Doom officially returns with an excellent brand-new release that’s saddled with Xbox baggage

On Monday, Microsoft opened its fiscal year with a new round of layoffs, including 1,600 Xbox employees with 1,600 more to be laid off by this time next year. The impact of those layoffs gradually came to light, like restructuring at Bethesda and Obsidian Entertainment canceling an Avowed sequel to pivot toward a new Fallout game. Id was hit particularly hard, and it’s now believed that less than half of the studio’s 186 employees remain. Those layoffs weren’t because Id Software faltered. Its latest game, The Dark Ages, was received well and it had the “biggest launch” in the company’s history.

Id Software has been around since the early 1990s, but its future is now left in doubt as the remaining team is about the size of a support studio and not one that forges AAA blockbusters. If Revelations ends up being the final word from Id Software, it’s quite the exclamation point.

Revelations continues the story of The Dark Ages. Now, that story doesn’t make a ton of sense, and the 14-month gap between playing the base game and the DLC doesn’t help in recalling specifics. But — that doesn’t really matter. You are Doomguy. You have demons to kill. Go kill.

After an opening level of parrying enemy attacks and flinging around the Slayer’s chainsaw shield, I’m defeated in battle and sent to Purgatory. It’s here that Revelations’s Metroidvania-lite elements crawl out of the shadows as the Slayer is stripped down (literally and figuratively). The chainsaw shield is busted, the Slayer’s armor is gone, and the Slayer’s ammo reserves are cut down. Those demons, though? They don’t care; they’re still comin’ for him.

The Slayer soon gains hold of the Chain Spear, a weapon that almost singularly makes this DLC worth playing. Like the shield, it can send green-hued enemy attacks right back to their makers, but a new dodge mechanic switches up the approach to combat. I no longer want to parry, as I did so much in The Dark Ages’ main campaign — instead, dashing out of the way is the name of the game. Perfect dodges build up a Spear Empowerment meter that is used for the Slayer’s strongest spear attacks, like throwing it at an enemy or stabbing them with an enhanced melee.

Suddenly the “stand and fight” approach to combat is nonexistent. I am a speed demon dashing around the battlefield, getting up close to smash a wimpy demon to bits with my flail or stab ‘em real good with my spear. I never linger in one place for long, and I’m loving it. Suddenly I find myself not having moved from my couch for two hours as I hunger for the next arena full of demons to slaughter.

I fly about those arenas with the spear’s Meat Hook ability. It allows the Slayer to close the gap between him and enemies by throwing the spear at one and using its chain to pull him close. It’s great for when dodging left or right won’t be enough to get out of the way of an attack. Instead, I use that chain to ascend vertically toward a demon and land behind them for some easy potshots. The Chain Spear adds great versatility to combat, and feels like an olive branch to players who wished The Dark Ages was as fast-paced as prior entries.

Image: id Software/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon

You’ll traverse around a few different levels gathering stones necessary for opening a portal back to… wherever Doomguy is from. Basically, collect some MacGuffins to escape Purgatory. Like in a Metroidvania, the levels are full of secrets to discover and can’t be fully explored without collecting keys first. The chainsaw shield returns at one point, and becomes necessary for traversal and puzzle solving; you have to alternate between the shield’s and spear’s abilities to reach the end of each level. Some puzzles are a bit head-scratching; the developers promised deeper environmental puzzles, and they delivered.

Once I get the shield back, however, I don’t find myself using it. I’ve become so comfortable with stringing together dodges with the spear that having to stand around and absorb attacks with the shield feels cumbersome. I don’t want to be slow, I want to zip around the fray like a dog with the zoomies.

Credits roll after six hours with Revelations’ blood-pumping campaign, which introduces new (and sometimes quite difficult) demons and bosses. There’s plenty more to do as hordes of demons await in the Ripatorium and a Master Key now allows me to unlock new areas to explore throughout Revelations’ levels.

But I don’t know if more awaits Id Software. Despite Doom reportedly being one of the franchises Id’s parent company Zenimax will be focusing on going forward, the team responsible for Doom games was just decimated. “It’s a bloodbath,” a former employee told GamesBeat. According to that report, Id had been kicking around ideas for what to make next, but none had been greenlit.

Now? It might not even be able to patch its own engine if the need arises. That’s according to a Kotaku report that claims the Id Tech team is down to one person. “The institutional knowledge is just not there,” a source told Kotaku. “Id Tech as a technology is probably dead forever.” Id Tech is the engine for the Doom games and is the technological reason for why there can be so many demons at once to kill and how the environments are a joy to destroy. The engine has also been used by Id’s sister studios, like by MachineGames for its recent Wolfenstein games. Machine also used a modified version of it for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

Optimistically — or, maybe, unrealistically — I’d like to think that Id Software (and every other developer gutted by Xbox) would be able to build itself back up and continue making great games if given a long enough runway. But then I read articles wondering if Microsoft would sell Xbox, and reality sets in. When companies are bought and sold, jobs aren’t created; they’re lost and subsidiaries are closed.

Doom: The Dark Ages and its Revelations expansion could very well be the last projects Id Software ever leads. If that’s the case, it would be quite the shame for one of gaming’s storied developers to no longer do what it does best: rip and tear.

Doom: The Dark Ages | Revelations is out now on PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X. The game was reviewed on PS5 using a prerelease download code provided by Bethesda Softworks. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.