doom the unlit ages
It is the fate of any long-running franchise that it will try to reinvent itself multiple times in an effort to stay fresh and novel and appealing to whatever the exec thinks is "current audiences". Of course, more often than not said audiences only exist in the execs coked-up brain cavity, but this, well, this is a whole another tangent... Ahem.
The point is, Doom changed greatly over the ages. Doom 2 to Doom 3 was a very radical departure. Doom 64 was also rather different (though in hindsight it was an interesting missing link deal between 2 and 3). 2016 was yet another radical departure. However, within this new, let's call it "the doom slayer series", id soft really went out of their way to reinvent the next game while keeping only the barest necessities intact.
And so, Doom 2016 was a bit basic affair, that could be broadly described as "Brutal Doom but fun". A lot of shooting, a lot of demons, nitty gritty atmosphere, and a fascinating exercise in giving your protagonist a whole lot of personality without even once breaking first person perspective. I'm talking both about things like the famous furious fist clench in the game's opening scenes, but also the game's most famous mechanic - the brutal and efficient glory kills as your main resource management method.
Then Doom Eternal came, and made the game even more arcadey, with extra lives, extensive platforming, and neon glowing powerups. Every gun had a niche (and you'd better use it for that niche, or else), and you were expected to manage 5 to 8 different resources at all times, extending to ludicrous combos of flame, grenades, dodges, and very rapid weapon switching, all of that often requiring split-second reaction time. When you could get in the zone, there never was, and probably never will be a feeling like riding Eternal's razor's edge wave of violence and more violence, followed by even more violence. But when you couldn't, well, many people were hard filtered by the very first Marauder, and that's not at all surprising. Plus, until Ancient Gods 2, the bosses all sucked major dick.
And now, this. Doom: the Dark Ages. Doom: DIO's Magica. Doom: Valfaris. Doom Messiah of... you get the idea. Setting aside the pricing question, what game is it?
Having completed the game, I can comfortably say that it is damn good, despite being rather different once more. DtDA does many things to differentiate itself from either previous game. For instance your equipment is no longer stiffly pigeonholed, and melee grew to be a proper system, instead of that one button you must quickly press once the enemy starts flashing. Painfully tight stun windows got replaced by a much more lenient - and powerful - parry system. And this is just the surface changes.
With so many changes, big and small, it follows that the overall feel is different. D2016 doomguy was powerful but relatively brittle. DE doomguy was slightly weaker and possibly more fragile, but hell of a lot faster, and required lightning fast reflexes to master. DDA doomguy is like a human cannonball - you commit to a trajectory and unleash, hah, hell on the demons there. Played right you're nearly impervious to damage, but if you underestimate or overextend, you're going to suffer. In a way the game is less about dancing your way around every threat coming your way, and more about identifying the weak link in the arena of monsters and descending upon it with righteous fury and 500 pounds of armor. The signature - in my opinion - tool of the game, the shield charge exemplifies this best; it is one of the first things you learn to do, and it is one of your best friends throughout the game; the superb mobility tool that has a delicious side effect of exploding every fodder demon in a wide radius (especially useful for quick health recovery). Pick your target wrong however, and you'll find yourself face to face with something very angry and about to go medieval on your ass, and you'll probably lose your shield meter at least.
And this, well, "cannonball experience" was all conscious design, built up from many things. For instance, the game uses hell of a lot physx objects to litter the maps with destructibles, which serve little purpose but to fall apart under gunfire - or upon contact with doomguy's heavy, thudding gait. It's technically not much of a change, just a different footstep SFX, and making player object much "heavier" than decorations for force calculations. But the result is striking; you're no longer a flimsy t'au (I move... and shoot! - Eternal in a nutshell) prancing away from danger, you're a goddamn SPESS MUHREEN and lesser beings better step aside. Same with guns; the first few feel kinda weak, but afterwards your arsenal grows the proverbial chest hair. There's a painkiller style stakegun, all about sending three feet of metal through demon skulls. There's a cannonball-on-a-chain contraption that explodes the target, technically like a very short range rocket launcher, but so much more appealing. Your machinegun did not have to be a device literally shredding skulls and spitting sharp bone bits. It could have been just a chaingun, again. But boy am I glad that it is the skull powered implement of death and mayhem it is.
And that is Doom the Dark Ages in a nutshell - an excellent game that substitutes extreme, game pausing violence, and blatantly arcade trappings, for running on extreme coolness and techno-barbarian style formulated possibly by ingesting and distilling every heavy metal album cover known to man.
And some Lovecraft for good measure.
Shame about the music though.
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