DOOM The Dark Ages Review - A Step Backwards

Doom is an interesting franchise to talk about, not because of it’s obviously rich history that saw the original game singlehandedly transform the entire game industry, but for it’s ability to evolve and drastically change it’s core game play with each new entry. We’ve seen it in Doom 3, Doom 2016, Eternal and now here in The Dark Ages, with each entry proving that this legendary franchise not only has staying power, but can successfully pivot between fundamentally different styles of game play from one entry to the next. It’s clear that id is not content with simply building upon what works, rather focused on trying to innovate not only their own prestigious IP, but the genre as a whole. This is commendable and I think they deserve a lot of praise for willingly taking such big risks in a flooded market that often plays it safe, delivering more of the same year after year. In this light I think The Dark Ages is another success for the franchise, it is yet again a fundamentally different experience than it’s predecessor, but still a highly polished game that’s unmistakably Doom. This makes it easy to praise and recommend to people, I think it’s a real crowd pleaser, but things get more complicated depending on who you’re talking to.

When Doom 2016 released and brought the series into the modern age, there were plenty of longtime fans that found it disappointing, maybe from abandoning the horror atmosphere of Doom 3 or disliking the locked in an arena loop throughout the game. Then came Eternal that cranked every dial of 2016 up to 11, with it’s complex combat that demanded more from the player than perhaps any other game in the genre. So with a series that changes as drastically as Doom, it’s easy to understand why some fans may love one and dislike another, you may dislike Eternal for it’s overwhelming mechanics while simultaneously appreciating just how finely tuned it was despite it’s complexity. I think all this is important to keep in mind when watching reviews on The Dark Ages, trying to decide whether it’s for you or not. To me Doom 2016 and Eternal were masterpieces in their own ways, I loved them both, the latter of which being one of my favorite FPS games of all time because of it’s impressive replay value thanks to it’s incredible combat sandbox.

Now after beating The Dark Ages and reflecting on my time with it, I genuinely wish I could say that the team at id pulled off the hat trick of 3 masterpieces in a single trilogy, but that just isn’t the case here unfortunately. I personally found The Dark Ages to be a downgrade in every sense of the word, in every area of the game besides the graphics. The whole experience felt like this huge, unnecessary course correction from the criticisms they received on Eternal, but more baffling to me is how they made some of the same mistakes anyways, making the complete gutting of Eternals excellent combat loop feel even more offensive and unnecessary. Where Eternal was this finely tuned, escalating symphony of complex destruction, The Dark Ages is this clunky one trick pony that shows it’s entire hand at about the 5 hour mark of it’s 15 to 20 hour campaign, leaving very little room for the combat to evolve passed throwing everything at the player in tight spaces. So while Doom The Dark Ages is undeniably a highly polished and complete game that most will enjoy, I can’t help but feel now that it’s live on gamepass and more players got their hands on it, it’ll find itself going down as the most divisive Doom title to date, rivaling even Doom 3.

“So while Doom The Dark Ages is undeniably a highly polished and complete game that most will enjoy, I can’t help but feel now that it’s live on gamepass and more players got their hands on it, it’ll find itself going down as the most divisive Doom title to date, rivaling even Doom 3.”

I’d quickly like to mention that my entire time within The Dark Ages was with the game speed set to 150% on Nightmare difficulty with the parry window set to small, but more on all that later. Speaking on performance, this game runs fantastic and looks great all the way through. Granted I played in 2k on an rtx 5070 ti with all settings max, DLSS set to DLAA with frame generation x2, I’ve no doubt that it’s still a highly optimized game for much lower end hardware so long as you’re willing to drop some settings. This is just what id does, the Doom games always showcase their latest id tech engine capabilities with high polish and The Dark Ages is no exception, showing us that id tech 8 is a real powerhouse. I didn’t encounter any major bugs, crashes or even slow downs during the latter half of the games huge firefights. I did have to switch from DLAA to Quality in the final few chapters, only because I was streaming and recording all footage and the fights were starting to affect encoding, otherwise it would have been perfectly fine all the way through. Make no mistake this is a beautiful game, models look great with high fidelity and the level of detail in it’s wide open environments is certainly an achievement.

