The other day Doom: The Dark Ages came out and we’ve been seeing a lot of 10/10s. These high scores have also had critiques of the game that would take away the perfect score from other games. We decided to play Doom: The Dark Ages for ourselves.

When it comes to the Doom series it’s not bad. We’ve only played a few of them and some are good, others are meh. Doom 2016 was pretty good, but not this game of the gen fans claimed. It actually got repetitive towards the end and focused on combat arenas for maps. Eternal was a regression and felt like you were just playing multiplayer with waves of bots. It had a bunch of unnecessary platforming too. Doom 3’s survival horror aspect is also underrated.

When it comes to Doom: The Dark Ages, theres issues. The first is the story, why is there a story like this in Doom? When they did a developer direct for the game they said one of the biggest aspects they focused on was story. When you start the game the story is front and center. It appears to be very generic and trying too hard.

Doom has always been about shooting demons. Having a story like that in Doom, goes against the games philosophy. John Carmack said story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. Its there but minimal, nothing special and takes a back seat to whats going on. Doom 2016 did this, Eternal put a bit more emphasis on story, but this is a bit too far.

Gameplay wise the Dark Ages felt the worse of the trilogy. I didnt think the guns had the punch like earlier games did. Then they’re trying to appeal to Souls players, where they put a parry system into the game, and each difficulty has different parry windows. They added a shield that turns into a saw and can be thrown. You can also melee and three melees in the right place unlocks a finisher.

Graphics look good, but the issue is the art style. This looks nothing like a Doom game. It’s like they had a bunch of Elder Scrolls devs on the team with a lot of fantasy architecture and ideas you’d see in those games. Theres even a dragon you can ride. After Eternal, I don’t think they knew where to go with the series. If they just made a Doom Skyrim crossover that could’ve been cool.

Soundtrack wise it has taken a big step back. I’m not the biggest person on music, but I was wondering wheres the music? There’s places that you’re waiting for it to play and nothing is playing. The music is generic rock and seems to be trying to imitate whats been in the past two Dooms.

The new Doom is not a 10/10. It shows that a lot of journalists are corrupted by the game companies they review for, and give any game in an established series a high score. For us the game is a 6.5. It has lost its identity and been made generic, while using the Doom name to get people to buy.