DOOM: The Dark Ages | Revelations review

In a botched attempt to slay Hell’s High Council, the Slayer is sent to purgatory to live out eternity in torment. His equipment, armor, and shield have all been damaged, but is this enough to stop him? No. Of course not. He’s Doom Guy. If it were his only option, he would tear the legions of Hell apart piece by piece with only his bare hands. Armed with just the essentials and a fancy new spear, he’s on his way to rip and tear until it is done. 

I don’t remember DOOM: The Dark Ages as fondly as Eternal or 2016, but it’s still an incredible game with sharp shooting mechanics, enemies that are always fun to fight, and a satisfying parry mechanic. The story went pretty much entirely over my head, however, and that continues in this DLC expansion, Revelations. It’s attempting to explore the Slayer’s past in an admittedly interesting way, with him being tormented by his deeds each time he picks up one of the stones he needs to make a portal out of Purgatory. A lot of it still goes over my head, but I definitely enjoyed a lot of the narrative beats touched on here, as it somehow got me to take Doom Guy seriously. Daisy the rabbit is referenced too, which brings me much joy.

For me, DOOM is all about the gameplay, and Revelations picks up right where the main game left off. You’re tutorialized a bit again in case you haven’t touched the game since it came out last year, which I found very helpful, but after getting your Doom Marine legs back you’ll be swapping between all your guns to battle endgame difficulty enemies. It sounds like more of the same, until your shield is broken and you need to rely on your new spear until it’s repaired. 

Where the shield encourages a grounded, tank-like playstyle, the Chain Spear is all about speed, maneuverability, and offense. You can’t block with it, and instead need to parry attacks by slashing at the right time, or avoid them entirely by chaining the spearhead into an enemy and soaring above their bullets. Wielding the spear also gives you the ability to dodge at the press of a button, and perfect dodging attacks can give you charges for special spear moves, like a staggering thrust or throw. This dodge is more so the equivalent to the shield’s parry, but it doesn’t reflect attacks. In exchange for safety, you’re generating power for special attacks and are able to continue firing while dodging. It’s a lot of fun to use in combat, though I actually like how it expands exploration a lot more. 

The chain grapple move is used a lot for platforming in this DLC, and you’d better believe the level design totally accounts for you using aerial dodges to get around. There’s tons of secrets and collectibles to find, like the new platinum currency used for upgrades. Purgatory is like one big level, with a central hub you traverse to reach the more linear stages. Each time I came back to the hub, I felt like exploring a bit before heading straight to my objective, and I would usually find something valuable or interesting. There are also the Master Key doors, which will only open once you’ve finished the DLC. These are littered everywhere, giving you a good reason to go back through all the areas once again to clean things out.

In the more bespoke levels, you’ve got your usual hordes of demons to battle. It’s mostly familiar faces, but there are a few new ones introduced too, and they’re all still a blast to tear through. I love focusing down one foe while simultaneously parrying or dodging shots coming at me from all sides, and you’ve got a lot more choice in that with both the spear and the shield. The shield is a lot better at instantly parrying Hell Surges, while the spear is a lot more risky to use and takes precise timing for parries and dodges, but can make you virtually invincible. Figuring out when you want to play it safe or go full offence is a lot of fun.

The consequence of having so many more options is that the controls get a lot more complicated. You’ll probably have to spend some time in the rebind menu making things a bit more comfortable when using keyboard and mouse, but even then I found myself wanting to do a specific spear move, like the slam, and forgetting the required inputs. I also spent some time on controller, but I also found that to be more complicated than I’d like (and a game like this is just better with a mouse). You can certainly get by without all the fancy new moves, but it does feel like you’re just leaving some stuff on the table because your arms are so full of potential violence.

I also found the music here a lot more memorable than in the base game. I don’t think it reaches the heights of 2016 and Eternal’s OSTs, but I did find myself rocking out more often here rather than it just feeling like background noise.

So there’s a bit of an elephant hanging over this DLC, and that’s the fact that, shortly after its release, most of the people at ID Software were laid off in the largest culling of jobs the games industry has ever seen. We’re at the point where I just don’t know what to say anymore; if making an incredibly successful game and being some of the most talented people in the industry still gets you fired at the end of the day, what’s even the point of any of this? We’re not really making games anymore; we’re generating shareholder value that sometimes has a video game attached to it. It’s disgusting. 

If this is DOOM’s final note though, it’s a good one to go out on. Revelations is a ton of fun and features what’s probably the series’ best bits of storytelling while also being chock full of delightful ultraviolence. So much so that the game can barely even contain it. It leaves us on the same message the modern trilogy started with, and one I think developers all around the world should take to heart: rip and tear until it is done.