5/5 ★ – LCSnoogs's review of DOOM: The Dark Ages.

I didn’t get into DOOM until the 2016 game, so I don’t have much experience with the historic franchise. I, like many, really enjoyed the reimagining of the classic series. At the time, it felt like a better version of Halo in its pacing of action and bullet-sponge enemies. The glory kill mechanic was the big hit of the game. Going against the trend of hiding behind cover to regain health, 2016’s DOOM required players to keep attacking to pull off a glory kill causing enemies to spew out health drops. It doubled down on the run-and-gun first-person shooter genre by forcing the player to constantly run and gun. The follow-up, DOOM Eternal, pushed the glory kill concept even further to the point I couldn’t compare it to any other shooter. It was in completely new territory. Every weapon was required to fight with each suited for different enemy types, and different types of glory kills dropped different types of resources. This led to a juggling act of balancing resources, monitoring cooldowns, and shooting with precision. It was the most difficult game I played that year, and beating it is an achievement I carry with pride. Even though I loved DOOM Eternal and preferred it to DOOM 2016, the game appeared to be divisive. A vocal group of fans felt the series was moving in the wrong direction after the first reboot. The marketing of the new game, DOOM: The Dark Ages, felt like they were trying to reassure players they were moving away from Eternal. The pitch for Dark Ages was “stand and fight” straying away from what they called the “fighter jet” gameplay of Eternal. They greatly reduce the player’s ability to jump in comparison to Eternal. Instead, DOOM: The Dark Ages gives the player a shield to stand their ground and block and parry incoming attacks. The team did say they want to try to make something different every time, so it may not have been the slight against Eternal haters thought it was. Having played Dark Ages, the game does not commit to the “stand and fight” idea they were selling, but it does differentiate itself from the previous games to stand on its own. With impressive scale, surprising adventure game elements, and an awesome shield, id Software delivered another great entry into the DOOM series. The ”stand and fight” idea is thrown out the window quickly. DOOM: The Dark Ages will often drop the player into an arena filled with enemies. The shield can only block what’s in front of me, and I found myself surrounded by enemies shooting me from all directions most of the time. Even when blocking shots, the shield can only take a certain amount of damage before it becomes unusable. I then have to wait for it to cool down before I can use it again. This is a run-and-gun game still pushing it closer to feeling like DOOM 2016. Dark Ages even goes back to using one glory kill which causes enemies to drop the health and ammo a player needs. There is a little DOOM Eternal sprinkled into Dark Ages too. Plasma weapons are the best option for enemies with plasma shields as plasma weapons can overload them to cause an explosion damaging nearby enemies. But unlike DOOM Eternal, I don’t have to use plasma weapons to destroy those shields. I can use any weapon. It will take more ammo to destroy them. They won’t explode, but it’s still possible to break them and kill those enemies with any weapon. There’s also a weapon that’s good against armor, but again, any weapon will do as long as I shoot the armor enough. The move away from DOOM Eternal isn’t a bad thing, but I did see one drawback: the guns. Since all weapons work in all situations, they don’t all matter. I found myself slowly using fewer guns the deeper I got into the game, and yet, the game kept providing me with new ones. The arsenal is big with two versions of each weapon type. There are two shotguns, plasma guns, skull guns, explosive guns, etc. There’s a weapon called the Shredder that shreds skulls to fire a wide spray of skull bits at enemies. It’s cool, but I dropped it about halfway through the game as it wasn’t the most useful weapon at hand. I went from swapping guns to try out new weapons to swapping guns to use the most advantageous weapons to swapping guns only because I ran out of ammo to not swapping guns at all. By the end of the game, I exclusively used a double-barreled, automatic plasma gun called the Cycler. All these guns get a limited upgrade tree. My Cycler overcharges enemies if I shoot them enough causing each subsequent shot to do extra damage. Once the overcharged enemy dies, electricity shoots out of the it causing all nearby enemies to be stunned. With that buff, the ability to explode plasma shields, and the 300 max ammo limit upgrade, it was the only gun I needed. This feels like a stepdown from Eternal. Even DOOM 2016 made its arsenal matter more. In this first-person shooter, the guns aren’t the main draw. The shield is the star of the show. It can block and parry. Parrying is limited to attacks highlighted with green. Enemy tells provide enough time to react for the parry. Enemy projectiles move slower with only some having the potential for parrying. It gives me enough time to dodge projectiles I can’t parry while moving towards the ones I can. It’s an approach reminiscent of bullet hell games. The shield starts off like a typical shield before the game gives it a chainsaw upgrade. I can throw the chainsaw shield to kill smaller enemies, and for bigger enemies, it will stick in them causing