I had a similar experience. Doom was pure shooting fun, while the platforming component they introduced in Eternal altered the essence too much for me. I finished Doom in a very short time but I never finished Eternal.

There's a moment of flow state I had with Doom Eternal. Like John Wick running on pure focus with the most intense music, as I eat fire and shit bullets, carefully balancing out my kill rate with my ammo and health and refilling as needed.

And you're right. It is stressful. It's 100% "fuck it we ball" and see where we land.

And after playing some Doom mods recently, it's no where near as chaotic.

Eternal was a recipe for stress for me.

That's the thing that made it great for me, but I liked both 2016 and Eternal for different reasons. Would be great if they can somehow satisfy both camps with the next entry.

I'm im the same boat. I don't think.i even finished eternal. Beautiful game, I see why people love it too based off the gameplay but the new one seems more my style.

Long COVID left me in a state where I can't handle too much physical or emotional stress. At least half a year ago or so playing 2016 was no problem for me. But Eternal was too much. Even on lower difficulty levels. But I actually liked Eternal. Especially later when you've got all the mechanics unlocked and can play through an arena on some kind of ultra instinct.

I fear that this new game will be similar in stress levels.

Honestly my first mental picture was something more like a really low rate of fire Splatoon except more about knocking down enemy "fortresses" instead of just coating the other side since... it's snow, it's already on both sides.

Different weapons would be stuff like slings for range, or a shovel for busting down snow castles, maybe it has a charged up projectile where your character gets a whole shovel full of snow and then lops it overhead to try and nail someone with an air mailed avalanche.

Also have an actual gun sometimes show up on the map but if you grab it all your shots miss for like ten seconds because funni.

I played tribes ascend in the past, and it was TONS of fun. Even if I did suck at actually hitting anything while zooming around lol.

Or even Max Payne... that game had every pellet, everybjullet be an actual physical projectile.

The original doom was released in 1993, not 2003