Doom: The Dark Ages Review: Rip and Tear, Medieval Style-OxBig News Network

When id Software rebooted Doom in 2016, it not only injected new life into a dormant franchise but also hit the refresh button on the first-person shooter genre. Annual Call of Duty releases, a faltering Battlefield series, and other COD clones had left shooting games feeling stale. Doom, with its brutal, relentless combat and classic FPS mechanics, arrived as a palate cleanser. It shirked modern FPS tenets of cover shooting and regenerating health and instead pushed players to be aggressive and punish enemies up close.

Nearly a decade later, the new Doom is a trilogy of distinct first-person shooters that share a common DNA. Doom (2016) was built on series’ roots, prioritising visceral and satisfying gunplay; the sequel, Doom Eternal, added kinetic movement and a tactical bend to its predecessor’s combat. With Doom: The Dark Ages, which released May 15 on PC and consoles, id Software takes a medieval approach to demon slaying. The newest Doom is more grounded, crunchy and weighty, but that doesn’t mean it’s cumbersome. The action is still quick and gunplay still chaotic.

You’re still whipping around the area, slicing through a deck of demons to heart-pounding heavy metal, but Doom: The Dark Ages switches things up by weighing down the Doom Slayer and bringing melee weapons to the mix. The familiar rotating cast of devastating guns returns, but they’re all essentially playing side fiddle to the new Shield Saw that lies at the red-hot core of game. The versatile weapon, which persists on the Doom Slayer’s left hand, powers the core mechanics for defence, attack and traversal in The Dark Ages. It’s astonishing how a single piece of transformative equipment becomes the fulcrum of all you do in the new Doom. There are a few missteps and missed opportunities, but none of them are egregious enough to make Doom: The Dark Ages anything but a bloody good time.

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The weakest cog in the machine is the story, but it’s also the cog that’s not crucial to the game’s functioning. You don’t need context for carnage, but it would have helped if The Dark Ages punctuated its action with narrative beats that lent weight to the violence. The game serves as a prequel to Doom and Doom Eternal and takes place on the atmospheric and ominous world of Argent D’Nur, the home planet of Night Sentinals. There’s a war against Hell raging on, with the Heart of Argent, an ancient artefact that can grant godlike powers to its bearer, at stake.

The Night Sentinels are aided by the Maykrs, an advanced and ancient race of beings who hold the Doom Slayer in their control. As the Sentinals are overwhelmed by the forces of Hell led by Azhrak, the prince of Hell, the Maykrs drop the ferocious, mind-controlled Slayer into the middle of the battlefield to protect the Heart of Argent and turn the tide of war. The story takes you through different frontiers of the war as you cleave your way through the army of demons, before some twists change the nature of the conflict itself. The Slayer resists the Maykr’s control, alliances are altered and a secret about the Heart of Argent is revealed.

In Doom: The Dark Ages, you take on the army of Hell
Photo Credit: Bethesda/ id Software

The story will be more engaging to those who’ve played Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal as it covers intriguing history between the Slayer, the Maykrs and the Night Sentinels, setting up events that will follow. But on its own, The Dark Ages stops short of delivering a compelling narrative, opting to play it safe rather than taking a bolder approach. But that’s okay because Doom: The Dark Ages tells a more convincing story through its fantastical environments that blend medieval grandeur and science fiction. This is a world where you explore ancient, colossal cities on the back of a cybernetic dragon and walk up to the gates of the fortress in Hell — it’s visual storytelling at its best.

Each level brings something distinct to the table and sets the stage not only for the battle against Hell, but also for the narrative to find a foothold in the locations you visit. At Argent D’Nur, you explore compact but winding indoor areas like barracks and command stations, delving deeper into the stacked maze. And then you’re out in the open, gazing at a sprawling forest or making your way through the ruins of a village. In between certain levels, cutscenes fill in the gaps at pivotal moments and drive the story forward, but these only act as curtains for the stage where you play out each act.

