Doom: The Dark Ages is a nostalgic power trip with a weak story

id Software tone down the difficulty and ramp up the narrative in this techno-medieval adventure

The message from the developers that arrived alongside my code for Doom: The Dark Ages made it very clear — this prequel to the reboot series was designed to stand alone from its hectic predecessors — and provide a new experience for fans “inspired by classic Doom”.

In that sense, I’d say id Software has succeeded, but the result is going to be quite divisive. Doom Eternal was a marked heightening of the intense pressure and refreshing speed of 2016’s Doom with some overwrought storytelling sprinkled throughout.

Regardless, the many memorable skill checks along its death-laden fight to the finish line helped smooth over some rough narrative edges — everyone remembers their first encounter with the Marauder…

But there are no Marauders in Doom: The Dark Ages, or any spot tests, for that matter, that feel as rewarding to overcome. I played the entire game on Ultra-Violence and didn’t die nearly as much as I imagined I would.

Here, the void of skill checks is backfilled by some fun new melee functionality and a heaped spoonful of unjustified cutscenes. All told, it’s still a smartly-made shooter worthy of its historic namesake, but also kind of a mixed bag.

Doom: The Dark Ages reminds me most of the glut of shooter campaigns from the Xbox 360 era that I’d trudge through with checked-out emotions, purely because the combat was captivating. The story in The Dark Ages reads like a teenager’s comic book idea of what a medieval Doom game might consist of.

There’s ancient kings, ancestral rites and clawed villains looking to harness a weapon that “gives you the power of a god.” As ever, The Doom Slayer is our mute vessel throughout, providing some rib-tickling but surprisingly sparse moments of comic relief as a forgettable, trope-heavy drama plays out around him. It’s still a game about being a badass, just a bit more serious and worse off for it.

I wish id Software would have leant into the fanfiction angle and focused on the absurdist comedy of playing as this ridiculous killing machine instead of introducing alien adversaries and a codex full of jargon that no reasonable player will remember. I’m normally an advocate for more story, and there are some cool moments in the final act, but this doesn’t feel like an earnest exploration in Doom worldbuilding — more like a convenient wrapper to justify the setting.

We’ve seen how attractive an idea it is to present The Doom Slayer in an otherwise-oppositional or ‘meta’ context in internet culture, and maybe it’s time for id Software to let go of the canon and get a bit irreverent and knowing with the studio’s immortal mascot.

And this is a Doom game, so if the story is not going to be subversive, then it’s just getting in the way of my demon-killing time. Thankfully, the demon-killing time in Doom: The Dark Ages is still plentiful and enjoyable, even if it is more intentional and grounded than its forerunners.

Crucified megademons and crumbling cathedrals abound across its Serious Sam-like open-world levels, which are lousy with secret areas and upgrade materials to collect. Easily my favourite part of the experience was exploring nooks and crannies in search of Rubies and Wraithstones to scale my abilites — and getting trapped in a nostalgic arena encounter that felt ripped from the 1990s.

Doom: The Dark Ages is a much slower game, then, and you can feel it in the thud of each footstep. The Shield Saw is a calculated and clever addition in that respect — it’s a Captain America-like shield that you can defend yourself with but also lob to stun enemies, or more often, destroy their armour after heating it up with a salvo of bullets.

Later down the line you can dip the shield in magic pools to imbue it with ancillary parry powers that allow for even greater specialisation, and I enjoyed the process of tinkering my build towards vampirism for better survivability in combat. Stringing together a series of Sekiro-like parries is a fantastic feeling, but the shield gets a lot of use outside of combat too, it being the main way you interact with puzzles, whether that’s docking it to release a climbable platform or throwing it to smash obscured statues from a distance.

A mace and a flail also join the party, with the mace in particular boasting a delicious risk vs reward combo. It’s a single-use, slow-recharge attack with a hefty animation, but it can make mincemeat of whatever’s in front of you. I tended to pair this with the upgraded Impaler rifle, which rewards your headshot accuracy with speedier melee recharge time. Tasty. Of course, Doom: The Dark Ages also has its own BFG, too — a nasty crossbow whose coveted ammo allows you to devastate the battlefield and cheat death.

As a result of these additions, the ‘Stand and Fight’ tagline is a fitting description for the gameplay loop in Doom: The Dark Ages, and I respect the commitment from id Software to provide something different and a bit old-school. Even so, I was still expecting the enemies to grow in intensity, actively pressure my position and challenge my abilities unto a point of mastery.

I enjoyed the challenge of ousting an Acolyte’s secret clone to make it vulnerable, and right-clicking my way through the Cosmic Baron’s sustained offensive, but I was never completely thrown off my toes by a fresh face, or felt the sheer majesty of a powerful new boss. The lower levels of chaos in The Dark Ages meant I quickly found a rewarding playstyle and loadout combo that suited me, and the game wasn’t too fussed about pushing me out of my comfort zone.

Beyond the appearance of Champion Demons, The Dark Ages doesn’t throw too many curveballs or boss battles at you across its 20-hour runtime, mainly because there is a higher focus on the underlying narrative, and its few clear villains mean that you naturally have to wait to fight them until the bitter end.

Unfortunately, this means there are levels in the midsection where the pacing is shot and it all starts to blur together, especially if you’re not super invested in what the Maykrs or Night Sentinels are up to. It’s here where, depending on your taste in shooters, you may start to long for something more from Doom: The Dark Ages.

Admirably, the game attempts to break up these lulls with a smattering of Mech and Dragon expeditions, but these new mission types felt like distractions that didn’t really add anything meaningful to the game. The bread-and-butter combat of modern Doom is so versatile and engaging by comparison that they start to cloy rather quickly. The limited control scheme and small scope of the mech missions mean you’re often just clicking your way to the finish line, and piloting the dragon is a little too awkward to deploy onto the kind of maps id Software is good at making.

Particularly, the mounted gameplay is dominated by rhythmic dodges in order to down shields, destroy hell cruisers and progress the objectives, but this process quickly becomes monotonous. The beloved Automap system falls short in such vast open-world spaces, too. You can easily end up lost and confused while surfing around like industrial Spyro looking for Secret Areas.

Ultimately, I think Doom: The Dark Ages is a solid entry in the reboot franchise and a worthwhile experiment in slower combat, but not quite the sensational follow-up to Doom Eternal I was hoping for. The techno-medieval setting is an audiovisual feast of tentacles, viscera and cobblestone, even if the narrative doesn’t do it justice. And yes, you can still rip and tear until it is done. For most of you, that will be more than enough.

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