Introduction

DOOM Eternal: Hell on Earth is a cure by id Software for the boredom of gamers confined to quarters by COVID-19. The second chapter in the 2016 DOOM reboot by Bethesda, DOOM Eternal is a re-telling of the events of DOOM II: Hell on Earth: You play as the Marine from DOOM who was mythologized in the 2016 game as a radical element in the power-tussle between the forces of hell, mankind, and heaven and retconned as the "Doom Slayer:" a force of nature on two legs with enough firepower and grit to terrorize hell.



Set two years following the events of the 2016 game, the Slayer awakens to find that the forces of hell have overrun the realm of mankind, Earth. From a space station called the Fortress of DOOM, he can teleport to the various infestations of the demons of Hell on Earth, to save mankind from annihilation. DOOM is designed to be a run-and-gun power trip where you dominate and annihilate demons in a fast-paced first-person shooter. Besides a change of locale and newer demons, Eternal introduces an emphasis on being creative and crafty with your "Slaying" to mine ammo, armor, and health from your fallen enemies. The Fortress serves as a hub world where you can take a break between levels to fine-tune your weapons, unlock new gear, or explore the place.

DOOM Eternal is based on the latest generation id Tech 7 engine, capable of next-gen features, such as ray tracing. id Software plans to add ray tracing content through a patch at a later date. The game engine leverages the Vulkan API exclusively and has no GL fallback. In this mini-review, we test a fairly big selection of graphics cards across the three popular resolutions, 1080p, 1440p, and 4K UHD.

Screenshots

All screenshots were taken at the "Ultra Nightmare" settings profile, which is the highest available. The gallery can be navigated with the cursor keys.

Graphics Settings

DOOM Eternal has a ton of graphics settings that let you fine-tune the rendering options to match your hardware.

• The first section is called "Display," and you can switch between "windowed", "fullscreen," and "borderless windowed" here
• V-Sync can be toggled between "off", "adaptive," "on," and "triple buffering"
• The field of view option ranges from 90° (default) to 120°. I found the default a bit narrow and am playing at 100°
• Motion blur can be disabled completely
• The "performance metrics" option gives you fine-grained control over an OSD that shows FPS, VRAM usage, GPU load, CPU load, and much more depending on the setting—there are seven option to choose from

• Colorblind people will appreciate these settings

• The overall graphical quality can be set to "low", "medium", "high", "ultra", "nightmare", "ultra nightmare," and "custom"
• These options are available for all entries in the following list; "overall" simply lets you set them all to the same value
• You may disable chromatic aberration, sharpening, film grain, depth of field, and depth of field anti-aliasing
• Resolution scale can be set to "static," giving you a resolution range between 50% and 100% in 2% steps
• When "dynamic" resolution scale is selected, you can choose a target FPS rate, and DOOM will automatically adjust the settings during gameplay to achieve the desired framerate (60 to 1000 FPS)

• To skip the logo/intro video at startup, use command-line parameter +com_skipIntroVideo 1
• To skip the forced Bethesda launcher registration, launch the game once to the title screen, close it, and switch to Steam offline mode to play DOOM Eternal.