Doom: The Dark Ages review – heavy metal first person shooter

The shooter franchise from Hell returns, as the sequel to Doom Eternal aims to be more accessible and closer to the original 90s classic.

The Doom reboot trilogy may have the worst storytelling ever in a triple-A game. It absolutely doesn’t matter, because it’s Doom and you don’t need a story, but we had no idea what was going on at any point in The Dark Ages, and we’ve played and enjoyed the 2016 reboot and 2020’s Doom Eternal. Admittedly, we started to zone out on the plot halfway through Eternal, but this third entry does such a poor job of explaining itself it feels like an act of self-sabotage.

But, like we said, it doesn’t matter. Doom is the game that popularised first person shooters, back in 1993, and it’s about one thing and one thing only: shooting demons from Hell. Well, that and looking for secret areas that contain items, that make it easier for you to shoot demons from Hell.

We’re not been factitious in that description. Not only is that how the original Doom worked but it’s very much what The Dark Ages is trying to get back to. Doom Eternal was a great game, but it didn’t seem to sell all that well, so The Dark Ages is presented as a significantly easier and less complex game. However, that’s not the criticism it might sound like.

We didn’t like the 2016 reboot quite as much as some people and felt it lost steam towards the end. Doom Eternal’s director agreed with us, and we had hoped that The Dark Ages would show further advancement by smoothing out Eternal’s pacing and difficulty issues, and the poorly judged platforming sections.

In a way it does but its approach is rather blunt: the platforming sections are removed entirely, to the point where you can barely jump at all, and the game’s default difficultly level is significantly easier than Eternal – to the point where we’d advise avoiding it if at all possible.

The idea of trying to take the series back to its roots is a reasonable one, since neither of the two previous entries played all that much like Doom, even though all three games stick with the conceit that you never need to reload and there’s no aiming down sight. However, The Dark Ages portrays the mute Doom Slayer as much slower and heavier than before, while enemies fire projectiles that are also slower and often need to be avoided by strafing left and right.

However, several new elements are introduced for The Dark Ages, most obviously the shield saw, which is basically Captain America’s shield crossed with a chainsaw. It has multiple uses, from simple defence to flinging it at enemies and/or sticking them in place for a few seconds. You can use it to barge through enemies, and hidden panels, and also close the distance between them in an instant.

The most important feature of the shield is its ability to parry any projectile that’s coloured green, which bats it back at whoever fired it at you for some significant damage. This is vital for opening up an opportunity to attack larger enemies, who are briefly staggered, with the game encouraging you to stay at close range as much as possible.

The shield saw is a joy to use from the first instance and can be upgraded several times, as can all the other weapons, which are largely the same as the previous games but always with two variants – such as a combat and super shotgun or the grenade and rocket launchers. Their upgrades are all very useful, from the plasma gun that can shock enemies to the one that gets supercharged if you hit enough enemies in a set timeframe.

You also have three separate melee weapons, all with their own skill trees to unlock, and four different special attacks that trigger when you do a perfect parry, from causing an earthquake to having a mini-turret pop up on your shoulder.

The only other core gameplay element is exploration, which is very enjoyable and reminiscent of how secrets worked in the original, as you poke around in suspicious areas of the map, looking for hidden entrances. The game plays around a bit with seemingly impossible geometry in a series of Lovecraft-inspired levels, but otherwise secret discovery remains simple but satisfying.

To add some variety, a few of the levels also involve flying on the back of a cybernetic dragon or piloting a 30-storey mech. These are very simplistic, with the mech stages being only one step above a QTE sequence, as you punch giant demons and nothing else. There’s a bit more to the dragon sequences, which allow 3D movement, but there’s only a few of these and you still spend most of your time jumping off to fight on foot anyway.

In theory, repetition is a major problem with The Dark Ages, especially as the campaign can last a good 20 hours, but the combat is so enjoyable it really isn’t an issue. All the levels being nondescript wastelands gets a bit monotonous at times, and you do get a bit overpowered by the end, but it’s a real pleasure to see a game so confident in its core gameplay mechanics that there can afford to be almost nothing else to it.

That said, Doom Eternal’s combat system is considerably more complex and tactical, and we much prefer that to either of the other two games. Some will accuse The Dark Ages of being dumbed down, while others will appreciate the fact that it’s more accessible, but the fact that it’s genuinely different to the other two, while also being closer to the gameplay of the original 90s games, makes its choices entirely justifiable.

We’re not joking when we say we have no idea what’s happening in terms of the story, since the game doesn’t do even basic things like explain who any of the factions or main characters are. We think it’s meant to be a prequel, and some of the ‘Sentinels’ look a bit like Vikings, but everyone rides around in spaceships and uses guns and computers, so we’ve no idea when or where it’s set.

It absolutely doesn’t matter that the lore is incomprehensible nonsense (not least because the few cut scenes are mercifully brief), but the game would’ve been greatly elevated if it was funnier than it is. It clearly knows that the action and premise is absurdly over-the-top but despite seeming perfect for some Evil Dead 2 style humour there’s none of that.

Doom Slayer is portrayed as Jason Voorhees, not Ash Williams, and that’s a real missed opportunity, especially as the game keeps quoting the wonderfully corny line ‘rip and tear’ as if it’s a serious piece of dialogue. Meanwhile, you spend the whole second half of the game literally trying to rescue a princess, but it’s not clear the developers even realise they’re perpetuating such a well-worn trope.

Given the improvements from the reboot to Eternal we had hoped to see a similar evolution for the third game, but this is more like a sidestep (a strafe, if you will). We prefer Eternal but we still enjoyed this, and if you found the last game too difficult this is probably exactly what you want.

Hopefully Doom: The Dark Ages won’t be the last word on the series, as there’s still much that can be done with the premise and, as has been the case for the whole reboot trilogy, the failings feel less like critical errors and more like opportunities for the future.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £69.99
Publisher: Bethesda
Developer: id Software
Release Date: 15th May 2025
Age Rating: 18

*available on Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass from day one

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