Before there were first-person shooters, there was Doom. Well, and a few others including Wolfenstein 3D, but it was Doom that captured the zeitgeist and solidifies that genre of video games we know today as the first-person shooter (FPS), or as they call them back then: Doom clones. Doom-likes, to use modern parlance.
And it was a miracle for Id Software, a new iteration of the company that has long parted ways with the names that made them a household name among PC gaming enthusiasts, to somehow reinvent Doom for a new generation. Rather than go with the flow and made a Call Of Duty-like tactical shooter (which there was an attempt), Doom re-emerged in 2016 as a completely different beast. Still rooted to its past, but a fresh take on FPS. It’s an action-FPS, as the developers like to call it.
And after Doom Eternal upped the ante by evolving the push-forward combat that made Doom (2016) ever-so-famous, how does Id follow that up with this new entry, Doom: The Dark Ages?
The answer to that is two-fold, by going back to the future past, and reinterpret the push-forward combat flow to be something different but still grounded to the essence of Doom. They gave Doomguy a shield.
Look, it may make no sense at first glance, but hear me out.
Presentation
Doom: The Dark Ages continues the aesthetic choice it had going for: a sci-fi world invaded by hell as interpreted by a heavy metal band. This time, it gets more medieval. Yet still sci-fi.
From the vast castles to flying fortresses, to the depths and hell and beyond, The Dark Ages can look and feel samey due to its limited colour palate. But thankfully, the levels themselves have character, enough to make me tell apart this brown hellish landscape is different than the other. One has tons of shipwreck, the other a city big enough that you need a dragon to fly around and one is in literal hell, to name a few examples.
Like any FPS games these days, you do see a good chunk of the weapon equipped on screen, and with The Dark Ages, the shield takes up space too. The 90-degree field-of-view can feel a bit too cramped, so it’s nice that there are options to crank the FOV up and see more things on screen.
And there’s FOV sliders on consoles. Nice.
And what’s more nicer, the game doesn’t faff about and ask if you prioritise resolution or performance. It just gives you solid 60 FPS (as my eyes perceive it) and that’s it. The game runs smooth, with barely a drop in performance.
You can’t talk about modern Doom without not mentioning the soundtrack. Especially after what had transpired after Doom Eternal. It’s a shame the working relationship between composer Mick Gordon and Bethesda/Id Software ended in such a messy way, to put it lightly. And I don’t envy Finishing Move having to live up to the heavy expectations fans have to the music, one of the most important aspects that made the modern Doom revival of 2016 much-celebrated.
The soundtrack itself is good. A lot of heavy metal, obviously. Really bassy, gnarly combination of more traditional instruments paired with the ravish harsh sounds of electric guitars (the main menu theme has the appearance of the cello, which we all know is good enough to make a heavy metal album with).
While it sounds nice, the music doesn’t do much impact to my experience playing the game. The music just sits down below in the mix, as the sounds of demon wailing and your gunshots punch up high. By default, the music is supposed to be louder, and I cranked the volume up still yet find myself not hearing the music pop. It’s just there at the back.
It doesn’t help that the cinematics don’t use enough of the music to really punch up the scene. I can recall one time where they match the action onscreen with the sounds of heavy metal… but I can’t exactly recall what song it was. The synergy between what’s going on screen and the music that’s playing isn’t there.
Listening to the tunes in isolation do show how kickass the music is, but it’s just not integrated well with the game.
That being said, the overall presentation of Doom: The Dark Ages is killer. But so has the previous modern Dooms. I forgot that this is the first entry to run on 9th-gen consoles, because Doom has already been looking and sounding great before. It doesn’t sound like a compliment, but it is. Plus, there’s no issues of performance whatsoever, on a base PS5, at least.
Gameplay
Doom: The Dark Ages is a prequel to the events of Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal, where we see our fabled Doom Slayer, or simply The Slayer (or to some old Doomers out there, just Doomguy) wage a medieval war against demons.
Now, this isn’t ye olde medieval times, the humans you side with have plasma guns, fly ships, have long-distance communicators and has the manner of speech of a modern US military. It’s more medieval sci-fi. Like legally distinct Quake, but with more hellish demons and a sprinkle of Eldritch horror on the side.
