Thrak Looks At: Doom the Dark Ages

The law of diminishing returns states that after a certain point, adding more of one input to a fixed amount of other inputs will eventually lead to a smaller increase in output. This is something we have seen in entertainment many times, also known as oversaturation. The idea of oversaturation does not start to hit until we reach the third iteration of a franchise, this is despite the quality of this part three in a trilogy. Return of the Jedi, Alien 3, Terminator 3, and others are well-known in movies for being the beginning of a decline. We have seen this before in video games and my feeling is that, regardless of the quality Doom: The Dark Ages is, it spells the beginning of this decline into diminishing returns for the franchise.

Doom DA comes off the success of the modern Doom trilogy with Doom released in 2016 and Doom: Eternal released in 2020. Both games have sold millions of copies and hold high Metacritic rankings with 2016 averaging 84 and Eternal at 86. Rebooting the classic franchise has been nothing but success for developer id Software and publisher Bethesda. In 2021, Microsoft acquired ZeniMax who owns Bethesda and id Software so now Doom is a first-party Xbox IP and Doom DA represents the first mainline release under the Xbox banner. Reviews are strong for the game with its Metacritic averaging 86 and it has reached over 3 million players across PC, Consoles and Gamepass. With the continued hype train surrounding Doom DA, why is it this is the beginning of a downward spiral? Well, this comes down to reception I have been seeing beyond the main publications.

For this review, I asked two friends of mine who had different opinions on the game to give me a brief review of their thoughts. The first comes from an IRL friend of mine (yes, they exist). A handsome, buff Chad of a man named Jordan. He gave the game a 9/10 and told me how it delivered on everything he was hoping for in a Doom game, apart from the soundtrack (Stay tuned for my thoughts on the OST). He found the mechanics to be refined from the previous games, praised the story and new lore along with the new gameplay modes DA introduces. His only complaints were a lack of post-game content and being too short.

On the opposite side, we have the esteemed Burgerchamp. A legendary figure in the Discord communities I reside in. He gave Doom DA a 4/10 and while he enjoyed the new mechanics and new modes as well, he ended up not having an enjoyable time with it. He told me about how the gameplay got repetitive over time and the new ideas it presents are good, but they are not well executed which led to an overall boring and disappointing experience for him. He also does not care about the story, so he ended up skipping most the cutscenes. This is quite a stark contrast from my friends and others’ views on the game. Is this just a contrarian take from an old gamer, or is there something here that needs to be addressed?

My take on the game falls somewhere between Jordan and Burgers. Overall, I did enjoy my time with the game, but I feel it does not do enough new things or sinks its teeth into the new things it has enough to really be that standout title in the series. For context, Doom DA is better than Doom 2016. I thought 2016 was a fine shooter but I never got the hype that surrounded the game. It was slow and not the thrill ride of an experience I was promised. To me, it was just a solid first-person shooter, lacking in that spice or juice that can make a game like say Titanfall 2 standout from the pack. Doom Eternal, however, was that thrill ride I wanted and more. Eternal was an intense experience of a game that I absolutely adored and has reared itself for a place in my all-time favorite shooters and even games. Certainly, one of the best games of this decade. People like to give Eternal criticism for certain elements and while I respect them, I cannot see these faults as anything more than fundamental disagreements or petty grievances. Doom Eternal is not a first-person shooter in the traditional sense. It is more comparable to say a Bayonetta, Vanquish, Devil May Cry or any other character action style game, just in first person. The action is frenetic, acrobatic and the enemies are near non-stop with little breathing room. Some people do not enjoy that kind of gameplay and I respect that, but for me, this was what I wanted and the 30 or so hours I put into that game still lingers in my brain. To me, that is a hallmark of a great game, does it still reverberate in your brain after many months or even years of playing it, and Eternal has become that for me. Needless to say, I was looking forward to Doom: The Dark Ages.

With Eternal being a definitive ending for the modern Doom series, Dark Ages decides to be a prequel to 2016, with The Doom Slayer being used to help fight a war between the Night Sentinels against the Hell Spawn who are looking for the Heart of Argent. The story continues from there and I will not keep going for the sake of spoilers. This game had quite the number of cut scenes, more than I expected, and really tried to put the story first. I know there are fans of the story and lore in these games but for me, I do not really care. The story is not what draws me into a Doom game. Graphically, the game looks amazing. Doom Slayer’s new model is fantastic, right down to the fur cape he dawns. The environments are big and varied, with levels looking like a pirate ship graveyard and others being on war-torn beaches. The game is stunning to look at. The game also runs smoothly with next to zero noticeable frame rate drops or performance hiccups. I played this game on an Xbox Series X, but I have not heard of anyone on PC having issues with the game running. Truly a first for the PC players.

Lets talk about the soundtrack. Doom 2016 and Eternal were both composed by Mick Gordon. The music he made for both games has become legendary, in some ways more than the actual games. His blending of Djent guitars with evil harsh synths reverberated with millions of people and helped to popularize the subgenre of metal to the masses. He does not return for Dark Ages. Around Eternal’s release, Mick Gordon and Bethesda had a fallout over issues relating to the mixing of the soundtrack. It became a huge public issue, and I won’t go into the details here, you can read them for yourself. Instead, the music was composed for this game by a company called Finishing Move. Their previous work includes Crackdown 3, Microsoft Flight Simulator and The Callisto Protocol. The music in this game is universally considered a downgrade and I must agree. There are some good moments there and the atmospheric moments reminded me of Doom 64 a bit. The heavier songs are solid, but they don’t have what made the Mick Gordon soundtracks so special. No knock-on Finishing Move, it’s just a tough act to follow.

