Doom: The Dark Ages thread

We are a month out from this releasing (May 15, 2025).

Other than seeing when they originally announced it awhile ago, I didn't follow any of the news regarding it. When I know I'm for 100% sure getting a game, I usually try to avoid getting information about it.

Well, turns out I was missing quite a bit this time around because this week I actually began catching up on all the latest info just out of curiosity and much to my surprise, the game is a radical departure from what most were probably expecting (including myself) based on the last two games.

I'll leave the deep dive up to ya'll, but they reworked the entire combat system, it's significantly slowed down compared to Eternal and the frenetic movement all over the place is also gone.

They have described Doom as "run and gun", Doom Eternal as "jump and shoot" and Doom The Dark Ages as "stand and fight"

The combat is quite strange looking for a Doom game. I have no doubt it will be very fun, id software has a great track record and this game will surely be good, I just don't know if it will be a good "Doom" game.

Seems like the shield is the primary mechanic all combat is based around and the melee attacks strongly compliment it. Weirdly enough the guns seem to be almost a total afterthought, they play mop up duty for the shield/melee attacks. It looks fun, but I'm not sure if that's Doom.

The dodging of and interacting with relatively slow moving projectiles all over the place. Once again, very strange. I find it to be too arcadey, clash of tones between world and demons and the widgets all over the place being bright and arcade like.

Watching the game play it almost looks like a rhythm game based on Doom. You basically tap the right button at the right colored indicator.

There was recently a big event where a lot of Doom community players were invited to play it and the feedback was all quite good, they all really enjoyed it. There are a ton of youtube videos of the various people there talking about it including their own gameplay footage.

One thing they all agreed on though was unfortunately the "variety" levels will call them. The giant mech suit and the dragon you can ride, nobody had anything positive to say about them, particularly the dragon levels. Everyone said they were passable at best and were relieved when they were over to get back to the standard gameplay. Variety for variety's sake is trap many games have fallen into it over the decades and it sounds like this game has a case of that.

So yeah, quite not as pumped as I was overall. I can appreciate them trying to be innovative and trying new things to make the games feel different and not rehashing the same idea. I'm also confident they will deliver a very fun game. However there is that danger that you can change too much and your innovation becomes bastardization. People who liked the previous game in a series expect something at least somewhat similar, that's why they are return customers. I personally would have preferred it to be a tad more traditional than what we are apparently gonna get.

Regardless, as a stand alone game I'm sure it'll be great and I'll still almost certainly get it.