Doom: The Dark Ages - Hands-on Preview
Doom. There are very few franchises with such an important legacy in video games. Along with its immediate predecessor, Wolfenstein 3D, it essentially created the FPS genre. Since that point, it has gone on to be one of the most loved franchises ever with every main game in the franchise bringing something new and exciting to fans (Yes even Doom 3, I stand by that.) This legacy looks to continue with Doom: The Dark Ages, a prequel to the events of both Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal. ID Software has promised to once again reinvent how people see Doom and thanks to a recent hands-on event I can say that that promise looks like it will be fulfilled.
Thanks to Bethesda ANZ, I was invited to their lovely Manly offices to get about four hours of hands-on time with Doom: The Dark Ages. After a brief intro from the development team, I was seated at a killer PC with a mouse and keyboard at hand, ready to test my mettle once again. But the thing is, I was tested in ways I didn’t expect. In Doom Eternal, everything was about speed, with the gameplay loop based around shuffling through your weapons and abilities at a great rate of knots while dodging enemy attacks. Things in The Dark Ages are more measured and go at a slower pace. The Doom Slayer is less nimble, but hits harder and likes to be in the think of things as opposed to dancing around the edges of combat. The comparisons used by the dev team said that if Doom Eternal was an F-15 Fighter Jet, Doom: The Dark Ages is a Tank and I found that observation to be incredibly accurate.
The gameplay has a unique feeling to it. The closest analogy I can come to is a weird one and that is Dynasty Warriors. I know that sounds odd but stay with me. You see, in Doom Eternal, every demon, from basic grunts and imps up could cause you problems, whereas, in The Dark Ages, these lesser enemies are nothing but cannon fodder for brutal and swift destruction. Whole battalions can be wiped out at once with shield bashes, shield throws and ariel slams, with their sole purpose being both a source of resources (ammo, shields etc) and a distraction from the real threats. The trick then becomes clearing out these hordes, while still keeping your focus on the bigger and more dangerous enemies, much like the traditional structure of a Muso game. It is something I haven’t encountered in an FPS before, but I found it exciting and a fantastic way of portraying the power fantasy of the Doom Slayer.
For a bit more context, the Doom Slayer this time around has a range of melee moves that bring him up close and personal with the demon horde. His shield can be used to parry large demon attacks, charge in and splatter a group of small demons or it can even be thrown Captain America style for some destruction from a distance. The other melee option is using fists, or later on, a flail to beat those hellspawn into submission. The real joy comes from combining these abilities. It took me a little while for it to click, but when it did I quickly began to forget about my guns and focus almost solely on my melee-based path of destruction. That’s not to say the guns weren’t great, after all this is a Doom game, but boy it is just so satisfying to parry a Cyberdemon’s attack and then immediately crush his knees with a flail strike that I just wanted to do it over and over.
During my time with The Dark Ages, I got to experience 4 different gameplay styles. The first was the traditional linear Doom experience with a contained map and an end-level goal. The next was an open-world style map where I could run around a wide open area and tackle a range of different mission goals in any order I liked. There was a host of secrets and hidden missions to discover and some huge combat arenas to battle in, bigger than anything seen in the series before. The big open combat areas felt akin in size to something you might find in a Serious Sam game with hundreds and hundreds of enemies all screaming towards you. It is a hell of a rush. The last two modes were the Mech and Dragon modes that were highlighted in the trailers both of which were a treat.
The Mech mode is like a ramped-up, Kaiju-sized first-person beat-em-up. You go toe-to-toe with the biggest demons kicking around, throwing right hooks, dodging attacks and breaking spines while charging up a super attack that literally disintegrates the flesh from the nasty buggers. This mode portrays the feeling of being a giant demon squashing mech perfectly with the feeling of both size and weight being bang on. The Laser Dragon does share some resemblance to classic arcade-style titles like Panzer Dragoon, with flight and auto-targeting combat the order of the day. Players can switch between flying or hovering to attack and dodging incoming attacks charges a special that is needed to break through the shields of certain demon vessels. This was perhaps the weakest part of my time with The Dark Age though, simply because it felt like it needed a bit of fine-tuning before release. It was fun, don’t get me wrong, but there could certainly be some improvements in dodge-time and pathfinding. I am sure that has already been considered and I fully expect it to be shinier than freshly minted dollar coin on release day.
To have played Doom: The Dark Ages really is to understand just how different it is from the games that came before, yet at the same time it holds on to the sense of what exactly makes a Doom game. The combat loop is chunky and satisfying, there is more variety in gameplay than ever before and it looks stunning. ID Tech is really stealing the show here. Things are on track to see The Dark Ages become one of the best action games of the year. Of course, expecting anything less from this team of talented developers is doing their history a disservice.
Doom: The Dark Ages is coming to Xbox Series, PC and PS5 on the 15th of May 2025
