Doom: The Dark Ages - The RPC Review

Welcome back, Slayer. It's been five long years since Doom Eternal's release, and I know I've missed ripping and tearing with one of my all-time favorite video game protagonists. Things are a bit different this time around, but the core joy of the franchise remains: killing the literal hell out of a bunch of demons in style, with dark heavy metal riffs blaring in the background. And while The Dark Ages positions itself as a prequel to both the 2016 franchise revitalization and its direct sequel, it remains a fun, cathartic experience.

Existential Doom

Doom: The Dark Ages begins by thrusting us back to an almost-origin of this era of the Slayer's adventures in demon cleansing. Id Software's hellacious singleplayer first-person shooter drops us into a massive war between the human forces—the Night Sentinels, seen in Doom Eternal—their allies, the enigmatic Maykrs, and the legions of Hell, led by the ambitious Prince Ahzrak and his main ally, a dark witch out for revenge after the Slayer apparently destroyed her god. Y'know, standard bad guy stuff.

As it turns out, the Slayer himself is not fully under control of his own faculties this time around. The Kreed Maykr, a rotund member of the species that has allied itself with the Night Sentinels, has been tasked by his masters with keeping the Slayer "in line" by suppressing his will with a device called the Tether, which delivers a painful bolt of energy and incapacitates him until he is needed. Both the Sentinels and the Maykrs consider him nothing more than a mere weapon, a being who is literally launched like a missile onto the battlefield. This raises a number of intriguing questions, chief among them: is this ethical at all? I mean, I understand the Slayer is a being of pure violence and rage, but was he always this way? The Maykrs empowered him, but has he always just been a weapon? Did they strip away his humanity? Does it even matter??? I never imagined a Doom game would make me ponder these types of questions, but here we are, and that's definitely a good thing!

Rip and Tear and Parry and Counter and Saw and Bash

But I digress. We're here to execute glory kills and chainsaw through demons, not ask existential questions! The Doom franchise doesn't give a shit about that nonsense, and neither does The Dark Ages. Gameplay mechanics aren’t a carbon copy of Doom 2016, as there's no double jump, no sign of the chainsaw, and little emphasis on platforming beyond some environmental puzzles. Unlike Eternal, you're neither as nimble as you were in that game, nor as focused on verticality and strategic weapon usage. Here, the Slayer is akin to an iron tank, and his combat style, weapons, and brand new iron shield all play into the game's "stand and fight" mechanic. The ethos of the combat in this game is, like the Slayer himself, extremely stoic. Your shield can block and parry attacks, leaving enemies wide open for counterattacks, and its mechanized sawblade can be used to break through armor and shields. It shreds through fodder enemies and embeds itself into larger ones, dealing constant damage and leaving them stunned.

While I obviously missed the chainsaw, The Dark Ages almost made up for it with chunky guns decked out like medieval torture devices (the Skullcrusher is a particular favorite of mine) and multiple melee weapons that would replenish ammo and armor on their own. You can either upgrade a straightforward yet powerful punch that throttles enemies, use a spiked flail for a brutal 3-hit combo, or swing a giant iron mace at them that one-hit kills many enemies on the spot and can be upgraded to refill health as well as ammo. I loved having three distinct and upgradeable melee options, and the flail and mace fit the medieval aesthetic perfectly.

I Find Your Lack of Glory Kills Disturbing

My biggest issue with the combat is the lack of Glory Kills. In 2016 and Eternal, it was a vital mechanic that would give you a satisfyingly violent demon execution animation and drop much-needed health. In The Dark Ages, you can still deliver final blows, but everything feels less satisfying and less up close and personal. Luckily, leader enemies—minibosses that provide permanent upgrades to your health, armor, and ammo capacity—can be killed in that old-fashioned ultraviolent way, and I wish there were more instances where I could do that. While you're in the flow of combat, the lack of player-controlled (i.e. not scripted) glory kills certainly isn't a deal breaker. It does, however, feel like there’s something missing which should be inherent to the franchise’s style, and that didn’t sit well with me.

Moving on, the Praetor suit power ups are very fun and add a number of unique enhancements to gameplay. Each upgrade is activated after a successful shield parry and a short cooldown timer. You have four different variations: a ground quake that can spread out and do damage to enemies in front of you; a bunch of spectral daggers that shoot forward and seek out enemies in their path; a shoulder-mounted auto-turret that lays down fire and absolutely shreds enemies when fully upgraded; and a lightning strike that damages and stuns multiple enemies at a time. Once you fully kit out the Slayer's weaponry, even larger enemies will fall nearly instantaneously to your onslaught. Each of the four weapons is a ton of fun to utilize, but the auto-turret is my favorite, with its high rate of fire dealing out ungodly amounts of damage to everything in its path.

Hellish Innovations?

While most of the changes to the franchise formula have skewed in the positive direction, I do have a few issues with id’s experimental segments, as well as the more open level design featured this time around. First off, the fact that the Slayer has a freakin' dragon is cool as shit conceptually, but in terms of execution, I was disappointed. The flying levels are very linear, and dragon-to-ship combat rarely happens. When you do come across a demon ship, you simply hold L2, press B or Circle to dodge a green laser blast, and then shoot at a weak spot on the ship, but guess what? Your shots are auto-aimed. It's so structured and dull. I feel like they tried to emulate Panzer Dragoon, but it ended up feeling very uninspired.

