It’s no easy task to reinvent any gaming franchise. Especially, one that is as long-running and admired as Doom. But here we are in 2025, and id Software not only managed to take Doom back to its roots, it introduced smart new additions that make Doom: The Dark Ages stand high and tall among its contemporary predecessors. It is through the darkness that the legend of the Doom Slayer is born and blazes the path towards one of the most satisfying Doom experiences yet.
Developer & Publisher // id Software, Bethesda
Platforms // Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, PC, Game Pass
MSRP & Release Date // $69.99, May 15, 2025 (May 13, 2025 – Early Access)
Reviewed On // Xbox Series X
Doom Has a Story, Who Would Have Thought!
Doom: The Dark Ages is a prequel to Doom (2016). The game takes place in a juxtaposing medieval, yet high-tech, setting, creating a unique contrast. The Dark Ages opens with demonic forces invading the Sentinel civilization on Argent D’Nur. The Demon Prince Ahzrak, a formidable demon leading the invasion, is seeking an ancient artifact that could shift the balance of power.
The alien Maykrs, allied with the human Sentinel, unleashed their ultimate weapon to repel the forces of Hell, the titular Doom Slayer. The Maykrs embed different measures to control and rein in the Slayer. But, as you would expect, it’s not easy taming a walking death machine.
Each of the 22 chapters begins with high-quality and engaging cutscenes, with some sprinkled in between chapters. No doubt, the cutscenes featuring large-scale battles and the politicking in Hell stole the show with their visual spectacles.
Without going into spoilers, the story in Doom: The Dark Ages throws some twists and turns that work well. Yet, don’t expect to be blown away, except for one development that involves the Doom Slayer. This development does add some context to his vengeful and stoic character.
The game wraps up its story beats nicely with a quite satisfying ending that only adds to the legend of the Slayer. Doom: The Dark Ages is the most cinematic entry in the long-running franchise. The latest entry shows that id Software has upped its storytelling chops.
Mostly Boring Characters
Besides the Slayer, the other characters aren’t very memorable or engaging. Except for Prince Ahzrak, who visually looks cool in a demonic way, and has a lot of hellish ambitions. But other than the Prince, the other characters weren’t exactly captivating.
Doom: The Dark Ages Wide Level Design
Doom: The Dark Ages features levels that are quite spacious and wide. The Slayer is free to explore every chapter’s zone to his liking. There are a bunch of secrets (demon toys!) and upgrade materials, such as gold, rubies, and wraithstones, hidden within the peripheries of each level. These mats, in particular, will ultimately turn the Slayer into an unstoppable demon-smashing god, more on that below. Usually, you will find breakable walls with a blue shield icon to find additional secret paths.
Upon completing a chapter, tried-and-true summaries show how many secrets and mats you collect. So, this will help completionists and add replay value for those who want to 100% every chapter.
Despite the wide chapter zones, it isn’t a slog to travel. Fortunately, there is a sprint button, a first for the franchise, to help go through the levels at a faster pace. Best of all, sprinting feels natural.
Doom: The Dark Ages Going Back to Its Roots
Since 2016, id Software has iterated on Doom to have its unique feel. In Doom (2016), glory kills were introduced to the long-running franchise. They are visceral and brutal and remain foundational to the modern Doom gameplay. While in Doom Eternal, there was a lot of emphasis on platforming and movement that left a bad taste in some players’ mouths. In 2025, Doom: The Dark Ages takes it back to 90s roots, while still feeling familiar.
When Doom (1993) was released on PC, movement was slower and more deliberate, in contrast to the post-2016 titles. The OG placed a lot of emphasis on dodging projectiles, and those fundamentals make a triumphant return in Doom: The Dark Ages.
Gameplay Design Mix of Dodge, Dip, Duck, and Parry!
Dark Ages handles a little slower and is much more grounded. Combat scenarios are filled with flying multi-colored projectiles. Orange projectiles can be blocked but cannot be parried, while green ones can be reflected with the Shield Saw at the sender and nearby demons for some nice damage.
I prioritized reflecting projectiles to the point of becoming second nature. I was surprised by how much it altered my play style from the previous Doom titles. It felt familiar and unique at the same time, but most importantly, it was fun and engaging. Especially with the introduction of the Shield Saw.
Shields Up, Scotty!
During the Doom: The Dark Ages reveal, the unveiling of the Shield Saw took fans by surprise. How could a defensive piece of gear be used in a game known for run-and-gun ultra-violent gameplay? Well, it works brilliantly!
The Shield serves multiple purposes, and thankfully, it’s very intuitive. The Doom Slayer can use his trusty Shield Saw to block and parry projectiles, a throwable weapon capable of destroying metal shields, stun enemies, and even traverse gaps. The LB and LT buttons are dedicated to the shield, where LT raises the shield and block projectiles and LB throws the shield.
