Look, I’ve played every modern Doom game. I’ve ripped and torn until it was well and truly done, my fingers a blur of weapon swaps and mid-air dashes. But back in 2025, when id Software told us they were slapping a shield saw onto the Slayer and calling it a day? I laughed. A medieval tech fantasy prequel with mechs, dragons, and parrying? It sounded like a mod someone cooked up after a particularly wild QuakeCon. Now, it’s 2026, and I’ve spent the better part of a week knee-deep in hell’s retrofuturistic corpse pits. I’m here to eat my words — and they taste suspiciously like gunpowder.
Grounded combat makes me feel like a tank, not a ballerina
The first thing that hits you is how heavy everything feels. Doom Eternal turned me into an airborne hummingbird of death, constantly cycling cooldowns, swinging from monkey bars, and dreading the moment I ran out of gas. I loved it, but my wrists still haven’t forgiven me. The Dark Ages takes that formula and smashes it into the ground — literally. Combat is now a brutal shoving match. The Slayer’s movement is thudding, deliberate, and oh-so-satisfying when you plant your feet and refuse to budge against a charging Hell Knight.
Gone is the chain-yoinking acrobatics. Enter the Shield Saw, a concept so absurdly simple I’m angry nobody thought of it sooner. It’s a spinning blade you can block with. It’s a saw you can throw into a demon’s face. It’s a key that rips apart castle doors and ancient mechanisms. Everything is tied to one button, and it’s glorious. I spent ten minutes just holding up the shield to watch Imp fireballs plink off it, giggling like a maniac. The parry system is straight out of Sekiro, and I don’t say that lightly. Getting the timing right lets you stagger even the biggest nasties, opening them up for a gauntlet shock-and-awe combo. My soul left my body the first time I parried a Baron of Hell, then smashed its skull with an electrified fist.
Melee weapons that actually make me feel medieval
Speaking of fists: the melee lineup is a love letter to overkill. You’ve got the Iron Flail — a spiky yo-yo of doom that turns groups into chunky salsa. The Electrified Gauntlet is a taser on steroids, and I use it primarily to feel like a power-armored Zeus. Then there’s the Doom Spiked Mace, which hits with the slow, soggy thud of a falling piano. Each weapon has upgrade trees and unique combos that flow directly out of parries and shield bashes. The rhythm is visceral: block, bash, flail, boom. No more fiddling with a weapon wheel while backpedaling. I am the danger.
Glory kills got a massive overhaul too, and honestly, it saved my sanity. In previous games, I’d see the same pre-baked animation hundreds of times. Now, you can trigger an insta-kill from any angle, and it’s context-sensitive without locking you into a repetitive cutscene. You just jam your weapon into a demon’s ribcage and keep moving. It’s fluid, it’s fast, and it doesn’t yank control away from me when I’m on a roll.
Don’t worry, the guns are still here. They just look like something a steampunk blacksmith hammered together after a prison riot. The boomsticks evoke that grimy Quake aesthetic — rugged metal, chunky barrels, and sounds that feel like a slammed meat locker. My favorite fires a spread of hot rebar. I can’t make this up.
A mech and a dragon walked into a hellscape…
I’ll be honest: when I first heard about piloting an Atlan mech, I rolled my eyes. Vehicle sections in FPS games are usually a gimmick that overstays its welcome. But here, the Atlan stages are dedicated kaiju brawls where you trade haymakers with skyscraper-sized demons. The sense of scale is absurd. I stomped through a ruined cathedral while backhanding a cybernetic Titan, and my neighbors probably think I’ve joined a cult. The dragon is even more ridiculous — imagine Panzer Dragoon with a gatling gun and napalm breath. You strafe over hell’s armies, turning demon formations into charcoal briquettes. It’s a brief, glorious power fantasy that breaks up the on-foot massacres perfectly.
Sliders that say “play your way, you maniac”
The difficulty sliders. Oh, these are going to upset the gatekeepers. I can already hear the screaming from the comment sections of yesteryear. But here in 2026, I’ve only seen gratitude. You can tweak enemy aggression, projectile speed, damage output, and more, all independently. It’s not an “easy mode” — it’s a custom hellscape. I cranked up enemy aggression to max but lowered damage slightly, creating a chaotic swarm simulator that made me feel like a caffeinated badger in a blender. My partner played on a more relaxed setting and had a blast. More people shooting demons = more fun. That’s math.
The story? I actually paid attention this time
Doom: The Dark Ages is a prequel that dares to give the Slayer a backstory. Usually, I’d skip cutscenes faster than a revenant missile, but here the techno-medieval setting is so utterly bonkers that I stuck around. The origins of the Slayer’s war with Hell are woven into massive, non-linear levels filled with secrets and lore tablets. The environments — towering castles, infernal forges, sprawling battlefields — tell their own story, and the occasional narrative beat never overstays its welcome. Best of all? You can skip them. Take notes, 2016.
The verdict from a Slayer who’s seen it all
This is the first time since 2016’s reboot that I’ve felt true to the classic Doom power fantasy: an unstoppable force bulldozing through hell’s bureaucracy. Hugo Martin and his team listened. They heard the cries about Eternal’s complexity, about the missed multiplayer, about the need for simplicity without sacrificing depth. The Shield Saw, the melee weapons, the difficulty sliders — all feel like deliberate responses to fan feedback. Sure, there’s no multiplayer and the dragon sections are short, but what’s here is a 20-hour single-player campaign that never stops churning, never stops evolving, and never forgets that ripping and tearing should make you feel like the angriest, most heavily armed knight in existence.
I don’t miss the platforming. I don’t miss the cooldown juggling. I slam my flail into a demon’s chest, parry its buddy’s projectile with my shield saw, then hop into a giant robot and stomp on a dragon. This is peak Doom. Wake me up in another five years — I’ll still be grinding demon skulls.
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