Doom The Dark Ages Review, Gameplay Impressions, Videos and Top Features

Doom The Dark Ages from developer id Software is the latest bold iteration for the series and yet another that doesn’t care what others in the oversaturated genre are doing. 

Dark Ages is the third entry in the modern Doom series, following up Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal (2020), though narratively, it’s a prequel to the former. 

And that’s not the only interesting wrinkle as the historic series looks to carve a bloody path through modern times. Dark Ages slashes away from the fast-paced combat of the prior two and slows things down for a more grounded, strategy-minded approach. 

Blatantly only competing against itself, Doom’s latest outing sounds a little polarizing. But in motion and at the controls? It’s still very much, well, Doom. 

Graphics and Gameplay

Bombastic is a nice word for modern Doom and Dark Ages is the pinnacle of it. The gore, metal soundtrack, gravely voice-acting and all types of demon spawns across hellish landscapes is turned up more than ever here. 

By now, even non-Doom fans know the deal. Dark Ages is a monstrously good-looking and sounding game with all the expected modern technical feats. There’s still the neon, out-of-place ammo boxes scattered about and similar colored prompts for enemy attacks that can be dodged or parried. But it’s no different, thematically, than the very first game from all those years ago. 

Along the way, the UI is clean and informative and those mentioned obvious tells stand out as helpful on the screen. 

Of impressive note this time out is the sheer scale of things. This isn’t a hallway shooter by any means. Many of the game’s levels are outright massive with really impressive skyboxes and draw distances that ramp up the immersion. 

This time out, the world map is expanded and worth exploring for more than tests of combat acumen, too. It loops in challenges, such as environmental puzzles that have nothing to do with combat. 

Doom continues to attempt evolutions with each release. The 2016 effort was classic Doom, running and gunning. The follow-up looped in more jumping and verticality. 

Now, here comes Dark Ages, a more methodical, brain-reliant experience. Make no mistake, there are still droves of creative guns to use while ducking, dodging and weaving, seeking those green projectiles that players can send back at the enemy. 

But there’s a much bigger emphasis on closing the gap and getting into the nitty-gritty of melee combat, too. The new Shield Saw, capable of blocking, parrying and attacking, is a highlight of the experience. It opens up fun new gameplay for the series and perhaps unintentionally makes the best Captain America-styled shield mechanic we’ve seen in a game to date, as throwing it and watching it rip a gory path through enemies as it arcs back to the player is super-satisfying. 

Slow-motion glory kills do seem to take a hit of a backseat compared to the prior games, but it’s not the end of the world when the rest of the fighting has been slowed down a notch. 

Beyond the wealth of guns, there are some other expected melee weapons, such as a mace, while outright new weapons pepper the experience, too. 

Dark Ages also lets players pilot vehicles for the first time in the series—and it feels like it. Hopping into a Godzilla-sized mech or flying a dragon through big skyboxes in Doom is a fun, metal idea, but it’s a little clunky, slow and typically winds up in a sigh of relief when the player’s boots are back on the ground. 

Even so, while some will bemoan the shift in gameplay style, this is a fun romp that still very much feels like Doom. A little added strategy and enemy variety that doesn’t often feel overwhelmingly difficult is a good thing, overall. 

Story and More

Dark Ages places a huge emphasis on storytelling, for better or worse. The overall setting is a sort of funny-but-strange high-tech-but-medieval mashup. 

Despite its efforts and some cutscenes, the story still feels boilerplate and background to the action. It’s hard to shake an almost Halo vibe to the whole thing in appearance and narrative, given the whole green super soldier gets big guns thing. 

Maybe that’s not totally fair, but it’s hard to imagine anyone is grabbing a Doom game in 2025 for the story. Dark Ages isn’t going to dramatically change that, but it’s nice to see the effort and longtime fans will appreciate having an excuse to stay focused and later dig up some lore videos about the world, at least. 

Overall progression hits the expected notes, with some of it now handled through exploration of the world. Uncovering goodies tucked into the environments that make the player strong is a tried-and-true staple of video games that works well here and makes secret hunting worthwhile. 

Currencies lead to upgrades, where players have some strategic agency over how weapons perform. This isn’t an RPG by any means, but stepping back and trying to figure out whether a gun’s ammunition should light enemies on fire or explode on kill is a small layer of control that is nice to have (and perks on guns are an either/or situation, making choices matter). 

Similarly, choosing which weapons to use is a fun part of the progression and strategy, too. There are obvious crowd-control weapons with big spreads, while players might want to emphasize raw damage output against a solo target. 

Not to fret if players make poor choices, though, as the game walks a fun balance between old-school and new by having a lives and checkpoint system in place that’s pretty generous. 

Along those same lines, this goes heavy on the options to be as accessible as possible. Meaning six different difficulty settings, plus heavy control over the little things that can make all the difference—such as the ability to tweak parry timing windows.

Conclusion

Dark Ages is very much Doom, no matter what pre-release fretting over design choices had to say on the topic. 

It’s a fun romp at all times, a weighty, impactful and violent-as-expected throwdown that demands just a little more thinking from the player than usual. There’s an upshot to that—it feels more rewarding than usual to engage with the Doom systems and come out atop a bloody pile of tough enemies. 

Also, there’s something to be said for an established series simply being willing to take bold twists and turns, rather than relying on the same old experience, too. 

While Dark Ages hits some impressive highs, we also can’t say this is a foundational block the series will use from here on out, given Doom’s willingness to zig when everyone expects a zag. 

But that’s modern Doom and frankly, this is the best entry in the series and is just worth enjoying for what it is.