4/5 ★ – PhatBaby's review of DOOM: The Dark Ages.

A really weird game to judge in a way, because I can't help feeling that, deep, deep down in the inner reaches of my soul, I'm disappointed by this. Which is wild, because, I'll say it loud and proud, I was cruising, bruising and havin' a good ol' time out here. If it was, let's say, Duke Nukem's fat-ass head slapped onto the Doom Slayer's body, I'd be out here raving about how Duke Nukem didn't have to cook this hard. But it's a Doom game, developed by id Software, and they have the unique problem of being the goddamn Mozart of first-person shooters. They've spent the last decade finessing two symphonies of frenetic action carnage with soundtracks so good I'd happily crank them until my ears spurt blood and a pair of largely different but fantastic gameplay loops that are so intrinsically satisfying they make you feel like an dripped-out, aura-farming giga-chad despite the fact you're eating doritos in your mom's basement at 4 am while playing them. Doom 2016 is an absolute masterpiece, and Eternal was a sexy piece of ass too. And, by comparison, this sort of feels like a step back while also being really, exceptionally good. When you've shipped two games that rejuvenised and reawakened the boomer shooter and made it cooler than ever, it's just really hard to play another one and not expect it to do that all over again. But, in all honesty, that's kind of just me being spoiled. I'm the rich kid who got a Bugatti and a Lamborghini for his last two birthdays, so the new Porsche my mom bought me just ain't getting me riled up. I guess what I'm trying to say, in the most entitled way possible, is that while I loved this, I hope some of the big swings, while ultimately making for a really damn fun game, aren't the future of Doom. And luckily, id is allergic to ever making the same game twice, so I think they probably won't be. So, to be annoying and crank out shit I'd say didn't work for me, story was... yeah... it was there... for sure. It existed, I cannot deny that. It's funny, because they keep trying to figure this problem out when 2016 had that shit on lock. Just base it entirely from the perspective of the Doom Slayer, who doesn't care. He's just this big, fat, aura-farming bastard; this angel of death with his steel-barreled sword of justice who wakes up, is like, oh, this shifty little cyborg crab is cooking up satan shit on Mars, well, better go kill him. And every character is desperately trying to tell him why, and bro is us. He's like, I don't care, man. I gotta shoot my cool shotgun and punch stuff. Another obvious one, but the lack of Mick Gordon is felt exponentially. The music is fine, but as a man who works out to Eternal's soundtrack pretty much every gym session, it felt like getting Branston baked beans instead of Heinz. Generally, the design and structure just didn't really get the gears grinding either. The open-world levels kill the pacing and leave bigger levels feeling a bit too fatty, and it's slightly too forgiving; it kinda feels like a hard overcorrection from Eternal. But I think my biggest grievance is just that it didn't sink the hooks in like the last two games. It's very different, but there's not enough to those changes to make that individuality translate to depth. By about half way, I had everything it was offering on lock, and it sucked to feel like I didn't really need to change strategy or think about how I played. But all these things don't make it a bad game; they just didn't really align with what I wanted from a Doom game, and even then, I still had a great time. When you reach the flow state, this is an expertly well put-together, polished shooter that's very fun and an incredible "turn my brain off and shoot some shit" kinda experience. It's id at the end of the day. You know it's gonna be so fucking satisfying to chain together blowing apart dudes heads while hitting them with a flail and listening to that oh so satisfying armour pick-up sound. And I do fuck with the whole "stand and fight" gimmick, even if I may prefer Doom to feel a bit faster moment-to-moment. It takes a little while longer to figure out how the game wants you to approach it, but when you realise the idea now is that you're not a fighter jet like in Eternal but instead a fat, lard-ass tank, wading in with your DOPE-ass shield (sorry, side note, the shield is PHENOMENAL and should be in every Doom game from now on), it manages to really find a solid rythym. Parrying is fun, and it allows for some cool moments mid-fight where you can actually stare an enemy down and feel like an aura-farming badass, which Eternal kinda ditched by kicking your ass for funsies every five minutes. I think generally, where you're gonna fall on this depends on what kind of Doom game you want. The beauty of id being so liberal with experimenting with Doom is that everyone's gonna have one that clicks for them more. I'm a Doom 2016 kiddie. I like feeling like an unstoppable force of nature that's zooming around, ripping little gremlin heads off. But I know people who liked Eternal more. And I'm sure some folks will like this more, too. And so while it didn't click entirely for me compared to the previous two, I think it's so damn cool that we can see a studio so in their own bag right now that they want to experiment with the formula to give people a different flavour of something they love. And by extension, what's sick is that their next Doom game will probably be entirely different again, and we can have this exact same conversation. At the end of the day, I like the big green man, and I like it when he shoots shit with his shotgun. That's my actual review. Goodbye.