Doom Eternal – The Ancient Gods: Part 1

If we need to mention a historic game, it's definitely the legendary Doom. We've seen the first one in all sorts of ways, from old PCs to programmable calculators to Ikea lightbulbs! I still remember when I played it for the first time, with that spectacular soundtrack that made any computer a spectacular means for gaming. Years after the first chapter, which we're talking about way back in 1993, last year Doom Eternal was released. This is the latest installment produced for this saga, where the Slayer was ready to take down hordes of demons coming out of every corner of the earth. Initially released on PC, Xbox One, and PS4 and Switch (with a several-month delay on the latter), last month we could also enjoy it on the next-gen PS5 and Series X with the addition of Ray tracing and a maximum resolution of 4K. In short, you no longer had any excuse not to play it, regardless of the hardware you owned.

The arrival of DLCs

During QuakeCon 2020, it was later announced that the “The Ancient Gods” DLC, a two-part downloadable content, would be released that year and the next (meaning this one). This DLC would be free for all owners of the first Doom Eternal season pass or the Deluxe Edition, or it could be purchased separately for those who own the base game. However, and this will be the sore point of our review from now on, it is also downloadable as a standalone version for all users who do not own the base game and want to experience this DLC. In short, you can play the DLC without ever having bought the game. But what does this strategy entail? And what consequences does it have for the player?

Let's start by explaining that “The Ancient Gods” follows the main story of Doom Eternal right after the events of the Doom Eternal campaign. Demons, of any shape and type, are ready to pulp the player to exterminate humanity into a pile of ash. Therefore, right from the start, all the demons will be ready to “rip our heads off” to stop our advance, using our knowledge of the monsters and their weaknesses.

Standalone Version on Switch

Today we’ll be taking a closer look at the standalone version for the Nintendo Switch hybrid console, with a casual first-person shooter gamer (yours truly) playing the DLC without ever having played *Doom Eternal*. Will it be possible to figure out how to play this game without ever having experienced the highly acclaimed and award-winning main game? Is it possible to enjoy the story this way? What, besides the main story, do we find inside this package? For the first questions, the answer is a simple and resounding no.

Excited to play this title, we download the package of an enormous amount of GB onto the small Nintendo console, mainly due to the inclusion of the base game but with locked features. First among these is the Doom Eternal campaign, which will be represented with a nice shopping cart icon. This icon, if pressed, will take you to the store to purchase the missing part of the title for almost 70 Swiss Francs, without considering (perhaps with some special offer) the previous purchase. But let's move on.

In the main menu, there is the option “The Ancient Gods,” which will lead the player to choose between its campaign or online multiplayer with the maps included in this DLC. We are asked if we have ever played Doom Eternal, and by answering negatively, we face a very short tutorial of a few minutes on the basic controls and on a couple of enemies (two or three at most) on how to best use weapons and the weak points enemies have to be defeated more quickly. After the tutorial, we select the normal difficulty (between beginner and other levels dedicated to the more passionate players) and set off to explore this much-discussed online campaign. A nice introductory video and we immediately get into action with hordes of demons jumping at us from all sides. Good! Too bad that in less than a few minutes we are immediately dead. At first, I think to myself: “Okay, that's fine. You don't play FPS often and you've never played Doom Eternal, I just need to get the hang of it.” I should mention that I am a fan of games where you have to die many times to progress, like Celeste, for example. I spend several hours but nothing, even after reading the various descriptions and tips for enemies in the “start” menu, the result is always the same: “You are dead!” We lower the difficulty to beginner, thinking that maybe normal wasn't the right move, and go back to the first level. This time the enemies fall to the ground faster, and we manage to progress, passing the first checkpoints (obviously with some deaths in between), which was impossible for us before, but the situation becomes increasingly frustrating and impossible to manage. New enemies jump out of nowhere, and we are always opening the “bestiary” to figure out how to defeat them.

We can't continue like this, spending over ten hours without completing the first level...

Nintendo Switch Performance

Bethesda did an excellent job with this version, offering guaranteed quality and fluidity in both docked and handheld modes. There are never any framerate drops, much less objects suddenly appearing and disappearing in the distance. In fact, the action is so frenetic that you have to jump from one place to another without ever stopping to move, changing weapons and choosing the right strategy to get through the area. In short, as old Alessandro Borghese would say: “Porting: ten out of ten!”.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, despite the excellent work by the developers, I have to give a terrible rating for this title, which I'm not reviewing as a DLC but as a complete game considering its stand-alone mode. If you are a fan of the Doom series, have already played Doom Eternal on other consoles or PC, and want to play the DLC on Nintendo Switch, then this title is the right purchase for you. In all other cases, it becomes impossible to play and enjoy this additional part, even for beginner players. It's unclear what the real reason is for Bethesda's philosophy of offering the game in this mode as well, but it certainly doesn't add value to the title. On the contrary, it causes more confusion even on the eShop, with identical titles having different prices or being unpurchasable depending on the download made. In short, it doesn't encourage the user at all, even to buy the base game later. We believe that if you want to minimally enjoy this package, you must have played and completely finished Doom Eternal beforehand, as it should have been, without at all encouraging a user to buy the DLC first and then the base game. If you think we are exaggerating, we later also tried the Doom Eternal campaign and assure you that the game properly provides the basics and the time to learn to face enemies with the right balance. This is entirely absent in “The Ancient Gods.”.

Is it worth buying? Yes and no. It all depends on you and whether or not you’ve played *Doom Eternal* before. As for the rest, expect hordes of demons ready to unleash hell at any moment.