{"id":87660,"date":"2025-05-09T15:13:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-09T15:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/87660\/"},"modified":"2025-05-09T15:13:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-09T15:13:10","slug":"doom-dark-ages-took-just-a-few-hours-to-hook-me-completely","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/87660\/","title":{"rendered":"Doom: Dark Ages took just a few hours to hook me completely"},"content":{"rendered":"

Doom: The Dark Ages<\/a> is going to be a love-it-or-hate-it entry in the shooter series. I\u2019ve only been playing the game for a few hours so far, but I already love it. That said, it\u2019s very different from Doom Eternal<\/a> \u2014 and unless you can adjust to a game that feels very different to play, Dark Ages will be a tough hang.<\/p>\n

But if you\u2019re me, Dark Ages is a nonstop thrill. While Doom Eternal put a huge emphasis on speed, the motto of Dark Ages is \u201cstand and fight<\/a>.\u201d That\u2019s because the game actually revolves around parrying and meleeing, not running and gunning. So, if you like parrying and melee fighting, aka if you are me, this is the Doom for you.<\/p>\n

The star of the show in Dark Ages is the shield, a new addition to the Doom Slayer\u2019s arsenal. Soon after acquiring this circular shield, you get a power-up for it that adds buzz saw blades around its edge. This means that when you throw your shield at a demon using a Captain America-like frisbee toss, you can leave them stunned and twitching on the battlefield; this won\u2019t kill them, but it will immobilize them, and you can use that time to take them out or clean up small fries around them first. This affords you a lot of control over how fights play out.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

Image: id Software\/Bethesda Softworks<\/p>\n

Flinging a circular buzz saw around the battlefield feels great, and the demon-splattering, bone-crunching sound effects are supremely satisfying, but that\u2019s not even the best part. The big selling point of the shield is a shield-bash move that\u2019s a new traversal mechanic; you aim at an enemy and use the shield-bash to zip towards them instantly, bashing smaller demons to bits or dealing a hefty blow to the bigger guys. This move is what makes the game feel fluid and fast, once you learn the rhythm of it. Because the shield-bash involves this dashing move that can zip you across huge distances, you don\u2019t necessarily need the super-fast run speed you had in Doom Eternal.<\/p>\n

This is why it\u2019s also interesting to me that \u201cstand and fight\u201d is this game\u2019s marketing one-liner. I was spending so much time zipping around the battlefield with the shield-bash that at no point did I really feel like the game\u2019s combat design had slowed me down. But there is something else important to note about the mechanics here that is new and different: Your focus now is on up-close-and-personal combat.<\/p>\n

I have always been a parry sicko<\/a> and a melee-obsessive who tends to pick the heavy attacker in any game where I have that option, so I love this aspect of the game, too, but it will make or break Dark Ages for you depending on whether you can stand it. Most people probably think of Doom as a game where you shoot at demons. And don\u2019t worry \u2014 it still is.<\/p>\n

Dark Ages is also a game where you can parry certain incoming attacks and, in so doing, build up charges for a three-part melee attack that does major damage. Is it weird to need to stack up charges in order to perform a melee attack, rather than just being an infinite punch machine? Yeah, kinda. The guns in this game do often feel like they have infinite bullets, after all; ammo tends to be plentiful, unless you\u2019re playing on the hardest difficulty settings. And this isn\u2019t like a Dark Souls game where you need to consider every move you make because stamina is so hard to come by. So it might feel weird to have a limit on a crucial game mechanic.<\/p>\n

But in Dark Ages, the melee attack is so powerful and so satisfying that I get why the game\u2019s designers didn\u2019t want you to be able to perform it every single second. If they had let me do that, I might never draw a rifle again and would be punching my way through the Hellspawn. Having to rebuild melee charges by using the parry mechanics feels good, because I\u2019m already parrying with my new shield, anyway, so whenever I really need to land a trio of big punches on a big guy, I\u2019m ready.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

Image: id Software\/Bethesda Softworks<\/p>\n

All that said, I\u2019m only a few hours into Doom: The Dark Ages. I\u2019m still at the beginning of its story about how the Doom Slayer is under the thrall of some strange religious organization that\u2019s using him against his will (although at least the task they\u2019ve forced him into is his usual fare, which is to say, brutally killing a shitload of demons). I don\u2019t know how the rest of this game is going to play out. <\/p>\n

I do know one thing: The combat instantly clicked for me. And if you love the sound of it \u2014 and you\u2019re willing to let go of all of your Doom Eternal muscle memory \u2014 it might just click for you too.<\/p>\n

Doom: The Dark Ages will be released May 15 on PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X. The game was reviewed on PC using a prerelease download code provided by Bethesda Softworks.<\/p>\n

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