Doom: The Dark Ages Review - All the Gory, None of the Glory

With the seemingly decisive conclusion of the Doom Slayer's story in Doom Eternal, id Software has decided to go back into the past to explore the origin of the only foe that Hell's demons ever feared in Doom: The Dark Ages. As one would expect, this means a change in scenery, more cutscenes, actual characters, and a positively medieval set of new weapons.

Thankfully, there's no drawn out process where you slowly work your way up from lowly grunt to demon slayer extraordinaire. In fact, Doom: The Dark Ages throws you into the midst of yet another demonic invasion right from the get-go at the apparent height of the Slayer's notoriety. No time is wasted in getting the distinctive new Shield Saw into your hands either.

Doom: The Dark Ages - Fantastic Weapons and Where to Find Them

Unlike the special weapons featured in the previous games, Doom: The Dark Ages' Shield Saw is fully integrated as a key part of the gameplay loop. You don't need to collect fuel for it like the chainsaw, there's no practical cooldown period when using its abilities, and its upgrades scale relatively well throughout the campaign.

Naturally, the Shield Saw can be used to block the vast majority of attacks. If an enemy is far away, you can use the Shield to charge at them and turn yourself into a makeshift missile. Entire rooms of low tier enemies can be cut down by a single throw of the Shield Saw. Mid-sized enemies can be stun-locked to death before they have a chance to pose a threat. 

Even higher tier enemies aren't safe as their armor can be weakened by gunfire and then stripped by a thrown shield. Other dangerous enemies can have their attacks reflected back at them. The best part is that all of this functionality is available to you without any need to touch the weapon wheel. In other words, it's a completely seamless experience that allows for incredibly aggressive gameplay.

Doom: The Dark Ages' guns feel almost quaint by comparison. You've got returning favorites like the Super Shotgun, a regular shotgun, a plasma rifle, an assault rifle, and so on, and they more or less function as one would expect. The new melee weapons (including your fists) are much more interesting as they are capable of inflicting debuffs and have some combo potential with the shield.

The same principle can largely be applied to the demons that you're fighting. The classic demons are basically unchanged while the new demons have unique designs and attack patterns. Coincidentally, the new demons really promote the usage of the Shield Saw's abilities.

Unfortunately, a lot of the mobility mechanics that were a key part of the previous Doom games are simply gone. There are almost no platforming segments and dodging mostly consists of walking sideways. The Shield Saw does offer some mobility options for both combat and exploring, but you may as well compare an acrobat with guns to a tank, ice skating to boxing, or Mario to Mortal Kombat.

Cinematic executions appear to have been drastically toned down too, seemingly relegated to boss and mini-boss kills. The combat is fundamentally still the same, you just lose a lot of vertical and horizontal mobility in exchange for extreme forward momentum. Either way, to say that it's a noticeable difference is an understatement.

Doom: The Dark Ages - The Doom Slayer Talks (Kind Of)!

Speaking of noticeable differences, Doom: The Dark Ages has far more cutscenes than any of its predecessors. There's generally going to be an intro and outro cutscene for each of the game's 22 missions, chronicling the story of the Doom Slayer and his time among the Night Sentinels.

Alas, there's only so much that the writers can do with the story given that Doom: The Dark Ages is a prequel. It doesn't help that the Night Sentinel characters are drier than a desert. Hell has begun a full-scale invasion of the mortal realm and demons are about to kill everyone, yet the named Sentinels sound like they're waiting in line at the grocery store and it's raining outside.

One particularly egregious scene shows one of the named Night Sentinels literally being dragged into Hell along with the entire building that they're in, and for all the emotion in their voice, you'd think that they forgot to eat their ice cream before it melted. If you weren't paying attention to the plot, you might even miss the fact that two of the Sentinels are supposed to be directly related as they're not exactly acting like it.

Ironically, the named demon and Maykr characters are far more personable on account of their design and voice acting. Sure, they're not exactly going to be showing much character development, but at least their voices match the mood of the scene.

Fortunately, the playable areas have more flavor to them. You get to go to Hell of course, and it's the same fire- and gore-filled wasteland that everyone loves. There's also the Night Sentinel territories, which heavily lean into the medieval aesthetic mixed with elements of sci-fi technology. Later missions let you explore the realm of ancient eldritch beings too, predictably filled to the brim with tentacles, eyes, and nautical themes.

Most notably, some of Doom: The Dark Ages' campaign missions let you pilot a mech and a dragon. These segments aren't particularly complex, and are admittedly more of a novelty than anything else, yet they prove to be adequate at providing some gameplay and visual diversity.

Doom: The Dark Ages Review | Final Thoughts

One can't help but wonder whether Doom: The Dark Ages is a testing ground for where id wants to take the series though. The mech and dragon missions, tweaking the combat mechanics to encourage parrying rather than dodging, even some of the narrative elements involving ancient eldritch beings can all be signs that the developers want to try something new.

In this case, new is not a euphemism for bad. Doom: The Dark Ages is quite the opposite, retaining the modern fast-paced gameplay that made its predecessors famous. The developers tried adding some new features, and while the story and voice acting is in need of improvement, everything else feels like a natural upgrade. The execution kills and dodge mechanics will be sorely missed however, and only time will tell if the aggressive gameplay offered by the Shield Saw is a suitably satisfying replacement.

Doom: The Dark Ages was reviewed on the Xbox Series X with a copy provided by the developer over the course of 25 hours of gameplay- all screenshots were taken during the process of review.