Ethan Rayner

DOOM: The Dark Ages feels like something that shouldn't be DOOM but unfortunately it is. TDA feels very underwhelming compared to DOOM Eternal in the sense of paying what felt like double what I paid for the previous installment to receive pretty toned down combat, no honourable music definition and graphics that feels the same as they were five years ago from the previous installment. I'm not really getting a great sense of story progression and being well into a couple chapters, I'm left with questions that I'm unable to answer. Picking up the title from the online store had me pumped waiting for it to download, only to open the title screen to find it's just the campaign? No multiplayer like Eternal or anything else to give TDA any extra playability after the campaign. I had high hopes for TDA but realising that there's a lot missing here that Eternal had offered is very disappointing and is leaving me dissatisfied, making it hard for me to keep playing and picking back up after a break because I REALLY don't want to be disappointed with this new chapter for DOOM. DOOM Eternal had me feeling every instance of combat in its overdriven aggression and it's fast paced environments that TDA is simply lacking. If this were a new IP not labelled as a DOOM game I'd feel a bit better however the matter of money spent for the product received alone has left me a tad bitter. This review being a large comparison to previous installments of the DOOM Franchise, it's hard to look at TDA on its own to critique when it just feels so empty in its development and it essentially feels like it wasn't built to appeal to the existing DOOM fanbase and what had previously been handed to us, two main courses on silver platters to then move onto a very bland third serving on a paper plate.