Since id Software released Doom Eternal, players have been enjoying the game’s violent, chaotic brand of combat. Ripping and tearing through hordes of demons has never looked or felt as good as it does in Doom Eternal.
Besides the Doom Eternal campaign, the game also includes a Battlemode multiplayer portion. For friends looking to play together, you may be wondering, “Does Doom Eternal have split screen?”, or, “Does Doom Eternal have local co-op?”. I’m going to answer that question today, let’s get started.
Campaign
The Doom Eternal campaign consists of 13 levels, which can take roughly 14 hours to complete. Or, up to 25 hours if you’re shooting 100% completion. In that time, you will build an arsenal of increasingly powerful weapons. Each weapon is unique and more dangerous than the last. Moreover, each weapon is also upgradable with different abilities and fire modes.
For instance, the Combat Shotgun goes from a more or less standard shotgun, to a full-auto weapon of death. Even more, it also increases the Doom Slayer’s movement speed by 20%! These are the kind of tools that you will use to eviscerate almost 30 different enemy types. Most of the demons and other enemies in Doom Eternal are no pushovers, either. They will require a decent amount of strategy to tackle. This is especially true when you are stuck in one of Doom Eternal’s many arena areas.
These places, present on every map, will through large numbers of all different types of enemies at you, and ask you to survive overwhelming odds. From this, you can begin to see the sadistic game development of id Software. Things only get more intense the further you progress into Doom Eternal. With the number of enemies being thrown at you, you would think that the Doom Eternal campaign might have co-op or some way to do a cooperative run.
Alas, it does not. Doom Eternal’s story is for a single Doom Slayer, and that’s it. Doom Eternal might have benefitted from a co-op mode or some form of split screen play. Yet, I guess having more than one Doom Slayer in any room would be too much power to wield.
Multiplayer Options Beyond Doom Eternal Split Screen
Doom Eternal’s new multiplayer mode, the Battlemode multiplayer, is a very interesting concept. It is a three-player mode that pits two demons against a single Doom Slayer. The demon team can pick from a number of units. These include the Arch-vile, Mancubus, Dread Knight, Marauder, Pain Elemental, and Revenant.
Each of these playable demons has its own strengths and weaknesses. For instance, the Mancubus is extremely slow, so it won’t be dodging attacks, making it an easy target. But, it is capable of taking a ton of damage, and its dual cannons can dish out a lot of damage of their own.
Also, the Arch-vile is the same as it is presented in the main campaign of Doom Eternal. It summons lesser demons and excels in area-denial through the use of firewalls, but it doesn’t have much in the way of close-up attacks. This makes its teleport ability very useful.
Between the team, they can mix and match demon roles to find out the most effective combination of abilities. Now, for the lonely third player, all they get is a measly fully-upgraded Doom Slayer with all of the guns and upgrades from the main campaign.
No need to wait and grind to get all the good stuff, everything is immediately available to you. This makes the 2v1 structure of the Doom Eternal Battlemode mode seem almost unfair. This is true even with the Doom Slayer being outnumbered.
While the demon team of the Battlemode is essentially a form of co-op play, and the strategy involved does make it a cooperative game, it does not have a split-screen mode for local multiplayer.
Conclusion
Across the many platforms Doom Eternal is available on (Xbox, Switch, Sony Consoles), it, unfortunately, does not co-op split screen or other types of local multiplayer. Cross platform play is also not possible with Doom Eternal. The only way to enjoy the multiplayer feature is through online services.
It doesn’t detract from Doom Eternal, but it is unfortunate for friends or adult families who may have enjoyed a local multiplayer feature. With no more updates on the horizon, the only way for two players or more to enjoy Doom Eternal is through the online-only Battlemode. Even the humble PC gamer, who can typically implement any feature they want in their games through mods, have not worked to add local co-op play.
So, if you’re asking if Doom Eternal has split-screen multiplayer, the answer is absolutely no on all fronts. We don’t know what future Doom games will do, but hopefully, the development team will consider adding some way for people to play together from the comfort of their couches.
