Latest news with #MickGordon
Time of India
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Doom: The Dark Ages does what Doom does best, forging carnage in a forge of chaos
Don't you think video games are getting too complicated? Every title coming out these days feel compelled to drop me into a 200-hour increasingly cinematic sandbox filled with fetch quests that demand dozens of hours exploring vast open worlds for what, just to kill off the bad guy for world peace? Well, Doom: The Dark Ages is exactly that but it's honest about it, and bluntly effective. After years of watching the franchise from the sidelines, occasionally nodding along to Mick Gordon's brutal soundtracks without context, I finally dove headfirst into it. What I discovered wasn't just my entry point into the series, but a reminder of why sometimes the most sophisticated gaming experiences come wrapped in the simplest packages. The Dark Ages positions itself as a prequel to the modern Doom trilogy, casting the legendary Slayer in a medieval-meets-sci-fi setting where alien overlords, demonic hordes, and humanity's last defenders clash across sprawling battlefields. The premise couldn't be more straightforward: you are an unstoppable force of nature, demons exist, and your job is to make them not exist anymore. No moral complexity, no branching dialogue trees, no companion approval ratings to manage. Just pure, undiluted aggression channeled through increasingly creative methods of digital violence. What struck me immediately was how liberating this clarity felt. In a gaming landscape increasingly obsessed with cinematic storytelling and player choice consequences, The Dark Ages presents a different philosophy entirely. The Slayer speaks exactly one word throughout the entire campaign, yet his character development through body language and environmental storytelling proves more compelling than most fully-voiced protagonists. There's something profoundly satisfying about a character who solves every problem by hitting it really, really hard with medieval weaponry. Rip and tear, stand and fight by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Click Here - This Might Save You From Losing Money Expertinspector Click Here Undo The Dark Ages' isn't very good with it's storytelling but let's honest it doesn't really need to be. Instead, it is the Doom's ages old combat formula, which is subtly evolved but still maintain its frenetic DNA. The introduction of the Shield Saw fundamentally changes how encounters unfold, shifting from Doom Eternal's emphasis on constant movement to a "stand and fight" mentality that initially sounds counterintuitive to everything the franchise represents. Yet somehow, it works brilliantly. While shields have mostly been known to be defensive equipment to humans, for the Slayer, it's a weapon, traversal tool, and tactical game-changer rolled into one circular buzzsaw of destruction. Parrying incoming attacks feels satisfying in a way that transcends mere mechanical feedback; there's a rhythm to combat that emerges naturally as you learn to balance aggression with precise timing. Unlike the rigid resource management that sometimes made Doom Eternal feel like solving an equation under pressure, The Dark Ages allows for more improvisational approaches to demon disposal. The weapon roster adapts familiar tools to the medieval setting without losing their essential character. The Super Shotgun remains the close-quarters king, but new additions like the skull-spitting gatling gun and chain-attached railgun offer fresh approaches to crowd control and armour piercing. Each weapon feels purposeful rather than redundant, contributing to a combat system that rewards experimentation without punishing players who develop preferences. What impressed me most was how the game manages to feel both more accessible than its predecessor while maintaining tactical depth. The shield bash's traversal capabilities replace Eternal's air dash system seamlessly, while the parry mechanics add a layer of skill expression that never feels mandatory for success. It's a delicate balance that many action games struggle with, providing systems that enhance experienced play without alienating newcomers. Hell on earth (but make it medieval) Beyond the moment-to-moment combat, The Dark Ages succeeds in creating environments that justify their existence beyond being demon-killing arenas. The level design strikes an excellent balance between linear progression and exploratory freedom, with larger hub areas offering multiple objectives and secrets to discover at your own pace. These aren't the overwhelming open worlds that dominate modern gaming, but focused playgrounds that reward curiosity without overwhelming players with busy work. The medieval aesthetic could have easily felt like a gimmicky departure from the series' established visual language, but id Software wisely blends fantasy elements with the technological underpinnings that define Doom's universe. Watching massive mechs stomp across castle battlefields while dragons soar overhead creates moments of genuine spectacle that feel earned rather than manufactured. These setpiece moments, while not always mechanically perfect, serve their purpose as palate cleansers between the more intense combat encounters. The game's approach to progression also deserves mention for how it respects player time. Upgrades feel meaningful without being overwhelming, and the currency systems are straightforward enough that you're never confused about what you need or where to get it. Secrets are well-integrated into level design, offering genuine rewards for exploration without requiring exhaustive searching to find every hidden item. When glory kills actually feel glorious Perhaps what surprised me most about The Dark Ages was how it made me reconsider my relationship with action games in general. I've spent years gravitating toward narrative-heavy experiences, convinced that emotional investment required complex storytelling and character development. The Dark Ages demonstrates that engagement