The Dark Ages is a prequel expanding upon the deep lore that Eternal was mostly implying, set in the distant past before even Doom 2016. The Sentinels are fighting off a Demon invasion and so they call upon their gods, The Maykrs, who have The Doom Slayer brainwashed and tethered to their will, to deploy him for aide, a weapon of mass destruction against The Demons. Now if this is all sounding incredibly silly, it’s only because it is. Doom 2016 began slowly planting the seeds of this sillier side of the lore in the second half of it’s campaign, but mostly maintained a lot of the mystery that kept The Doom Slayer as a badass with a vague past. That mystique surrounding him is important, I think the character works best the less we know and I really started to feel that in Doom Eternal, as even despite my overwhelming love for the game, I greatly disliked how they expanded upon the lore, slowly lifting the veil on what is otherwise an interesting character so long as we’re filling in the blanks ourselves. Still it wasn’t pushed too much to the front and was otherwise a non issue, easy to ignore and hey whose really playing these for a thought provoking story in the first place right? The Dark Ages on the other hand is hell bent on absolutely assaulting you with it’s narrative, taking itself far too seriously while trying to explain and build upon ideas that were only ever alluded to before. While you may be sitting there saying, dude just ignore it or who cares it’s a Doom game, I mean I agree, but there’s just so much of it here that while it was easy to brush aside in the previous 2 entries, it becomes an actual detriment to the game this time around.

“The Dark Ages is a prequel expanding upon the deep lore that Eternal was mostly implying, set in the distant past before even Doom 2016. The Sentinels are fighting off a Demon invasion and so they call upon their gods, The Maykrs, who have The Doom Slayer brainwashed and tethered to their will, to deploy him for aide, a weapon of mass destruction against The Demons.”

I’m not going to get into any spoilers beyond what I’ve already set up which was just the intro to the game anyways, but the story here is so generic and full of every trope we’ve seen thousands of times over again. What’s even worse is by explaining a lot of this, they’re actively making me dislike the narrative as a whole across the trilogy, doing damage it’s predecessors. Several times during the many lengthy cutscenes, I couldn’t help but feel like I was watching a bad comic book movie, like a really bad one. Like a Sony Spiderman spinoff movie bad. Tell me this fucking guy doesn’t fit right into something like Morbius. The line delivery, the writing, the tropes, it’s all just so egregious and comes across as a 13 year olds fan fiction at times, it’s really hard to look the other way and focus solely on the gameplay when what you’re presenting here is so painful to sit through and you’re taking it as seriously as you are. Luckily despite all that, I still don’t really care about the narrative, at the end of the day I just want some good Doom gameplay and that’s were The Dark Ages can still deliver.

While I have a much more nuanced take on the combat loop here than most, make no mistake this game is fun and combat is definitely satisfying, with the tight gun play you’ve come to expect from id. Every weapon feels powerful with clear use cases and look great as they’re ripping and tearing through waves of demons. Of course there’s also the addition of the shield which adds a whole new and unexpected layer to the mix. Obviously it can be raised to outright block attacks, used to charge into the fray, thrown at enemies like you’re Captain Doom Slayer and to parry some attacks. Combined with some excellent audio and visual design that makes every action feel impactful, this all ends up feeling like a really fresh and unique combat loop, especially since id have repeatedly said they’ve focused on returning to the roots of the franchise, with a “stand and fight” philosophy.

“make no mistake this game is fun and combat is definitely satisfying, with the tight gun play you’ve come to expect from id. Every weapon feels powerful with clear use cases and look great as they’re ripping and tearing through waves of demons.”

What this all equates to is a big emphasis on heavy, grounded combat, you’re not jumping around swinging on monkey bars, dashing around to the nearest launchpad or frantically running away in search of a health pickup. Instead it’s clear right from the start that you’re meant to bring the fight to them, using your shield to charge directly into close quarters combat, parrying their melee attacks while distant enemies cast a net of bullet hell towards you, finish the staggered demon off with your mace, weave through the projectiles in search of the the one that can be parried and deflected back to it’s attacker and start the loop over again. It’s very active and visceral, but not overwhelming. There’s not much of a mental stack to keep track of here, you right click on the green glowy bits, press e on the purple dudes and weave in between the red sparklies until the arena is clear.

