening, and it’s glorious.DOOM ETERNAL
DOOM ETERNAL
DEMANDS SHARP
SITUATIONAL
AWARENESSGAME OF THE YEAR AWARDS 2020
CLOUDPUNK
Cloudpunk isn’t a long game,
but I could drive around the
colossal dystopia of Nivalis for
hours. Every skyway is filled
with vehicles buzzing around
stunning voxel skyscrapers like
hundreds of neon insects. It’s
gloomy and vibrant, and you
can explore the whole thing –
from the grim undercity to the
corporate spires. You also get a
lovely AI pooch! The post-
launch addition of a first-
person mode makes it even
more essential.Fraser Brown
FORT TRIUMPH
Fort Triumph is turn-based
tactics with Heroes of Might &
Magic’s overworld, battlemaps
covered in objects that can be
moved or knocked over with
spells, tools, or just kicks, all
wrapped in Pratchett-esque
fantasy parody. A troll with
concerns about dungeon
health and safety explains you
should “skulk from the knees”.
It’s knockabout fun that had
the bad luck to release within
weeks of Chimera Squad and
Gears Tactics.Jody Macgregor
PERSONAL
PICKPERSONAL
PICKBEST
FPS