We got quite the treat from QuakeCon last night – twenty-five minutes of Doom Eternal! We were introduced to some new guns like the Ballista, an explosive bolt rifle; and returning favourites like the Rocket Launcher, Plasma Rifle, and Super Shotgun which now has a new bladed attachment called the Meat Hook. The Doom Slayer also has some cool new abilities like an arm-mounted sword, something that looks like a Predator plasma caster on his shoulder, a grappling hook for zipping around the environment, a short quick-dash, and the ability to climb certain walls now.

There are also some updated enemies from the original Doom 2 game making an appearance: Former Soldiers, Mancubus, Arachnotron, and Pain Elementals. There are also some entirely new enemies like the dual chainsaw wielding Doomhunter, and axe and Super Shotgun wielding Marauder (who looks a bit like the Slayer, apparently there’s a story behind it). These enemies will also be more destructible than before with the new Destructible Demons feature that allows for more varied and gruesome deaths as you rip and tear your way through the hordes of hell.

In the gameplay we’re treated to the Slayer stepping out of a ruined building into what looks like a ruined city, the orange sky filled with thunderclouds and lightning, and huge demonic structures descending from the clouds like something out of a Lovecrafian nightmare. The demo wastes no time in getting to the demon slaughter, showing off some of the new glory kills that involve the sword and the destructible demons look great as the shotgun blows chunks off them. A few minutes in we even get a look at another new demon – a winged Imp-like thing. We even get to see the shoulder mounted weapon in action acting as a flamethrower briefly.

Another curious addition was lives – we see the Slayer pick up a floating power up that grants him an extra life, a mechanic that comes into play later on when a demonic invasion kicks off with two other players invading the game as demons. When the map screen is briefly opened we can also see a “demonic corruption” gauge, presumably indicating you can either purge an area of the infestation or have things get worse. The Slayer also uses a new traversal technique – swinging from highlighted horizontal bars to reach distant platforms. Later in the demo we also get to see the chainsaw, returning in much the same role as Doom 2016, acting as a limited-use insta-kill that drops a huge amount of items.

In the final gameplay segment we get to see the Slayer on a UAC base on Phobos, Mars’ moon, briefly interacting with terrified humans to gain access to a demon infested area of their base, culminating with him taking a plasma rifle from a terrified trooper before resuming his ripping and tearing. Another new demon makes an appearance, looking like a horned Hell Knight armed with two curved fiery swords on its arms. We finally get to see the new Ballista in action, exploding demons with a single shot. The shoulder-mounted weapon also acts as a flamethrower yet again before dispensing a grenade, indicating that it will have multiple uses. Yet another new demon type makes an appearance, stepping from a dark doorway before throwing its arms up and setting everything on fire – a sequence that culminates with the Slayer pulling out the handle of a sword that then activates into a red hell-rune covered blade and charging at the new demon.

Sadly, we don’t have a release date to reveal, but Doom Eternal is looking like it does everything right so far.