Back when DOOM The Dark Ages released, if you asked me how I felt about it, I'd say it was an amazing game that deserved a lot more praise than it was getting. A lot of people liked to harp on it, simply because it's not Eternal again, and that's unfair. But since then, I've had a lot of trouble getting myself to replay it. Not that I didn't try. I tried multiple times, but always found myself dropping the playthrough once I hit the third or fourth level. It's been the only DOOM game in the soft reboot trilogy that I haven't replayed multiple times. I've played through 2016 about three times, and I've played Eternal a countless amount of times, but there was always something about TDA that I just couldn't get into.
If it weren't for the DLC, which I thoroughly enjoyed on console (although I'm hesitant to call it amazing until I eventually replay it and see if I really liked it, or if it was the hype talking), I wouldn't have replayed this entire trilogy from the beginning, with 2016, to the end, with TDA. And now that I've finally replayed TDA in it's entirety, I think I can nail down what does, and doesn't exactly work for me.
To start out with the positives, I think the guns look and feel great. There's a lot of really punchy sound effects that work perfectly with each individual weapon. I also love the addition of the shield and quite enjoy the parrying system. It adds a lot of fun utilities to gameplay, all of which I frequently used. The melee system is a great concept, even if I don't feel like it's executed very well. I'll miss the glory kills, as most people do, but axing them does give the player a bit more agency with how they wanna handle close up melee strikes if done well. I enjoy parts of it, as well as the three different melee weapons to choose from. And as always, the enemy variety in both badass designs and devastating attacks is awesome.
While I do have my gripes here and there with the OST, I think it's overall a great soundtrack. It receives a lot of flak for not being as good as Mick Gordon's OST, but that's just a completely unfair comparison to make. I don't think anything will quite match the genius of Mick Gordon's mind when it comes to DOOM OST, so expecting different musical artists to perfectly recreate that is begging to have your expectations let down by having it too high. The OST here is great as a soundtrack separate from any unfair comparisons. 'Nuff said.
And now there's the stuff I don't like. I'll start with the one thing that causes gameplay to take a substantial hit, and why I just couldn't get myself into the game upon trying to replay it. Most weapons in the weapon wheel, despite looking, sounding, and feeling awesome, are completely useless compared to others. Early game weapons will very quickly be outclassed and replaced by new weapons and upgrades. I played through the game on UV the very first time I played it on console, and here on PC, and on both playthroughs, by the time I grabbed the super shotgun, I primarily stuck with that weapon, would rarely switch over to the chainball and rail spike when the time called for it, and never touched a single other weapon without ever being punished for it. I only used three out of the eleven weapons in the game for a majority of my playthroughs, without ever facing difficulty for neglecting eight other weapons.
This would've been fixed if there was any type of important resource management, similar to DOOM Eternal. And I don't mean to say this game has to copy everything Eternal did. But resource management wasn't something that exclusively makes Eternal better, and it wasn't something that doesn't work for any other potential DOOM games. It could've even helped with 2016's gameplay loop if it was incorporated at the time.
This game could've very much benefitted from resource management without just turning into an Eternal copy. The reason Eternal had strict resources was to encourage you to swap between all your weapons in order to spread out your ammo usage so that when the time came to finally use your chainsaw to restock your ammo, you had three gas canisters that would allow you to refill your ammo and take out a heavy demon. TDA has nothing like that. You will never have to worry or be conscious about ammo because you'll always be stocked up.
Melee charges essentially replace the gas canisters. You can hold three melee charges at max. They don't instantly take out demons, but melee attacks that land, including finishing blows that don't use a melee charge, fill up a large chunk of ammo for every weapon category. And they aren't tricky to save up like gas canisters. All three melee charges will automatically refill over time and can be sped up by parrying. You will almost always have multiple melee charges, and by extension, plentiful ammo. You can very comfortably stick with one extremely powerful weapon like the super shotgun without ever worrying about running out of ammo for it for the entire game. That's how much this system can be abused. And because of how closely linked melee is to everything, you don't even really have to put any effort into thinking about using melee charges, because using them quickly because second nature due to how easy they are to use. And because you're primarily sticking with one weapon for most of the playthrough, with the shield being an exception but playing a big part in making other weapons feel obsolete, things can get repetitive.
And, again, I'm not asking for an Eternal copy. I'm not asking for weapon quick swapping on the same frantic level of Eternal, but I am asking for reasons to use more than half of my arsenal throughout the game. It feels like the devs wanted to distance this game from Eternal to prevent comparisons. And while that didn't exactly work, it's understandable why they wanted to. But it feels like they distanced it too far from Eternal, and in the process they cut gameplay attributes from Eternal that would've helped TDA's gameplay.
You may say "well then just switch between weapons on your own, you don't have to stick with one weapon". But, why should I? The game doesn't punish me for it. It's extremely easy to do. So why shouldn't I stick with one weapon? The game should find ways to encourage and push me to swap between most of my weapons, like 2016 and Eternal do, although 2016 suffers from similar problems as TDA but not on the same scale. If I have to FORCE myself to use the other weapons in the game in order to have more fun, then the game isn't very well designed.
That's my biggest gripe for the game, but there's some other things, like the story here. They chose to have a bigger focus on the story this time around, and this just feels like the antithesis of DOOM. One thing that's stayed consistent about these games is that they know you're not here for the story, you're here for cool ♥♥♥♥ and the gameplay. 2016 was so self aware of this that even Doomguy constantly rejects the idea of sitting around for people to talk and the story to play out. And I love stories in games. Some of my favorite games ever have a large focus on story, but the DOOM franchise is not meant to have large focus on it's stories. At least there's still plenty of cool ♥♥♥♥ that happens, so there's that.
There's a lot to like about The Dark Ages, but it's got it's obvious blemishes, and after the original honeymoon phase I had all the way back at launch, I gotta say this entry is a pretty disappointing one. Still somewhat fun, but disappointing.
7/10
