The good news? Doom: The Dark Ages is still all about slaughtering fearsome, demonic foes. Combat is king, and The Dark Ages’ substantially altered systems are creatively ambitious and satisfyingly successful. Even by the end of the 15-hour campaign, they kept my full attention.
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The new setting is a perfect excuse for an arsenal revamp, with weapons featuring a cool medieval flavor. Alongside your standard shotguns and rocket launchers, there’s a gun that grinds bones into a spray of bullets that cover a wide arc. There’s also a gun that charges and shoots a heavy iron ball that returns to you. You can upgrade each weapon with loot gathered from the battlefield or discovered in hidden areas. They have alt-fire modes, too.
(Credit: Bethesda/PCMag)
The gameplay gains a ton of extra depth with the shield saw, its central new combat mechanic. You can toss it at enemies, block attacks, and hit glowing objects to solve environmental puzzles. The shield comes with a new color-coded parry system that nearly turns The Dark Ages into a Bayonetta-style action game. You can parry everything from projectiles to spear thrusts, eventually activating a bonus effect like paralyzing lightning.
Along with being a fun tool, the shield creates awesome synergies with the rest of your loadout, feeding into the frenetic combat loop. Shooting enemy armor causes them to overheat. Throwing the shield at overheated enemies, Captain America-style, cuts through an entire horde in seconds. Locking onto enemies and shield-rushing into them deals fast damage and closes the distance. You unlock multiple melee attacks, from a simple punch to a heavy mace, but they operate on a cooldown. However, a successful parry creates the perfect opening for a guaranteed hit. The shield fits so naturally into Doom tactics that I’ll have a hard time going back to a series entry that lacks it. Shield combat is now baked into my muscle memory.
(Credit: Bethesda/PCMag)
2020’s Doom Eternal received criticism for being too fast and technical, forcing you to perform precise techniques that were more frustrating than fun. The Dark Ages is slower and less vertical. As in classic Doom, many enemy projectiles are big, obvious orbs you must manually avoid while returning fire. Instead of dumbing the game down, these systems encourage a more improvisational, empowering approach. As long as you remember to shield every so often, you can try whatever you want and probably find a way to win. It’s very welcoming to new players.
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Granular difficulty options let you adjust the game’s speed, parry window, enemy aggression, and other options. So Doom veterans can still turn The Dark Ages into the brutal experience they crave.
