Doom: The Dark Ages Review

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The Doom franchise has been around for around 30 years. It’s seen its share of reboots over that time and in a way Doom: The Dark Ages is yet another reboot. While it still feels similar to 2016’s reboot and the Doom Eternal sequel, there’s enough here to make it feel new and rejuvenated.

The Plot Thickens

Doom: The Dark Ages is a much grittier and dark entry into the Doom franchise. Serving as a prequel to the 2016 reboot, Doom Slayer is being used as a weapon by humans, the Sentinels, against the hordes of hell. Slayer is being held by the Maykrs a friendly alien species. The Maykrs have found a way to control the Slayer and make his hatred of the demon’s his sole focus.

The plot revolves around the demon’s trying to get a hold of a powerful artifact that will make the prince of hell an unstoppable force. The Sentinels have part of it and are trying to defend it while trying to figure out where the rest of it is. While no one is coming to the Doom series for its gripping narrative, I was actually quite impressed with The Dark Ages story. For the first time there felt like a real emphasis on it. The cutscenes were more frequent than ever before, and while it won’t be nominated for best story, it was certainly a step up in terms of storytelling.

The one thing that could have been done a bit better is the character building. There aren’t that many characters involved in the story, and the ones that are we don’t really know much about. Again, no one is coming to Doom for gripping characters, but with the new emphasis on the story it would have been nice to see a bit more development in that department.

It is also stunning to look at. It’s weird to describe a setting that’s so dark and gritty as beautiful, but iD has done a fantastic job making Doom: The Dark Ages look like one of the best games of the generation. It runs at a smooth 60fps on the Xbox Series X and I didn’t encounter any technical issues during the roughly 35 hours I’ve put into it so far while looking for all the hidden areas that I’ll discuss later.

Guns Galore

Everyone comes to Doom for its frenetic pace and constant action, and The Dark Ages delivers on both fronts, although a little more subdued than the previous games. Everything in The Dark Ages is just a bit more grounded, and iD purposely did so. Most of the combat takes place as waves of demons look to tear you apart, however the open world chapters spread things out just a bit more.

When it comes to those waves of enemies there is typically a leader you must defeat. The leader ensures more enemies will continue to spawn until it is defeated. In some instances the leader can be killed right away, limiting the amount of enemies you have to deal with.

In other instances the leader will be protected by a shield and cannot be hurt until you’ve defeated enough enemies in the area to break the shield. These battles are easily the most intense sections of the game, often times leaning you scrambling for ammo, health and armor.

You have a full arsenal of weapons at your disposal, from classics like the Super Shotgun to newcomers to the series such as the Skull Crusher that spits out shards of bone and shreds the enemies to bits. All the guns felt great to use and made for a varied playstyle. When I wasn’t chasing the masteries for each weapon I mostly stuck with a Super Shotgun and the Cycler combination. The Shotgun is fantastic up close and the Cycler is great for more range. Once powered up it also can do a lot of extra damage with it’s electric shock.

Of course, Doom isn’t anything without the melee, and there are a few fun options in The Dark Ages as well. My personal favorite is the flail. Considering how vital melee is for combat, as you gain health and ammo anytime you do melee someone, I preferred it for its multiple charges. The mace does far more damage but it also only has a single charge.

Rip & Tear

The chainsaw also makes a return to the Doom series, but in sticking with the medieval themes it comes in the form of a shield. You can block incoming attacks however it is not unlimited. After taking so much damage your shield will temporarily break and need to recharge. Enemies will also shoot many different projectiles at you, almost in a mini bullet hell like fashion. Red attacks can only be blocked or dodged; however green attacks can be parried if you time it right. You can also parry certain melee attacks. When parrying a melee attack the game will slow down for a brief moment giving you a chance to get some more significant damage in.

Parrying these attacks is by far the most effective way to use the shield and will save you a lot in battles. A parried attack often will stun an enemy, or for those that wear armor help damage or break it.

While the shield can be used as… well a shield, its main use is actually for offense. The shield can be thrown and will turn into a flying chainsaw saucer, ripping and tearing through anything in its path. For bigger enemies it will get embedded into them and stun them for a few seconds. The shield is also your best bet for breaking armor off the larger enemies as well as enemies that carry shields themselves. Armor and shields will get hot the more damage they take from gunfire. Once it becomes red you can throw your shield out and break it off the enemies or break the shields completely.

You can also use the shield as a way to pull yourself into the thick of battle. Using a shield charge by locking onto an enemy will pull you instantly over to them and deliver a blow. It’s one of many great ways to control the hectic battlefield and at times pull you away from danger.

