When it comes to game design, a small decision can make the difference between something being amazing or annoyingly frustrating. Choosing to make a hitbox slightly bigger can define whether a boss fight is an unfair mess or a piss-easy bore. One of the true arts of game design is finding a million little sweet spots.
How much damage an attack does. How much health an enemy has. Whether you should be given invincibility frames for certain actions. Whether or not you should allow animations to be interrupted. All while knowing players are going to play the game their own way. Balancing everything so that the player can concentrate on how to have the most fun without getting tripped up by bad game design is a herculean task in my mind. So when a true masterpiece of game design shows itself, I can’t help but let my eyes grow wide in awe.
Here’s a video of me playing on Nightmare difficulty for an hour, if you’re interested. I’m about halfway through the game at this point.
Id Software’s Brilliance
Id Software is an elder in the school of immaculate game design. Like Miyamoto, their mantra seems to be “Okay, so how do we make it more fun?” During development of DOOM, Id developer John Carmack once said in a famous quote that ‘story in a video game is like story in a porn movie, it’s expected to be there but not that important.’
Whether or not you agree with that statement doesn’t matter; it shows from the very beginning, they were solely concentrated on gameplay. Of course, the industry has left that quote to rot as story writing has become a main feature in video games, DOOM included. The DOOM lore is vast and pretty amazing at this point, but they never let go of that gameplay-first mentality.
Enemies can give upgrades
You’ve probably already gleaned that this is a simple gush article, so let’s not beat around the bush. DOOM: The Dark Ages is fantastic in the same way DOOM Eternal and DOOM 2016 were. Not only does it isolate and recognise what made the previous games good, it innovates in ways that heighten those aspects without breaking any core integrity. The core loop remains the same, but how you approach every situation is fundamentally different between the games. Giving every DOOM game its own unique feel.
The Dark Ages doesn’t nullify its predecessors. Instead, it makes me want to play DOOM Eternal when I’m done. That is the genius of good game design. They don’t sit on their laurels, giving us revamped versions of the same games they’ve already made because it’s safe. They take a look at what they’ve already got and think, “Hmm … what else can we do?” They take pride in their work, and it shows.
Rocket launcher is still the best
Weapons
You can’t talk about DOOM without talking about the weapons. Every single game is almost defined by its arsenal. With each DOOM game pushing the boundary of how mental and brutal the weapons can be. But when it comes to FPS in general, even if the arsenal is massive, players will tend to gravitate to only a few guns. If it’s a good FPS, there’ll at least be guns that reflect the player’s playstyle. That being said, DOOM Eternal already impressed me with how much it made every gun a joy to use. The Dark Ages took it even further.
With the variety of enemies – and the combinations of enemies – almost every encounter calls upon you to use most of your guns at least once. It’s not impossible to get away with just using one gun. Every gun does damage to every type of enemy. But if you’re playing on the harder difficulties, you really have to master how to use every gun. Memorise every situation that is best approached with each weapon and execute your actions perfectly. And every gun is so satisfying to use. The flow-state becomes second nature as you constantly shift between guns and pull off crazy maneuvers.
You can huck your shield at foes like a baboon with a turd
The Shield
The biggest change to the gameplay is the addition of the shield. I commend Id for the boldness of dedicating so much to this new mechanic, but they’re adept enough to know exactly how to make it fit perfectly within the DOOM framework. Never has a DOOM game put so much emphasis on defense because never before have you needed it. The shield gives a lot more power to the player, which means they’ve created an environment where you’ll die without it.
The shield is versatile, as much offensive as it is defensive, and it even helps you maneuver around the battlefield. That versatility is a blessing when the battlefield gets so full of enemies and projectiles that you can barely even tell what’s happening. Centering the gameplay around how the player uses their shield puts the whole battle into perspective. Mastering the shield and how to use it against all the different enemies turns each arena into a playground.
It gets so hectic, you can’t even follow it sometimes
Parry
With the way the industry has been the last few years, it was pretty much inevitable that the next DOOM would have a parry mechanic. I, for one, welcome the oversaturation of parry mechanics because they tend to almost always be fun, but I do acknowledge they don’t belong everywhere.
Metroid Dread was one game I thought had no business incorporating a parry mechanic because it just made it too easy. When the most effective way to kill every enemy in the game is just to parry them, suddenly they all just feel like the same enemy. The personality of a video game enemy is defined by what means the player uses to defeat them. If the same method works every time, the enemies have no personality. I was happy to learn that this is something that Id Software understands.
