genuinely surprised the same studio that made hyper light drifter were actually capable of making a good video game

secretly a movement shooter if you play scout and know how to bhop

the best there is in the friendslop genre. some might even call it friendpeak

its peak

I have to say, I was very excited for this game. After hearing that it would be stepping in a new direction I knew that I should go in expecting it to not be like Eternal. The Dark Ages doesn't have to follow in Eternal's footsteps, and it's not a bad idea to bring the series somewhere new. However, this should not be an excuse for the MANY fundamental flaws with this installment. I'm not sure how this is even possible for a DOOM title, but The Dark Ages is boring on nearly every front.

What does this entry to the series do right? Presentation and sound design. The Dark Ages is a great cinematic experience, though this does introduce some flaws (which I will be getting to), and the sound design is the best it's ever been. The thundering impact of the slayer hitting the ground from height, the booming footsteps as you sprint across the battlefield, the explosive shots from your guns, and the shield parry sound which is music to the ears. Flying through vast levels on the back of your dragon mount and effortlessly kicking through buildings in the atlan look cool and feel cool.

But how do they play? Well, not so great. They're glorified cutscenes in all honesty, there is no gameplay. During every dragon and atlan segment, all the player is asked to do is press space to perfect dodge when the game tells you to and then spam left click. This is even worse during turret segments (of which we're lucky there's so few), where you just hold left click until your right click is charged and you fire it off. Very very dull gameplay wrapped in very stylistic set dressing that is a poor attempt to distract you from the fact that you aren't really doing anything. The gameplay is so barebones that even on nightmare you romp through them effortlessly, hurting especially bad on repeat playthroughs where these missions only waste your time as nothing here is a real threat whatsoever. They seem like a total afterthought and are far far too easy.

Speaking of easy, even the main game is not a challenge at all. I get that game journalists were getting their skulls caved in by the marauders in Doom Eternal, but did we have to dial it back this hard? The accessibility options are a great addition, extra tweaking of difficulty is really cool. However, the base difficulty (I played through the game on unmodified nightmare) seems... oddly unbalanced? Where Doom Eternal had the perfect juggle of resource management, this game does not. I never once found myself running out of ammo. Ammo pick-ups are spammed all over the place, and even if you can't find any ammo for the gun you're using then don't worry, grab one of the many "melee ammo" pick-ups and wack some fodder for an easy refill. Sure, if you're switching weapons a lot (in this game, doubtful) then you won't be using a lot of one ammo type. However, in my experience playing the game, I only used one gun AND STILL didn't find myself running out of ammo. Where ammo is beyond fruitful, health is lacking pretty hard. "Glory kills" (if you can even call them that) give hardly any health back, and medkit/armor pick-ups give barely anything for picking them up. I'm assuming this is due to the resource value slider in the difficulty settings being on the lower side, but this is such a horrible way to balance resources. Pick-ups should have consistent values across each difficulty, but should appear less often on higher difficulties. Resources are spammed literally EVERYWHERE and make arenas look so ugly and cluttered, and it absolutely doesn't help that they feel worthless on higher difficulties with lower resource values.

Yeah the arenas and encounters in this one are pretty boring too. Besides looking beyond ugly with resources acting as litter scattered all over the ground, all of the encounters in this game look and feel incredibly boring. Every arena is wide open and very flat, I get they were going for the battlefront aesthetic, but every arena feels super samey. One large part of this is due to a lack of verticality in this game, but like... we have bounce pads? Use them? If they were used beyond being placed in areas to get the slayer from point A to B, the arenas might feel a lot more unique. Because the arenas are so wide and flat, enemy encounters feel super boring too. I feel like outside of the bosses in this game, none of the base encounters feel memorable at all. Enemies get introduced, then are spammed around for the rest of the game. No encounter feels like they had any real thought put into them, just enemies placed listlessly about.

Enemy interactivity is a MAJOR problem in this game. Who would've guessed, but engaging with enemies in this game is also boring! Where Eternal had enemy weakpoints to break apart to disarm them, this is entirely absent and thrown to the wayside here. The whole "enemies are uniquely rended apart" system is visually impressive here, but like with the dragon and mech segments, only serve to distract you from "oh hey what happened to the interactive weakpoints?" Again, it looks cool, but where is the gameplay? Glory kills are almost entirely gone from this game as well, the only ones that remain happen once in a while when you take down an enemy leader or finish off an enemy from above (and even then, the animations are pasted from Eternal). The best this game can manage is putting an enemy in a glory kill state only to have you kick it or whack it with your melee weapon of choice when you hit the input. Glory kills are what made you feel so powerful in the previous game, not having the same feedback here was such a poor choice and posing it as "you choose the way you finish off enemies" feel very disingenuous.

