4.5/5 ★ – bryansbane's review of DOOM: The Dark Ages.

Unfortunately, much of the conversation around DOOM: The Dark Ages will probably be how it compares to DOOM Eternal. It is quite different, but by the end of my playthrough I found it to be of the same quality as both Eternal and DOOM (2016). What’s so great about this modern DOOM trilogy is that each game is different from each other. They all share similar traits that make them the high quality true to form DOOM experience you love, but deviate in smart and effective ways. Where 2016 had a more modernized take on classic DOOM, Eternal really cranked up the systems and micromanaging of both your weapons and the enemies on screen. For all the shared traits of these two titles, they had different core philosophies of play. The Dark Ages is clearly id Software trying to find balance between the two, while simultaneously doing some new things entirely. For me, I think this likely resulted in my favorite game of the modern trilogy. There are insane amounts of enemies on screen, a visual style that’s engaging, weapons that have some really cool modifications and a badass shield that’s one for the ages, no pun intended. There’s a focus here that reminds me of 2016, but goes back even further to the original DOOM games. They reignite the feeling of constantly strafing in between projectiles while traversing through giant open battlefields. There is less platforming than ever and knowing where item pickups on the map are become essential. Glory kills are tuned way back intentionally which will upset some, but I quickly found that they’re still here in a big way. The combat flow is now even smoother. Enemy redesigns are familiar yet fresh and the rules of engagement are new and exciting. You’ll be weakening demons armor and parrying their attacks to end them as quickly as possible. Your shield is an instrumental part of this, offering many different ways of killing and rarely being used for defense. There’s a huge focus on story for better or worse in The Dark Ages and that will be up to you to decide. On one hand, the narrative is very weak, but on the other there is more opportunities than ever to show how badass the Doomslayer is in high fidelity cutscenes that are often quite long. For as little of an impact the story will have, it’s hard to care because that’s never what we were here for to begin with. In a similar vein, no longer do we have Mick Gordon composing the soundtrack and it’s immediately noticeable. While it’s a shame the music never reaches the highs of the prior two entries, by the end I think you’ll come to believe they were at least within distance of it (albeit far away). I’m not sure whether it was always the intent or not, but this soundtrack does invoke the vibes of classic DOOM more than Mick’s work, which lended itself well to the games design which is already leaning heavily into those earlier games. DOOM: The Dark Ages came on the heels of two of the greatest FPS games ever. The expectations I had were initially high, but cooled by the time the game was releasing. I wasn’t confident the setting and the slew of changes could impress or delight me the way they ended up doing. I am very glad my concerns were unfounded. If you specifically want Eternal 2, you won’t get it here. Be open minded, and play past the first 5 missions and I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. id Software has dropped another modern FPS piece of greatness upon us, we should only feel lucky we got to live to see it.