Doom: The Dark Ages Review – The Best Doom Game Ever Made

Doom: The Dark Ages Review

Masters of their craft, iD Software have done it again. Plainly stated, I believe that Doom: The Dark Ages is the best game in the series’ history. I’m a mega fan of Doom 2016 and Doom: Eternal. Doom: The Dark Ages continues sticking to the series’ fundamentals while mixing it with new mechanics and a focused narrative.

A Narrative Odyssey

A single level into The Dark Ages campaign informs you that spectacle is the goal. Cutscenes play at the beginning and end of levels, but don’t overstay their welcome. They’re concise, giving you all the necessary information before tossing you back into the action.

I couldn’t connect much with the characters, but seeing the lore come to life through them is nice. I had difficulty keeping up with some of the story’s finer details apart from the main plot: Hell is, once again, attempting to seize power over all the realms, and it’s up to the Doom Slayer and the Sentinels to stop them. If we’re honest with ourselves, that’s all we need to know.

Thankfully, the Doom Slayer doesn’t utter a word, much less a sound. On a side note, his pain grunts are a glorified accessibility feature that I prefer to turn off in every game. He’s never looked better in his medieval-inspired Praetor armor adorned with a fur cape. His actions do the talking, and he has plenty to say.

From a narrative perspective, I enjoyed the ride. It’s an odyssey of twenty-two levels through diverse realms that keeps things visually rich. My only minor gripe is the brief fades between cutscenes and gameplay. Something insane will be happening on screen, or there’ll be an intense buildup with a driving score, only to fade to black, then fade in to you standing idly, waiting to take off.

Many games of the last decade have adopted the trend of having cutscenes that smoothly transition to gameplay. Considering the rapid pace of gameplay, it begs to have the cutscenes transition seamlessly following the often intense situations occurring right before each level begins.

Many epic moments occur throughout the story; fortunately, the best are experienced during gameplay. Under the leadership of Director Hugo Martin, the game designers at iD are geniuses. I’m fascinated by their ability to have developed three modern Doom games with distinct flavors. You could think of them collectively as the Neapolitan ice cream of boomer shooters.

True To Itself, Yet All New

I seem to be in the minority of fans who love Eternal’s design. The resource management, dodging, and acrobatics engage me, forcing me to focus exclusively on what I’m doing moment to moment. I enjoy it for the same reasons avid golfers enjoy the sport. I like seeing a version of that trend carried into The Dark Ages.

That same level of engagement is present, but in a way that doesn’t demand thinking as hard about the keys you’re pressing. Essentially, I’m thinking less and instinctively acting more. That’s partly due to how the presentation communicates, informing you what decisions to make.

Every action key is near WASD. You still need to manage your health, armor, and ammo, but there are several ways to acquire each between your shield, melee, and weapon upgrades. Playing the game physically feels simplified, while being full of depth. I empathize with the players claiming their expression was leashed in Eternal. It’s true to a degree, but it’s a sentiment I don’t agree with entirely.

The Dark Ages addresses that criticism head-on with an arsenal of effective weapons. While some suit specific instances better than others, you can play this game with a single gun from beginning to end if you desire.

Throughout my nearly 25 hours in the campaign, I discovered several ways to maximize combat between the gun combinations alone. If that were the beginning and end of combat, it would still be a solid Doom experience. The return to form with grounded combat and heavy emphasis on melee and parrying set it apart.

Promise of the Premise Fulfilled

Hugo Martin’s comments on being a fighter jet in Eternal and a tank in The Dark Ages are true. The game’s slogan is “Stand and Fight,” and that’s exactly what you do. Enemy variety is abundant in The Dark Ages, all with unique melee and/or projectile attacks.

It’s partially a rhythm game between timing your parries and managing your strafe. I can hardly articulate how adrenaline-pumping and satisfying it is to reach a zen state during gameplay. The action is so fast and intense that you’re not thinking, only acting. During this time, you swap weapons, parry incoming attacks, and blitz around the arena.

In one interview, Hugo shared that Leonidas in 300 was one of their inspirations. That iconic scene from the movie, where he crosses a battlefield, cutting down Persians with his sword and shield, is what this game feels like. Trading melee attacks with a Cyberdemon twice your size face to face is so sick.

