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New York Times
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
A Frenzied Franchise Takes the Fight Up Close
Within every first-person shooter, there is a little bit of Doom. That 1993 game about a space marine slaying endless swarms of demons started a franchise known for ultraviolence and a broad arsenal of weapons, and also helped usher in a generation of successors. More than three decades later, the arrival of Doom: The Dark Ages effectively reinvents the hellish shooter with a revamped movement system and deepened lore. Players couldn't jump or even look up in the original game as they navigated labyrinthine military bases and turned beasts into piles of flesh. The '3-D' space that made up the game's levels was illusory — sections of each location were staggered in height. After several sequels came a soft reboot also called Doom (2016) and its follow-up, Doom Eternal (2020), both of which rewarded players for mastering aggression, momentum and frantic movement in an entirely new way. For the first time, players could double jump. The Dark Ages takes a striking shift in tone. The celestial, sci-fi brutality of the previous two games is swapped for medieval goth, with the protagonist, Doom Slayer, sporting a fur cape, a heavily serrated shield and spiked pauldrons. Double jumping and dashing are ditched and replaced with an emphasis on raw power and slow, strategic melee combat. Doom Slayer's arsenal features a brand-new tool, the powerful Shield Saw, which Id Software made a point to showcase across its 'Stand and Fight' trailers and advertisements. Used for absorbing damage at the expense of speed, the saw also allows players to bash enemies from afar and close the gap on chasms too wide to jump across. While previous titles allowed players to quickly worm their way through bullet hell, The Dark Ages expects you to meet foes head on. 'If you were an F-22 fighter jet in Doom Eternal, this time around we wanted you to feel like an Abrams tank,' Hugo Martin, the game's creative director, has told journalists. And Doom Slayer's beefy durability and unstoppable nature does make the gameplay a refreshing experience. The badassery is somehow ratcheted to new heights with the inclusion of a fully controllable mech, which has only a handful of attacks at its disposal, and actual dragons. Flight in a Doom game is entirely surprising and fluid, and the dragons feel relatively easy to maneuver through tight spots. They can also engage in combat more deliberately with the use of dodges and mounted cannons. Id is returning to its roots with more grounded combat and movement mechanics, but the game isn't hampered by other quality-of-life changes like dodging and parrying. A feature of timed challenges returns with more opportunities to exercise Doom Slayer's brutality on unassuming imps and zombies. The Dark Ages, which comes with a deep slate of accessibility and difficulty sliders, has a 'choose-your-own adventure' feel because of its diverse collection of weapons. Like in the game's predecessors, players can find secret collectibles and gather resources to improve the depth of their arsenal. One of my favorite additions is the skullcrusher pulverizer. Equal parts heinous nutcracker and demonic woodchipper, the gun lodges skulls into a grinder and sends shards of bones flying at enemies. The animation is both goofy and satisfying. The franchise's approach to narrative has evolved since the original Doom, which told a scant back story through the environment and intermittent onscreen text. The 2016 game introduced an ancient war between hell and other realms in the game's universe. Codex entries such as fiery pieces of paper hovered in secret sections of the game, adding to the richness of a story that explored themes of corporate greed and divine wrath. Since the reboot, the composer Mick Gordon's face-melting soundtrack has been driving the dread home, and this latest entry is again flooded with industrial heavy metal sounds and punchy guitar riffs. The Dark Ages stands out for its creative reinvention. But no matter what, Doom Slayer — a stoic gladiator beset by a demon scourge — sticks to his mantra to rip and tear.
The Age
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
After 30 years of guns and gore this franchise is turning to story
Anyone who hasn't thought about the video game series Doom since the mid-1990s might be surprised to see the latest trailers for Doom: The Dark Ages, which is launching next week. id Software's seminal shooter series has maintained its guns, its gore and its blend of sci-fi and satanic vibes that helped propel it to massive success decades ago. But it also has knights, shields, a massive pilotable mech and what appears to be an epic and cinematic tech-horror-fantasy storyline. It's not the only legacy franchise to have ballooned from an all-action gameplay experience to something that – at least in part – is presented like a Hollywood blockbuster. Look at recent Tomb Raiders, Final Fantasies, Sonics, Zeldas and even Street Fighters. And especially look at the recently delayed Grand Theft Auto 6, which is shaping up to be one of the biggest and most expensive games of all time, despite the series' humble beginnings. It's not that there's no longer a market for more focused and exclusively playable experiences; those are furnished in essentially all genres by smaller-scale games generally by smaller teams, and sold at a lower price. Or players simply return to the originals; all the old Doom games are available, packaged with new maps and running in high resolution, on current platforms. But new games in these massive tent-pole franchises operate on a different level, as marquee releases for major corporations, costing many years and millions of dollars to make, and being sold for more than $100 a copy. Each one needs to be different from the last. And, importantly, bigger. The world of Doom was reset in 2016, with a new game that emphasised brutality and heavy metal music but also brought back a lot of 'video gaminess' that had been shed in the dour 2000s. Yet through that game and its sequel, 2020's Doom Eternal, director Hugo Martin has built an entire narrative framework linking the superhuman demon-fighting protagonist (referred to as The Slayer) to earlier games, and charting his path through hell and back via several dimensions and centuries of warfare. Just as in Marvel movies, progressing the plot has become almost as integral as the action and spectacle, and in The Dark Ages, Martin is embracing on-screen storytelling in a way Doom never has before. 'As much as we like [ Doom Eternal ], there's never an intention to just create the same experience but with new weapons. As a trilogy, we think that it's going to be much more satisfying for players to be able to play each game and know that each one kind of stands on its own, as its own unique experience,' Martin said.
