Doom: The Dark Ages plays very well, but is let down by some tedious design decisions, a lacklustre soundtrack, and some of the most generic storytelling i have seen in a game this decade. Its slightly better than Doom Eternal, but i dont think this game gets close to 2016.
Aesthetically Doom has always been strong. It knows what it wants to be and mostly succeeds in being that way. While this isnot a massive difference in graphics quality, i think it has the most unique and varied Doom aesthetic ever. We have so many different biomes, worlds, and hellscapes to explore that i overall, really enjoyed looking at this game. That was one of the main issues i had with Eternal, it felt the game was very samey aesthetically, and very tame with the places it sent you to. Thankfully this game changes that, and it makes for a much enjoyable experience. I also think the Demons are just much cooler looking. They have this sort of "older" aesthetic design, combined with the meshing of technology, it just looks cool as fuck.
Now one of the most disappointing parts of this game is the music. Mick Gordon who created most of the modern day Doom OST had a conflict with ID management that never got resolved, so he stopped doing the music for these games. You can really hear his absence, cause this OST has virtually nothing unique to it. Everything sounds like watered-down Mick Gordon, whether it be Rip and Tear, or BFG10000. It also doesnot have that "ONE song" to identify the game with. Doom 2016 had BFG or Rip&Tear, Eternal had The Only Thing They Fear is You, and Cultist Base. Doom: The Dark Ages has? i heard nothing that stood out, and i have seen no tracks online being spread around like i did with the other games. What a disappointment. Now i will say that the OST is not bad, like its enjoyable at points. But compared to how outstanding the last two games were, this is a colossal failure.
Theres also some bad audio mixing during some sections. In the open world parts of the game, the music sometimes wont even play, its just the background ambience music. So it essentially just breaks all of the hype in some fights.
If you have read my other Doom reviews you will know that i loved 2016 and really disliked Eternals gameplay. This is because i felt Eternal was too fast paced for me, and they really overcompensated with the combat by adding 5million different mechanics. Doom: The Dark Ages mostly goes back to the 2016 movement by removing dashes and double jumps and instead focuses on its new mechanic the Shield.
I fucking love the shield. It has a good amount of movement but that movement is combined with actually killing Demons, so it feels interactive. I adored the shield throw, probably my favourite new mechanic in this game overall. It was soo damn satisfying throwing my shield and shotgunning the demon right in this ugly face. It also has a parry mechanic, which is alright. Sometimes it feels a bit gimmicky where its used in pretty much every situation, which can feel bland at times. But overall, i did enjoy it and i felt like it works so well with the way i liked to play, and the general movement of the game.
Because of the Shield the demons felt so damn fun to fight. I loved remembering what demons i could throw my shield at, what demons i could parry, and what strings of attacks each one had. Its the most interactive the enemies have gotten in a Doom game and i really loved the change. As i felt i was rewarded for remembering their attack patterns.
The guns are once again a mixed bag. Theres the most in the games history, with each gun category having two options. I felt most of these options were kinda boring, like picking from a LMG or a AR is a dumb choice, of course i will pick the LMG. Or the choice between a boring Shotgun to a Boomstick, of course i will pick the Boomstick! My personal favourites were the Super Shotgun, which was so damn satisfying. The Pulverizer which is the weapon that grinds skulls for its ammo, its super fun to use against massive crowds. I love the energy weapons in Doom, and the Cycler is best one in any game, its so damn satisfying watching all the demons explode from the electricity.
Speaking of perks they have redone the system. You dont have any Doom guy perks, instead everything has to do with your Shield, your melee weapon, or your gun. For guns, they removed mods, and instead just made them passives. Some guns have a choice between the passive mod, while others are just no choice at all. I never felt super strongly about the mod system in the other games, mostly because i never swapped between the two in combat. You do feel the lack of interactivity with the weapons overall because of the absence of mods, but i think the shield makes up for that exclusion. I sound negative about the change to the ARPG systems, but i actually like the changes to the currency systems. I do like how you collect gold, and two different gems to unlock powerful upgrades, i found that better than the older systems.
