Dark Ages Is A Misunderstood Game

The newly arrived installment is receiving flak for the wrong reasons

There’s a lot to be said about the new Doom game, and most of it on the upside. It’s a different spin to the frenetic combat of the older games, involving parrying, tactical skirmishes against the demon armies, and sustaining.

It’s meatier, heavier, it all most of the characteristics of the prior games, but in a gothic, techno-medieval aesthetic. For an origins’ story of the Doomguy, post-Doom 64, it goes all-in with the feel and look of the world of Argent D’nur. Combat feels like you’re Conan The Barbarian, but more jacked up with guns.

The shield deflects back color-coded attacks, can also boomerang while essentially wave clear enemies or stun the larger ones. Then somewhere in the mid to late games, you use a chained mace to melee kill enemies after they’re concussed. The entire game’s RPG mechanics involve finding secret areas and spending resources to unlock skills and upgrade weapons. Much akin to the prior games.

A lot of the complaints are revolving around the lack of glory kills, sections like swimming involved that is padded, and aspects like the platforming are oversimplified. Reasonable complains. Problems are they dismiss the shifts in the design, and reliances on careful approaches while removing verticality.

You have to balance the skill based mechanics to the absolute brainless gun combat. Weapons need to be switched for specific enemies, but can shift forms to deal with others on the go. Lot of grunts on the screen, and for that you have to rely on the shield or the shredder for clearing those waves. While the larger enemies will aggressively attack you, as you block or deflect their attacks.

The game becomes more difficult as you progress, but the weapons becoming available, and how useful they are, needs you to rely on the know-how, and using the shield as a gap closer while locking onto far away targets.

It’s a breath of fresh air, compared to the anxiety driven state of Eternal. I like that game, but you have to be so ambidextrous in everything to get the hang of its mechanics. Dark Ages scales things back, even as rudimentary as it is, it’s still a hell of a time to spend, tearing demons apart.

Sure, giant mech and flying sections are mixed results. The story is lukewarm. Mike Gordon’s absence left a lot to compensate for, and platforming is more simplified. There’s also the issue of this being a 70 dollar game, despite not having over 20hr main content, and difficulty being a bit on the easy side. Played this on Ultra-Violence.

It’s still a good game, exploration is great as you get to see the amazing environment design which tells you about its world. It is absolutely stellar looking too, visually. Tons of crazy boss designs also part of the package, go check it out in Game Pass.