In the opening I mentioned that this game felt like a clunky one trick pony and so I guess it’s time for that rug pull. The combat really does not ever evolve past the simple loop I laid out before you, which is on full display less than 5 hours into the game. Sure there’s plenty of new weapons and enemies being thrown into the mix, but unlike Doom Eternal, there’s just no real variety to any of it. It all plays the same, right down to the repetitive combat arena design that mostly amounts to either wide open spaces with little cover or claustrophobic close quarters boxes. It’s also incredibly slow, painfully slow for my taste and if they didn’t include the option to crank up the game speed to 150%, I wouldn’t have enjoyed it nearly half as much as I did. I do think the team tried their best to stretch this framework as far as they could, with the returning branching weapon upgrades and upgradeable rune systems which can affect how you play, like a shotgun firing incendiary rounds so demons drop armor or your parry casting magical daggers like you’re playing Elden Ring, there’s some fun ideas here. It’s just such a shame that everything else feels so homogenized in the guise of giving players more options during combat.

A common complaint against Doom Eternal was being forced into certain weapon types and strategies for dealing with specific demons. By the end of the game you were expected to juggle like 6 different cool downs alongside constantly swapping your weapon to optimally deal with the priority targets. Not to mention the whole time you’re supposed to be running circles around the entire arena like you’re some sort of Sonic The Hedgehog from Hell. It was a lot to keep track of, a big mental stack that required a high APM, so I totally understand why it didn’t click with some players, but in id’s desire to address this one criticism, they completely gutted all the complexity and depth from the combat in The Dark Ages. So much so that I actively disagree with the notion that there’s more player choice here, granted I was playing on Nightmare and you definitely start with a higher ammo capacity than in Doom Eternal, but you’re still pigeonholed into dealing with specific demons in optimal ways. It’s always best to break armor with the chainshot then followup with headshots from the impaler, the super shotgun is always the obvious followup to a shield charge regardless of the target, rows of shielded foes require either a plasma weapon to pop or a ballistic weapon to heat up and prime for a shield throw which then pops the entire row. Don’t get me wrong, I like the interplay here, but we’re literally still forced to swap constantly if we’re trying to play optimally, only this time around everything is far slower, including switching weapons.

“I actively disagree with the notion that there’s more player choice here, granted I was playing on Nightmare and you definitely start with a higher ammo capacity than in Doom Eternal, but you’re still pigeonholed into dealing with specific demons in optimal ways.”

So if it’s still the same then what am I complaining about? Well it’s the complete lack of meaningful options from one encounter to the next. The arenas themselves provide very little in the ways of variety, there’s next to no verticality, no interesting layouts of monkey bars, launchpads and warp gates to utilize. This alone makes each fight feel nearly identical to the last, I couldn’t even single out and tell you about any specific encounter I thought was memorable. The enemy compositions also don’t feel as finely tuned as they were in Eternal, I can’t tell if it’s a lack of play testing or rather the combat is just too simple to present any actual variety to player, though I suspect it’s the latter. To me it’s very clear even id was aware of this in the second half of the game where they started resorting to locking you into laughably small spaces, throwing everything at you back to back, including spawning new waves of enemies behind the player constantly. I’d wager that this is also the real reason why we have such a suite of difficulty options like being able to increase game speed, alter the parry window timing, increase projectile speed or player damage, without these the game would have even less replay value. It’s also easy, like really easy, even with my difficulty settings turned up I didn’t encounter too many tough battles. Any difficulty was down to learning the new spawn compositions or a new attack pattern. The question then becomes, why would id do this? Why the over compensation for criticism directed at a highly successful game? The answer lies in the shield, this fucking shield that’s the core central mechanic through the entire game.