Doom: The Dark Ages takes place on the ancient world of Argent D’Nur
Photo Credit: Bethesda/ Screeenshot – Manas Mitul

The meat, of course, lies in the combat. The Doom franchise is built on the pillars of visceral and chaotic first-person shooter gameplay and Doom: The Dark Ages is no different. But id Software has refreshed the formula this time by turning the Doom Slayer into a medieval, murderous tank. The Slayer has always been formidable — he’s one of gaming’s greatest badasses. In The Dark Ages, however, he embodies something more primordial. A cross between a silent, cybernetic Terminator and a bloodthirsty Viking lord, with a fur cape, a shield and a flail to boot.

The Slayer is still agile, but he’s much heavier and his melee attacks crunchier. And the Shield Saw essentially acts as an extension of the Slayer himself. This is not a piece of gear you can equip or put away, rather it forms the mechanical basis of the game itself. You can of course block incoming projectiles and melee attacks with the shield, but it also enables you to parry both of those attacks with a timely press of the left trigger on the controller and leave the enemy stunned. All projectiles and melee attacks that can be parried are colour-coded green and they present an opportunity to turn defence into offense.

The Doom Slayer comes with a shield and a cape
Photo Credit: Bethesda/ id Software

The parry window is forgiving by default, even at higher difficulties, but the new mechanic presents unique scenarios where Doom: The Dark Ages almost becomes a bullet hell lite as you slip through the barrage of red projectiles to parry the green ones. Later in the game, you empower your shield parries with runic abilities that deal devastating damage to multiple enemies in front of you. The Shield Saw can be used for a more direct attack, too. With the press of the left bumper on the controller, you can launch the shield at your enemies like a frisbee. The serrated edges of the Shield Saw slice right through fodder demons, but with larger enemies, the shield lodges itself into their bodies, making them more vulnerable to your gunfire. And once its job is done, the shield flies right back into your hands like Thor’s hammer.

And finally, the versatile Shield Saw also acts as a tool for traversal. Doom: The Dark Ages is slower, heavier and more deliberate, but the shield allows the Slayer to zip across the arena and slam into enemies with concussive force. When you hold the shield up, it locks onto a demon ahead of you, and as you press the attack button, you’re launched at the target like a medieval missile, covering a lot of ground in a split second. While, this attack obliterates columns of smaller demons in front of you and stuns larger ones, it also serves as a strategic and quick way to traverse across the battlefield. The Shield Saw also acts as a sort of a grappling hook, embedding into specific anchor points and pulling you to hidden, inaccesible areas.

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The shield is locked to your left hand, guns on the right
Photo Credit: Bethesda/ Screeenshot – Manas Mitul

With the shield locked to the Slayer’s left hand, you cycle through the game’s array of guns on the right one. It wouldn’t be a Doom game without a selection of ridiculously overpowered, cool as hell weapons. You start, of course, with the good ol’ combat shotgun, but you quickly assimilate an arsenal of firearms fit for a war on Hell. There’s the Pulveriser, that chews through demon skulls and shoots out bone fragments; the Chainshot is a chained iron ball that charges up and smacks demons in the head with devastating power; and the Impaler fires precision metal spikes that do extra damage with headshots.

But the real ballistic fun begins when you start getting upgrades for different weapons. Doom: The Dark Ages has distinct upgrade paths for each weapon that unlock synergies with other actions, like parrying or shield throw or melee attacks. This allows you to specialize in specific weapons and pick a playstyle to your liking. For example, if you invest in upgrading the Chainshot, you can unlock a perk that instantly charges your next shot when you parry an incoming attack with your shield, thus making the Shield Saw and the Chainshot and excellent one-two combo. One of my favourites was the Richochet upgrade for the Shredder weapon, which deflects projectiles shot at a demon with the Shield Saw embedded in it to other nearby enemies, in effect spreading your damage output.

Weapon upgrades bring meaningful combat synergies
Photo Credit: Bethesda/ id Software

To get these meaningful upgrades for your shield, guns and melee weapons (there are three of them — a gauntlet, a flail and a mace), you must scour each level to find hidden resources like gold, rubies and wraithstones. You’re likely going to miss these if you race to your objective marker and don’t explore the map, as they’re usually locked behind an environmental or platforming puzzle. But with weapon and shield upgrades affecting how you play the game, exploration is encouraged. I found myself scanning the automap and hunting down all collectibles to get 100 percent completion in each level.