The Shield Saw’s versatility fundamentally changes combat. It forces players to rely on it to deter shielded demons, stunning enemies from afar to buy you some time, and of course, parrying demonic projectiles. Also, the shield can reduce the distance to demons by charging towards them. However, this is a double-edged sword as you can easily shield charge into projectiles. All in all, the Shield Saw is a welcome addition to the Doom toolbox and is an absolute joy to use.
The main combat features can be summed up into a trifecta. First, and previously covered, the Shield Saw. Second, being the guns (duh!) themselves, and lastly, melee attacks via the nifty Power Gauntlet, Flail, and Mace. In Doom: The Dark Ages, melee combat shows its evolution. Besides having its own dedicated skill tree and ammo, meleeing enemies will drop ammo. Trust me, you will burn through ammo, so melee attacks are essential to restocking to stay deadly within a fight. However, the power gauntlet and flail have only three charges, which they replenish with their melee ammo found commonly in levels similar to the chainsaw in previous entries. So, expect to throw a lot of punches during combat zones.
Fight Night Would be Proud
Weaker demons can be killed with a melee hit, but it doesn’t prompt the usual mutilating glory kills. Instead, it’s just a wind-up uppercut that whacks them. Though glory kills are still available in Dark Ages, most feel quite reserved. Whereas, more spectacular glory kills are found for larger creatures that the Doom Slayer defeats.
And Lastly, the Guns!
The last part of the combat trifecta is the guns in Doom: the Dark Ages, which maintain the same satisfying ”umph’ that Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal offered. The game features a total of seven weapons, each with its own alternate mode to unleash against the demon hordes.
Similar to Halo, plasma/energy-based weapons are great at disrupting energy shield-wielding demons. Conversely, conventional weapons will heat enemy armor and shields, but need a lined-up shield throw to destroy them. It’s a phenomenal combat system that feels distinct from The Dark Ages, and it is amazing to see id Software reinvigorate combat in every Doom entry. I would call it a testament to their risk-taking philosophy to keep Doom fresh for its players.
My favorites were the Accelerator for taking out energy shields, Skullcrusher Ravager (the Pulvirizer’s alternate mode), and the Shredder for medium-range crowd control. When I felt feisty, I would whip out the Rocket Launcher for good measure. But for the most part, the Ravager and Shredder were my go-to weapons, especially after upgrading those weapons. Weirdly, I didn’t bother using some of the weapons at all during my 23-hour playthrough. The Reaver Chainshot, in particular, was weird and not useful compared to my usual setup.
Skill Upgrades
Doom: The Dark Ages doesn’t feature skill trees for each weapon, the Shield Saw (including Attunements and Runes–more on that below), or the different melee weapons in the game. Each weapon has three upgrades only, and they are quite substantial to the point that it makes weapons quite overpowered, but in a fun way.
The Ravager has upgrades that drop both health and ammo from shooting enemies, which no doubt kept me replenished during a fight. While Shredder upgrades focused on producing spikes on enemies that you shoot, throwing your Shield Saw at them produces a nice explosion. The upgrades are thoughtful and help you feel overpowered.
Shield is Truly the Star in Doom: The Dark Ages
The Shield Saw has multiple Attunements, each with its skill trees, that players can select to change the Shield’s elemental properties. This includes absorbing and reflecting projectiles when blocking, increasing melee damage, additional health regen drops from demons, electrifying Shield throws, etc. Attunements help customize your Shield’s properties to your liking and priorities. Since survival is high on my list, I gravitated towards the health drop attunement.
Moreover, Shield Runes add additional damage-focused output when you successfully parry Hell Surge attacks. This includes Ground Fissure, which summons a fissure that travels forward, damaging and faltering demons in its path; Holy Swarm releases ethereal daggers that seek out nearby demons.
My favorite was the Auto Turret, which deploys a shoulder-mounted turret that fires ballistic rounds at a single target. However, as I upgraded the Turret, the upgrades were less meaningful as the Turret quickly eviscerated demons.
After I got most of the skill upgrades I wanted towards the end of my playthrough, I was an unstoppable demon-killing machine and truly felt like the Slayer himself. While this power fantasy might turn off some more hardcore fans, you can easily adjust your player experience to add more challenge (more on that below).
Dragon and Mech Included, No, You Read that Right!
For the first time in the long-running franchise’s history, Doom: The Dark Ages introduced new ways to fight the demon hordes. This comes in two forms: a massive mech known as the Atlan Mech, and an armored and double machine-gun equipped Dragon for the Slayer to ride in his fight against Prince Ahzrak.
Both the Atlan Mech and the Dragon are not only great ways to break up the run-and-gun nature of Doom: The Dark Ages, but are also narratively tied in with the Sentinel’s struggle against the forces of Hell.
The Atlan is a massive, slow-moving mech that relies on melee strikes, dodging, and double-mounted canons (a pickup) to fight off mammoth horned demons. Best of all, the Atlan feels distinctive when you’re the Slayer on the ground. The Atlan Mech has weight and heft to it. Its movement has a peculiar momentum to it, and id Software nailed its movement. Moreover, the Atlan punches and uppercuts have a wind-up to them. While its stomp is enough to disorient mammoth demons and destroy their armored–yes, that’s right, armored giant demons!
