To me, the modern Doom games have always been a standard for benchmarking PCs and high-refresh-rate monitors. I’ve never really been invested in the stories these games tell, because let’s be real — who cares? Doom: The Dark Ages attempts to tell a more conventional story akin to something out of Halo, and while it fails in that respect, id Software gets what makes these games tick — packing a strong punch, literally. This will be a shorter review than usual because I’d rather be bashing a spider-demon’s head in with my bare hands on my Xbox.
In past Doom games, I only played them for a few hours before moving on with my life. Not with this one. There’s something magical in The Dark Ages that scratches a particular itch I’ve developed after playing Expedition 33: a parry mechanic. It also borrows one of the coolest ideas from the Marvel Cinematic Universe: a shield that bounces around the map back to your hand. They even put a chainsaw around the shield. Yep, they got me. I was locked in.
In my hands-off preview of Doom: The Dark Ages earlier this year, id Software’s Hugo Marti stressed that they wanted players to “stand and fight”, which is a departure from Eternal and 2016’s run-and-gun approach. That doesn’t mean that you won’t be zipping around the maps, because you still can and are rewarded for it, but id has added a heft to the Slayer’s movement that amplifies every jump and strike. There’s a satisfying weight to the Slayer’s movement that, as Martin put it during the Xbox Developer Direct, adds to the feeling of being a “superweapon in the centre of a medieval war against hell.”
Let’s talk about the shield saw, arguably the coolest weapon in the franchise. With just two buttons, you can cut through fodder, dash across the level, parry attacks, and zip to higher elevations. It’s a simple tool that allows for a multitude of kill combinations, and I enjoyed every second of using it. Juggling between throwing the shield and holding on to it for parrying or blocking attacks is a strategic choice, one you’ll have to make every second in a confrontation.
Augmenting the shield is a variety of runes that change what effect is triggered after parrying attacks. Do you want a larger area of effect blast, or would you rather get assisted by an auto-turret? You decide.
If there’s one criticism I have about the game, it’s that you aren’t rewarded with nearly enough resources to go after a variety of upgrades for every playstyle. Even after combing through all secret areas of a level, you’ll only have barely enough gold to upgrade a handful of tools. Very early on, I knew that I’d have to lock into a few specific tools to tailor my Slayer’s playstyle, and I’d have welcomed a little more agency.
The Dark Ages isn’t a particularly hard game either. With the dearth of accessibility options, one could even say that this is the easiest title in the franchise, which is fair enough. Where the game ramps up in difficulty is in throwing a larger variety of enemies your way as you progress through the campaign. Balancing the fight between dozens of fodder demons and mini-bosses can get tricky, always pushing you to keep moving around. However, with three life-sigils always at my disposal, I never saw a game over screen that I couldn’t shake off.
Managing ammo can also get difficult in the later stages of the game. The upgrade tree lets you imbue all weapons with self-refilling properties so long as you kill enemies in certain ways. However, given how resource-strapped I was, I often found myself missing a few bullets in weapons I seldom used.
The new gimmicks add enough variety to the flow of the game without taking away the spotlight. The Atlan mech battles are stupidly simple, though they achieve what they set out to be, which is being pure spectacle. Stomping over towers and uppercutting kaiju demons feels satisfying. The same goes for the dragon, though at least that one requires a little bit of skill to pull off cool moves. There’s not enough handoff between the ground combat and mech/dragon sections to make it feel seamless, and that’s the only area where I could see through the veil of the game design.
It’s great that id Software didn’t follow the trend of open-world games and limited itself to more linear level design. Make no mistake, these are still some absolutely huge levels, but you’ll never find yourself lost or your time wasted while traversing through them. There’s rarely any empty space in hell.
Finally, there’s the question of value. The Dark Ages costs $70/Rs. 5,999, a total clown show. I get that the cost of developing games is higher than ever, and The Dark Ages is a big game, with sprawling levels, weapon variety and a campaign length lasting roughly as long as Doom: Eternal did. However, the game doesn’t include a multiplayer component, which was never the focus of previous entries, but at least added to the value proposition. Would I have put down my own money to buy The Dark Ages? No.
But I didn’t have to, as Xbox Game Pass came to the rescue. As a consumer, that’s clearly the better option, and as long as the service is available, I don’t fault anyone for using it to play some incredible AAA games. In that respect, I had a blast ripping through demons in Doom without it burning a hole in my pocket.
On the technical front, this thing runs just as smoothly as the previous title while upping the complexity of its levels, enemy numbers, and fiery effects on screen. I kinda miss the 120fps performance option on console, but I’ll take the ray-traced global illumination that adds a new level of depth to each frame. On Xbox, particularly, the implementation of Dolby Vision expands the generally red colour palette, breathing new life into its wide skyboxes.
Verdict
id Software cooked. While some may bemoan the reduction of movement speed and locked glory kills, I welcome the new additions that further empower the Slayer to become the one-stop demon-ripping shop. New additions such as the mech battles and dragon riding aren’t fleshed out in extraneous detail, but they serve the function they’re built for, and that’s cool with me.
Doom: The Dark Ages is another win for id Software, fulfilling the power fantasy of bashing through demons in hell.
Doom: The Dark Ages is available now on PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PS5. The game is also available through Xbox Game Pass for PC and console.