them to stop moving and attacking for a limited time. Throwing the shield can also break armor that has been heated up from taking gunfire. Breaking armor does area of effect damage blowing smaller enemies to pieces. With the shield, I can target enemies to lunge a pretty long distance to slam into them with a forceful enough hit to damage nearby enemies. This move just causes fodder enemy to explode. All shield attacks land with satisfying *THUNK* and *PING* sound effects. Parrying adds an extra slow-motion effect for a few seconds after knocking back an attack for impact while allowing time to prepare for a follow-up attack. Melee attacks have a similar effect with the Slayer unlocking three different melee weapons with varying degree of damage. Melee is limited requiring recharging or a specific item pickup after use to hit enemies again. Parrying recharges the melee attack with more powerful weapons requiring more successful parries to charge. This system became more crucial as the game got more difficult because those melee weapons really pack a punch. Everything about the Slayer’s movements and attacks feel heavy and powerful in this game. Jumping from great heights lands with an impact that generates enough force to obliterate small enemies in the area. Shooting and punching enemies tears chunks off their bodies. It feels good to be the Slayer. The shield isn’t the only new inclusion as the game has dragon-riding and giant mech levels. These mostly function as a novelty to break up the normal first-person shooter gameplay. They don’t last too long and lack the depth of the traditional combat. I do feel they could’ve been done better. The dragon-riding levels are at their best during moments of chasing enemy aircrafts around the level to shoot them down as they try to get away. The high speed and maneuvering through spaces between buildings and tunnels made for intense encounters. But most of the time, the game has me locked in place to dodge projectiles from ships as I shoot down their turrets. I’m riding a dragon. Why are they having me sit still? The issue with the giant mech levels is I can’t feel the scale. I’m fighting other monsters the same size instead of focusing on crushing smaller enemies. The game has me walking slow to give a sense of the size of this machine, but the combat feels like a shallow version of Punch-Out: dodge with one button, punch until I fill up a meter, and then unleash a special attack. There’s no challenge to it. They are trying to create cool moments with these, but they fall flat. There was a piece of the conversation around DOOM 2016 that struck me as odd. People liked the story. I had no idea what the story to DOOM was throughout my playthrough, so I didn’t know what people were talking about. Apparently, some players were reading the codex. I never do this for any game. I always find taking the time to read codex, newspapers, books, and letters in games takes me away from actually playing them for too long. I didn’t read any of them in DOOM: The Dark Ages. This game decided to make the story more of a focus with cutscenes. I didn’t pay attention to those either. It appears to involve Kings and princesses, aliens, and demons. The problem with the story is it involves many characters who don’t have a relationship with the Slayer, and the plot feels so disconnected from the action. The Slayer is a weapon to be unleashed with little agency in the narrative. The only moments that hooked me were when I realized the dragon Slayer rides is his pet. He feeds it and gives it pats on the head. It’s surprisingly cute behavior for this unstoppable killing machine. Even though I didn’t care about the story, this game does go places. Levels taking place on Earth and in Hell are expected, but this game takes Slayer to alien planets and what appeared to be the River Styx. This level variety was even more alarming since I had no idea why any of this was happening. I never thought much about the level design in DOOM games. I feel like it’s mostly just funneling me to the next battle arena. The level design in DOOM: The Dark Ages is amazing. There are still linear levels like in previous games, but there are also new open levels with objectives that can be tackled in any order. Some enemy encounters can be skipped entirely. It’s reminiscent of Halo levels. The developers added adventure game elements to this new DOOM: exploration, puzzles, and collectibles. And a map to keep track of it all. The puzzles in particular are impressive. They eventually reach the level of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild shrines. The alien levels get to play around with gravity and water in mind-bending ways to create puzzles for the player to solve. I was not expecting any of this from a DOOM game. DOOM: The Dark Ages feels like it was marketed wrong. “Stand and fight” is not at all how I would describe this experience. It’s more like run-and-gun-and-slam. So much of my experience as the Slayer showed off his heavy weight and power while still maintaining speed. This is the selling point. Dark Ages might be the best it’s ever felt to be the Slayer which makes the dragon-riding and mech fights disappointing in comparison. At least the adventure game elements were a pleasant surprise giving the game a new structure to separate itself from the past, and the team excels in this new approach evoking the greats of the genre. Id Software continues to impress as one of the best first-person shooter developers.