Onto the gameplay. This game feels much closer to 2016 than Eternal. Doom Slayer is heavier this time around and the levels don’t have the same verticality as Eternal had. No more platforming or any major acrobatics, here you stand and fight. The game’s selection of guns is solid. You have the shotgun, super shotgun, plasma rifle, grenade launcher and rocket launcher along with new guns like the Skullcrusher which takes a skull and turns it into a spread like weapon and the BFC which is a Crossbow variant on the BFG. Gotta admit that one got a chuckle out of me. The guns feel just as good as they did before but with no more weapon swapping you can pick one or maybe two weapons to use for basically the entire game. I personally find this a downgrade because I liked Eternal when you had to know how to use each gun for specific situations. In the Dark Ages, once you get the Super Shotgun, most of your arsenal collects dust till the end credits.

Guns are not your only weapons this time, as there is a new emphasis on melee combat. It was in the previous games, but now you get a flail, a dread mace and the biggest addition, the shield. You get the shield early on and eventually you add a saw around the shield as a replacement for the chainsaw. This thing is awesome. You can bash enemies and zoom across the map while doing so, you can throw it at enemies to destroy their armor or slice into them while you pump more lead into them and it’s the source of a new parry mechanic. The mechanic is like most parry systems in recent years, you time your parry on green colored projectiles or melee attacks to send it back or stun the enemy, respectively. This is a radical change in gameplay that emphasizes defense over offense and allows you to stand and fight over Eternal which was more about running around to get the advantage. While the shield is a great new weapon and I like it, I tend to agree with Burgerchamp’s analysis of it. After a while, the game tends to get much easier with the shield. You get to upgrade the shield, your melee attacks and guns as you progress by finding gold and various runes and stones to make yourself more powerful. Fairly standard by today’s game standards but once you max out the shield, which isn’t that difficult to do, the game becomes a near cakewalk.

The obvious rebuttal to that would be either to increase the difficulty or adjust the new difficulty sliders. I beat this game on Hurt Me Plenty which is the Normal setting. I also beat 2016 and Eternal on the same difficulty and I found both previous games to be fair easier than DA. I did not increase the difficulty for consistency’s sake and those may increase the challenge to something I would prefer, but seeing a drop off in the same setting comes off disappointing to me. For the sliders, I am mixed on these as a concept. On the plus side, they are a great tool for accessibility and being able to make these games playable to many more people who may struggle with the game at higher difficulties for various reasons. On the negative side, I worry about them hurting the concept of difficulty in gaming. You need the defaults to be good and feel good. I thought the default I selected did in fact feel good. The parry had a very generous window, and enemies were aggressive without it being too much. Id software nailed these, but I worry about more games using these in the future. Are they going to not balance their games and makes things feel completely off and then any complaints resort to “adjust the sliders” which would come as lazy to me. You are the developers; you should have the knowledge on how to make games challenging in the right way for your game. It should not be left up to me, like how QA and proper game testing is dying due to things like “Early Access”, another thing in modern gaming that gives me the ick. Sliders are not inherently bad; I just have concern for what they could do to games in the future.

I mentioned collecting to upgrade your weapons, which means we have big open areas to explore, for the most part. The levels can very much become overwhelming if you are trying to go for 100% and that leads to numerous moments of downtime. Having that is good for a game like Doom but it can make the game more of a bore than it needs to be. Now the smaller areas are used for the new game modes this introduces. We have mech fighting and dragon riding. The mech fighting is self-explanatory, you get into a giant mech and run through these linear sections and fight giant demons. The emphasis here is punching them and you occasionally get a giant gun to help. For some reason, I was reminded of I-Ninja during these parts, as I-Ninja also had mech sections (that’s a story for another day). The mech parts here are not good. They are not very fun to play or engage in. Your move set is incredibly limited, and they are so short, they feel unnecessary. I get they want to break up the shooting parts, but it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. The dragon sections are a different story. Here you get to ride a Dragon Slayer who can breathe fire, and you end up flying around these parts taking down ships or other big enemies. You have a parry as well and just like the mech sections, you parry to power up your attacks. The controls in the dragon sections feel great as you get to fly around and I agree with Jordan, it has a Star Fox vibe to it. The problem with these for me is they don’t amount to much. The parrying and shooting de-emphasizes the fact you are flying, and you never really get to spend a lot of time flying around shooting at ships like an Ace Combat or other plane game. It has potential, but I think it wasn’t really executed as strongly as it could’ve been.

This all may sound like I did not enjoy the game, but I did. Combat feels great, and it retains the power fantasy from before. I just think the game stops evolving or really challenging you by about halfway. Once you figured out the main strategy for enemies (Shield rush, super shotgun then “Glory kill”) you’ve basically mastered this game. The enemies don’t change that much throughout the game and the bosses don’t do much either. There are a handful of them, and they were absolutely nothing sauce for me. Just a bullet sponge, nothing more, nothing less. It’s a shame because Eternal had some amazing boss fights that really tested your skills and these do not. This is where diminishing returns comes into play for me. It feels like the output of this game is a downgrade from previous games, despite the input being near the same if not more. The last two games were big productions and did well. This game also seems to be doing well, but I can’t shake the feeling that this is the start of a decline. While still a fun game, it shows how the series needs to make a more drastic change than this half step we have here. Either the Doom series needs to take a long break again or they do something crazy like bring back Doom RPG or something. Personally, I would love a reboot of Quake as that could be the breath of fresh air needed. Overall, it was a fun game and I’m not here to yuck the yum of anyone who enjoyed it, I just think this isn’t the slam dunk it could have or should have been.

Special thanks to my pals Jordan and Burgerchamp for submitting their inputs and thanks to everyone who made it this far! If you enjoyed my review, leave a comment below or talk to me on BlueSky about this game. Stay tuned as I have more written reviews in the works. Until next time, BUH-BYEEE!