UNCIVILISED

DOOM: THE DARK AGES is indulgent and deliciously violent, but surprisingly safe

- By Morgan Park

In a time when the FPS campaign is so vanishingly rare that the only helping of big-budget shooting we can rely on each year is from Call of Duty, it'd be easy for id Software to kick up its feet and decide "more Doom" is good enough. It'd be good enough for me. But that'd be dereliction of id's duty to the genre it created.

To id, a new Doom is an to demolish a perfectly good sand castle and start fresh. Doom: The Dark Ages is the trilogy's sharpest zag yet-recasting the Slayer from a meaty fighter jet, dashing past the hordes of Hell, to a stalwart tank, smashing shield-first into the action.

The transition is successful, but not without major sacrifice.

This is Doom at its most indulgent and deliciously violent, but it's also dumbed down and undeniably the easiest of the trilogy. Maps are uncharacteristically barren, secrets abnormally obvious, and puzzles so simple that they hardly fit the description. Viewed through the lens of loud feedback that insisted Doom Eternal was too complicated, The Dark Ages is an overcorrection.

SHORT LEASH

The Dark Ages turns back the clock to our favourite demon smasher's salad days as a pawn of the Makyrs (those floating tentacle guys from the previous games) in a war against Hell. He's the same Slayer as ever, still feral and focused in his distaste for demons, now sporting a tasteful beast pelt to let us know we're in olden times. But in a decision that proves profoundly shortsighted, the Makyrs keep him locked up in a spaceship with a shock collar. You can imagine how that goes.