How to Train Your Slayer-Riding Dragon
The Dragon sections are quite enjoyable. The flight controls feel good overall. Pressing the left stick up moves the Dragon forward, and you can easily ascend and descend with the RB and LB buttons. Holding the left stick will aim at different enemies and weak points to target. However, if certain weak points are shielded, you will have to dodge their green attacks first before you can start damaging them. It doesn’t really make sense. But it just seems to hit the point home that parrying/dodging are foundational in Doom: The Dark Ages, despite some logical conflicts.
Though the vistas during the Dragon segments are quite breathtaking and show off the visual prowess of Doom: The Dark Ages. Especially the damaged city skylines that just look absolutely phenomenal when flying around them.
One thing that I did appreciate was that there was a seamless transition when landing. In certain Dragon segments, the Slayer will have to land at different points of interest to progress, and these transitions were quite smooth.
Graphics in Doom: The Dark Ages
Doom: The Dark Ages is a testament to how far id Software leveraged its own proprietary engine. Doom has never looked better, while still maintaining its girthy and grizzly character designs and dark and gothic environments. In particular, the Hell environments are dark, dreary, and ripped straight out of Pinhead’s most devilish imagination. There was one zone that featured floating sail ships that looked mesmerizing.
The human character models looked like cousins from Gears of War. Larger than life and quite girthy, they wouldn’t look out of place among the different COG divisions found on the planet Sera.
On the performance side, the game ran beautifully at 60 FPS on the Xbox Series X. There were no noticeable frame drops, even during the heaviest combat encounters. However, I did experience a few crashes to the dashboard.
There were also some graphical glitches showing yellow dots on the environment during Chapter 20. Moreover, another bug reared its head during Chapter 17. In the middle of a combat section, my Shield Saw suddenly disappeared. It was clear and gone, which made me feel so vulnerable during the fight. However, those are the only noticeable hiccups that I experienced during my review period.
Audio Design
Doom: The Dark Ages maintains crunchy and visceral sound effects from the previous iterations. Guns sound powerful and reverberate beautifully. While the more animated glory kills sound gut-wrenching, and were delightful!
The soundtrack is still comprised of the heavy metal tracks that mimic the famous original 2016 composer, Mick Gordon. The riffage is still as heavy as ever. However, in the third iteration, it is now all too familiar. What is strange, though, is that the default music level is set at 77%. Be sure to crank it up to max when you first boot the game!
Doom: The Dark Ages Takes Accessibility/Experience Customization to the Next Level
By way of our very own Cerebral Paul, Doom: The Dark Ages has an impressive suite of accessibility features. More specifically, the game also combines standard options with advanced customization tools to enhance the player experience. When you launch the game, players can adjust basic accessibility settings, followed by a detailed suite of difficulty modifiers that can be tweaked at any time.
The game includes a variety of disability sliders, allowing users to personalize gameplay, such as adjusting item and event colors for better visibility, especially useful for locating collectibles. Combat assistance features include parry timing adjustments, enhanced targeting, and “Empowered” attacks, which enable players to interrupt enemy actions for strategic advantage.
Beyond these core features, Doom: The Dark Ages introduces sliders for damage scaling, enemy aggression, and game speed, giving players control over how quickly enemies react and how fast projectiles move. Notably, players can slow down enemy projectile speed while maintaining normal game speed, a feature praised for balancing challenge and accessibility.
While the game excels in customization, one notable omission is the lack of audio cues for sight-impaired players, leaving room for future improvements. These features make Doom: The Dark Ages one of the most adaptable entries in the franchise, ensuring a more inclusive experience for all players.
Final Thoughts on Doom: The Dark Ages
Id Software has outdone itself with Doom: The Dark Ages. They reinvented the game to make it feel distinct, while familiar at the same time. The Shield Saw oozes satisfaction, despite the guns taking a somewhat backseat. Introducing cinematics is a breath of fresh air, even though the story is serviceable at best. The Atlan Mech and Dragon are nice ways to change the pace. But the run-and-gun gunplay remains as frenetic and brutal as ever. Truly, the legend of the Doom Slayer emerged from the Dark Ages.
Final Score: 9.0 / 10
Pros –
- Phenomenal Run-and-Gun Combat
- Solid Graphics
- Immersive Cutscenes
- Truly Makes You Feel Like the Doom Slayer
- Steady Performance on Xbox Series X
- Plethora of Accessibility and Player Experience Tuning
- Mech and Dragon Segments are Fun
- Good Replayability for Completionists
- Decent Game Length that Does Not Feel Like a Slog
Cons –
- Glory Kills Feel a Little Muted
- Some Crashes and Weird Glitches
- Dodge to Counter on Dragon-Back?
- Predictable Storyline and Bland Characters
- Why isn’t the Music Set to 100% by Default?
- Some Guns Feel Useless
- Audio Cues Missing in Accessibility Options
Disclaimer – Access to the game was provided for this review.
