In these modern, often tumultuous, times so much of our lives are spent looking for catharsis. Not necessarily a way to escape the world, but a way to block it out and vent whatever new or existing stresses are currently eating us alive. We want to feel the thrill of abandon, maybe the exhilaration of letting go and taking risks, or more often the simple, primal joy that comes of just breaking stuff. Any stuff. All the stuff. It’s this particularly violent itch that games like Doom: The Dark Ages aim to scratch. Hard, possibly with a chainsaw.
Because Doom: The Dark Ages is all about catharsis. Where 2020’s Doom Eternal seemed to be id Software pushing the rebooted franchise towards the more hardcore audience, The Dark Ages is a sharp about-face in the opposite direction. Which is not me telling you it’s a walk in the park, but there are more difficulty sliders and adjusters than ever before in a Doom game, and the default Hurt Me Plenty setting is the Goldilocks option for someone like me who just wants to cut bloody swathes through hordes of demons with a smile on my face and a song in my heart.
I should probably dispel a pretty big myth before we get into the meat and muscle though, because Doom: The Dark Ages isn’t set in the Dark Ages at all. What at first appeared to be potentially some kind of prequel or spin-off featuring a medieval version of the Doom Slayer hacking through demons with crossbows that mulch up skulls and melee weapons that split open demonic heads with satisfying ease is actually still very much sci-fi, it’s just the kind of sci-fi that’s also wielding swords and carrying lanterns unironically. It’s an almost Warhammer 40K like setting now, so far removed from the original concepts of demons invading Mars that I struggle to follow any kind of coherent through-line in the overarching narrative.
Although there is a genuine narrative to follow, even more so than in the previous entry. The armies of Hell have invaded the Sentinel homeworld of Argent D’Nur, seeking the Heart of Argent, and the Doom Slayer is the crazed pitbull in the ointment. Following on from the events of Doom Eternal, The Dark Ages continues to explore the war between Hell and the Sentinels, introducing King Novik and his General Thira, who lead the desperate fight, and who come to rely heavily on the Slayer. A mythical avatar of violence, our charming player character begins the game under the tenuous control of the Makyrs, who are allied with the Sentinels against a demonic prince, but is soon aligned more closely with Novik and Thira.
As a character in a violent FPS, the Slayer is almost perfect. He says barely five words in the whole story, only showing any semblance of humanity when he interacts with his dragon. Oh yeah, he has a dragon now. Instead his primary role is the usual ripping and tearing, now bolstered by the acquisition of a whole arsenal of new weapons, most notably the saw shield. Edged with whirring blades and charged with powerful demon-slaying magic, it’s like Captain America’s shield as redesigned by Clive Barker.
While there are plenty of new weapons to get your hands on, it’s the saw shield that informs much of The Dark Ages’ combat, and it’s fantastic. You can throw it to slice lesser demons in half or embed it into the mottled flesh of larger fiends, you can smash through walls with it or lodge it in grotesque statues to swing across gaps. You can even activate switches with it, or, if you’re feeling spicy, block incoming damage with it. Green attacks can be parried, which will stagger demons and can be imbued with a number of devastating effects via runes you can inscribe on the shield. Coupled with melee weapons like a deadly gauntlet and hulking great spiked mace, the shield transforms the minute-to-minute combat in The Dark Ages from simply another over-the-top gorefest into something that feels endlessly satisfying.
Crashing through intricately designed levels set in a variety of locations from gloomy swamps and embattled Sentinel facilities to the steppes of Hell itself, the Slayer wields a dozen weapons that can all be upgraded using gold and gems hidden across every stage. From the old faithful Super Shotgun to the new Pulveriser that grinds skulls into ammunition, the weaponry is gloriously silly and deliberately on the nose. Especially the Chainshot, which is like a metal version of a boxing glove gun and never fails to amuse. For a game with such a grim and po-faced story, id Software ring a great deal of unlikely comedy from this blood-soaked bandage, and anyone taking any of this seriously just isn’t paying attention.
