Doom: The Dark Ages review: a great action game with a deep story

If you’ve spent any time on the internet, you may have seen the “what I expected vs. what I got” memes. If I could make one for Doom: The Dark Ages, in my expected column I’d reference the earlier Doom games — Eternal and the 2016 soft reboot of the franchise. But for the “what I got” column, there’d be an unexpected mix. Those earlier Doom games would still be there, as in most respects The Dark Ages is very much like its predecessors. But I’d also throw in Band of Brothers, Pirates of the Caribbean, Pacific Rim, The Necronomicon, and a collection of the best bodice-ripper romance books literature can provide.

For The Dark Ages, id Software takes the story way back to the early days, to a time before the demons invade Mars and Earth. The Doomguy, known as the Slayer, is a supersoldier enhanced by aliens who have styled themselves as humanity’s gods. When those gods and their human collaborators are besieged by the legions of Hell, the Slayer gets to doing what he does best: ripping and tearing until it is done.

The Slayer has an arsenal of weapons to aid him in his quest. The series’ time-honored favorites, like the super shotgun, make an appearance. But in this old-timey prequel of sorts, the Slayer has all new weapons to get medieval on demon asses. I’m actually really surprised at how much I enjoyed using every weapon in this game. Typically for games that give you a varied arsenal of guns, only one or two are worth using, as there’s only so many ways a thing you shoot people with is materially different from another thing you shoot people with.

But each gun in The Dark Ages was designed with a distinct purpose and enough utility to still get the job done outside that purpose. The accelerator breaks energy shields and with upgrades can paralyze enemies. The impaler works as a semiautomatic pistol to mow down swarms of fodder but can also transition into a sniper rifle that shoots bullets the length of railroad spikes. But though I love every gun equally, it’s the Slayer’s shield that makes combat so dang entertaining.

Using the Slayer’s shield is the most fun I’ve had playing a shooting-focused game because now, instead of shooting bullets, I am the bullet. Using the shield’s charge ability, I can shoot across the battlefield ramming into enemies and turning them into paste. When that ability’s on cooldown, I can also use the shield to parry attacks, reflecting them back where they came for massive damage. Parrying’s useful to break enemy armor and protect yourself and, unlike in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, it doesn’t take an advanced degree in theoretical physics to figure out the timing.

Between the shield, the Slayer’s melee attack, and all the guns, combat in The Dark Ages feels like entering mini flow states. Every action fits together like a ballet of carnage. Shoot the metal armor to weaken it, throw the shield to destroy it, and then, by the time it’s returned to my hand, the enemy has unleashed a blast I deflect back to kill it. And because combat is so much more involved than point and shoot, I can bear the fact that there’s not a lot of enemy variety or unique boss encounters.

Another conflict between the “what I expected” and the “what I got” columns is how strangely peaceful and Zen-like playing The Dark Ages is. The levels are large, filled with secrets and collectibles that I enjoy searching for. Completing a level 100 percent doesn’t feel like an exercise in tedium but rather a reward for perseverance and clever puzzle solving, especially for someone like me who is very much not a completionist.

In addition to the ripping and the tearing, there are other special sections of The Dark Ages in which the Slayer pilots either a big-ass Doomecha fighting enemies Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots style, or a big-ass dragon with flying sections. These moments were a miss for me. Despite the “rule of cool” novelty of the mecha and the dragon, without the variety of the Slayer’s weapons, combat in these sections is boring as — forgive me — hell. All you do in the mecha is walk and punch. All you do with the dragon is fly (poorly) and shoot a cannon (also poorly). They’re certainly cool to look at in cutscenes, but mechanically, I’d rather be back on the ground.

But my favorite part of this entire game is the story. I know that’s not something you’re supposed to say about Doom. It’s Doom: the story is superfluous to all the demon killing. But thinking about the narrative id laid out, I start giggling and kicking my feet like a blushing schoolgirl, because this Slayer is a lover!

Just like in the other games, this man cannot be bargained with and he has no moral ambiguity. If you are a demon, you die. If you enable demons, no matter how “good” or “noble” your reasoning is, you die. And he is just so stylish at killing things, inflaming my competency kink.

But more than that, despite the fact that in previous games the Slayer doesn’t speak outside of pained grunts and his face is covered for most of the game, the way this man emotes belies so much depth. There’s a moment in the middle of one of the dragon sections where, just before he hops back on his loyal steed, he takes a beat to place his hand tenderly on the creature’s neck. But my favorite Slayer moment comes early in the game. He’s being held in stasis by his alien masters as they don’t want to deploy him and thereby draw Hell’s attention. He’s forced to watch as his human allies are overrun, and he is so overcome with rage that he’s able to briefly break the chains that bind him. You could be forgiven for believing the Slayer is driven by the desire to vanquish Hell, but that’s only partly true. In The Dark Ages, he is just as much a lover as he is a fighter, and the hottest thing a man can do is rip and care.

The Dark Ages is so good because it brings out the kid in me. Describing it to other people makes me sound like a child trying to explain something that sounds nothing like what you’d expect from a Doom game as I ramble off events with no regard for shaping a coherent story. “And then, a big mancubus appeared, and I parried its blast with my shield and then a bolt of lightning came down from the sky and it killed a bunch of demons. And it was awesome.”