DOOM: The Dark Ages is an absolute disappointment.
I remember watching the trailer for this game and being extremely excited to play it. Now that I have played it, I am incredibly disappointed.
DOOM: The Dark Ages takes a different approach to the DOOM series, which by itself isn't a bad thing, but it removes everything that made DOOM Eternal and DOOM 2016 so good. It completely strips the high-octane, fast paced, strategic movement shooter aspects and replaces it with.... super clunky movement, a parry that's just there and doesn't actually do anything and tedious non-strategic gameplay.
I mean seriously, the guns in this game serve no purpose like in the first 2 games. The only useful gun is the Plasma Gun which you need to get past shields, and that's it. There are no weak spots, no demon mechanics guns are used for like the Mancubus Guns or Cacodemon grenade in mouth move, or anything like that! None of that exists here. You could beat the game with just a shotgun and maybe not even the Plasma Gun if you really tried. There is no incentive to actually swap weapons and swapping is even discouraged, because it takes ages. They also strip the ammo management aspect of this game. I don't think I've ever run out of ammo in this game, when in Eternal you had to actually manage it by swapping weapons and using the chainsaw effectively. Now the new addition... The Shield. It looks cool, but it's also your only defensive option. There are no dashes, no double jumps, nothing to help you defend yourself aside from the shield. The parry is just there. It's a cool mechanic, that is in this game for the sole reason that "parries are cool" and as someone who 100%'d Sekiro, this parry is awful. It slows time, but doesn't let you do anything with that new window and it only really empowers one gun, if you have a specific upgrade and that's it. It's so disappointing. It doesn't stagger demons, it doesn't refill your ammo, it just does nothing. Take the Baron for example, he's got like 5 parryable attacks in a row, and once that string ends you get your opening, whether you parried perfectly or not. The parry itself isn't giving you that opening, it's just there to stop you taking damage while you wait the string out. So you're stuck doing 5 parries in a row just to survive until the game decides to give you an opening anyway. THAT IS NOT FUN NOR ENGAGING. Also you can't rev the shield. The chainsaw upgrade is just cosmetic.
Furthermore, the melee has ammo??? And the other melees aside from the Flail are complete trash with no reason to use them.
Let's move on to the demons. GLORYKILLS ARE PRACTICALLY GONE. THE THING THAT DEFINED THE FIRST 2 GAMES. In Eternal and 2016 they actually had weight to them, you could even build around them with runes, faster kills, more health back, whatever you wanted. Here they're barely there anymore and there's nothing to upgrade them with. The slayer has basic "finishers" that are just a punch, kick or similar and don't even connect properly and don't feel good. The game made me not want to use the finisher, it was that bad. Now, the demons themselves are.. well, super boring and soulless? They look like copies ran through an AI filter and behave how you'd expect. There are no special mechanics to any of them. No weak spots. No certain patterns. They're just completely forgettable. Introducing armor or shields doesn't help here, but the devs did it anyway. Even early on, the demons are extreme bullet sponges and just not fun to fight, which kinda breaks the game since that's the core thing you'll be doing.
Now movement. Super floaty and you feel like a tank, but not in a good way. It's like the doomslayer weighs a ton and is trying his best to run. And the sprint in this game is only in this game for the huge level sections, where it's needed. You can't really use it in combat and can only use it when going forwards. Just awful.
The music is more of the same. None of it is memorable, unique or enhances any of the encounters. If I had to describe it, I'd describe it as "generic doom music" and that's sad. Especially, compared to the absolutely beautiful OSTs of the first 2 games.
The price tag for this game is way too high for the amount of content it has. Doing everything took me around 15 hours, and if you just rush the main objective you could probably do it in 7-10. And the side content is.... pretty awful.
The game essentially forces you to explore the levels thoroughly to get any sort of meaningful upgrades, so rushing it the way I just described leaves you underpowered for the rest of the game. A game should reward exploration, not force it. This just feels like a huge chore. Especially, since the puzzles are "look around, flip a switch and done" or are locked behind keys or keycards, that you can find very close by and have a huge LED marking like it's cyberpunk. Just awful.
Performance in this game is also awful. I can run Doom Eternal on max settings without issues, but this game refuses to run smoothly on even the lowest of settings and changing settings barely has an impact on performance. And it's not just me either, this is a complaint I've seen everywhere, even from people running way stronger rigs than mine.
It's so sad to see a game, which I was so excited for turn out to be so unenjoyable and so backwards to what the series was going for.
I got all the achievements in the base game, but will I get the new DLC? Probably only to get the rest of the achievements, otherwise I probably wouldn't after this awful base game experience.