Despite the intensity, you never feel lost in the noise. Some scenarios are designed to feel overwhelming, making overcoming them all the more exhilarating.

Hugo describes gameplay in each title as the “Doom Dance.” During Eternal’s marketing, he described improving as a player from beginning to end as transitioning from a white belt to a black belt. That mindset remains in The Dark Ages.

The introduction to melee and parrying is excellent, but the game’s mechanics didn’t fully click for me until the latter half of the game. I felt like Frank Reynolds reacting to Mac’s interpretive dance. That’s great, as the game has an incredible sense of progression. You’re introduced to new weapons, abilities, enemy types, and boss encounters up until the final hours of the game. It results in each level feeling fresh between your environment and gameplay.

I appreciate that the game doesn’t throw gimmick mechanics at you during boss fights. The battles serve the purpose they’re supposed to: Challenge everything you’ve learned up to that point. Fortunately, Doom games haven’t been guilty of surprise, throwaway mechanics, and I’m happy to confirm that’s the case here.

The Ultimate Power Fantasy

The shield saw is the best addition to the game. In addition to parrying attacks, it’s basically Captain America’s shield adorned with a lancer’s chainsaw. Between the animations and sound design, every parry feels brutal. Dashing around arenas with the shield bash is so much fun. It also serves as a brief escape method when nearing death. Throwing it at enemies to break shields and armor or temporarily stun them is satisfying every time you do it.

Pairing the shield with three melee weapons amplifies everything. I appreciate the risk and reward factor of all your decisions with weapons. On top of it all, you possess multiple reactive abilities triggered by successful projectile parries. Not unlike the flame belch in Eternal, my favorite is the Auto Turret. The Predator clearly inspires it, and I love it. The game wears many inspirations on its sleeve while making them its own in both meaningful and amusing ways. It’s fun to recognize them while you play.

iD have described the Doom games as a power fantasy. They aim to make you feel as powerful as possible as the Doom Slayer. That’s never been truer than it is here. For me, The Dark Ages is the most fun and powerful I’ve ever felt playing a Doom game, and I’m a fan of many of them, notably the two that preceded this one. That likely isn’t the case for everyone, but for me, it hits in every way it intends to. The Dark Ages dance is a delicate, violent balance between your shield, melee, and guns. I can’t imagine the difficulty the team faced in designing it, but they’ve prevailed.

The standard gameplay is occasionally broken up by levels where you pilot a giant Atlan Mech or fly around on your trusty Dragon. I was never concerned that these encounters would be frequent during the marketing phase. Hugo Martin and the team at iD knew how to moderate them.

Brutal Breathers

Both experiences are relatively simple. It doesn’t get much deeper in the Atlan than dodging attacks and beating down Titans with your fists. You wield a mini gun a couple of times, but that’s it.

The Dragon’s a mixed bag for me. I love the idea on paper, but the execution’s a little strange. Flying around feels great, but the rhythm of your dance with enemies is odd. It’s not bad game design, but I struggle to understand what it adds to the game apart from giving you a breather from the always-intense standard gameplay. The best part is flying around and landing at points where you enter arenas to kill enemies and complete objectives on the ground, then hop back on to fly to the next point of interest. It’s reminiscent of some Halo missions I like.

A good mix of linear paths and large, open maps also shakes up level design. There’s a good balance of both. The large areas greatly benefit gameplay. The Dark Ages often includes more enemies on screen at once than ever before. It’s always thrilling to blaze around these arenas when it feels like one versus a hundred.

Exploration is encouraged and critical. Much of your progression is bound to collecting gold, runes, and wraith stones scattered around levels, most of which are locked behind doors requiring keys, puzzles, and platforming sequences. The platforming sequences aren’t as wild as those in Eternal, but they’re solid here. Using your shield to launch yourself across gaps or trigger doors to open is always fun. Fans of collectibles should be satisfied. There are many toys and codex pages to collect in addition to your progression items.

