DOOM’s Ultra-Nightmare Mode Is So Hard Even Developers Can’t Beat It

Try Not to Pull Your Hair Out Playing DOOM’s Ultra-Nightmare Mode

If you’re one of those hardcore gamers who want an unrelenting challenge then look no further, DOOM is almost here. The highest difficulty, DOOM’s Ultra-Nightmare mode offers an extreme challenge along with permadeath — if you die, you have to start way back at the beginning.

Executive Producer, Marty Stratton and Creative Director, Hugo Martin discussed the upcoming difficulties during a recent live-stream. They mentioned that the second highest difficulty, ‘Nightmare’ is straight up punishment but the very top tier is ‘Ultra-Nightmare’ which takes the same difficulty and adds permadeath in the mix.

They discussed another feature where you can track the progress of your fellow friends by way of a marine helmet being left where they die. In the original DOOM there were marine corpses scattered about the levels, but this was unrepresentative of an actual player, this time when you see a fallen marine helmet that will be one of your friends. This way you can track how hard certain parts are and push to get past where your friends perished — it’s all about the bragging rights.

Doom Ultra-Nightmare

Stratton went on to discuss the helmet feature in detail:

“When you die, it drops a helmet, a Doom marine helmet, in the world and your friends will see those and you’ll see them. So you can always try and get a little bit further than where you see that collection of helmets early in the game.”

Marty and Hugo went on to talk about how no one at iD Software has managed to beat the game on the highest setting which means it is painstakingly difficult. DOOM is shaping up to be a marathon of pain for those who enjoy higher difficulty. Who will be the first one to complete ‘Ultra-Nightmare’ with permadeath active?

DOOM hits stores for Xbox One, PS4 and PC on May 13