Following Doom’s revelatory reboot in 2016 and its bigger but not necessarily better sequel in 2020, Doom: The Dark Ages is doing exactly what it needs to do: getting focused, and getting a li’l weird with it. With its dramatic shift in setting and its emphasis on toe-to-toe demon punchouts, it looks like a hard left turn for the series. But after my time with the demo build at a recent in-person preview event, I believe The Dark Ages’ additions to the Doom 2016 formula are thematically and mechanically cohesive, and moreover, they’re really goddamn fun.
Image: id Software/Bethesda Softworks
Doom (2016) was an exercise in mechanical purity. It weaved effortlessly between frantic arena combat and environmental exploration, just like its 1993 namesake. Its big addition to the formula was the Glory Kill, a melee finisher that essentially turned wounded enemies into health packs, encouraging you to always stay in the fight. The game succeeded on its propellant combat design, but lost some steam in the back half, by which point it had handed you all of its weapons, introduced all of your demonic foes, and granted your one big movement upgrade in the form of a double jump.
Doom Eternal built on the 2016 Doom’s groundwork, adding loads more stuff. On top of the usual spread of big guns, you had an arm blade, double jumps, air dashes, a shoulder-mounted flamethrower (which could also shoot ice grenades), a laser claymore, and something called the “Blood Punch.” While that big pile of new mechanics allowed for a more steady drip feed of treats over its playtime, it also never felt as elegant or focused as its predecessor.
Doom: The Dark Ages feels closer to the sweet spot. It plays less like Eternal’s offspring and more like its weird younger sibling. Another, different evolution of 2016’s design, built fresh atop its foundation. You still run fast, find keycards, and shoot demons, but id Software has stripped away the shoulder-mounted flamethrowers, air dashes, and Blood Punches and replaced them with a host of new systems — and this time, those additions feel smartly intertwined with each other, and thematically at home in the new dark fantasy sci-fi setting.
Image: id Software/Bethesda Softworks
The Doom Slayer’s new buzzsaw-bladed shield is the centerpiece of this mechanical streamlining. It’s always there, in your left hand, and it’s always justifying the space it takes up on the screen. Its most basic function is as a shield. Imagine that. You can lift it to cover yourself as you advance under fire. Its slightly less basic function is as a tennis racket. A quick tap of the shield button parries green projectiles back at foes as well as repelling the melee attacks you’ll be seeing a lot more of in The Dark Ages. The designers clearly want you to get up close and personal in this one, and your own melee attacks have received a serious buff to that end.
How do you get up close and personal? You use your shield. Your defense tool is also a movement tool, equipped with a shield dash that locks onto an enemy and zips you toward them astoundingly fast. When you arrive, you unleash a shock wave that turns smaller demons to paste. But bigger demons might want to go a few rounds. As you trade blows, you might notice you’ve burned through your limited stock of melee strikes. How do you restock? Once again, you use your shield. Successful parries refill your melee charges, so skillful defense turns you into a perpetual violence machine.
Image: id Software/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon
If that’s not enough, you can also chuck the bladed shield at bad guys to lock them down. An enemy with your buzzsaw shield lodged in their head won’t necessarily die, but they’ll be stunlocked until you recall your shield. It’s a handy trick for taking a more powerful demon out of the fight for a few seconds while you focus on cleaning up the cannon fodder.
Assigning so many of the new mechanics to the shield, an object that is always on the screen, is pretty smart. It meant I never once forgot about my new abilities as I scrapped through each chaotic encounter. If I got torn up by a Mancubus’ plasma orbs or a Cyberdemon’s energy sword, the tool I needed was right there, bobbing to the left of the crosshairs — but the exact application of that tool was up to me. I was constantly thinking and making choices about how to weave the shield into my combat flow, whether for movement, defense, or offense.
Image: id Software/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon
Speaking of offense: The guns are good. I played with mainstays like the combat shotgun and plasma rifle, but my favorites were the arsenal of comically brutal medieval contraptions. From a seemingly bottomless magazine, the Pulverizer feeds rune-inscribed skulls into a churning grinder, creating a constant spray of bone flechettes in a horizontal line. The Chainshot charges up and fires a retractable iron ball. The Impaler launches massive railroad spikes that pin demons to walls. Even the Shredder, which initially feels like a reskinned machine gun, achieves new mechanical complexity when it’s been upgraded. After applying a swappable weapon mod, it can super-heat targets with concentrated fire, and those piping-hot demons can be detonated with a well-placed shield throw.
That’s what I find most promising about Doom: The Dark Ages. I can’t talk about one element of it for long before I’m talking about how it connects directly to another element, and how that element connects to another and another. Within its combat design, there is a clever economy at play, designed to reward you for using the breadth of its tools. Thumbing through the upgrades menu, it seems there’s even a bit of room for buildcrafting — speccing mods and skills to exploit synergies that enhance your particular play style.
Image: id Software/Bethesda Softworks
Doom: The Dark Ages’ willingness to try something new is charming, and for a franchise that has been booted and rebooted, it might be necessary. We’ve been to Mars. We’ve been to hell. We’ve been to hell on Earth! I didn’t doubt that id could squeeze another helping of fun from Doom, but I wasn’t really itching to see the Doomguy return to E1M1 for an emotional homecoming. It certainly feels like the freedom to forge a new path is keeping the developers interested in their own work. The weapons, world, and monsters of The Dark Ages drip with the kind of adolescent enthusiasm you only see when an artist is given permission to get a bit weird. Meanwhile, the implementation of new mechanics seems judicious and thoughtful.
Whether the new approach will coalesce into a great game is yet to be seen, but I’m excited to find out when Doom: The Dark Ages launches on May 15.
