The other key shield technique is a charging bash attack that can be used to quickly close the distance between you and the enemy. Think the Super Shotgun’s grapple in Doom Eternal, only faster, you can use it with any weapon, and it’s on a relatively quick cooldown. This combination of being able to use the shield both defensively to block and stun, and then offensively to quickly zip in or out, is what really elevates The Dark Ages’ combat to the stratosphere by making it still feel very fast and exciting even with the removal of things like double jumps, quick dashes, and fast weapon swaps. We get the best of both worlds, in that this Slayer is still extremely mobile, but also feels like a heavily armored tank thanks to loud footsteps and a shockwave when you land from a high jump.

The shield’s utility doesn’t end there, either. Eventually, you’ll also get the ability to toss the shield out, Captain America style, to instantly decapitate tons of fodder enemies at once. Or, if you use it against larger enemies, it will continuously buzzsaw into them, keeping them incapacitated for a short while. This is an extremely useful skill, but I found this to be especially potent against the Arachnotron enemies that like to pepper me with a constant stream of non-refelctable bullets. If they’re unarmored, I can just toss my shield to stop them from shooting, dash in, and all it takes is a single super shotgun blast to ready them for an execution.

Those abilities are key to surviving tough fights because almost every enemy in Doom: The Dark Ages has some sort of weakness like this – and unlike Doom Eternal, they are rarely weapon-specific. There’s no more switching to the combat shotgun specifically to pop a grenade into a Cacodemon’s mouth, then swapping to the rifle to snipe the guns off a Revenant, then swapping between shots of your super shotgun and ballistae to quickly burst down a Marauder or other big and beefy enemy, etc. That’s fun in its own way, and I’m sure there will be those out there like myself who will still prefer it overall, but The Dark Ages still manages to find a way to be an absolute blast without requiring a StarCraft pro’s level of APM (Actions Per Minute) on the harder difficulties.

The enemies are largely the usual suspects that have been in most of the other Dooms, You’ve got your Imps, Hell Knights, the aforementioned Mancubi and Arachnotron, and even the Cyberdemon, all of whom behave as you’d expect. Others have gotten new facelifts to better match with the new setting, like the Pinkie who’s now a mount with a demon archer riding him, and the new Cacodemon that hails from the Cosmic Realm. The Dark Ages even brings back the Vagary as a mini-boss, who hasn’t been seen since Doom 3. Overall, there’s a nice variety in the enemies, and even those you’ve fought a million times before have a few new tricks to make them fit better in The Dark Ages’ combat.

Speaking of enemies, It’s worth mentioning as well that Id has exponentially jacked up the number of on-screen nasties relative to Doom or Eternal. When you get a bird’s-eye view of a battlefield, it truly looks like all-out war against the minions of Hell. This did lead to a bit of frustration for me early on because I was often getting attacked from behind by enemies that would spawn in without warning, but all it took was some adjustment in how I approached certain combat encounters. I had to make sure that I used my shield bash to disengage in addition to engaging to keep them off my back.

One noteworthy omission from The Dark Ages is the iconic Chainsaw that has been used since Doom 2016 as a way to instantly kill a single enemy and regain ammo in the process. That has been replaced by an all new melee system that lets you get up close and personal and engage in melee brawls that also restore your ammo. I do miss the satisfaction of just sawing an Imp or other small enemy in half, but this system works better for what Doom the Dark Ages is trying to achieve by again making you rush towards the fight rather than away from it. The “ammo” pick ups for your melee attack are also much more plentiful than the gas for the Chainsaw was in either Doom 2016 or Eternal, making me run out of ammo far less, which was something I very much appreciated.

The Tools of Doom

As far as the actual weapons go, The Dark Ages plays around a lot with the look of each weapon to give it an old-timey flavor, but the functions are generally all the same as what we’ve come to know and love from this series. All the satisfyingly punchy stalwarts are accounted for: The combat and super shotguns, an assault rifle that shoots out railspikes instead of bullets (but don’t call it a railgun), a plasma rifle, and a single-shot sniper rifle-like weapon in the form of a satisfying steel ball launcher, just to name a handful. The only unique weapon of the bunch is the Skullcrusher Pulverizer, which sort of behaves like the chaingun but has a ridiculous spread that can just absolutely shred a football field’s worth of fodder enemies. It’s a fun weapon that goes great with The Dark Age’s absolutely insane amount of on-screen enemies at once, even though I typically opted to use the shield throw to mow down the hordes of fodder since there’s an upgrade that powers up the shield charge when you do so.

One interesting twist for how The Dark Ages handles its arsenal is that every gun has a sister weapon that uses the same ammo type and can be hotswapped between with the press of a button. So for example, along with a rocket launcher, there’s a grenade launcher; in addition to the aforementioned Pulverizer that does a little bit of damage spread out over a wide area, there’s a Ravager that concentrates the fire to hit single enemies. It all adds up to a ton of variety in the gunplay, and while I was never forced to swap between my weapons in the same way that I was in Doom Eternal, I still found myself jumping around from gun to gun simply because it’s fun.

But the absolute best part about the toolbox in The Dark Ages is – and this is a credit to the weapon designers at Id, because this is true for just about every Doom game – that every gun retains its usefulness throughout the entire game. Sure, I might have my favorites and gravitate more towards the Super Shotgun, Rocket Launcher, and Steelshot, but even the early weapons stay relevant once you get some upgrades into them. If I’m low on armor, I can swap to the combat shotgun that I upgraded to ignite enemies and make them drop armor shards; if I need health, I can swap to the Ravager to make them bleed h ealth pickups; and if I need to incapacitate an enemy while also dealing damage to others nearby I can throw my shield into a baddie, shoot the shield, and watch as my bullets ricochet and hit everyone else around.

To sweeten the pot, all of these abilities and weapons are sprinkled at a measured pace throughout the campaign. There was never even a chance for the gunplay to get stale because every level would give me a new gun, or a new ability for my shield, or a new melee weapon, or I’d find enough gold to afford a new upgrade at the shop that would alter something I already had in a way that made me want to use it more.

And it’s this need to upgrade that fed into my desire to explore and find both upgrade currencies and more traditional Doom collectibles like figurines, weapon skins, and lore pick ups. Appropriately, the levels of The Dark Ages welcome that exploration with open arms. While they all vary in size, the smaller stages are still big by the series standards, and the big levels are gigantic. They’re huge, open battlefields with tons of secrets, challenging enemy encounters, and more than a few breathtaking vistas.

Doomazord Power

Breaking up all of the running and gunning are giant mecha battles and flying sections where you pilot the Slayer’s dragon. Yes, the Doom Slayer has a dragon, because why not. These sections are shallow compared to the rest of The Dark Ages, with the mecha sections amounting to little more than a simple game of dodge, punch, punch, dodge, punch, punch, etc. And the dragon bits are little more than dodge, shoot, shoot, dodge, shoot, shoot. That said, they’re kind of like a turret sequence in that they’re infrequent and brief enough to never drag the pacing down, and they at least provide some cool moments in the cutscenes that precede and follow them.

And then there’s the soundtrack: holy hell. If you’ve played a Doom game before you probably know what to expect going in, but even so I was gleefully into it. It’s another banger of a heavy metal soundtrack that had me coming back to certain levels after beating the campaign and just turning down all the volume except for the music so I could listen without it being overpowered by all the sounds of shotgun blasts, explosions, and dying demons.