The levels themselves are designed to be distinct from one another. They can be open and sprawling, spilling out in all directions with multiple objectives tucked away in faraway corners. Or they can be tighter and compact, collapsing upon themselves and creating a maze of connected corridors. The same goes for arenas where you encounter hordes of demons, too. Often, they’re an open field you can dash about with a few structures spread out, but sometimes they trap you in a smaller space and the only way out is demonic carnage. Either way, the Slayer always feels like he’s in control of the situation — a ferocious Middle-Age clean-up guy, sent to wipe out all manners of hell spawn.

Indoor areas are detailed and offer a stark contrast to outdoor regions
Photo Credit: Bethesda/ Screeenshot – Manas Mitul

The game allows you to become the true demon on the battlefield. If you keep upgrading your gear, utilise your guns a little more tactically and master the Shield Saw, you can feel invincible. You can walk into a boss fight feeling like the boss — that’s a power fantasy very few games can offer. And it’s not just the gameplay that contributes to that feeling, it’s the sound design, too, that goes into establishing you as a medieval wrecking ball to be reckoned with. Your shield goes off like a gong when you parry attacks and lets out an explosive bang when you charge into demons. When you jump, you’re whooshing through the air as almost every other sound quiets down, and then you land with the force of a tank being dropped on the battlefield with a thunderous crack that sends out shockwaves.

But on the flipside, the soundtrack is disappointing, especially with Mick Gordon’s excellent work on the previous two Doom games in the rearview. It’s generic heavy metal that barely gets the job done. There’s no personality to it, no signature flair that makes it feel like the soundtrack to a carnage. It’s also not very prominent. The music is going off somewhere in the distance as you’re cutting down demons, but you’re not overtly aware of it. There are fewer glory kills, as well, which can feel anti-climactic when you take down a bigger demon.

Doom: The Dark Ages changes up the pace with dragon and mech levels
Photo Credit: Bethesda/ Screeenshot – Manas Mitul

The game also tries to break up the pacing with two new kinds of levels that involve the Slayer riding a cyberdragon and engaging in aerial combat and exploration, and controlling a colossal Atlan mech to get into fistfights with towering demons. These can be fun and serve as neat little punctuations to the regular run-and gun gameplay, but they’re also very basic. There’s not a lot of mechanical depth to these sections and they’re largely trying to sell you scale and scope of the action. But at least the underwhelming dragon and mech levels are few and far between and never overstay their welcome.

Where Doom: The Dark Ages goes above and beyond what Doom and Doom Eternal achieved are the visuals. On a technical level, id Software has truly knocked this one out of the park. The Dark Ages, built on the ID Tech 8 engine, is stunning to look at and runs without a single hiccup. There’s an incredible amount of character detail on demons, a healthy variety of environments and a pulpy exaggeration to the gore that feeds into the game’s medieval sci-fi medley. Every outdoor level also comes with these jaw-dropping vistas that make you stop and look. These are largely done through beautifully detailed, expansive skyboxes that depict the unending war on Hell. Performance on PS5 was flawless, too, with game running at 60fps with no noticeable stutter.

Levels in Doom: The Dark Ages feature stunning vistas
Photo Credit: Bethesda/ Screeenshot – Manas Mitul

Where does Doom: The Dark Ages then sit in the Doom oeuvre? As the third game in the new trilogy, people might look at it as the lesser successor to groundbreaking games. But on its own merits, The Dark Ages is a superb entry in an iconic franchise that breaks its own new ground. It follows the id Software tradition of innovation to bring a new gameplay loop to the table. And the mix of medieval fantasy and science fiction fits the Doom franchise like a gauntlet.

The Dark Ages has more story and cutscenes than its predecessors, but the familiar tropes and their lacklustre execution leaves a lot to be desired. The gameplay, however, more than holds up its end of the bargain. The Shield Saw is a versatile addition that transforms literally every aspect of how you play a Doom game, but the guns and the gore keep it familiar enough for series veterans. This is perhaps the most accessible Doom game, too, with open-ended levels and highly customisable difficulty options that can tune the game to your liking — you can cakewalk through it, or you could turn it into a dance with the devil in hell. But what stands out most, especially in times where games built on grind start feeling like a chore, is how fun and fluid the Doom: The Dark Ages is. Wasn’t that that the whole point?