Sydney Morning Herald
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
After 30 years of guns and gore this franchise is turning to story
Anyone who hasn't thought about the video game series Doom since the mid-1990s might be surprised to see the latest trailers for Doom: The Dark Ages, which is launching next week. id Software's seminal shooter series has maintained its guns, its gore and its blend of sci-fi and satanic vibes that helped propel it to massive success decades ago. But it also has knights, shields, a massive pilotable mech and what appears to be an epic and cinematic tech-horror-fantasy storyline. It's not the only legacy franchise to have ballooned from an all-action gameplay experience to something that – at least in part – is presented like a Hollywood blockbuster. Look at recent Tomb Raiders, Final Fantasies, Sonics, Zeldas and even Street Fighters. And especially look at the recently delayed Grand Theft Auto 6, which is shaping up to be one of the biggest and most expensive games of all time, despite the series' humble beginnings. It's not that there's no longer a market for more focused and exclusively playable experiences; those are furnished in essentially all genres by smaller-scale games generally by smaller teams, and sold at a lower price. Or players simply return to the originals; all the old Doom games are available, packaged with new maps and running in high resolution, on current platforms. But new games in these massive tent-pole franchises operate on a different level, as marquee releases for major corporations, costing many years and millions of dollars to make, and being sold for more than $100 a copy. Each one needs to be different from the last. And, importantly, bigger. The world of Doom was reset in 2016, with a new game that emphasised brutality and heavy metal music but also brought back a lot of 'video gaminess' that had been shed in the dour 2000s. Yet through that game and its sequel, 2020's Doom Eternal, director Hugo Martin has built an entire narrative framework linking the superhuman demon-fighting protagonist (referred to as The Slayer) to earlier games, and charting his path through hell and back via several dimensions and centuries of warfare. Just as in Marvel movies, progressing the plot has become almost as integral as the action and spectacle, and in The Dark Ages, Martin is embracing on-screen storytelling in a way Doom never has before. 'As much as we like [ Doom Eternal ], there's never an intention to just create the same experience but with new weapons. As a trilogy, we think that it's going to be much more satisfying for players to be able to play each game and know that each one kind of stands on its own, as its own unique experience,' Martin said.
Metro
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
Indiana Jones selling faster on PS5 as new Doom trailer targets Sony's console
Microsoft's shift to becoming a multiplatform publisher appears to be paying off, as an oddly PlayStation-specific trailer for Doom: The Dark Ages is released. Four months after it originally launched on Xbox Series X/S and PC, Indiana Jones And The Great Circle was officially released on PlayStation 5 this month. The game is the latest in a growing number of Xbox exclusives appearing on other platforms, as Microsoft shifts to becoming a multiplatform publisher which prioritises its Game Pass subscription service over Xbox consoles. What that means for the future of Xbox hardware remains to be seen, but based on the sales of Indiana Jones And The Great Circle on PlayStation 5, it seems like Microsoft is finding a considerable amount of success on Sony's platform. According to Alinea analyst Rhys Elliott, Indiana Jones And The Great Circle has sold over 117,200 copies on PlayStation 5 within a week of its launch on April 17, 2025. It is said to be selling 28% faster than on Steam, which sold 91,200 in the same timeframe in December. The analyst claims it is outpacing Xbox sales too, but there are some caveats. While there aren't any exact sales figures, it's estimated just under five million Xbox players 'checked out' Indiana Jones And The Great Circle on Microsoft's console, but 'the overwhelming majority' played it via Game Pass. As such, they didn't need to actually buy the game. The same analyst predicts the PlayStation 5 version will eventually outdo the overall Steam sales, which is estimated to be around 300,000 copies. According to Microsoft in January, Indiana Jones And The Great Circle attracted over four million players following its launch on December 9, 2024 across Xbox Series X/S and PC. While it's not exactly surprising that the PlayStation 5 version would outpace sales across Xbox, as it is a far more popular console, these results might inspire Microsoft to launch its games across all platforms simultaneously – even if that would be somewhat detrimental to Xbox hardware. More Trending As such, Microsoft might be paying close attention to the upcoming launch of Doom: The Dark Ages, which is set to release across PlayStation 5, PC, and Xbox Series X/S on May 15, 2025. Although the series has always been multiformat, Microsoft's subsidiary Bethesda has released a trailer for the shooter specifically aimed at PlayStation players. In the video entitled the Cosmic Realm First Reveal Trailer, uploaded to the PlayStation YouTube account (and notably not Xbox), id Software's Hugo Martin doesn't mention Xbox once, and closes out the trailer by saying the team 'wants to give Sony fans something special'. While this kind of marketing is to be expected considering PlayStation 5 is the biggest platform for a game like Doom, it is still an odd sign of the times – and one which leaves a big question hangingover Xbox's role in the console space moving forward. Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. MORE: 16 Nintendo franchises missing from the Switch 2 line-up MORE: Pokémon Gen 10 on Switch 2 is an 'oceanic adventure' as leaks reveal new info MORE: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 had more players on Steam than any Final Fantasy
