I just realized that Warhammer 40k: Space Marine nailed the shooty shooty + melee gameplay like 10 years ago. It even had the "melee kill to heal" mechanic. And melee fatality cinmatics.
Anyway my point being that it never felt like the melee was forced on you. Instead it gave you variety.

I feel like they played out too safe with Doom Eternal. I thought they were doing invasions (like dark souls) where other players can screw with your campaign by controlling the heavy demons. And for some reason I thought it would have coop thru the story mode. And no mods sucks. Doom 3 was a far better experience once they had a few mods like duct tape and open coop.

I've heard the game gets better after about 3 hours so I will play thru to the good bits. The combat is fun for the most part.