Mech levels play out in a similar fashion. Giant demons attack you, you press B or Circle to dodge around them, and then you press R2 to punch them in the face and RB to deliver a final blow. It should have felt thrilling and exhilarating to pilot a ginormous mech in this universe. Indeed, it looked cool in the trailers and gameplay footage we saw prior to release. Instead, it's undercooked, underwhelming, and an unwelcome break in the flow of the game. Very disappointing.

On the other hand, while the dragon and mech levels left me wanting, the open-ended, exploratory levels were relatively well-crafted and filled with secrets and bonuses. I don't love them as much as the more linear levels, as I'm not a huge fan of open world level design, but even I can appreciate the craft on display here. The one issue I do have with these particular levels is that they take a while to get through and feature constant backtracking, especially if you want to try to get all the collectibles. At times, I really wanted to get back to the more straightforward action-oriented areas, but my OCD kept me super-focused on looking for that one final collectible (which is definitely a “me problem”). Your mileage will vary, and I'm certain that most will enjoy the exploration far more than I did.

Viewtiful Exsanguinations?

All that said, let's talk about presentation. Graphically, this game is beautiful. Environments are dense, packed with detail, and feature many destructible objects. Explosions send nearby demons flying, with particle effects that melt your eyes right out of their sockets. Character models are freakishly well-rendered, with the demonic enemies looking sufficiently spooky and evil. The Maykrs look oddly alien and decidedly inhuman, which adds to their enigmatic nature. The Night Sentinels' armor shines beautifully under light sources reflect the destroyed landscapes in an oddly mesmerizing way. If you have a rig capable of handling intense ray-tracing, this game will be a dark feast for your eyes.

Alright, let's rip the sound design band-aid off now. On the positive side, weaponry and environmental sounds are excellent. Gunfire sounds chunky, demons shriek at the Slayer with reckless abandon, and the Slayer himself grunts out in pain if you take a hit. The shield parries have a very particular metallic ringing sound, which is super cool, as well. You'll always know when you land a successful counter, or when you take out a poor unsuspecting miniboss with one mighty swing of your iron mace.

Mick Gordon’s Finishing Move

Then we have the soundtrack, and unfortunately, I can’t say I was super into it. If you've read my Doom Eternal review, you know how much the soundtracks to the previous two entries meant to me. Mick Gordon, who was unceremoniously and unjustly fired off the franchise (I won't dive deep into the controversy here; just Google it) after he composed two of the finest video game OSTs of all time, obviously doesn’t return here, nor do any of his motifs or themes. Instead, id turned to Finishing Move, a company which has produced soundtracks for titles like Halo 2 Anniversary, Borderlands 3, Grounded, and the Callisto Protocol, among others. While their work here is serviceable, it lacks the uncaged creativity of Gordon’s work. It feels like putting on a heavy metal album in the background while playing a Doom game, and while that’s fine, there’s nothing here that truly stands out and punches you in the face like a BFG-10k shot. Some of the ambient tracks are so quiet and droning that I thought the music had glitched off. There's nary a "Kar en Tuk" to be found, and no trace of a heavy metal choir. A few tracks are memorable, and they showcase the strongest tracks during the final levels, but overall, I’m disappointed in this game’s soundtrack. There’s no prestige here, and the end result is a soundtrack that feels contractually obligated rather than creatively inspired. And that’s a shame. While I don’t think anyone could truly measure up to Gordon’s exemplary efforts, I wish that id had retained Eternal’s Ancient Gods DLC composers, Andrew Hulshult and David Levy, for this installment in the franchise.

In terms of performance, I played the game on my five year old PC with an Nvidia GeForce 2070, and it ran surprisingly well! I’m sure I was barely getting 60 FPS consistently, but anytime a visual stutter happened, a few adjustments to the visual fidelity in Settings would clear things up. If you have a better GPU than my lowly (but still very functional in most cases) 2070, I'm sure you'll be fine. I’m also certain that future patches and updates will increase optimization for the majority of users in the future.

Back to the Future

The Dark Ages is, at its core, a continuation of one of gaming's most revered franchises, and I think it mostly picks up that torch and successfully runs with it. Kudos to id for trying to innovate yet again, and adjusting their play mechanics based on the feedback they received in previous titles. That said, I do think it's the weakest of the seminal FPS franchise’s current era. I need to revisit the previous two games to decide which of them I'd place on top, but I can confidently say that both Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal are better than the Dark Ages was, and I think the second game of the trilogy remains the best-looking and playing of the three.

And can I just say that we need better main villains in this series? I mean, in a game that makes you question who the real antagonists are, a two-dimensional main baddie like Prince Ahzrak ain't it. His visual design is lazy, he has very little connection to the Slayer himself, and he looks like he belongs in an episode of Power Rangers from 1993. Do better.

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