can come from perfectly tuned mechanics and clear, achievable goals just as effectively as any branching storyline. The game's violence is cartoonish in the best possible way—so over-the-top that it transcends any concerns about real-world implications and becomes pure digital catharsis. There's an almost meditative quality to chaining together perfect parries, weapon swaps, and glory kills that creates its own form of flow state. The feedback loop is immediate and satisfying: see demon, devise elimination method, execute plan, admire results, repeat. This isn't to say The Dark Ages completely abandons narrative ambition. The wordless characterisation of the Slayer, the environmental storytelling embedded in each level, and the broader mythology all contribute to a surprisingly coherent world. But these elements serve the gameplay rather than demanding attention in their own right, creating a more integrated experience than many games that pride themselves on their storytelling. The campaign's 22-chapter structure maintains excellent pacing throughout its roughly 20-hour runtime, never allowing any single element to overstay its welcome. Even the occasional mech and dragon sequences, while mechanically simpler than the core combat, provide necessary variety and spectacle without derailing the overall experience. The sound of silence (and chainsaws) If there's one area where The Dark Ages stumbles, it's in the audio department. While I haven't really spent hours slaying on Mick Gordon's composition, yet somehow his absence is immediately noticeable, and I guess it would be even more so for someone who have been a regular of series' previous entires. While Finishing Move's soundtrack is competent, it lacks the driving intensity that made Gordon's work such an integral part of the Doom experience. The music often fades into background noise rather than amplifying the on-screen chaos, a significant departure from how seamlessly audio and gameplay integrated in previous entries. This isn't a fatal flaw, but it does represent a missed opportunity to elevate already excellent gameplay with equally excellent audio design. The sound effects themselves remain top-tier, every shotgun blast, demon roar, and shield clang carries appropriate weight, but the musical backing never quite matches the energy of what's happening on screen. Until it is done (for now) Doom: The Dark Ages succeeds as both an entry point for newcomers and a worthy addition to an established franchise by remembering that complexity and sophistication aren't synonymous. It knows exactly what it wants to be and executes that vision with laser focus. Now I understand what I'd been missing all these years. The Dark Ages doesn't just serve as my belated introduction to the series, it's a masterclass in why Doom has endured for over three decades. What I initially dismissed as mindless violence revealed itself as carefully orchestrated chaos, where every system works in harmony to create something greater than the sum of its parts. The sophistication I'd been seeking in complex narratives and sprawling worlds was here all along, hidden beneath layers of demon viscera and shotgun shells. This realisation feels almost embarrassing in hindsight. I'd spent years chasing elaborate gaming experiences, convinced that depth required complexity, when Doom was quietly perfecting the art of elegant simplicity. The Dark Ages strips away every unnecessary element to focus entirely on what matters: the pure joy of interactive entertainment. No padding, no filler, no respect for your time wasted on anything that doesn't contribute to the core experience. In a year likely to be dominated by sprawling open worlds and narrative epics, Doom : The Dark Ages offers something increasingly rare: a game that respects your time, trusts your intelligence, and never forgets that fun should be the primary objective. Sometimes that's exactly what hell ordered. Our rating: 4/5 AI Masterclass for Students. Upskill Young Ones Today!– Join Now
Gizmodo
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
‘Doom: The Dark Ages' Is My First Game in the Series—and It Absolutely Rips (and Tears)
I'd always known Doom was a highly regarded video game franchise. Still, up until now I'd only watched from the sidelines—seeing an amalgamation of wild Let's Plays of its chaotic run-and-gun combat in my poor college days, witnessing folks play it on unconventional computer appliances, and blasting composer Mick Gordon's heavy metal original soundtrack in my leisure without fully grasping the context to why its gnarly songs went so unbelievably hard on Doom (2016). Now, with id Software and Bethesda Softworks' latest entry in the 32-year-old first-person-shooter series, Doom: The Dark Ages, serving as a prequel to its newly christened trilogy—while wedding two action genres I have a high affinity for and am coming around to, sci-fi and fantasy—I've finally jumped into the deep end on the series with its newly released game on my PlayStation 5. I went into Doom: The Dark Ages expecting its signature FPS chaos mixed with the demonic, style-switching combat I love in the Devil May Cry—a series I use as my metric for action games. I got something far more wild: a Doom game that somehow also channels other greats like Halo and Gears of War and yet remains purely, unapologetically Doom, packed with relentless action and satanic madness unlike anything I've played before. After sleeping on the series for too long, I'm wide awake now—Doom absolutely fucking rocks. A delectable pastiche of sci-fi and dark fantasy As a prequel, Doom: The Dark Ages eases players into its mayhem, setting the stage for an all-out war between alien overlords, medieval warriors, and hell's demons. The game sees Doom Slayer under some mind control, caught in a battle where Tonka-toy-built knights (equipped with high-tech comms like the Avengers) face off against a horde led by a warlord rocking Dracula's muscle armor. Early on, Doom Slayer is treated with the same gravitas as a Final Fantasy summon, given a simple