Okay but surely, SURELY, the core combat loop in this game has to be good right? No it's also pretty boring. I get leaning into the new shield gimmick, but damn it feels like such a crutch in this game. The answer to every problem in this game is the shield. Lined up rank of shielded enemies? Throw your shield. Whiplash running after you and whacking you hard? Stunlock it with the shield. Large pack of fodder enemies to deal with? Shield bash one of them for a large AOE one shot. Enemy attack coming your way? Hold up your shield to block the damage. Enemy turns green? Land a shield parry within its whale-♥♥♥♥♥ sized hit window. If the solution to every single one of your problems is the same every time, things will get dull very quick. The main loop for combat is Parry > Shoot > Parry > Shoot. Occasionally you will encounter a boss enemy and the combat loops becomes Parry > Parry > Parry > Shoot, which is hardly any better.

What makes this problem even worse are the weapons and weapon switching. Switching weapons in this game takes an ABSURDLY long time which can be extended LONGER by buffering the swap input. So switching weapons is slow in this one? Who cares? They said they wanted to dial things back in opposition to Doom Eternal's lightning fast hotswapping. Well if you design a game around it's new melee-focused combat system, maybe don't make switching weapons LOCK YOU OUT OF ENGAGING WITH IT. During the horrendously long weapon swap animation, you are unable to parry. Like at all. You are punished for switching weapons in this game, and because of this I hardly ever switched off of my main weapon of choice: The Impaler. The upgrades give you an enhanced shot after every parry, and given the combat loop mentioned above, why use anything else? No gun has a unique use case when the shield solves everything, not even the plasma weapons which are specialized for energy shields (the shield throw one shots them, who would've guessed!!)

Ran out of space for some other major points and have to cut the review short. The presentation is great (aside from forced raytracing making it unplayable for many people, somehow lucked out with my 3060) but presentation isn't enough when the game itself is lacking on every other front.

Can't recommend this one. Pretty disappointed.

This game is great, but not without its flaws.
For context I 100% my nightmare save file and beat the game on ultra-nightmare.

The game feels absolutely amazing when you get into a good groove, but there are some issues that feel like hitting a brick wall:
-Random death planes and invisible walls punish creative movement solutions to parkour puzzles.
-Side glory kills are unintuitive and hardly ever connect.
-Buffered inputs cause very jank interactions very frequently (mostly glory kills/chainsaw)
-Elevators that lock you in place cause softlocks pretty commonly

Here are some thoughts/criticisms about certain systems:
-I never swapped weapon mods and only stayed on the one I preferred. Mod swap speed feels too slow to even bother.
^-(Sticky bombs, Precision Bolt, Heat Blast, Lock On Burst, Arbalest, Mobile Turret)
-For getting all of the empyrean keys, I never used the Unmaykr because the BFG is just better.
-Hotswapping shouldn't be locked behind an upgrade and should be fast by default.
-Good movement locked behind a rune kinda sucks, having bad aerial movement feels pretty horrible.
-Chainsawing a heavy demon in a glory state should only cost 1 fuel, giving the player a choice for ammo over health.
-Game overall has a HUGE button bloat issue. WAY too many things to keybind.

Getting past these things, this game is really amazing when you have the slayer's full kit (with comfortable keybinds). Settling into a nice weapon swapping, enemy prioritizing, movement routing rhythm is unbelievable amounts of fun. You may find yourself getting frustrated at times, but this game is very much worth your time.

This game is unfair, and I love it. The environments are very immersive and atmospheric, with an amazing OST to boot. This is a difficult game done right.

This was the most aggressively mediocre game I've ever played. Was expecting a lot more from the combat, but you either clear every encounter like its the easiest thing ever designed or you get stun-locked to death by trying to take on three of the homing rocket enemies at once. The combat feels unresponsive, and the chain dash upgrade is very clunky. Was hoping for the game to feel pretty snappy, but it really misses the mark. Every upgrade only serves to make the game easier rather than add more depth to the combat, you can literally buy i-frames for your dash, who thought this was a good idea? The "story" is just a massive nothing burger, you're plagued by visions the whole game then you beat the demon boss at the end. I collected every module, weapon, nearly every clothing set, and was going to collect all of the keys to go for a full 100% but realized it wasn't worth it. Really hope hyper light breaker ends up being much better than this. The atmosphere, charming art style, and smooth soundtrack are all this game has going for it, but there's plenty of other games that have good gameplay to accompany those things.

TL;DR
-Great Atmosphere
-Great OST
-Great Art Direction
-Combat is very mediocre and unresponsive
-Upgrades don't add depth to combat, just make it easier
-Some mechanics feel clunky
-Challenge rooms feel much more frustratingly difficult than mechanically difficult due to poor design
-Extremely weak "story" if you can even call it that