Rip and tear in third-person with this Doom Eternal mod
It feels criminal to do this to Doom Eternal. Doom is the ur-FPS. Not the first, by any means, but the most - the first-person shooter we've been chasing for decades. In their own act of heresy, though, modders have plucked the eyes from our Doom Slayer and hung them a few feet behind his rear, turning Doom Eternal's meaty in-your-face gorefest into a ludicrously nippy third-person adventure.
Gosh, it's like watching someone throw an Action Man into a washing machine full of meat.
Like many hacked-together third-person modes, it's pretty rudimentary - shifting the camera back and killing first-person viewmodels. Honestly, it reminds me of toggling +thirdperson in Source games like Garry's Mod or Left 4 Dead - a neat little trick, but you wouldn't actually play a game like this, right?
But that's never stopped the Doomguy. When you're behind the Slayer's eyes, he feels beefy, a brick shithouse of chaos tearing limbs from bone across hell and back. But from behind, he's like a tiny little action figure, zipping around like an armoured wasp. It's properly shocking just how goddamn fast this bloke can run.
While it's hilarious to watch this tiny soldier ripping and tearing across a heavy-metal toybox, it's still remarkably well-realised. Were it not for the obstructive camera angle, this is how you'd expect a third-person Doom Slayer to move. No first-person animation trickery here, and certainly a far cry from Mirror's Edge's goofy-as-hell camera hacks.
Granted, this is probably due to Doom Eternal's Demon vs Slayer Battlemode, which requires even glory kills be animated fully. The only real slip-ups are mantling (which seems to slip back into first-person for a tick) and certain weapon firing effects still sit on the corner of the screen.
This trick uses the same cheat engine that let players discover a hidden pistol via the game's console. There you go, then - everything you need to play Doom Eternal with a rubbish gun and an awkward camera angle.