Medieval meets metal

🎮 The Doom Slayer is back, and he’s brought a shield to a demon fight. If that sounds jarring for a franchise built on constant motion and evasive maneuvers, that’s exactly the point. Doom: The Dark Ages (DTDA) represents id Software’s most daring reimagining of their legendary shooter yet, and while it won’t please everyone, it succeeds in creating something genuinely fresh while maintaining the series’ signature brutality.

Stand your ground: The heart of DTDA’s transformation lies in its new shield mechanics. Where previous Doom games taught you to dance around enemy attacks like a caffeinated hummingbird, DTDA encourages you to plant your feet and face danger head-on. It’s a change that initially feels foreign, but once the system clicks, it’s surprisingly intuitive.

Your shield isn’t just a defensive tool — it’s practically a Swiss Army knife of destruction. Beyond blocking standard attacks and deflecting green-tinted projectiles back at enemies, you can rev up its saw-toothed edge and hurl it Captain America-style to buzzsaw through crowds, or pin larger demons in place.

A heavier metal: Everything about DTDA feels weightier than its predecessors. Your footsteps thunder across battlefields, landings from high jumps create visible shockwaves, and the removal of double jumps grounds you in a way that takes adjustment. This isn’t the nimble fighter jet of Doom Eternal — it’s a heavily armored tank, and the game is designed around that philosophy.

Level design follows suit, favoring massive open battlefields over the vertical playgrounds. You’ll face literal armies of demons across sprawling war zones, with encounters that genuinely feel like medieval sieges. While PC players accustomed to Eternal’s demanding verticality might find this approach less technically challenging, there’s something undeniably fun about standing your ground against hundreds of demons pouring across a hellish battlefield.

Between battles, the game surprises with its strongest story effort yet. This prequel explores the war between humanity’s Sentinels and Hell’s forces with actual character development and political intrigue. Don’t worry — you can still skip the cutscenes and get back to demon-slaying. But for the first time in Doom history, you might actually want to pay attention to what’s happening.

Here’s where things get weird: DTDA plays noticeably differently depending on your platform of choice. Unlike its predecessors, this feels designed with consoles in mind first. The wider arenas, streamlined weapon systems, and generous parry windows all point to a game built around controller limitations, then ported to PC rather than vice versa. For console players this is fantastic news — DTDA offers the most comfortable and accessible Doom experience yet. PC players may find it less demanding than Eternal’s keyboard gymnastics, though the trade-off is a combat system that’s more about timing and positioning than pure mechanical skill. It’s not necessarily better or worse, just different.

💯 Rating: 9/10 on Steam, 9/10 on IGN.

⌛ Hours of gameplay: TBD.

🔁 Replay value: TBD.

👾 Platforms: Steam for PC, Playstation, and Xbox.

💵 Price: USD 49.99 for the standard edition and USD 69.99 for the premium edition on Steam, and USD 69.99 for the standard edition and USD 99.99 for the premium edition on Playstation and Xbox.