For as long as I can remember (and even further back than that), Doom has been a franchise that I’ve had a minor obsession with, and it’s only grown into a major obsession as time goes on. If my own personal lore is to be believed, Doom II was one of the first, if not the first video game I ever played, sitting on my dad’s lap, blasting any hellspawn that dared show its face. Later in life, playing Doom 3 with all the lights out was a highlight of visiting my cousins who had it on the original Xbox. It wasn’t until the BFG Edition of that game was released in 2012 that I got to fully experience all three games as a fully conscious human being. It was, as with Godzilla, all downhill from there.
I’ve followed the development of every game since then, with the release of Doom (2016) being the catalyst that really solidified my love affair with the act of killing demons.The franchise has only gotten bigger and better with the overwhelmingly positive reception of Doom Eternal and its subsequent expansions fully entrenching Doom into modern popular culture. Which brings us to now; Doom: The Dark Ages has arrived, and given us all kinds of new ways to drive demonkind to extinction (how else to explain the absence of Imp Stalkers in the previous two games?).
Yes, the previous two games! The Dark Ages is not a sequel to Eternal but rather a prequel, taking place in between Doom 64 and Doom (2016). For those who did not play the two expansions to Eternal, parts 1 and 2 of The Ancient Gods, let’s just say it would be difficult to make a direct sequel to that game. The previous two games were pretty heavy on lore (assuming you went out of your way to find all the codex entries, that is), and The Dark Ages serves to expand on some of the Doom Slayer’s past with the Night Sentinels, the race of transdimensional humans that we finally learned more about in that last game.
And while it might be heresy to start a review of a Doom game by talking about its story (insert obligatory reference to original Doom [1993] developer John Carmack quote about story in a video game here), the story of The Dark Ages does feature one of my main issues with the game in that I just can’t bring myself to care. And that’s not to say I don’t care about the story of Doom overall; far from it, I was very much engaged with the story that Eternal and The Ancient Gods set out to tell.
The story takes place during the Sentinels’ war between the forces of Hell, led by the demonic Prince Ahzrak, who has allied himself with the Cosmic Realm, another dimension heavily inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, in hopes to turn the tide of the war. The Slayer, meanwhile, has been taken out of Sentinel custody and instead been placed under control of the Makyrs, the alien race of angel-like beings from the previous game, kept contained only to be unleashed when the tide of battle is going poorly. There’s a macguffin that Ahzrak and the Witch (the emissary from the Cosmic Realm) are after called the Heart of Argent which we only know will “turn the tide of war” because it’s so powerful, but never is it explained why it would.
The problem with this game being a prequel is that we already know how this all ends. Even though the game itself doesn’t end as such, we know that eventually the Sentinels are betrayed by the Order Deag and are all but wiped out, we know Commander Valen (who is present but not given nearly enough to do here) will eventually lose his son and betray the Sentinels in an attempt to revive him, giving rise to the Icon of Sin. King Novik, a supporting character here, appears briefly as a ghost in Eternal, confirming his eventual fate, and his daughter Thira, who plays a major role here, isn’t even in that game, which doesn’t bode well for her either.
Compared to all the optional lore in the previous games, the story in The Dark Ages feels less important. Nothing of consequence to the series’ overarching story actually happens here, it just feels like another of the Slayer’s adventures through Hell and back. It feels like id Software just wanted to make another Doom game and came up with the story as an afterthought. That wouldn’t necessarily be an issue in any other franchise, but if game director Hugo Martin is adamant about Doom being a lore-heavy series, the story shouldn’t be an afterthought. I should care about what’s going with these characters.
Even putting aside the lore aspect of it, the pacing feels weirdly disjointed at times, especially in earlier levels where you’re thrown into situations with little to no build-up or reasoning as to why exactly you’re there. It bounces around so much in those first few levels that it’s legitimately hard to follow what, exactly, the plot of the game actually is until maybe the sixth level. If it takes that long to figure out what the story you’re trying to tell is, maybe it’s time to go back to the drawing board.