There are a number of things i did dislike about the gameplay though. For one, there are these Dragon and Mecha sections that you have probably seen from the trailers. Now these sections are cool as fuck and very cinematic the first time you play them. The problem comes when you get them over and over again, because they are frequent it feels more like a drag than a actual cool moment. Thats because alot of the gameplay here is a shooting gallery, not anything actually hard or designed to be difficult mechanically. Atleast the Dragon sections were mostly just about flying, cause the Mecha sections were legit tedious as hell, having to fight these titans with the most easy dodge and punch gameplay i have seen in a game.
I hated the boring ass platforming sections in Eternal and thankfully they are gone. But in replacement we get these semi-open world sections for padding. Not a huge fan of these parts. Now i do like that we get alot of more demon killing fights on the map, but i dislike how each level is structured the exact same. Same puzzles, same pickups, just lacks interesting and unique variety.
This game might have one of the most boring introductions to a shooter i have played. Its about 4 hours of straight tutorials back to back. Because its the intro all of the shooting sections are brain dead easy, and when i thought was finally finished with that it jumped me into another tutorial about the Dragon and then ANOTHER tutorial about the Mecha. Seriously it was dreadful.
They removed glory kills, and in place they just have a punch or a kick. They still get staggered like in the other games where you can "execute" them for a quicker kill. I actually kinda liked this as it made combat a bit quicker, but i dont understand the point of removing glory kills but keeping the melee part in.
2016 and Eternal had story lines but they were not super into them. Like i remember Eternal might have had like 3ish cinematic story breaks? Doom: The Dark Ages changes this and focuses on the story MUCH much more. Which honestly could have worked IF the plot line was interesting AT ALL. This story is frankly just garbage, its generic, you care about NONE of the characters, and it feels so tacked on. Alot of the storytelling feels like, "look there's that one guy from the lore!" and never expands on that character at all. It doesn't help that the Demons who are actually given character here are also so fucking generic. I really liked 2016s story because it gave the demons a good reason to attack the people on Mars. because of the exploitation of their energy for humanity. It created this interesting political and ethical dilema where you could see where the villains were coming from, even though they did deserve to die. Here we get the most generic and tame, storyline ever created in a video game. I have seriously played Call of Duty games with a better narrative than this shit. To give Eternal some props i liked seeing more of a "human" side to Doom Guy in some of the flashbacks. In this game you would expect to see some of that comeout but NOPE! instead we get the same obvious actions from him over the entire plot. Why make this a prequel if you dont want to give some insight on the main character, it seems like such a bizarre choice.
I might sound more pissed than i should be and you might be saying to yourself "well bro! this is Doom what did you expect from the story?" and instead of saying that to me, you should bring that up with the developers. Why take this focus on the story if your not going to take ANY risks? or try to use the Doom lore for ANY interesting/fun concepts? what the fuck!. The increased focus on the story means it deserves all the critique thrown at it, unlike the other games. Thats why im so pissed at this part of the game.
Anyways, i think this game is slightly better than Doom Eternal, but not by much. It has some good parts to it. I loved the combat with the shield throwing, parrying, and movement. Which added a ton to the interactions with Demons, and weapons in the field of battle. The aesthetics are solid and i liked the different biomes and worlds you visit. The rest of the game is filled with issues. The music is bland and has no standouts tracks. Gameplay is bogged down by boring repeated Dragon and Mecha sections, with some bland semi open world parts of the game. The story is one of the most generic plotlines i have seen in a game, maybe it could have worked back in the 2000s but to have a storyline like this in 2025 for a game like this is fucking crazy terrible. Its between a 3/5 and a 3.5/5 for me. On a combat level is like 4/5 on par with Doom 2016, but everything else other than the aesthetic drags it down so hard.