Slayer is just out here ripping and tearing. There’s a story that you can follow, the world is established if you read up on those codex entries. But should you just engage with The Dark Ages as just a video game that goes “opening cutscene, game, ending cutscene, end-of-level-screen, next level” you’re off just fine too. It’s not pretending to be a cinematic experience, or force you to be engrossed in the lives of these characters and what’s at stake. You could, but you don’t miss much for leaving your brain turned off when you’re not controlling the Slayer, outside of the cool things Slayer does.
And speaking of controls, my goodness controlling the Slayer feels good. He can haul ass with his default running speed, and haul more ass when sprinting, yet can turn quick enough even at full speed. And he has this heft, not communicated by awful shaky cameras, but the thuds of his footsteps and the destruction he leaves in his wake of going all cheeked up running. You also just auto-ground pound if you fall from a tall enough ledge, leaving the ground to tremor and quake and any conveniently placed cannon fodder demons to splash into smithereens of blood and gibs.
I play on the controller, and the default aiming settings here is just nice. I can land most of my shots, thanks to auto-aim. But most of the time I do feel like that shot was all me, as the stick controls are just at the right sensitivity to move them in place.
The meat of a game like Doom: The Dark Ages is the combat, of course. And this is the most fascinating aspect to this new entry to the modern Doom games. Doom (2016) invented the push-forward combat philosophy where the gameplay loop of the combat is designed to entice players to go aggressive and close up the distance to enemies as much as possible. At the heart of it all is the Glory Kill, essentially the one-button takedown in many other games, expressed in modern Doom as an indulgent display of ultraviolence and a big gameplay reward with copious of resource drops to top you up and keep the pressure on.
Doom: The Dark Ages takes a new spin to this philosophy. Instead of ripping and tearing endlessly by eternally pushing forward, The Dark Ages asks you the player to “stand and fight”.
Slayer has the Shield Saw in this game. And it’s not a weapon you can choose not to use, it’s part of his core moveset used in combat and general traversal. The Dark Ages has no alt fires, as the left trigger on the controller is the dedicated shield block button. You can block attacks, as demons in The Dark Ages throw a lot more big, glowing projectiles that you can either dodge or block.
Even better, there are some projectiles that glow a different colour, green by default, and if you block with your shield at just the right time, well, yes, you parry the attack.
Doom: The Dark Ages has parries.
If you ever thought that modern Doom has the sensibilities of a character action game (and other shooters like Ultrakill has since explored this connection), well, Doom: The Dark Ages makes that natural progression of that thought manifest.
This is no character-action game, though. You’re not doing combos and juggling demons after a launcher. And the parry window by default on Hurt Me Plenty (Normal) difficulty is really, really generous. Some attacks would still be parried even if you put out the shield after what feels like a full second. it’s that generous.
But it does fundamentally change how you play Doom. You might want to bait a parry, as consecutive parries leave demons in a daze which gives an opening to deal damage. And as such, you might not want to move that much. Maybe even considering just standing there, menacingly, as you wait for the green glow to come to you. “Stand and fight.” And parry that tank.
The Shield Saw is really fun, though. Outside of blocks and parries, you can also throw the shield like a boomerang. Seeing a row of demons with shields get instantly wiped with a well-thrown shield of your own (once you soften the shields with enough peppering of your gun of choice until it gets molten hot) is pure satisfaction. So many of these fodder enemy formations is just for you to inflate your ego, or let your id go oonga-boonga and murder them in the coolest way possible.
And it’s useful when fighting big demons too. It can strip off armour pieces, it can stun-lock them if it lands on their squishy bits. Bringing back a thrown Shield is as instantanous as pressing the block button, so you can still block and parry even if you just threw it out, which makes it so forgiving and also play so well.
And you can also do a Shield Bash which can smash enemies from quite a large distance that you can use it as a mobility tool to either get out of dodge or quickly close in to a another gaggle of demons spawning. No, you don’t literally just stand there and fight. Circle-strafing is still the order of the day. But The Dark Ages is more grounded. Not much verticality if any. Just you, a room full of demons and the moveset and arsenal of guns at your disposal. It supposed to evoke the gunplay of the classic Doom games. And I can see it.
