Doom: The Dark Ages is a prequel to the 2016 reboot of this famed fantasy shooter franchise. And like the six main games and numerous spinoffs in this long-running series that began way back in 1993, the goal with The Dark Ages is to pulverize massive monsters, hellish bosses and demonic entities of various stripes in run-and-gun, blood-gushing ways.
Publisher Bethesda’s latest take on the concept is set in something of a medieval world with a fantasy-future-sci-fi twist. So, you’ve got humans dressed in heavy armor, defending castle-like fortifications with large swords and shotguns. And there are endless hordes of demons and shambling skeletons streaming through mystical portals while unleashing magical blasts and loosing gigantic mountain-sized, horned fiends. (Pant, pant.)
Layered on top of that is a race of technically advanced extra-dimensional aliens called the Makyrs. These powerful creatures float overhead in a ship that looks like a glowing cross in the sky. And they promote the idea that their advanced civilization makes them worthy of human worship.
Oh, and Makyrs have also arrived to help the human struggle through use of a super-weapon called the Doom Slayer. (That’s you.) That Slayer is a heavily armored, razor-shielded human battler who’s been empowered with incredible weaponry and set loose to defeat Prince Ahzrak, the current demonic lord.
The game eyes a power-struggle tale that plays out through some 15 to 20 hours, and includes back-stabbing betrayals, enforced slavery and dark, supernatural surprises.
In reality, though, gameplay is all about gamers wading through crumbling landscapes and grabbing an arsenal of death-dealing implements wrenched from the hands of mutilated corpses or snatched up from some nearby pile of dribbling goop. And then, of course, they obliterate and disembowel every slavering demon that they can. Period.
Doom: The Dark Ages is a single-player game. You will need an online connection to install it, even if you purchased a physical copy. However, after it’s installed, it can be played offline.
You could say that this is a graphically impressive game that portrays a stalwart battle against evil. But …
Doom: The Dark Ages is all about carnage.
Whether gamers are slashing their way through burning human ruins or the lava-spewing depths of hell, the goal is simply to use the various shotguns, large-caliber automatic weapons, skull-crushing melee strikes, spike-launching turrets, rocket blasts and razor-edged shield parlays to eviscerate and dismember foes.
Blood spews and spatters; fleshy chunks fly; and corpses are splayed before disappearing. Some areas feature bodies with exposed entrails. Some up-close finishing attacks showcase sawing enemies in two, smashing skulls and lopping off the heads of wounded foes.
You could say that the game makers offer something of a veiled spiritual commentary in their depiction of this battle against hellish forces. The Makyrs, for instance, are given an angelic aesthetic, and they fly in a massive ship that has the appearance of a glowing cross hanging in the sky. But for all their efforts to foster human adoration, these technically advanced aliens also reveal themselves to be false creatures who betray mankind.
Much of the Dark Ages storyline deals with an ancient human artifact of great power called the Heart of Argent. This artifact is said to hold the “Soul of the Last Wraith,” an angelic being of immense power. And a human is later imbued with that power.
The Slayer is killed at one point during his one-man battle against hell. He’s then resurrected through a demonic ritual.
At first glance, you might think this is a game about a battle between heaven and hell. But it’s really just a game about hellish combat. Doom: The Dark Ages is hours of gory and intense demon-blasting and little else.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
