Doom: The Dark Ages overstays its welcome, but only by a little bit.

I'm the right age for boomer shooters, but I didn't play them growing up... or any shooters, really. I just wasn't coordinated enough for those kinds of games at the time, and I gravitated more towards RPGs. By the time I picked up Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal, though, things had changed. I'd played a few soulslikes at that point and (ironically) my reflexes are much better now as an adult. I'm still not super into boomer shooters as a genre, but I fell in love with the new Dooms.

I love everything about them. The frantic gameplay. The ambience and environments. The music. The stupid, over-the-top story. The story of Doom Eternal felt like it copied the homework of a power metal album cover and, for me, that was a feature. So I was pretty excited to pick up Doom: The Dark Ages. I know many found the inclusion of a more detailed story, with more characters, a turn-off. But the dumb-ass narrative about magic space Vikings in their war against the forces of Hell is exactly my kind of shit.

The gameplay is at once a departure from the previous titles and the same in all the ways that matter. You must still always be in motion, lest the endless hordes overwhelm you. As you dance, you must balance your health, shields, and ammo, with special attacks to recover each of them. The decadent brutality of the Slayer's animations, the blood and gore, are all the same ultraviolent fare I was looking for.

The addition of the Slayer's shield does not engender passivity. While you can use it to block, it's almost useless in that capacity. Rather, it facilitates a charge attack that assists in traversal, aids in exploration, and provides a parry mechanic. The parrying meshes shockingly well with Doom's combat. You may only parry special green attacks, but the attacks are frequent, the parry window is generous, and you're rewarded well for successful parries. Initially parries simply build up stun on an enemy, exposing them to critical attacks. Midway through the game, however, you unlock runes that trigger an attack when you successfully parry, and these attacks are powerful and worthwhile.

The super shotgun, as always, feels staggeringly cathartic to fire. But the Slayer's movements also carry that delightful weight that was absent from previous titles. When the Slayer jumps off a ledge, he lands with an echoing boom that damages nearby foes. When he charges with his shield, you feel the impact at the terminus. The game just feels so fantastic to play.

I frequently found myself at very low health, only to somehow survive until I could punch some health out of a grunt. I suspect the game manufactures these scenarios, both with the resource dance and by lying about the Slayer's remaining health. But I don't begrudge it. The added tension was welcome.

Exploration still mixes easy puzzles and platforming with secret hunts in large, circuitous maps. The maps are wider and more open than ever before, however, which facilitates more sweeping combat sequences and scenes. The first time the map opens up like this is very cool. But the sheer scale of the maps is a bit exhausting, and they are less interesting to look at than maps from the previous two entries. By the end of the game, I was over it. I'd seen almost exactly two too many massive maps of blood swamps.

The Dark Ages also introduces sequences where you pilot the Slayer's giant mech or ride his pet cyborg dragon. Unfortunately the experience of playing these segments does not live up to how cool the concept is. They're bad, and I think the game would have been significantly stronger without their inclusion.

The dragon sequences play fine, but the maps that the dragon traverses are mostly empty, and it feels to me like they add very little. The mech is ponderous and slow, with a focus on dodging attacks to build up your own powerful strikes. There's very little depth here, but quite a bit of tedium. Your attack charge drops to zero if you're hit even once, so you're incentivized to play defensively, making these sequences drag out long past the point of enjoyment. A late-game boss fight pits the Slayer in his mech against, essentially,

Spoiler

cyborg Cthulhu.

This should be the raddest shit ever, but the fight is an enormous slog. And that's a damn shame.

To summarize, Doom: The Dark Ages is great fun. The fact that Id has managed to explore new gameplay elements in each modern iteration of the series, yet stay true to their core design philosophy and gameplay loop, is an enormous triumph. And the story, while probably not for everyone, was fun. That said, I think it would have been improved by removing the mech and dragon sequences and having a few more focused, linear levels near the end of the campaign.