In the years before Doom and Doom: Eternal , the Doom Slayer was a slave to the Kreed Makyr. Dispatched to a world overrun by the demon scourge, the Doom Slayer must band together with a kingdom to make a stand against the endless armies of hell.
Ok guys, real talk time: there’s A Lot of story in this particular entry. No longer is the story stuffed into notes or audio logs most of us didn’t pay a lick of attention to. It’s Doom. Most of us come for the brutal demon slaughter with badass weapons to loud, unrelenting metal music. Thankfully we get plenty of that. I love the aesthetic of this game. The weapons are a mix of medieval and sci fi, with giant robots, biomechanical dragons, and a certain special horror figure tossed in. The shield is the biggest gameplay change. You can whip it around like Captain America, sawing through fodder hoards and stunning bigger enemies, as well as parrying critical attacks. The parrying mechanic is fine but I felt like it was overused to living hell. Instead frantic combat that made you think on a microsecond’s notice like Eternal, most of this game comes down to the shield. It made the game stale in a way the previous entries weren’t for me.
The game takes a grander, more open approach than any other Doom has. I found it mostly fun to explore and gather loot to upgrade my abilities. The enemies are your pretty standard Doom fare, with a couple new enemies that can murder you real quick if you don’t learn to parry. The weapons themselves range from great to meh- the Super Shotgun, the Ravager, the Accelerator, Rocket Launcher, and Chainshot were my personal go-tos. Some weapons I felt were cool in theory but I nevr found much use for a lot of the options I was given all around. The epic set pieces were a huge win for me, fighting giant kaiju demons in a robot mech and flying around on my badass dragon were a long time metal nerd’s dream come true.
The game leans heavy on it’s story but sadly I wasn’t really invested. There’s long cutscenes that while beautiful feel like they belong in another game. A lot of the game is basically generic fantasy game dialogue and hyping the Slayer up as if he wasn’t already a absolute legend. As I said, while I appreciate the effort, the story didn’t really do anything for me.
In the end, I found Dark Ages to be the weak point of the trilogy but far from terrible. It’s a damn fun, truly epic experience at times that just leans too heavy on the shield parry and a meh story for me but still well worth grabbing. May the gaming gods bring you glory.
Savior Gaming 