DOOM: The Dark Ages Steam Charts & Stats

Pretty dull, the game treats you like a you could not solve a simple puzzle. Evert hing is just labeled with where it is and how to get there. Combat is the same assortment of enemies doing the same attacks or just stood in a neat line asking to be wiped out in a chain explosion. Its like the devs were scared of giving the players a tough time with anything.

It's not a hard, not recommended, but from someone who thought eternal went in the completely wrong direction with its highly direct rock paper scissors gameplay that just feels like the devs are poking you in the shoulder the entire time going, remember, against that enemy, you use this weapon, and against that enemy you use this single powershot weapon, but not the other 3, they don't do anything, and against that enemy you use this explosive, but not the other 4, they don't do anything. And to confirm their insistence on "Making you play the way we want you to play" they confirm weapon juggling was also an accident by hard blocking it in this game, which I didn't enjoy anyway because it makes the weapons completely meaningless as you're just scrolling through them regardless of situation and enemy. In this game, it's even worse, as it's literally, a quicktime event. That's what the game is. Now press the green button; Good job. Now press the purple button! Good job! Now press the.....rinse repeat. There is 0 exploration, as everything is marked on the map, yet somehow is a "secret", which is kinda good because they're stupidly large with nothing to actually do or explore. You're just running from arena to arena, another bad bit of eternal that's even more pronounced here. Performance. Doom Eternal was a benchmark, a magnum opus for how games should look and perform. Clear and distinct visuals with good detail impact and visceral sensation. Quicktime ages, is a blurry mess where nothing stands out from anything else, and it runs like ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Medium settings, balanced DLSS no PT or anything fancy to hit 100-120fps. Eternal runs native 4K on max settings at locked 200fps. A lot of people like this game, but they're not FPS players. If you want the feeling of DOOM, without having to play DOOM, this might be a good fit for you. But for me, I spend the first 3-5 minutes going, yeah it seems alright, and after that, just bored to tears, waiting for colored button prompts to pop up. Even at 150% speed with the parry window and stuff set to minimum, the game is rather slow and the prompts are still so lenient, it's free. I think the best example is the same thing that was wrong with the marauder in eternal, as you just kinda stand there and wait for the dork to drop his shield, so you can shoot him. Well, welcome to the bossfights in this game. I think Moistcr1tikal's playthrough showcases it very well where, during a bossfight, he's sitting with one hand on his mouse, reading chat, and pressing the same button sequence over and over again for a couple of minutes until the boss is dead. That's Dark ages. It's got atmosphere, it's got.......story, though it's rather disjointed and dorky, feeling more like pandering to teenage hormones of wanting to feel badass than to actually be a story and it's got some cool scenerry and situations. But the gameplay is extremely simple and basically on rails. Enter arena, follow button prompts, player agency is not really a thing, weapons don't matter, you're just doing the thing the developers intended. I got a really bad feeling during Markiplier's early preview of Doom Eternal, a 15 or so minute video with the devs, where they, during that 15 minutes say, verbatim; "To get you to play the way we want you to play", I think it was 47 times. I found Eternal to be beautiful, run amazing, really well made for what it was, but not for me. Too directed and simplified, but I managed to slog through it. Dark ages......oh boy. I'll let you peope who enjoy it, enjoy it. But I really hope they actually make the next game, a DOOM game, and not an on rails shooter with 0 player agency. Mentioning on rails, look forward to the "exciting" dragon and mech suit sections, literally on rails, literal quicktime events with some walking or "flying" in between the events, just to give the player even less agency in the gameplay. In short, there's several good reasons this game has a quarter of the reviews Eternal and 2016 had in the same timeframe. Test it, see if you enjoy it, it's very easy to see, becuase if you enjoy the first level, go for it. If you do not, nothing changes as the game goes on.

No Glory Kills. Soundtrack is OK. Combat feels smooth. Animations clunky. Nah eternal had it.

Good game, but it's poorly optimized for AMD hardware. Consistently crashes during gameplay!

Definitely my favorite of the modern doom trilogy. I feel like it melds the best aspects of 2016 and Eternal into one experience. The shield combat is fantastic and I hope it makes a return in whatever game we get next. Only complaint is that I feel there are too many weapons. they're all fun to use, some more than others. I tend to catch myself only cycling between 3-4 weapons when I assume the game wants you to use all of them? That being said the 3-4 guns I do tend to favor are amazing, I tend to use the Super shotty, the Cycler and the rocket launcher mainly. Overall a great game, very much looking forward to the DLC in July!