The Dark Ages doesn’t include a dodge mechanic, but it does include sprint. It works well during combat and is great for quickly getting around the larger maps. By default, this game feels much faster than it looks, and you can even increase the game speed up to 150%. Upon completing the game, I played a portion of one level at 150%. I can see the appeal, and maybe someday I’ll play the entire game that way, but I’m satisfied with the default speed and believe it suits the game’s design perfectly.

My initial playthrough of every Doom game is on Ultra-Violence. I like getting a feel for the games on what most consider the standard difficulty before playing through again on Nightmare. I’m not a big fan of Ultra-Nightmare, but I love that The Dark Ages lets you alter many aspects of gameplay to suit your desired experience. Settings like damage to player and demons, enemy aggression, daze duration, projectile speed, and resource values can all be tweaked.

The Hole in My Heart

That said, throughout most of my experience, I felt like something was missing. As it turns out, it’s the soundtrack that underwhelms me. Don’t be mistaken; this game has some absolute bangers, but that’s all they are.

That likely doesn’t surprise you. If you’re a fan of these games, you’re a fan of Mick Gordon’s iconic work on Doom 2016 and Eternal. I won’t address the specifics of his falling out with iD. His presence is missed, and I expected it to be.

Mick Gordon is an auteur, mad scientist of a composer. If we’re talking guitar riffs and melodies alone, it’s apples and oranges. Again, The Dark Ages has some great tracks that suit the gameplay, but they don’t transcend it. Mick’s music gets stuck in your head, making each level in Eternal particularly sound distinct. The music in The Dark Ages is well-produced, and there are certainly some fun tunes, but they don’t amplify gameplay much.

Apart from that, the game features incredible sound design. I mentioned how powerful you feel, and the marriage of sound design and visuals heavily contributes to that. A friendly note I’ll give is that the perfect mix balance is setting game sounds at 65% and music at 100%. I wear a nice 7.1 surround headset. The game sounds phenomenal, but I had difficulty hearing the music during combat encounters until I tweaked the default settings.

Demanding Performance

I have a moderately powerful PC with an RTX 2080 Ti GPU, an i9-9900K CPU, 32 gigs of RAM, and a fast SSD. Here’s some news that may bum you out: I struggled to run this game beyond 80+ fps in most instances. To maintain an average of 60fps to 90fps, with my worst dips around 55fps, I had to run the game settings with everything set to low, and DLSS set to balanced.

That sounds like a nightmare, but the silver lining is that the game surprisingly looks good despite that. That’s primarily due to its beautiful art direction, but even textures set to low look clean. iD Tech 8 seems to be another great iteration of their proprietary engine.

I’m disappointed that I can’t maintain a higher frame rate on average in higher-intensity encounters. Sure, my GPU is outdated, but future patches may further optimize the experience for players. iD certainly understands that PC is the primary home of Doom fans, and statistically, most people don’t have modern, state-of-the-art rigs. I’d love a 50 Series GPU as much as the next guy, but it’s way out of my budget for now.

Apart from moderate dips in the frame rate, I occasionally encountered some minor bugs that persisted throughout the review period, even after downloading a pre-release patch. On two separate occasions, my shield stopped working. During gameplay, your shield can be temporarily disabled. That isn’t what was happening during the bug I experienced.

My shield would be on screen, but it was frozen. I couldn’t shield bash, block, or parry. By definition, it’s game-breaking, as the gameplay relies heavily on those abilities. I had to restart from my checkpoint to fix it. Fortunately, it only happened twice across 25 hours. In another instance, the music was entirely absent from a level. I played through half of it, wondering if it was a creative choice. Savagely massacring waves of demons in silence never felt right. My intuition was correct when the music returned after reloading my checkpoint.

Thankfully, those were the only bugs I experienced, and there’s a chance they’ll be resolved before release. For the most part, The Dark Ages is polished. I’m only keeping my fingers crossed for more optimization for higher frame rates in the future.

The Best To Ever Do It

I’ve mentioned some minor problems and disappointments, but I mean what I said at the top. This is the most impressive Doom game iD has developed. The ingenuity and evolution of its gameplay, while remaining true to itself, is outstanding, along with an epic campaign to complement it. The Doom Dance in The Dark Ages is addictive, and I’m stoked to continue playing.

***PC code provided by the publisher***