| Platform | OVERALL |
|---|---|
| PC | 7.60 |
| Overall | 7.60 |
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The last two Doom games were an excellent comeback to the franchise that defined first person shooters. Eternal, while it has its detractors, I felt was one of the best FPS games ever made, probably the best in a decade. For its next installment id decided to try something different, listening to some of the criticism of those who did not like Eternal’s focus on weapon switching, they decided to do away with the fast paced highly maneuverable gameplay of Eternal to a more grounded strafe based style. I don’t think it worked as well as the last two Doom games and I fear in trying to appease more players they just ended up making a lesser version of Doom. The big addition to The Dark Ages is the shield, id made a big deal of feeling like a tank, the slayer is slower and can’t really jump that high. The Slayers base speed is pretty slow, the best way to move around is to lock on with the shield and activate a shield bash with darts you toward the enemy at incredible speeds. If the enemy is above you, you launch upward like Superman, this is clearly the intended way to move around now. Depending on the size of the enemy either they will explode into bits or take a hit for the bigger ones. Problem is if you shield rush a big enemy you will be left right in front of it where they will do a big attack. This is where the shield does what a shield is supposed to do, shield you from damage. There is a bar to how much damage at a time the shield can absorb, though with larger enemies one big blow will shield stun lock you leaving you open for a few seconds with no defense. It can become frustrating if you are trying to block but were accidentally locked on which turns a block into a shield rush into an enemy you did not want to be close to. Dark Ages tries to do some bullet hell like scenarios as now enemies shoot very large, often times slow, color coded projectiles at you. If it’s green, and only green, you can parry the projectile back at the enemy and stun them. This mechanic is so important that I found myself actively chasing very slow green projectiles because it’s such a great counter attack. It’s a very odd feeling when you WANT the enemy to please shoot a green blob of energy at you, PLEASE! This turns some of the bosses and larger enemies into strange waiting games as you dodge the orange stuff and chase the green stuff. Some enemies have a green physical attack, here the parry acts more like a traditional parry where you can stop all incoming damage and stun the enemy for a moment, though it’s harder to time than the projectiles. The last feature of the shield is the captain America shield throw. You can launch your shield at enemies and watch them split in half, the smaller ones at least. Any sizable enemy will have the shield stick to them, holding them in place stunned as you unleash hell on them. For the largest enemies it just bounces off them and does nothing, but for the majority of mid sized enemies it is a key part of enemy management. There are groups of enemies with shields who line up in a perfect little row for you, often times their shields are pre primed (glowing orange which means their armor is ready to break) so you launch the shield at them and they all explode giving you ammo. Melee is also a much bigger part of this game, you can equip one of three different melee weapons (some are stronger but not fast), this can damage and stun enemies and more importantly break armor. The melee recharges as you kill or if you find melee ammo which is all over. The melee can be very powerful and can act as a use in an emergency kind of weapon. After a certain amount of damage enemies glow purple which means you can do an execution, this lets you kill them with melee or a shield bash with no use of the melee charge. Killing this way grants you health, so even though the very tactical weapon switching of Eternal is gone, there is still some management in how to kill enemies to get the items you need. Putting all these new elements together and you get this new style of gameplay that is fun when enemies are coming at you from all sides and you are darting all around the battle field and chucking a shield at an enemy before shotgunning them in the face. Projectiles all over, you bouncing green energy back at the enemy at the perfect time. It’s still fast, it’s still chaotic, you still feel like a completely badass. BUT it’s not as interesting as Eternal, it’s not as interesting as 2016, it’s different in a way that I feel is more like any other FPS rather than the high skill based mechanics they cultivated with the last two games. Also many times I felt I was getting hit off screen and I died without ever seeing what killed me. This happens in any Doom game but it was excessive here. I think fans of classic Doom will appreciate that the guns are all viable. Eternal was very strict in that enemies were specifically vulnerable to one type of gun so it became a fast paced chess match of constantly juggling guns. This game feels a lot more like classic Doom where any gun works but some enemies just make more sense with a preferred weapon. Double barrel shotgun for any hell knight charging at you. Plasma rifle great for energy shield enemies and unloading on slower targets. One of the best new guns is this skull launcher which has two modes, one has a huge horizontal spread so it’s like mowing the lawn with grunts. It can adjust and go into a more focused stream of skulls and really devastate the larger enemies. There is a cool ball and chain gun that does massive damage but it’s slow to shoot. And of course trusty rockets, never leave hell without it. All the guns are fun to use and they all have two modes and multiple perks you unlock, the best one for me was the rocket launcher healing you with splash damage after you parry. This lead to me many times