All I did was keep pace with him, not letting him out of my line of sight. He almost got me a few times, but I managed to slip away.
I’ve just beaten my first encounter with the marauder (I’ve heard that there are other encounters later into the game from people commenting online) and I might have got lucky but I beat him on about my 5/6th try and didn’t find him too hard at all as just kept super shotguning him in the head when his eyes went green only pausing to run away to glory kill for health or chainsaw for ammo. I imagine he is a lot harder with some tougher enemies around him as I chose to just ignore most of underlings focusing just on him. I tend to find the doom hunters a lot harder to beat. The game is pretty frantic and whilst precision is important in this game I’m finding what differentiates a successful run and a rubbish one is mainly being aware of your inventory and location as certain enclosed places in the arenas will get you killed if spend more than a second there. I don’t mind the platform sections as they haven’t been too hard so far but just like the 2016 game I wish it wasn’t so linear as it makes exploration/secrets feel laboured and a chore as it feels like I’m being pushed down a series glossy corridors until I enter the arena areas to fight.
Ironic, the entire intent of the platforming, map hazards, and secrets were to eliminate this very feeling. Instead they just made the same "mistake" 2016 did, except in 2016 the linear paths between arenas were just paths and didn't feel like a slog or annoyance to navigate, so you hardly thought about them. (unless it's the Argent tower) Eternal makes you do all kinds of annoying, boring stuff just to get to the "good parts." Eternal really was over-thought as a game. They just kept throwing more and more shit in it until it was bloated. They took the sentiment of "we want 2016 again but more" as "we want more things beyond what 2016 had" and not the actual sentiment of "we want more of what 2016 gave us." I don't agree with anyone that says Eternal outclasses 2016. They're on par IMO. 2016 is more balanced, and while Eternal has plenty of new and amazing things, it has so much that drags it down. It's like when Homer got the lobster and put it in the fish tank. They kept trying to balance the game by adding more things rather than simply tweaking the elements they had. 2016 was too easy? Add in a tonne of overpowered, overly-lethal enemies. Now it's too hard? Add in a life system for when the player is inevitably boxed into a corner by endlessly spawning buffed demons because they couldn't see the Archvile or Totem tucked behind that one corner. That kind of thing. The Marauders aren't fun because they change the mechanics of the game. They, quite literally, do not play by the rules. The one-hit weapons don't work on them, so every encounter will be exactly what you described, with no variation. No other weapons are effective besides the SS and Ballista (kinda), and they have no other opportunity to be killed beyond when the game says they can. It's not just that they're hard, plenty of demons are hard, but that they're restricting and formulaic. I don't want to have to play Simon Says just to beat them, I want to fight them like I do literally every other demon, which is to say my way. I don't like my killing freedom being limited to a single tactic in a game that otherwise encourages freedom, movement, and creativity with its weapon sandbox.
I can see where you are coming from but when fighting the marauder I found myself using the exact same skills of inventory management, distance awareness, reacting to attack patterns and punishing weaknesses that you have to use when fighting all of the other enemies in this game but as it was a harder opponent it was a stricter pattern to follow and that is essentially what happens with all boss fights. Where new doom really excels for me is when you have to balance lots of different formulas at the same time like for example having to battle one foe at close range whilst several other enemies take pot shots with projectiles from afar. Overcoming these strict conflicting formulas is where the tactical depth comes into its own as you are forced to make complicated and sometimes creative tactical decisions to overcome these difficulties and commit to them rather than having endless ‘options’ like for example playing devil may cry 5 on a low difficulty setting where everything chains together so you can get away with clumsy button mashing. I can see why people find the marauder difficult and frustrating but I would much prefer them as bosses rather than the bosses from the 2016 game as you got whisked away to some bland flat setting and the tactical depth of the regular combat faded away to just learning their attack patterns and responding with any old weapon. My only really complaint with the game is how linear it is as I think it could have been an all time classic if they had adopted the Mario world type structure, refined by games like castlevania symphony of the night and bloodborne, in that there is a not too long route to the end credits if you just want to race through the game but a wealth of additional content and areas to discover if you want to go looking. They could have rewarded exploration with revealing some additional lore/storyline and various different abilities and customisable elements of the game.
Anybody have issue with this game not saving the difficulty you select? Every time I select a higher difficulty at the beginning of a mission it either doesn't take or resets as I play. I keep replaying missions solely to beat them on higher difficulties only to finish and realize it didn't stay, even after checking it periodically through the mission. This has happened every single time I've tried to up the difficulty. (because you can't just select difficulty from the title menu settings, it has to be during a mission) Except the Marauder isn't a boss. He becomes an infrequent spawn later in groups. As a one-time boss he's fine, it's placing him in other groups that's a problem, and he's so, so repetitive. It's the exact same pattern, and it's tedious and lengthy.
I had that happen between missions if I quit to the main menu after a level instead of going to the Fortress of Doom. I think it's something weird with it wanting to take you back to the main menu if you've beaten the campaign already.
Anyone else catch the hologram lady say "Lemmy is God" after you return to Earth towards the end of the game?
I'm surprised she got off that easy, usually people constantly advocating horrific entities get devoured by them in the end or some similar karmic fate, like with Olivia. But then again, being completely and embarrassingly wrong about Doomguy's awesomeness is just as bad.
I'm hoping McFarlane makes the demons from this game. I don't understand the lack of figures of them for any of the Doom games honestly. They'd be perfect. I really don't want Doom Slayer/Guy, unless it's his old G costume.
You think that's bad? There's a rare glitch where he dies...but other enemies don't stop spawning. Imagine three empowered Marauders.
Take some getting used to, but I’ve gotten a handle on how the game wants to be played. Once you get the pattern of killing down it becomes easier.
