Doom Eternal Dark Ages: First Impressions

Published on: May 10, 2025

2025-05-10

The Dark Ages, billed as a prelude to id Software’s 2016 resurrection of Doom, is as distinct from its predecessors as possible while yet being recognizable as a Doom game. The Dark Ages places more emphasis on maintaining your ground than 2020’s Doom Eternal did on speed and evasion. The Dark Ages gives you the ability to destroy dozens of demons at once, whereas Eternal required you to eliminate adversaries one at a time. In The Dark Ages, you can solve most difficulties by striking things with extreme force, unlike in Eternal, when you had to juggle rapid-fire weapons in a finger-cramping frenzy. There is no more ripping or tearing. Trauma from blunt force is in.

The slow-moving missiles that foes like imps, cacodemons, and hell knights shot in the 1993 original served as the inspiration for the core of The Dark Ages’ combat. Because the majority of its adversaries are able to fire these projectiles, the Dark Ages’ interdimensional battlefields are illuminated by floating energy barriers, scudding orbs, and drifting fireballs.

As a slower, heavier Doom Slayer, one who is so physically dense that he gives a thunderclap when he lands from a height, you must navigate these obstacles. In fact, it seems as though he shouldn’t require the shield that serves as your main defense against these projectiles; it can be used to simply block oncoming missiles, but some attacks can also be deflected, returning them to the sender; successfully countering a projectile can stun its shooter, allowing for a final “glory kill.” These executions are still bone-crunchingly vicious, but they are typically less complex than in previous games, often (though not always) reduced to a simple punch or kick.

The biggest and most formidable enemies are almost always close-range duellists, although many demons engage in hand-to-hand combat in patterns that are helpful to learn. These encounters typically occur in far bigger battlegrounds, as rows of zombie shield-bearers defend their larger commanders while lesser foes roam in their dozens. A demon-impaling rail-spike launcher and a pistol that rips adversaries to pieces with the shrapnel of smashed skulls are just two of the new weapons that Id Software has created to combat these hellish armies.

Learning the cadence of its firing is just as enjoyable as experiencing its deadly impact, and it’s a fascinating reformulation of Doom’s fundamental concepts. It is a simpler riff to learn than Eternal, but at its best, it doesn’t provide the same feeling of adrenaline due to its slower tempo and simpler toolkit.

The fact that the system is overloaded with the shoddy game ID software doesn’t help either. The 22 levels of The Dark Ages are all expansive in scale, and several of them are open-ended, allowing you to choose the order in which you fight and uncover their mysteries. The game doesn’t always seem to make the most of this real estate from a fighting viewpoint, and even if the size is spectacular, the levels may be tiresome to navigate.

Id Software mixes up your exploration in an attempt to offset the sluggish rhythm. In certain areas, you operate a massive mech known as an Atlan and engage in slow-motion battle with demons the size of mountains. Others include circling on a dragon’s back. Although this has novelty value, the game struggles to make either an engaging experience. The best I can say about these segments is that they don’t appear very often, which is reminiscent of the required vehicle sections that beset shooters in the 2000s.

I do appreciate that Doom: The Dark Ages is far more experimental than it needed to be, though. Rather than sitting on its laurels, id Software appears to be driven to develop in a Nintendo-like manner. With every new release, it aims to make Doom the shooter that completely changes your perception of the genre. The Dark Ages is a really well-done, well conceived shooter that, at its finest, strikes like a truck, even though it doesn’t do it as well as id Software’s previous work.

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Doom Eternal Dark Ages: System Requirements

Minimum:

- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- Operating System: Windows 10 64-Bit / Windows 11 64-Bit
- Processor: AMD Zen 2 or Intel 10th Generation CPU @3.2Ghz with 8 cores / 16 threads or better (examples: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X or better, or Intel Core i7 10700K or better)
- Memory: 16 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA or AMD hardware Raytracing-capable GPU with 8GB dedicated VRAM or better (examples: NVIDIA RTX 2060 SUPER or better, AMD RX 6600 or better)
- Storage: 100 GB available space

Recommended:

- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- Operating System: Windows 10 64-Bit / Windows 11 64-Bit
- Processor: AMD Zen 3 or Intel 12th Generation CPU @3.2Ghz with 8 cores / 16 threads or better (examples: AMD Ryzen 7 5700X or better, or Intel Core i7 12700K or better)
- Memory: 32 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA or AMD hardware Raytracing-capable GPU with 10GB dedicated VRAM or better (examples: NVIDIA RTX 3080 or better, AMD RX 6800 or better)
- Storage: 100 GB available space