Review: DOOM: The Dark Ages

My first three hours with DOOM: The Dark Ages were an argument. I kept trying to Eternal-strafe through encounters that wanted me to plant my feet, raise a shield, and parry like a demon linebacker. Once I stopped fighting the game’s gravity, the campaign opened up — gothic, loud, and weirdly proud of being heavier.

This is melee-forward Doom: shield bash as punctuation, green-glow parries as the metronome, siege toys and set pieces that feel closer to a war movie than a skate park. The fantasy skin shouldn’t work. It does, because the shotgun sermons never leave.

The fights that sold me

When Dark Ages is cooking, arenas are readable battlegrounds — sightlines for projectiles, pockets for glory, heavies that punish panic jumping. Sound design still does half the storytelling; I play this series loud for a reason. Difficulty options respect the masochists without locking the spectacle behind a purity test.

Presentation details stuck with me more than any plot beat: the way armor scrapes, the silhouette of the Slayer against siege machinery, levels that feel constructed as fortresses instead of corridors with skull wallpaper. It’s a confident standalone identity, not “Eternal with a helmet swap.”

Where I drifted

Mid-campaign, spectacle sometimes outruns encounter variety — I had stretches where I was impressed and slightly bored in the same breath. If vertical Freedom is your religion, the grounded tempo will feel like a patch note you didn’t ask for. The on-ramp is steeper for casual nights; mastery is the point, and mastery takes evenings.

I finished the base game before Revelations landed and still felt complete. Playing the DLC after only made me appreciate how deliberate the tank fantasy was — the Spear is a remix, not a retcon of what Dark Ages wanted.

Would I rerun it?

Already have. 8.2 — a top-tier action campaign that asked me to change habits and paid me back when I did. Not the Doom I expected. Increasingly the Doom I crave on a weeknight when I want to feel like a problem with a shotgun.

Score: 8.2 / 10 — DOOM official.