Amidst the bullet hell that’s slowly encroaching upon you at all times are some attacks you can parry and deflect back to your attacker, often staggering them and triggering your shields rune ability which as I mentioned can cast magical daggers, activate your auto turret or the very over powered smite that stuns all nearby demons. All melee enemies also have several telegraphed attacks that can be parried, some even have full blown combos that will eventually stagger them for big damage or a glory strike. It is not an exaggeration to say that the entire game was clearly built around this one central mechanic and it’s far worse for it. It makes me question what the hell id even means when they talk about returning to Dooms roots, I guess I just missed the entry where you stood still waiting to parry attacks like you’re playing Sekiro or something. Listen, I like parry mechanics, I like bullet hells, but what the actual fuck is this doing in a Doom game? No it isn’t bad, it’s actually quite fun for a couple of hours, but it’s so shallow and never evolves passed waiting for the green glowy bits to parry until it’s your turn to attack. In fact during several of the later game encounters, I was over thinking how to approach enemy compositions by frantically running around, swapping weapons and looking for weaknesses to exploit. Instead the optimal play was to shield charge face to face with the enemy and stand still waiting to parry attacks. They really embraced their stand and fight design philosophy.

“I like parry mechanics, I like bullet hells, but what the actual fuck is this doing in a Doom game? No it isn’t bad, it’s actually quite fun for a couple of hours, but it’s so shallow and never evolves passed waiting for the green glowy bits to parry until it’s your turn to attack.”

It just isn’t fun after awhile, despite being technically solid and by no means an outright bad design. There’s absolutely nothing new on offer after the 5 hour mark, you’ve seen it all and will continue to go through the same motions until the credits roll, including some of the most disappointing boss fights I’ve experienced in awhile that boil down to the same “stand and fight” nonsense. The biggest irony in all of this is they stripped away Doom Eternals complexity in favor of a more universal and accessible mechanic that I’m certain will not click with everyone. If people hated the Marauder in Eternal, then I’m genuinely curious how they’re going to respond to enemies like the Agaddon Hunter or new Cyber Demon where a similar design philosophy is present, only now you’re expected to also enjoy parry and stagger systems, something I know the average player doesn’t. I haven’t even mentioned that the glory kill system was removed in favor of striking an enemy with your mace, I get that it’s to keep the pace of the new combat loop, but it only adds to the repetitive nature of the game. All of the strike animations look a bit silly and lack the raw power we’ve come to expect the Doom Slayer being capable of, actually they kind of reminded me of Avowed which is not a game I wish to be reminded of.

With the more grounded approach to level design, the breaks in combat took a hit as well with light puzzles being little more than a 10 second distraction. Maps are also much larger and non linear this time around, so a good portion of downtime is spent in the map menu looking for secrets and running to the next encounter. To help break up standard combat further are these giant mech and dragon sections, hell even a couple of turret sections like we’re playing Duke Nukem Forever or something. Look I gotta be honest, the giant mech and dragon sections are fucking terrible and the game would be much better off without them. The mech is little more than a button mashing mini game while the dragon is basically a somehow worse version of the Batmobile in Arkham Knight, everyone loved that right? No I didn’t find them badass, no they weren’t fun sections to play through and no their inclusion in the story didn’t elevate it in the slightest. I can’t imagine the player that finishes one of these sections and thinks to themselves “oh hell yeah, I can’t wait to replay that.” Actually I don’t even want to meet those players, you do you buddy, now go finish your applesauce.

Finally what ties all of this together? What’s been stuck in our heads since the first Doom graced us 32 years ago? Some iconic badass music of course, a good soundtrack is a core feature in this franchise and it’s absolutely a requirement at this point. Mick Gordon is a hell of an act to follow and I don’t envy anyone that’s had to try. At this point I’ve already dropped a whole videos worth of hot takes so whats one more right? I found the music here to be painfully generic, in fact all it did was aide in making the entire game feel repetitive. First off the audio mix is way off, so I had to crank the music up in the options just to hear it properly and once I did I was graced with the same 3 power chords for 15 hours straight. There is very little variety to the tracks, with many of them just kind of droning on and on, almost like these guys don’t even want to be there. It really reminded me of some garage metal, you know the dudes in your high school that had a moderately successful side project or those backyard gigs you’d go to every weekend when you were young. I can hear the money behind the production, but ultimately it’s just generic metal 101 to me, with very little hooks or hype moments that get the adrenaline pumping. The way the music ebbs and flows between combat and exploration is also handled significantly worse here than the previous 2 games, especially when encountering a new enemy type, it contributes very little to the experience. I’m not trying to say it can only be Mick Gordon on this franchise, though I wouldn’t mind that, but this soundtrack just completely missed the mark for me.