But as I said already, who comes to a Doom game for the story? Historically, the gameplay is where these games have shined, and The Dark Ages is no exception. Something that id Software made clear from the get go with this game is that it wasn’t going to be Eternal again, just like that game wasn’t a carbon copy of its predecessor. id has done a phenomenal job making sure that each new Doom feels like a completely different experience from the last. In many ways, The Dark Ages feels like the antithesis of Eternal’s high-energy, lightning-fast combat. That’s not to say that The Dark Ages is a slow game, far from it, but compared to Eternal, it’s night and day. Fitting with its more medieval aesthetic, The Dark Ages opts for a more in-your-face visceral combat experience with a heavy focus on melee combat. Sure, Eternal had the Blood Punch mechanic, but The Dark Ages takes it a step further, with three different options for melee weapons; the Power Gauntlet, a Flail, and the fearsome Dreadmace, the last of which feels almost too powerful at times (you’ll melt a Cyberdemon in seconds when upgraded fully). In addition to just doing a decent amount of damage no matter which weapon you choose, it also replaces your chainsaw as your main means of stocking up on ammunition. And with the melee being such an important part of the combat loop, it’s rare that you’ll ever run out of ammo for your weapons. I think the only time I ever did was during the game’s few boss fights.
Eternal’s focus on weapon combos is now out the window as well, as the animation time for switching weapons is so greatly reduced that you’re actively putting yourself at risk by not doing damage during those precious seconds of combat where you’re switching weapons. This is something I’m a little torn on, and not for the reasons you might think. I played Doom Eternal on console, so it was a little harder to pull off the fancier combos on a controller. But regardless of that, every weapon in that game still served a purpose. Here, that’s not as true. Every weapon is just as effective as the last, sometimes to the point that others feel almost useless. Doom (2016) had this issue as well where you could more or less get through using nothing but the Super Shotgun. It wasn’t as fun that way, mind you, but it was an option. Here, even when I forced myself to use weapons like the Grenade Launcher and the Accelerator, I still found myself going back to the old reliable loadout of the Impaler and Combat Shotgun (fully upgraded, firing in a three-round burst, AND igniting enemies to drop armor is a game-changer).
Don’t get me wrong, the other weapons are still fun to use. The Pulverizer is good for mowing down big crowds, and its counterpart, the Ravager works well for locking down larger enemies with high DPS. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the Chainshot, a kinetic force gun that fires out a steel ball on a chain that does massive amounts of damage. This weapon also has an upgrade that instantly charges the next shot after parrying a Hell Surge attack (which we’ll get into shortly, don’t worry!). What I mentioned about melting Cyberdemons in seconds with the Dreadmace before? The Chainshot is the other half of that recipe. The weapons are fun, it’s just that it’s harder to find a use for some of them when others get the job done so well. Using longer-range weapons like the Grenade Launcher and Rocket Launcher feels almost wrong sometimes when the emphasis is on getting up into enemies’ faces and dealing damage.
Enemies hit hard. Especially ones at long range like the Arachnotron and Revenant. The best way to deal with enemies like this is to lock them down until you can get close and deal damage. How does one do that? There’s no Ice Bomb here. Nope, we’ve got the glorious Shield Saw. What game director Hugo Martin and senior community lead Joshua Boyle compare to “Captain America if he was mean,” the Shield Saw by and large the biggest change in the Doom combat loop. What’s the latest and greatest trend in gaming? That’s right, a parry system. And while normally that wouldn’t make any sense in a Doom game, 1) don’t forget that excellent medieval aesthetic, and more importantly 2) it’s a ton of fun. Enemies have green Hell Surge attacks that, when you block with the shield at the right time, will send projectiles right back to their source, dealing stun damage, and heating up armor to the point of breaking. Getting the parry system down is key to understanding the game’s combat. Most enemies have a specific pattern to their attacks, that if you parry the entire string of attacks, will leave them open to counters, whether that be a Super Shotgun blast to the face, or a three-hit combo with the Flail. But of course, that’s not all the Shield Saw is used for. Just like Captain America, you can throw the Shield and watch it tear through fodder enemies like paper, before getting lodged into a heavier demon and stunning them for a few seconds, allowing you to then also shred them like paper as well.