It’s dark and gorgeous, with a scale that’s often breath-taking when it pauses long enough to let you take it in. Most of the time you’ll be in huge, wide-open spaces facing down scores of fodder demons and handfuls of huge brutes that take a little more effort to bring down. There’s little here that feels cerebral, and beyond parrying anything green and clicking the stick when an enemy glows purple, Doom: The Dark Ages asks little of you beyond the aforementioned ripping and/or tearing.
There’s still a certain ballet to the brutality, of course. Killing enemies with certain attacks will cause them to drop certain resources: melee hits for ammo, for example, or shield strikes for armour shards. You’ll mix and match these thanks to the upgrades you buy at special Sentinel Shrines, while your weapons have individual upgrade paths, often letting you choose between two buffs. The first upgrade for the Combat Shotgun, for instance, lets you stack damage to set enemies on fire. Then the second step lets you choose either Smelt, which causes enemies you ignite to drop more armour, or Blast which makes them explode. And you can go into the menu and swap between these whenever you like. It’s not exactly build-crafting, but it’s not far off.
Secret-hunting requires a little more grey matter, though, especially as some of the stages take the form of massive open areas complete with looping shortcuts and environmental puzzles. Seeking out coloured key-cards, secret switches, destructible walls, and hidden swing points is always fun thanks to the sheer speed at which the Slayer moves. He’s an absolute joy to sling around these stages, in or out of combat, and the map is helpful enough to list every collectible and secret you haven’t yet found. The developers of Doom: The Dark Ages want you to have fun, first, foremost and throughout the entire, sprawling campaign. Want more challenge? Up the difficulty. Want to simply kick back and destroy hordes of demons while solving some light puzzles? Go nuts. We’re not chasing some kind of hardcore mecca here; this is a game about letting your hair down and getting your anger out.
Which makes it feel just a little bit of a drag when it slams on the breaks to make you fly your dragon around for a while. Granted, it’s not a common occurrence and you don’t spend much time at all on dragon-back – but it simply doesn’t feel as interesting or cathartic as being knee-deep in mud and blood. The dragon sections aren’t bad, but they don’t feel nearly as smooth or satisfying as getting stuck into twenty or thirty demons all at once, and start to feel a little formulaic in no time at all. Still, innovation is what we asked for, so this is something I guess.
Regardless, the dragon flights are barely around long enough to really cause an issue. Much more time is spent cycling through your arsenal of weapons, which come in six classes, each with two iterations, so the Combat Shotgun becomes the Super Shotgun, the Shredder assault rifle becomes the precision-focused Impaler. Doom: The Dark Ages feels like a glorious dance when you’re in the thick of it, parrying projectiles back at demons, or blocking combo attacks from Hell Knights, slinging the shield through a mass of shambling horrors and nailing a three-hit flail combo to explode a Brute in a shower of gore and teeth. The bright menus and garish pick-ups have been toned down considerably since Doom Eternal, maintaining that darker, grittier aesthetic while still presenting an experience that feels quintessentially, crucially, like Doom should feel.
Doom: The Dark Ages is exceptionally good fun. It’s a game that knows exactly what it wants to be and exactly how to behave in present company, offering the kind of gory, violent satisfaction that made Doom 2016 and its sequel instant hits, but dialling back some of the meaner-spirited difficulty. It’s still there if you want, given that there are six difficulty levels to choose from off the bat and a number of customisable sliders to tweak things further, but this is not a game designed to punish anyone.
In all the ways that matter, Doom: The Dark Ages is a pure power fantasy, loading you up with outlandish weaponry and lethal powers and unleashing you on the horde. At no point did I hesitate to jump directly into the next fight, the next arena, the next encounter with a spider the size of a cottage with a gatling gun stuck to its arse. It threatens to lose its balance a little whenever it stands still for too long, but that’s kind of the point, and you won’t find a more satisfying, liberating, and downright therapeutic first person shooter experience anywhere else.