About half way through the game you will also be introduced to shield runes. Runes are special abilities specific to the shield. While there are only 4 different runes each one adds a unique element to the combat. You can only have 1 active so you can’t stack them or anything, but they all work the same. Whenever you do parry one of the green projectile attacks it will trigger the rune. My favorite rune to use was the auto turret. Once activated with a parry it will sit on your shoulder for a few seconds and kill anything in its path.

One thing I will mention that may upset some fans is that execution kills, and the game in general has far less gore in it than previous games. While previous iterations had many animations that would turn the gore up to 1,000, The Dark Ages is far more subdued. The executions are now mostly just basic kicks or punches. The developers said it was to help smooth out the gameplay and it certainly did that, but some fans may want more gore. It is Doom after all.

Mechs & Flying Dragons? Oh Yeah!

The Dark Ages also features 2 new mechanics to help split up the gameplay. A few missions feature a giant mech known as an Atlan. The Atlan is a giant mech to defeat the mammoth demons. These missions are few and far between and the Atlan is fairly basic. It has a melee and stomp attack and you can dodge attacks. A perfect dodge will help fill your attack gauge. Once the gauge is filled you can perform a finisher move. Get hit and the meter resets.

The other new feature is the Slayers dragon. Again, the dragon is only featured in a couple of missions but it is effective and far more enjoyable than the Atlan. The dragon can fly around the big maps and dogfight other flying ships. These ships don’t fight back and are pretty much on rails which takes away some of the excitement, but they are still fun to chase down and attack.

Unfortunately, the dragon’s gameplay is fairly basic as well. You lock onto what you need to attack, usually a ships cannon or these worm looking enemies and are instantly moved to directly in front of them. Once locked on you must dodge their attacks. When an attack is green you can do a perfect dodge which will turn the dragon’s bullets into larger, more powerful plasma bullets. This is how you defeat the enemies. There is no real flying around and attacking, its just this one mechanic. I’d love to see the dragon return in future games but a bit more fleshed out.

The good news when it comes to the dragon is that when it does defeat the few giant demons it encounters, if you use the execution to do so it is filled with gore. So if you need your fix of crazy animations and sick gore, this is the time to get it.

Open World Doom

One of the big things the developers have talked about in the lead up to release has been the fact that The Dark Ages is much more open world than its predecessors, and that is somewhat true. There are some open world levels, but not many. I will say that while most of the levels are still linear, they do at least give a slight feeling of open world. The level will be linear and then you will get to a section where you can have a choice of where to go next. In that sense they are open world letting you decide which direction to go in but I wouldn’t really call them open world.

The few chapters that are truly open world though do a good job of it. Like the Atlan and dragon, these chapters help keep the game feeling fresh. None of the open worlds are that massive, you could probably run from one side of the map to the other in a matter of a few minutes, but compared to the confines of tiny hallways it does what it needs to do.

Each chapter also features a bunch of hidden areas that often require you solving some basic puzzles. Most of the puzzles involve using the shield, either to cut chains, turn into a gear to raise a platform or door, or shield charge to knock a crate over to help you get to a higher spot. There is also a shield recall move that lets you pull yourself up to high areas that are highlighted by a green looking statue.

You will definitely want to take your time in trying to find all these hidden areas as they often contain valuable resources or collectibles. The games upgrading system revolves around finding in game gold scattered about the chapters as well as finding Rubies and Wraithstones to fully upgrade all your weapons and attacks. By fully upgrading each weapon you can work on the mastery challenges for each one, adding even more varied game play to your experience.

And some of the areas really are well hidden. Having gotten 100% of everything in each of the first 13 chapters (I will be doing them all but just had to start moving quicker to get this review up!) I can confidently say some will be easy to figure out and some will take some time. Due to looking for everything its hard to put a length of time on a playthrough of Doom: The Dark Ages, but if I had to guess I’d say its about a 20-25 hour experience depending on difficulty setting and just how much you want to do. iD has said its the biggest Doom yet and that would seem to check out.

Final Thoughts

Doom: The Dark Ages takes a very positive step forward for me in the sense that it really added a narrative experience I could get invested in. The gameplay is still as tight as expected with crisp movement and the added weapons alongside the staples of Doom were a nice touch and fit well with the medieval theme, especially the shield saw.

While the Atlan and dragon sections were great to split up the game play, the mechanics of both were too minimal to make much of an impact beyond that. With some added features they could be a good addition moving forward but for now they don’t have the impact I think iD was looking for.

All of this has left me deeply satisfied with this current direction of Doom and excited to see where they go with it next. As someone who wants story in my single player games Doom: The Dark Ages delivered in a way previous Doom games never did while keeping the core fans happy with the crisp, varied gun play. Doom: The Dark Ages is a must play for fans and is a great place to start for newcomers.