Attacks that can be parried are indicated with a color
The parry adds a great new level of power to the player, but also isn’t overused. They incorporate the parry in a way that doesn’t break the original way of playing. By making it so that only certain attacks can be parried, it feels more like you’re seizing an opportunity than just waiting for your time to parry. And because you’ve got so many other avenues of attack, the parry becomes another skill that breaks up the moment-to-moment action.
Parry is just the same as any other overused mechanic. When it’s done right, it’s great. And whenever a game doesn’t offer a good parrying system, they just feel like they failed to achieve something that a good parry game could. Sekiro, Sifu, Nine Sols. These games recognised just how satisfying a good parry mechanic can be. DOOM knows where the parry fits.
Some enemies are best dealt with by parrying
The Demons
The enemies have always been one of the strongest parts of DOOM. They make up half of the core loop, so they are integral to what makes DOOM such a fun experience. DOOM Eternal blew my mind when they made it so that fodder enemies become the main source of health and armour drops. This made it so there’s no break in the flow of the battle. You’re not having to run away every once in a while to scrounge for health. If you’re skillful enough, you’re invincible. Which is so in line with the character of The Slayer.
This is the most fun part about DOOM in general, its ability to provide a perfect power fantasy. Not just through avatar strength but through talent and skill. The Dark Ages is no different, it’s just more intuitive. Kill enemies with your shield to drop health, and kill them with your flail to drop armour. They’re perfectly incorporated into the new block and parry mechanics.
There are abilities like making splash damage heal you for a short time after performing a parry, turning the rocket launcher into a melee weapon. And if you use the flail on armoured enemies, you essentially steal their armour. You feel like nothing less than a badass when you look at a screen packed to the brim with things that can kill you in a couple of hits and think, yep … I got this.
Give me a labyrinth to explore over an open world any day
Any Downsides?
Anyway, gush over. After all of that, is there anything I don’t like about DOOM: The Dark Ages? Yes. Well, I have a gripe or two at least. One of those countless tiny decisions a game developer has to make is a little off. That of the weapon changing animation. It’s like a second too long. Sometimes when you’re in a tight spot and you need the right weapon, that second can mean the difference between a game over and not. In my opinion, it needs to be instant.
I don’t know if they made it shorter than in Eternal, but I don’t remember this being an issue in that game. If they did make it shorter, that means they’re encouraging the player to stick to the guns they have for longer, which I just don’t think is a good decision gameplay-wise. It’s more satisfying to switch guns on the fly than it is to stick to one gun until the ammo runs out. That’s a tiny complaint, though, so I don’t mind too much. The game still works perfectly fine.
The glory kills have been replaced with lame executions
How Do You Tell a DOOM Story
The one real issue I have, though, is that of the narrative. I wouldn’t say it’s a bad narrative. I’m yet to finish it, so I don’t know how it ends, but I’m liking what I’m seeing so far. I like the idea that The Slayer is treated as this crazed weapon against the forces of hell because that’s how the character feels from even the original DOOM games.
My issue isn’t with the narrative, it’s with the fact that there’s a narrative at all. I’m not saying DOOM shouldn’t have a story. I personally don’t agree with the quote from earlier about how game stories aren’t important. I think they’re very important. But the story of DOOM seems confused with how it wants to be portrayed.
How Serious Should I Be Taking This?
At the start of DOOM 2016, the Slayer punches a screen out of the way right as it is about to deliver some exposition. The point being, don’t tell me anything, just let me go kill the demons. And it worked because killing demons was so fun. The scoffing at the narrative almost worked like a battle cry. But DOOM 2016 still had a story. Eternal had a story too, and there was more emphasis put on delivering that story. But the story was still well enough in the background to the carnage gameplay that you didn’t have to engage with it.
There’s a vast variety of brutal environments
I, myself, am a lore junkie. I read every item and codex description, and get way too into it. But I still appreciated that they had a distinct stance on where the narrative fits in DOOM. So it was quite jarring to start up The Dark Ages and get like four cutscenes in a row. Then a small gameplay segment followed by more cutscenes. It’s hard to care about any of the characters because, well, you’re The Slayer. You exist to kill demons, not be part of some war strategy. You are the war strategy. And so far, the narrative understands this.
I’m still invested and hoping that it turns out to be good. But the cutscenes are weird. It’s hard to judge how seriously it’s supposed to be taken. I’m kind of hoping that The Slayer just ends up killing everything in the end, and the point was that there is no real point. You’re a demon hunter; that’s the point of DOOM. But we’ll see. They might have some cheesy happy ending cringe.
There are side challenges in every stage