directive: annihilate everything in his path with the same cold efficiency as a walking nuclear weapon. The Dark Ages' story? It's there. Granted, it mainly serves as an epic backdrop, blending dark fantasy with a touch of sci-fi, all while ferrying players from one bonkers WatchMojo 'Top 10 Insane Doom Slayer Kills' video moment to the next. Among the standout sequences that had me sit forward in my chair were Doom Slayer piloting a giant mech like a Pacific Rim veteran—and riding the back of a cybernetic dragon armed with a matching gun that looked like it was lifted straight off a metal album cover. Even beyond Dark Age's massive set-piece spectacles, its moment-to-moment gameplay is pure old-school gaming bliss. Throughout the game's 22 levels, frenzied players run and gun through an ambush of demons, grabbing shields, ammo, and health potions littered around the battlefield or offered as an incentive for ripping and tearing through demons with their bare hands. Combat and platforming that'll light every neuron in your brain Despite the sheer chaos of the Dark Ages' setting, its combat is where it truly shines, offering a wealth of strategy beneath the madness. As its killer box art suggests, Doom Slayer fights off demons with firearms that drop from the sky like orbital supply capsules, ensuring each battle feels like an escalating arms race where hell is on the back foot. New weapons enter your arsenal at every level, allowing customization and fluid switching via the weapon wheel. After adapting to the speed and ferocity required to survive as the Doomslayer, I found myself favoring the following weapons: Grenade Launcher: Perfect for starting and finishing fights, delivering quick and effective crowd control like Junkrat from Overwatch 2. Impaler: A needle gatling gun ideal for long-range enemies, stacking damage before detonating with the Shield Saw. Accelerator: An energy weapon that feels like Halo's plasma pistol, offering precision and raw stopping power Another pleasantly surprising part of Dark Age's combat that felt as rewarding to solve as its combat encounters was platforming its environmental puzzles. I found Dark Ages' emphasis on stopping and smelling the roses by heavily encouraging exploration to be just as much of a brain teaser as its experimental offering of combat combinations. Exploration is heavily promoted, and Dark Ages continuing the series' implementation of a map that smartly separates hard progress from side content with icons and markers for where hidden items like gold and gems to upgrade equipment was a godsend, making it easy to double back and hunt down upgrades, codex entries, or skins without losing momentum. I found it the perfect blend of action and curiosity-driven exploration for a game about killing demons. And then there's the Shield Saw—a new weapon introduced in Dark Ages that I doubted would fit Doom's FPS combat. But once I mastered it, it became my favorite weapon in its inventory. Shield Saw is my new best friend While I was initially apprehensive over whether or not the game's implementation of a shield would bog down its lightning-fast combat, it quickly became my favorite weapon in the game. Not just because it saved my ass a ton in sticky situations, but for how much more texture its added to its gameplay. The Shield Saw isn't just for blocking oncoming sword slashes and fireballs; it also doubles as a Mjolnir-like tool, letting you grapple to secret areas to uncover treasure, execute enemies with a shield bash, or ricochet into a line of overheated enemy shields from a hail of the Doom Slayer's gunfire for explosive crowd control. By far, my favorite use case for the shield saw was with its perfect parries. Like in Sandfall Interactive's Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Dark Ages' Shield Saw transforms parrying into a high-stakes rhythm game, rewarding players who seek out oncoming green fire balls and sword slashes and send them flying back at enemies. Even if I was underleveled in a brutal boss fight, or fighting uphill in a handicap battle, a perfectly timed parry could turn the tide in my favor and eke out a satisfyingly primal win in an otherwise unwinnable battle. The DMC sicko in me loved the sheer Royal Guard-style power the Shield Saw empowered me with, letting me stunlock enemies in the most disrespectful way possible. While melee combat in some games takes a backseat, here it's everything, not just for style, but for survival. Landing brutal in-your-face punches (or mace flails) funnels health-regenerating orbs, shields, and ammo into Doom Slayer like a vacuum. The game rewards ruthless aggression, encouraging players to embrace the chaos, chain Glory Kill whenever possible, and dominate the battlefield instead of hiding behind cover and playing it safe. The music doesn't quite live up to the moment Oddly enough, my biggest gripe with the game is its soundtrack. It never hit as hard as I wanted it to. While it does an okay job of underscoring the game's bedlam, it never quite amplifies the gunplay, shield throws, and eyebrow-raising boss reveals the way I felt it should. If anything, it went unnoticed the more I played; even to a newbie, that struck me as a sacrilegious takeaway from the game. A few hours in, I barely noticed the music ramping up before fights, like it was struggling to punch above its weight (more than I was in a boss fight) to match the sheer insanity on screen. Finishing Move (known for Borderlands 3, Halo Wars 2, and The Callisto Protocol) composed the soundtrack, but for a game like Dark Ages, music needed to be a driving force, not just background noise. Eventually, I turned Dark Ages' music volume down and blasted Gordon's old tracks instead to make up for what the game lacked sonically. Overall, Doom: The Dark Ages is an electrifying genre mash-up and an incredible entry point into the franchise that lives up to the hype it's garnered over the past 30 years, and I'm glad I stopped sleeping on it. Doom: The Dark Ages is available now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