“There is very little variety to the tracks, with many of them just kind of droning on and on, almost like these guys don’t even want to be there. It really reminded me of some garage metal, you know the dudes in your high school that had a moderately successful side project or those backyard gigs you’d go to every weekend when you were young.”

Towards the end of the game I was also noticing some tracks that didn’t sound like they were mastered properly, especially some of the final songs that would jarringly transition between each other. These guys clearly have the skills to produce good music, so I’m gonna have to place the blame on id here. Maybe they got the Mick Gordon treatment of having little to no thematic direction and had to bang this thing out on an unrealistic schedule while being gaslit that their work wasn’t matching the teams vision. Hope those guys at least got paid for this without having to work on 2 more Bethesda projects first. Stay classy Marty.

Let’s see what else is there, oh yea, there’s no multiplayer component this time around, which I don’t know. I put a good chunk of time into both Doom 2016’s and Eternals multiplayer, though neither were particularly deep they were still fun side activities that only added more value to already excellent games. So on the one hand I don’t really care that it’s absent here since I don’t wish to play anymore of this game, but on the other it is less product for more money, a product that I personally feel already suffers from a major lack of replay value, so it’s up to you to decide if this bothers you or not. Frankly I don’t understand why we haven’t gotten a simple horde mode yet, let’s just team up with some Doom bros and decimate waves of demons together like a Killing Floor clone or something. Space Marine 2 just showed us that simple throwback multiplayer modes can still be a good time, the framework is already here so why not put some development time into it? Tell you what, let’s stop with this silly ass narrative you keep insisting to expand upon and put that money into a competent multiplayer mode instead.

Before I close out this review I want to share some thoughts I had towards the end of the game, especially during the cosmic realm sections, which we already saw in promo material that spoiled cthulu, whose also a major letdown by the way, but I think this game should have been a Quake reboot in the same way Doom 2016 was. Granted I don’t immediately think of parrying and bullet hell gameplay when I think of Quake, but they could have positioned this as a solid Quake reboot with minor retooling. Lean harder into and focus solely on the eldritch stuff, which feels a little out of place here anyways and really hone in on the darker universe of Quake. After all, this whole game feels a bit like a spinoff of Doom as it is, so why not bring back another beloved franchise from the dead. No, instead we have Doom The Dark Ages, a game that’s by no means bad despite my heavy criticisms of it, but also one that absolutely fails to live up to it’s predecessors legacies. Forced into their tall shadows as the inferior experience simply through direct comparison, were this not Doom it wouldn’t have to shoulder such a burden, but it is, so here we are.

“Doom The Dark Ages, a game that’s by no means bad despite my heavy criticisms of it, but also one that absolutely fails to live up to it’s predecessors legacies. Forced into their tall shadows as the inferior experience simply through direct comparison, were this not Doom it wouldn’t have to shoulder such a burden, but it is, so here we are.”

Look I definitely had enough fun with it to justify a playthrough and can generally recommend it to most people, but I also don’t really think it’s worth it’s asking price due to how quickly it becomes repetitive and lacks any sort of replay value. It’s a one and done kind of game, this isn’t Doom Eternal that’s still on your hard drive cause you go back to remind the demons you’re the only one they fear every few weeks. There just isn’t enough depth here for that and I suspect there’s gonna be a whole new segment of players that dislike the unavoidable emphasis on timing parries, even if they also disliked Eternals combat. It really felt like an over compensated course correction that alienated Doom Eternal fans, such as myself, while managing to present a new combat framework that may still not even appeal to those players they’re hoping to recapture.

Doom The Dark Ages is certainly not worth its asking price, but it may be worth an eventual playthrough if you’re interested in what is has to offer. If you have the gamepass then it’s a no brainer, definitely give it a try, if nothing else it’s a fun 20 hour distraction. Otherwise rent the game or wait for it to hit the bargain bins, because in my eyes this is easily the worst of the new trilogy and it’s a shame to close out such an impressive run with such an underwhelming disappointment. I really wanted to like Doom The Dark Ages more than I did, but I have to keep it real. This was a downgrade in every sense of the word.