4/5 Very good, high action gameplay. Not quite perfect, but a solid entry in the franchise. *Note: the DLC has been announced, but not released upon time of this review. This is base game only. Doom: The Dark Ages takes place prior to the events of Doom 2016, during a war between the Night Sentinels and the Demons of hell. The Doom Slayer is deployed during this war to rip and tear his way through the Demons. That's basically it. There is a story, but let's be honest, it doesn't matter. You're here to rip demons apart in glorious combat. Gameplay is split into 3 sections: on foot, on dragon, and Atlan. On foot is the vast majority of the game. Basic FPS stuff, move, shoot, blast demons. All that good stuff. While not as fast as Doom: Eternal, the slayer is still extremely mobile, and now has a Shield Charge allowing you to close the distance. The shield is also the biggest change here - you can use it to block most enemy attacks, and with proper timing, parry others. Parrying charges your melee attacks which you can then use to combo after stunning the enemy. It makes for a fun, if repetitive, gameplay loop where you parry and counter attack. You can also throw it at enemies to quickly kill them, or to stun the larger ones momentarily while you move in for a kill. Like Eternal, you also get your resources from the enemies - most will drop health if killed, and certain weapons will cause them to drop armor or ammunition as well. This keeps the gameplay moving. I was never in a situation where I felt I needed to scrounge for health because I knew the next encounter would provide me with the resources I needed. There are a large number of weapons. 12 in total, plus 3 melee weapons, and 4 upgrade runes for the shield. You can swap between all of these at will in the middle of a fight to match the situation as needed. They can all be upgraded as well with resources found in the game. On Hurt Me Plenty difficulty, I found that the fully upgraded super shotgun, combined with the flail and any rune was sufficient for pretty much any situation. I ended up fully upgrading half the weapons and using 3 or 4 of them, but, the Super Shotty works on everything. That said, I'm sure certain weapons perform better against certain enemies, and would likely be needed in higher difficulties, but the parry/counter gameplay lends itself to the high burst damage of the shotgun. There are several boss fights. They are fairly simple - figure out the parry patterns, strike when there is an opening. Basic video game stuff, but good encounters nonetheless. As for the other gameplay: The Dragon is a cool concept, and certainly had my inner 12 year old hyped, but the actualy gameplay is really dissappointing. It isn't bad, it's just meh. They probably could have cut it to be honest, and the game would not have suffered at all. The Atlan missions are about the same. You get to throw hands with Demon Titans in a Pacific Rim mech. It's very simplistic, and easily could have been excluded, but it's a cool concept. Overall, really solid game. The shield gameplay gives it an armored knight feel that kept the combat from becoming overwhelming. I personally think it's better than Eternal, though I believe I may be in the minority on that. The DLC has been announced recently - looks good. We'll see if I revisit it when it comes out.

I wanted to like this game more, but it just never clicked with me. I've been a Doom player since the 90's and I LOVED Doom 2016, however, I feel like the philosophy for each subsequent game after Doom 2016 was "just add more stuff and things!" More. More. More. More. So does it have more of everything? Yes, however, the overall game feels numb and bland to me.

The negative reviews for this game make me roll my eyes. So many people whining about how the previous two games were "better" (in their opinion). This game is extremely well made and keeps up with the quality of the previous two. It is not buggy. The graphics and performance are incredible. The gameplay and animations are so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ smooth. You still get to feel like an absolute badass. I thoroughly enjoyed Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal. I had a ton of fun playing this one, too. This game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awesome.

A big step back so far. It’s just missing that raw energy you expect from a modern Doom game — it feels toned down and neutered. Remember the huge cheers at the 2016 glory kill reveal? They clearly had a meeting at some point and decided, “Yeah, let’s remove that.” I loved the intro in 2016 where Doomguy just yeets the tablet while some guy tries to give him exposition. It was a perfect throwback to John Carmack’s old line about story in games. It was there, but it knew its place. Now we’ve got all this lore, no real glory kills, weak weapons, a lame parry mechanic, and side characters I couldn’t care less about. They felt the need to explain everything, which completely baffles me. I thought we were dealing with Hell — incomprehensible darkness, pure evil manifest, a cosmic force of mindless malevolence. Instead, they humanize Hell with scheming demon princes who make deals and play politics like medieval warlords. That’s the real problem. Doomguy as an unrelenting killing machine makes perfect sense when Hell is pure, irredeemable evil. But once you humanize Hell and give it politics and motives, you undermine the whole fantasy. The Slayer goes from being a righteous force of wrath to just blindly slaughtering enemies that now feel like just another political faction. They changed what Hell means, and in doing so, they broke what made Doom work. Maybe that’s why they removed the glory kills.

okay I'll just see what the next level's deal is and then I'll get off OH *NOW* I GET MY CHAINSAW SHIELD okay I'll stop after I test this out a little IS THIS A FLAK CANNON THAT SHOOTS BITS OF GROUND-UP SKULLS okay surely there's a place I can chill now and go to the bathroom WAIT A MINUTE I GET A MECHA okay this level's done and I really gotta pee I'll just check the next one and it surely won't throw me right into WAIT A MINUTE I GET A DRAGON-