Games Beaten in 2025 - 1
* denotes a replay
January (Not Shit Beaten)
February (Not Shit Beaten)
March (Not Shit Beaten)
April (Not Shit Beaten)
May (Not Shit Beaten)
June (1 Game Beaten)
1. Doom: The Dark Ages - Series X - June 2
My first completion in 10 months! It's been a hell of a year, y'all...
Doom is, on paper, a series I should not enjoy nearly as much as I do. I am typically a very narrative-focused gamer, and while Doom has some interesting lore, it's not exactly a series that most players would describe as "lore-heavy." On the contrary, the lore is basically a coat of paint put on an exterior of gratuitous violence and gore. I definitely want a good story with most of my games, but sometimes, I just want to rip and tear. Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal pretty much perfected that, though, so where was id to go from here? Backwards. Technically. Dark Ages is a prequel to the recent Doom games. It takes place after Doom, Doom II, and Doom 64 (Doom 3 is a non-canon reimagining of Doom) but before Doom 2016, Doom Eternal, and Eternal's The Ancient Gods DLC. Doomguy (nowadays referred to as Doom Slayer) voluntarily stayed in Hell fighting demons at the end of Doom 64, and he's found by UAC trapped in a sarcophagus at the start of Doom 2016; Dark Ages depicts the war between Hell and Argent D'Nur that took place between those two events.
Dark Ages seems to be a rather divisive game amongst fans of the series. Some praise it as the best Doom experience yet while others pan it as the worst game since Doom 3. I fall somewhere in the middle; I enjoyed it more than Doom Eternal, but it definitely fell short of Doom 2016 in my opinion. The split in opinion, it seems to be, comes down largely to the flow of the game. It is an undeniably slower gameplay style than Doom 2016. That said, though, it's a consistent flow whereas Doom Eternal would flow like 2016 for 45 minutes and then grind to a halt when you encountered one of the god-awful marauders (the shield guys). Dark Ages does have a couple of enemies that can shield themselves from all attacks temporarily, but you either need to kill enough smaller demons to "break morale" or parry its attacks back at it to drop its shield, depending on what the specific enemy is. Either way, it doesn't break the feel of the game the way Eternal's marauders did, and that alone puts it above Eternal in my book.
As far as performance goes, it seemed to run at a flawless 60 frame per second, and according to Digital Foundry, it seems to run at a dynamic 1440p with the occasional drop down to 1080p for especially busy fights. Resolution isn't everything anymore when it comes to visual quality, though; the power of the Series X is leveraged to deliver that rock solid frame rate and respectable resolution alongside ray tracing, some impressively detailed textures, and fantastic lighting effects that perfectly set the dark pseudo-gothic tone that creates a sort of medieval version of a cyberpunk aesthetic. I admittedly have not played on PC with my 4090 GPU or on PS5 yet (let alone PS5 Pro which I don't even own #broketeacherproblems), but I can't imagine PS5 looks or runs much worse than Series X, and PC...well, PC always runs better than console these days unless it's a port from Playstation. If nothing else, Doom: The Dark Ages's art design is pretty unique, at least of games that I've played.
As I mentioned before, the gameplay flow of Dark Ages is a lot slower than that of 2016. Doom 2016 was a very acrobatic-feeling game wherein you practically flew through the environment raining death and carnage down on your enemies. Dark Ages, on the other hand, has you act more akin to a modern main battle tank; you can move fast when you need to, but you're mainly a steadily progressing wall of carnage, standing your ground and killing all that lies before you rather than zipping around like Peter Parker did a pound of meth. I, personally, prefer 2016's faster paced combat, but that is absolutely a personal preference and not a statement on quality; I felt Dark Ages's slower pace to be every bit as masterfully executed as 2016's frantic pace. Dark Ages did add in some awesome new combat segments. The dragon mounted combat from The Ancient Gods is back and refined to a smoothness that made it feel almost like Star Wars: Squadrons. Better than that, though, is the introduction of a giant robot. You can pilot a huge mech and either punch demons to death or explode them with enormous shoulder mounted cannons. I may prefer the general combat feel of 2016, but the mech combat in Dark Ages is peak. It's also supremely approachable with an array of deeply customizable difficulty options so you can tailor the game's difficulty (and the reason for that difficulty) exactly to your wishes.
There is one major factor that keeps Dark Ages from getting a near perfect score from me, though, and that's the soundtrack. Since the very first game, Doom's epic metal soundtrack has been a staple, and Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal were absolute masterpiece examples of video game soundtrack design. The soundtrack in Dark Ages isn't bad, per se, but it's...bland. It's like seeing Slipknot live, then seeing Ice Nine Kills live, and then seeing your uncle's admittedly talented Metallica cover band live. They may be a great cover band, but they'll never hold a candle to legit metal superstar bands. That's how Dark Ages's soundtrack is. It's a perfectly fine metal soundtrack, but it's just fine, and fine isn't good enough when you're coming off the heels of two consecutive perfect soundtracks. At least as far as my personal friends go, that seems to be the single biggest complaint about Dark Ages; the soundtrack is just such a disappointment after the standard set by 2016 and Eternal.
Doom: The Dark Ages is a fantastic game. Hell (no pun intended), it's an amazing game. The soundtrack it honestly the only thing holding it back from a perfect rating from me. Normally that alone wouldn't be enough to knock a game with otherwise incredible gameplay down from a perfect S to an A, but this is Doom we're talking about. There are three things that people think of when they think of Doom - a shotgun, a chainsaw, and a badass metal soundtrack. Okay, so Dark Ages also replaced the chainsaw with a flail, but the ultra-violence is still there. The soundtrack, though, is just painfully mid for a game in the Doom franchise. Still, though, I consider this an absolute must play for fans of first-person shooters. You've got options with it available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X or (eww) Series S, so hopefully you've got one of those platforms lying around. I'm also crossing my fingers for a Switch 2 port down the line given how well Panic Button got Doom Eternal running on the original Switch.
