Doom: The Dark Ages

id Software once again found a way to reinvent the DOOM formula, adding new gameplay elements such as the thoroughly enjoyable shield saw. DOOM: The Dark Ages is nonstop, adrenaline-fuelled thrill ride from start to finish. This blockbuster demands your full attention as the best FPS this year so far.

The Doom Slayer is back and he’s heavier and angrier. DOOM: The Dark Ages reimagines the franchise’s blistering pace with a medieval twist and a new “stand your ground” mentality. It trades double-jumping and grappling hooks for a powerful shield, an upgradable flail, and dragon rides through the skies. The result is a variation of DOOM that mostly refreshes the formula without losing its soul.

With stellar combat, incredible weapons, hellish monsters to fight, and excellently implemented gameplay and design changes, DOOM: The Dark Ages delivers an excellent new style of DOOM, while still retaining the series' core strengths.

DOOM: The Dark Ages throws everything and the kitchen sink at the wall, and a lot of it sticks. However, just enough of it doesn’t stick to drag things as a whole down a few pegs. Gunplay and parrying feels great, as does weaving through the bullet hell-esque attacks, but suddenly dying for no perceivable reason does not. Still, it’s a game worth your time for those highs, even if you have to get ...

Doom: The Dark Ages is indulgent and deliciously violent, but surprisingly safe.

Stressful, but in a good way, Doom The Dark Ages thunders along a well-trodden path but fails to break any new ground.

DOOM The Dark Ages is an unrelenting parade of visceral hyperviolence that comes at your thick and fast, leaving you overstimulated and exhausted but thrilled and gratified.

DOOM: The Dark Ages is different, and whether that’s a good thing or not is dictated almost entirely by how you feel about id Software’s last game. After the breakneck DOOM Eternal, the developer has dialled its action back for a medieval prequel that feels reserved in comparison.

Doom: The Dark Ages is definitely a game that you play for the shooting mechanics and not the story, but the newly implemented Shield Saw brings a breath of fresh, aggressive air to the demon-slaying fun.

From the original games that propelled id Software along on its path to glory, to more recent installments that brought the franchise to a new generation of slayers, Doom has always held a special place in my heart. The satisfying violence, the lightning fast pace, and those oh so heavy metal soundtracks always worked for me.

One last area that had me excited was the talk of streamlining the game’s upgrade currencies, where Hugo shared a little more on a ‘streamlined economy’ – “We’ve streamlined the economy and the currencies in the game. I think that’s another thing we learned from DOOM Eternal is if you have too many currencies and too many skill trees, you can confuse the player.”

All the new additions id Software introduced in Doom: The Dark Ages are welcome changes to keep a franchise that's been around for more than three decades feeling fresh. I still can't shake the feeling that something's missing, though. It just doesn't have the same pull as the last two Doom games.