DOOM Eternal: The Ancient Gods - Part One

I went back into DOOM Eternal for this expansion fully expecting a rust-shaker. What I did not expect was to be thrown headfirst into a wall of Barons, Spirits, and Evil Eye turrets before I'd had a chance to remember which button triggers the Flame Belch. The Ancient Gods - Part One does not ease you in. There are no warm-up rooms, no re-introductory corridors with weak imps to get your fingers loose. From the opening seconds of the UAC Atlantica mission, an oil-rig-style level that pushes the franchise somewhere it had never been before, you are already in a fight you might lose. The core loop of Glory Kills rewarding health, the Flame Belch dropping armour, and the chainsaw spawning ammo is all still here and still satisfying when it clicks. But the three new levels are built around an escalating hostility that makes even Doom Eternal's hardest stretches look measured. Two new enemy types define the experience: Spirits, which possess other demons and massively boost their speed and health, requiring you to switch to the plasma rifle's microwave beam in a tight window after killing the host, and turrets that function like miniature Eyes of Sauron, retreating into their pillar if you're too slow to scope them through the Heavy Cannon's precision bolt. Both slow the dance. Both frustrate as often as they challenge. The returning Marauder also shows up repeatedly, and where some veterans will find that muscle memory clicks back in comfortably, newcomers who somehow skipped the base campaign will hit a concrete wall. The level design itself has genuine highlights. The Blood Swamps, battered by acid rain, studded with pustules that blister and burst if you linger, is creative and atmospheric. A section involving a ghostly companion dog that forces you to stay close while navigating a damaging miasma is a clever, low-stress break from the arena grind. The platforming is tightened compared to the base game, less sprawling, mostly readable, though specific sections still ask for a precision that feels out of place in a game built on momentum. The arenas themselves are multi-tiered and well-constructed, but there are too many of them stacked back-to-back with too little breathing room in between. By the third level, The Holt, even committed players may find the relentless wave structure wearing thin rather than thrilling. The mixed Steam reception (66%) maps pretty cleanly onto the real fault line: players who mastered Doom Eternal's combat puzzles find this a worthy final exam, while everyone else runs into what feels like artificial padding through sheer enemy volume and bullet-sponge mechanics rather than clever design. Environments are genuinely gorgeous, some of the best-looking locations in the whole game, and the cliffhanger ending does its job setting up Part Two. But the music situation is worth flagging: Mick Gordon, responsible for the iconic soundtracks of both Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal, was not involved with The Ancient Gods' new music. It's fine, but noticeable to anyone paying attention. If you breezed through Doom Eternal on Hurt Me Plenty and want something that tests the absolute ceiling of your skill with the game's systems, this expansion delivers that in roughly five to eight hours depending on your pace. If you bounced off Doom Eternal's more demanding encounters, or you're buying this as a standalone entry point with no base-game experience, you are going to have a genuinely rough time.

Alex · Scout Team

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