Doom: The Dark Ages review: Shields up!

In between all the parrying, you do get to shoot stuff.

Credit:
Bethesda Game Studios

In between these parries, the game seems to go out of its way to encourage a more fast-paced, aggressive style of play. A targeted shield slam move lets you leap quickly across great distances to get up close and personal with enemy demons, at which point you can use one of a variety of melee weapons for some extremely satisfying, crunchy close quarters beatdowns (though these melee attacks are limited by their own slowly recharging ammo system).

You might absorb some damage in the process of going in for these aggressive close-up attacks, but don’t worry—defeated enemies tend to drop heaps of health, armor, and ammo, depending on the specific way they were killed. I’d often find myself dancing on the edge of critically low health after an especially aggressive move, only to recover just in time by finishing off a major demon. Doubling back for a shield slam on a far-off “fodder” enemy can also be an effective strategy for quickly escaping a sticky situation and grabbing some health in the process.

The back-and-forth tug between these aggressive encroachments and the more conservative parry-based turtling makes for some exciting moment-to-moment gameplay, with enough variety in the enemy mix to never feel too stale. Effectively managing your movement and attack options in any given firefight feels complex enough to be engaging without ever tipping into overwhelming, as well.

Even so, working through Doom: The Dark Ages, there was a part of me that missed the more free-form, three-dimensional acrobatics of Doom Eternal’s double jumps and air dashes. Compared to the almost balletic, improvisational movement in that game, playing The Dark Ages too often felt like it devolved into something akin to a simple rhythm game; simply wait for each green “note” to reach the bottom of the screen, then hit the button to activate your counterattack.

Stories and secrets

In between chapters, Doom: The Dark Ages breaks things up with some extremely ponderous cutscenes featuring a number of religious and political factions, both demon and human, jockeying for position and control in an interdimensional war. This mostly involves a lot of tedious standing around discussing the Heart of Argent (a McGuffin that’s supposed to grant the bearer the power of a god) and debating how, where, and when to deploy the Slayer (that’s you) as a weapon.