And let’s talk about the guns. With no alt-fire in The Dark Ages, the game just add more guns instead. Half of them are a variant of an existing weapon, the same weapon class, that shares ammo. So the Super Shotgun is now an “alt” to the Combat Shotgun. The former can one-hit kill the toughest of demons at close range, the other is more of an all-rounder that can deal damage up to the mid-range.
And there are new guns. Some of them fill the same niche and are more medieval-theme replacements like the Shredder, which is basically your Heavy Cannon in this game. And the Pulverizer, the gun that mulches skulls into deadly projectiles, is basically the Chaingun replacement, but this one spreads its skull-based particles of doom wide while its variant, the Ravager, behaving more like a normal Chaingun.
But there are properly new arsenal you will be one-hand wielding. The Chainshot makes the hold-to-do-more-damage gun mechanic ever so satisfying by having it be the heavy metal equivalent of a gun that pops out a spring-loaded boxing glove. It’s a ball chained to a gun, and it packs a wallop great for smashing squishy demons to a pulp and armour stripping.
Weapons still have mods, well, sort of. You will have to spend three different resources of increasing rarity to upgrade your weapons to the fullest. Some upgrades are mandatory, while others you can switch between two different passives at any time, like mods are. If you prefer to use the Combat Shotgun to farm fodder enemies for armour pickups instead of making them just quickly explode, feel free. The permanent upgrades are great though. Take the returning Rocket Launcher. It’s best used at range as the splash damage can hurt yourself. But its upgrade allows you to heal from the splash damage instead, as long as you activate the ability which triggers upon a successful parry. More reasons to stand and fight.
The chainsaw, the limited but very useful resource that can one-shot a weak enemy and drop ammo, has been replaced with a melee system. Instead of a one-to-one replacement, melee comes in three different weapons which you can toggle, and has their own upgrade path as well. The default gauntlet lets you hit quick if you need those ammo drops, while another weapon has only one charge and it will be a long while until you can use it again… but drop every weapon ammo type in one hit. The choice is yours on how you want to slay, and the multiple options do give some slight variance in playstyle changes.
Doom: The Dark Ages takes it sweet time doling out these new toys to you, slowly introducing the many tools of the trade throughout the game. And it made me look forward to the next combat sequence. Between the exploration, the arena combat encounters, and the occasional diversion of riding a dragon or piloting a mech or a gun turret sequence helps keep the pace just nice throughout the campaign.
Like past games, you’ll be locked into an arena when a major encounter starts, and the only to progress is to rip and tear until it is done.
Big demons of various variety with different movesets, gimmicks and weaknesses will need to be turned dead. From Stalker Imps that are barely visible and likes to come too close to the Mancubus that will greet you with a parriable attack and douses of flamethrowers if you get too close for their comfort. And from the pesky Arachnodemons that will pepper you to death by a thousand bullets to the Revenants that can turn ghastly and impervious to damage unless you parry one of the green skulls they throw at you. Plus, some of the newer demons will have combo attacks that require sequential parries.
In-between the combat, you get to explore the landscapes of this medieval sci-fi world. The Automap is still one of the best 3D maps in video games with its easy-to-parse presentation. The exploration itself is fun as the maps are designed to be investigated at each nook and cranny. And ledges, you never know if there’s a hidden platform down there you can fall down to.
Some levels are sprawling and non-linear, letting the Slayer to go around and do the rounds clearing all the objectives and find all the secrets. Some more linear, with clear points of no return to keep you pushing forward and progress. Outside of the tedious statue hunting for Wraithstones, these are all fun, with straightforward puzzles. You just have to look very, very carefully and try to think like the level designer to find all the solutions you need. There’s no backtracking, you can 100% each level on first play if you’re thorough enough.
And these breaks really makes you luster for the next combat encounter. It serves as a good distraction and help pace out the fights.
Overall, I love this reinvention of modern Doom’s established action-FPS combat loop. The addition of the Shield Saw makes Doom: The Dark Ages not just “more Doom”, or “better Doom” but a “different Doom”. A new flavour of Oreo rather than an improved formula of the original. And that’s really neat. You can still enjoy Doom Eternal and Doom: The Dark Ages’ style of combat as two separate experiences, which I find refreshing.
The developers figured out a new flavour twist to its push-forward combat yet still retains all the great elements that made past modern Doom games modern classics. Truly a commendable achievement.