chasing green stuff and then blowing myself up by aiming at the floor while shooting rockets, weird strategy but it worked. The way some enemies bum rush you creates a feeling of constantly needing to move either backwards or strafing, again much more like traditional Doom, but also kind of like Serious Sam. Levels are way more flat, now with big wide open battlefields where once again enemies will continuously spawn in a sort of kill zone until you defeat all waves of them. I don’t think these areas are as well designed as the ones in the last two games, they are so open they just kind of all feel the same, the good stuff just comes from the mix of enemies. I will give credit to the more open levels, they do have some neat secrets (though they show up on the map so it’s less a secret and more a try to find out how to reach this thing). Many levels have optional bosses and sections, though a problem happens after you clear most of the level and you want to backtrack to get a missing power up, the levels become very empty but still very large so for long stretches you just slowly lumber around an empty map (if you are searching for extras). There are some creative levels especially toward the end, they do some neat things with gravity, though way too little. Also there are some puzzle areas, not complicated but hey interesting to see that in a doom game. Going with the theme of being more of an open adventure, there are two big new additions, a mech and a dragon. The mech is the worse addition of the two, what should be this epic spectacle is just you playing with a slower shell without any of the good gameplay. Being first person the mech just feels the same, yeah the level looks smaller but ultimately it controls the same, you just battle one type of “giant” enemy and all you do is punch a few times to power up a strong attack. You have a simple dodge which you use to avoid the glowy projectiles. That’s it, these segments last like 5 minutes, happens a few times and they are hardly memorable. The dragon though I really liked, here you take to the skies in third person where you can dodge and shoot at ships and monsters. You see the entire level from the sky and there are points of interest where you get to land and disembark for some slaying, usually to activate something and then hop back on and find the next area. In the air you may do battle with some large ships with turrets, here you lock on and play the dodge the projectile game, when you get a green one and dodge your lasers power up and you can blow up the turret. Sometimes a small ship will fly around and you can give chase while shooting at it, in reality these just serve as a bonus mission and a way to guide you to a new point of interest. It is pretty cool to dismantle the defenses of a capital ship, then land and do your normal slaying, blow up the entire ship and jump off and be caught by your dragon mid fall. I also like that there are optional areas to land if you explore well enough. It is not a game changer, the dragon hardly has deep gameplay but it’s a neat change of pace. There is a larger emphasis on the story in this game, and wow what a story… nah I’m messing with you, as you can imagine it’s stupid and pointless. Eternal had so much lore but at least it was kept to the menus, now they put all that lore into cutscenes so you watch generic characters talk about crap you don’t care about as you wait to kill things again. The main villain at least looks cool and is an imposing figure, plus it’s a pretty fun final boss. Everything else with the story is just drivel. There were also weird cuts, where it feels like a connecting scene was deleted. I did not care for anyone, I just wanted to rip and tear. This is a very meaty game, took me about 20 hours to complete though I was searching every inch of these levels. I do like the variety in locations, as I mentioned before especially at the end with some neat ideas. The pacing with new weapons and upgrades is handled well. The mech levels were short, so didn’t hurt the experience much and I enjoyed the few dragon levels. Bosses are surprisingly good, some become bullet hell spectacle which is weird for Doom but makes for a fun fight. It’s a game where I started off not liking it much to really feeling the combat and getting into a groove by the end. This is a very good FPS, it’s just not at the level of the last two games. Graphically the game looks very nice though there aren’t any real next gen wow effects. Performance is perfect, runs extremely well with emphasis on frame rate. I think they missed an opportunity with the art style, here is this clearly inspired by metal world, with the blandest look possible. This game should have been like a metal rock album cover come to life and with great music which sadly this game doesn’t have. The music is as generic as the art style, just loud rock with hardly a memorable hook, a far cry from Doom of old. Doom The Dark Ages is a swing that doesn’t miss but it doesn’t make contact either, it’s more of a foul ball. The combat is still frantic, exciting and gives that same rush Doom is known for, it just doesn’t happen as often and more importantly it’s lacking the extra elements that make this franchise the best in its class. For the original it was the incredible level design and enemy placements. For new doom it was the mechanics heavy almost action game like precision needed to play at a high level. This game has neither, its new elements aren’t good enough to be top of the genre. I really enjoyed my time with this game, I played it twice, second time on nightmare with the speed turned up which made the game feel better, but instead of feeling like I played something special I just felt like I was going through the motions of a good but not great game. Score: 7.6 |
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Posted by Dvader Tue, 10 Jun 2025 08:45:13
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