If it sounds like The Dark Ages has a lot going on in its meta… That’s sorta because it does. It can be very daunting going into it and it might take a while to get used to everything (it didn’t come together for me until maybe halfway through the game!), to the point where you might start to think “Is this game actually good or am I just bad?” To which I say, neither are mutually exclusive, but The Dark Ages IS a very good game. Since beginning this review, I’ve actually started up another playthrough on a higher difficulty and I’m actually having even more fun now than I did on my initial one. Once you do get used to everything the game is throwing at you, and you understand how every enemy works and how to counter them, you’ll stroll into a big arena ready for anything, and come out on top, covered head to toe in gore, smoke still rising from the barrel of your shotgun, with a smile on your face. That’s that fun zone that Hugo Martin always likes talking about.
That being said, the game does feature some more gimmicky missions interspersed with normal play, just to give the player a breather. These come in two different flavors; one in which you take control of one of the Atlans (the same kind of mech we see in the Fortress of Doom in Doom Eternal!), and aerial combat focused missions that have the Slayer riding around his pet cybernetic dragon, Serrat. There’s not much to say, gameplay-wise on these, they’re both pretty barebones in terms of play, but it is fun to finally take control of the Atlan and see Hugo Martin’s background working on Pacific Rim finally come full circle.
Finally, we’ll address the elephant in the room. The loss of Mick Gordon in the composer’s seat was something that’s hard to ignore. I won’t get into the details behind why he didn’t return, but when The Dark Ages was first announced, I assumed that at the very least, Andrew Hulshult and David Levy, who took over for Gordon for both of The Ancient Gods expansions, would return to score this game, as their work on those expansions was pretty well-received; I’d wager many fans regard the theme from The Blood Swamps just as well as something like “BFG Division.” So it was a bit of a surprise to see Hulshult say he wasn’t returning upon the game’s announcement. A few months later, id Software revealed that Finishing Move Inc. would be composing the soundtrack for the game, who’d first made waves composing the music for Halo 2: Anniversary, which is about what anyone could ask for in remaking a video game soundtrack. So I was optimistic. Unfortunately, that optimism proved all for naught.
The Dark Ages’ soundtrack isn’t bad, per se. It’s just boring. There’s little to no variety in the music. A friend of mine worded it as only ever hearing a grand total of two songs in-game: “the battle track and the ambient track.” It’s a pretty apt description. Every heavier track sounds like the exact same bargain-bin chugging metal riff as the last. The audio mixing in-game makes it a little more forgettable as it’s drowned out by the sounds of combat, but listening to the OST itself makes it really obvious how creatively bankrupt Finishing Move Inc. was in writing the score. I couldn’t even really think of a single track as memorable as the two mentioned previously. Individual tracks are surprisingly quite good, but the official OST is over two hours long. It really puts into perspective how samey everything sounds when you listen to it on its own, uninterrupted. It’s frustrating hearing bits and pieces that have promise only for it to go on and do the same exact thing for another hour.
Doom: The Dark Ages is not a perfect game. It’s a very, very good game, but flawed nonetheless. It might be the most flawed out of the three newer Doom titles, but by no means does that make it bad. Its tense and supremely satisfying combat loop will leave players itching for more and more and will have them seeing the green flash of Hell Surge attacks when they close their eyes. The story might leave a lot to be desired, there’s still plenty of those “holy shit” moments that the franchise has made its bread and butter. Ultimately, despite its flaws, Doom is still Doom. And Doom is awesome.