Content
I finished Doom: The Dark Ages in less than 20 hours, on Hurt Me Plenty difficulty, and attempting to 100% every level by doing copious amount of exploration. The game is upfront in stating how many chapter (levels) it has, 22. Some levels are longer, sprawling adventures. Some are shorter set-pieces. Each surprisingly memorable, despite the samey colour palette. It makes the perfect for those who game in sessions. Especially if you only can find a good hour or two in a day to play video games.
I personally don’t think the story’s that compelling. It’s there, if you want it. But you can skip the cutscenes and the only things you’re missing are the cool cinematics where Slayer does Slayer things: Slay. His screen presence presents some serious aura and it’s just majestic to behold, for a guy that barely speaks, out of choice, throughout the game.
Surprisingly, Doom: The Dark Ages don’t come with any other accoutrements. No Snapmap. No Battlemode or any kind of multiplayer.
Yet I don’t feel like this game needed those. The Dark Ages just presents you with a 15+ hours of a single-player campaign, take it or leave it. And I think for most players, they wouldn’t mind taking it. The campaign’s damn good!
Personal Enjoyment
I’m not a big Doom fan, or a big FPS guy for the matter, only dabble here and there. I tried a few hours of Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal and enjoyed them. But just didn’t have the drive to play them all in my own time.
But when they showed that Doomguy can parry in The Dark Ages, of course I’m seated and excited.
And it happens to be that I just completed a long game where I was devastated for being exposed to not be that good at parrying. And then Doom: The Dark Ages comes in and lets you adjust the parry window as a difficulty option, hell yeah.
Granted, I didn’t adjust anything from the Hurt Me Plenty difficulty, and here I am, parrying just about anything I can. I feel alive again.
But really, the ballet of death Doom: The Dark Ages is something I relish. The arenas are unique enough and the enemy compositions varied enough that it doesn’t feel like a slog. And with ample downtime via exploration opportunities and some wide-open levels to wander around, it makes me yearning for that next fight. Every time I open up the Automap and see I’m close by to red area, which signals an arena combat encounter, I am locked in.
And the fun of it comes from the many ways you can express yourself via demon genocide. There are weapons more suited than others, but finding your own way to kill ’em all really is peak. Whether that be constantly juggling through all the weapon classes or stubbornly use the combat shotgun for the entire encounter (no really, the base shotty is pretty decent here). It’s always fun. Especially when you find that flow. This game can get you into that zone, man. The combat’s that good.
In some ways, Doom: The Dark Ages reminds my of the Ratchet & Clank series, in that most of the fun comes from letting loose on goons with your vast arsenal of weapons, and also take a break with a bit of exploration in between the combat. And it makes sense though, both games have what’s essentially an insta-win gun.
While the story don’t excite me as much, but seeing the Slayer slay and see people flinch and step back whenever he turns around and make eye contact will never be not funny. Same goes to the many instances that people (and demons) have to acknowledge the Slayer is simply a force of nature.
Verdict
Doom: The Dark Ages proves this old dog still has the dog in it, and it can learn new tricks. The Shield Saw being part of the Slayer’s core moveset is an inspired choice as it allowed the action-FPS to express a little bit of that character-action pizazz while still retain the spirit of modern Doom’s push-forward combat philosophy of hyper-aggressive, always-moving, flow-state-inducing gameplay.
Whether you’re an old fan of Doom or never played any of the Doom games, you’ll find Doom: The Dark Ages to be a blast. It carries the spirit of the past Doom games and modern Doom games. It satisfies that carnal need to do something violent. And you can safely let out all your rage out, let that id in you do what it needs to do, in the safe confines of a video game. Id Software has made another modern classic shooter.
Played on base PS5. Review code provided by the reviewer.
Doom: The Dark Ages
Whether you're an old fan of Doom or never played any of the Doom games, you'll find Doom: The Dark Ages to be a blast. It carries the spirit of the past Doom games and modern Doom games. It satisfies that carnal need to do something violent. And you can safely let out all your rage out, let that id in you do what it needs to do, in the safe confines of a video game.
Id Software has made another modern classic shooter.
- Presentation 8.5
- Gameplay 9.5
- Content 8.5
- Personal Enjoyment 8.5