REVIEW: Doom: The Dark Ages Reigns as 2025’s Best Shooter

This may be controversial, but Doom: The Dark Ages is best played on the easiest difficulty possible.

That’s how you push this unrelenting power fantasy to its natural conclusion: with your force-of-nature hero, colloquially known as Doomguy, effortlessly carving through the armies of Hell as he fights to rid the realms of a demonic invasion.

Slowing down for even a second is unthinkable. For example, unlike most shooters, the X button doesn’t reload your weapon in Doom: The Dark Ages – it merely swaps it out for another. You can fire while locked in a full-on sprint, with no aiming penalty to knock your spirit. And only in Doom does the shield become an offensive weapon.

Your shield is one of the core changes since 2020’s Doom Eternal. Held firm with LT, it gives you the confidence to weather anything thrown your way, able to both absorb and reflect attacks. Developer ID Software redesigned the entire ebb and flow of combat around this new tool, imploring you to ‘stand and fight’ rather than ‘run and gun’.

Batting back glowing green attacks is endlessly satisfying. Some enemies, like the spider-legged Vagary Champion, launch walls of damaging orbs at you to return like a round of demonic tennis. Others, like mounted foes, let loose twinkling green arrows. Parries produce a hearty ringing on impact that sounds like the mighty clang of a clock tower bell.

The shield does threaten to dominate the game at points. A part of you might pine for the more streamlined previous series entries, especially during heavier sections which demand constant shield use. These bits can become arduous on higher difficulties.

While you’re more defensively minded, that’s not to say you have to play cautious. In fact, the opening salvo of any skirmish often consists of you locking onto an enemy with LT and hitting RT to charge shield-first into them, triggering a distorting shockwave and turning anyone in the vicinity to squishy giblets.

Throwing it like a spiked discus with LB is another move in your considerable arsenal. Launch it spinning into enemy chests like a buzzsaw, or if they’re armored, super-heat their metallic plating with gunfire and your shield will explode them on contact.

The interplay of shooting, shield-parrying, and melee is unrelenting. That’s why, as mentioned, Doom: The Dark Ages gets better the easier you make it. It’s a fast, impossibly fluid game of maintaining constant rhythm and motion, one that cranks way up when you use the generous array of difficulty sliders to boost the aim assist, widen the parry windows, halve enemy health bars, and increase the rate at which you accrue gold.

Of course, it’s all to personal taste. If you’d prefer to play on Nightmare mode and strip away all the assists, that’s completely viable too.

Doom: The Dark Ages New Weapons

One of the best new weapons in Doom: The Dark Ages is the Pulverizer. Essentially, it’s a portable industrial shredder that uses human skulls as ammo, grinding them out and spitting out damaging shards of bone in a wide arc – perfect when confronted with a packed corridor.

Your flail is another addition, this one melee-only. When unlocked, you can swap out your default three-punch-combo gauntlets and swing it crunching down onto heads with presses of R3, adding range to your strikes.

When Does Doom: The Dark Ages Take Place?

Doom: The Dark Ages is the prequel to 2016’s Doom and 2020’s Doom Eternal. Playing as the iconic Doom Slayer (or ‘Doomguy’), you’ll embark on a medieval war against the forces of Hell.

Doom: The Dark Ages Enemies

Classic Doom enemies return in Doom: The Dark Ages. There’s the Arachnotron, which is a giant brain straddling a set of metallic crab legs; the grotesquely flabby Mancubus with its arm-grafted flamethrowers; and grinning Cacodemons that look like Monsters Inc.‘s Mike Wazowski on a really bad day.

The damage you do to them is considerable. Each bullet skims off flesh chunks, exposing off-white skeletons and rotting organs. Obliterating body parts doesn’t stop them fully – shooting off an arm sometimes means your enemy will resort to swinging its remaining one.

Doom: The Dark Ages Gameplay

There are plenty of standout moments in Doom: The Dark Ages. Chapter 5, The Holy City of Aratum, is firmly in contention for the best video game level of 2025. In fact, it’s one of the best levels in an FPS, period, and will be remembered for a long time.

It’s the first time you’re in control of a new Mecha Dragon mount. Taking flight with crackling neon-red wings, you’ll roam across a gigantic floating city dogfighting with flying demons in supersonic jet-mode and engaging colossal gunships before landing on them to continue the fight on the ground. It’s absolutely epic.

Other standout levels give you the keys to a towering mech that shakes the ground with each step. These short sections are simple, and fall flatter than they looked in trailers, often devolving into basic punch-trading with similarly-sized demons, but remain a welcome change of pace nonetheless.

Doom: The Dark Ages Trailer

Check out the latest Doom: The Dark Ages gameplay below, showcasing your massive new Mecha Dragon pal.

Some of the best action happens when your feet are on the ground. Here you can truly appreciate the game’s grand scale as you witness giant monsters battling in the distance and armies massing on fire-fringed horizons. One stage is set in a cavernous chest cavity with a festering, skyscraper-sized heart at its centre.

Is Doom: The Dark Ages Multiplayer?

Doom: The Dark Ages is singleplayer only. It features a 12-hour solo campaign, with unlockable weapon skins and trinkets to find scattered throughout.

The levels are surprisingly expansive too. ID says these are the biggest in its history. Some give you multiple objectives across forlorn forests, destroyed castles, and heaving battlefields. In one chapter, Siege, you can take on pockets of enemies in any order, while optional objectives offer decent rewards.

Finding and sabotaging four siege weapons, for instance, gives you a new Combat Shotgun skin. There are also Easter eggs to find, as well as codex pages and secret caches of gold.

The latter is how you upgrade your weapons, melee, and shield, with plenty of unlockable effects to experiment with. Outfit your Shredder with the pincushion effect to make embedded spikes explode when shield-bashed, or imbue your gauntlets with electrifying shock. It keeps the power fantasy well and truly fuelled.

Doom: The Dark Ages Review Score

Doom: The Dark Ages is the story of a man so uncompromisingly stubborn the possibility of his death, even against overwhelming odds, is absurd. Enacting that iron will across 12 hours of a shield-bashing, dragon-riding, metal-soundtracked shoot-fest is the perfect way to raise Hell.

This is without a doubt 2025’s best shooter.

Score: 9/10

How Long is Doom: The Dark Ages?

With 22 chapters in total, Doom: The Dark Ages will take you around 12 hours to complete.

Is Doomguy in Doom: The Dark Ages?

Yes, Doomguy is in Doom: The Dark Ages. In fact, this game dives into the past to shed light on his origin story. With his newly designed armor featuring a flowing black fur cape, he looks more intimidating than ever. Buying the deluxe edition unlocks extra skins, including a gorgeous white and gold ensemble.

Plus there’s even a Doomguy Easter egg in the menu. Go to the HUD options and you can select to use the classic pixelated face from previous old-school Doom games.

Doom: The Dark Ages Release Date

Doom: The Dark Ages releases on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S on 15 May, 2025.