Doom: The Dark Ages |OT| Mod City

CNgvUf6.jpeg


finished it a week ago, and it was a good game, however Doom Eternal is still the best Doom game and so much higher in quality and enjoyment than this one that it was kinda disappointed. Played it on Nightmare with 130% speed, and min low parry window and I feel like wthe weapons in this game are really meh, second class citizens while the shield does most of the work, 75% of the game I was using just the basic shotgun because on Nightmare I really needed the armor drops and fully upgraded it drops a ton of armor from everyone. The melee weapons are trash except the last one so theres absolute no point in them, the parry upgrades are overall average and I ended up just using the stun one while the rest were trash. Speaking of weapons, I take it back a bit, I did love the rocket launcher as once you parry you can heal yourself quite decently with it. The BFC was shit and outside of some challenges I completely forgot I even had it. The music is fine, but I have 0 favorite songs while Doom Eternal I have quite a few, so another minus compared to it. Visuals are pretty fucking bad, theres absolutely 0 reasons why this should require raytracing hardware, nothing looks advanced, projectiles dont feel better or better looking, the architecture was absolutely boring. Level design was ok, but inferior to previous ones. The story was shit, I had 0 investment in its lore and they just memed the Doom Guy being an unstopable force, while in previous games, especially Doom Eternal, it made a huge impact, you could see in the voice recordings, the lore was amazingly written, here it's just generic stuff.

Now all this sounds very negative, but it's still a good game, like an 8ish/10, but compared to Doom Eternal it's not very good, at all. Considering how long it took them to make this short game, being a gamepass product and an 80+euro game that's inferior to its previous ones, it seems that id's future is in the shitter imo.
 
One thing that does bug me is that you can't switch weapons or even open the radial menu while blocking. Baffling.
 
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Punished Miku said:
One thing that does bug me is that you can't switch weapons or even open the radial menu while blocking. Baffling.
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There are a few oddities like this in the game. I'm playing on console and I noticed a bad bug where custom controls will fully reset to default if you let your console go idle.

Also another issue, I've been playing mostly with the HUD off (because it takes up too much screen real estate) and when playing with the HUD off I noticed that the cutscene subtitles are weirdly 'attached' to the HUD. So if you turn the HUD off, you get no subtitles.

Not sure why they did that.
 
Damn, playing the game on Ultra-Violence and its kickin my ass. It's hard but it's fair to be honest. It's just i watch guys like DraQu and i wonder how they can beat the game on Ultra-Nightmare (without dying that is)
 
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Connificent said:
So I finally finished this bitch. Glad it was over. Its easily the worst of the trilogy.
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It was still fun but in comparing I agree, it was so flat and felt rushed.. They were definitely banking on the gameplay mechanics and literally nothing else. Everything else is meh.

Personally as number one being the best:
1. Eternal
2. Doom 2016
3. The Dark Ages
 
Just bumped into Marty Stratton randomly on the street in Amsterdam. He was super cool, apparently his daughter is here for college. Doom16 is still my fav fps of all time so I was happy to take the opportunity chat and shake hands with the man

UHVhuPv0WmZKp12L.jpeg
 
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Having to push myself to finish the last 1/3. Lot of wandering around looking for seemingly random collections of enemies to tell me I haven't been to this area. It's like they just randomly distributed bad guys around big open world maps without much thought about pacing or direction. Game starts weak, gets pretty good and then just gets lost and forgets what to do. It's like rando, below-average $14.99 Steam FPS level design with AAA assets once you get to hell.

I pray the theories about this being an "id B Team" project are correct. If they're not, there's been an exodus of talent that we don't know about.
 
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Bartski said:
Just bumped into Marty Stratton randomly on the street in Amsterdam. He was super cool, apparently his daughter is here for college. Doom16 is still my fav fps of all time so I was happy to take the opportunity chat and shake hands with the man
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That's so awesome you bumped into Marty Stratton. I love him and Hugo Martin.
 
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On level 18. Some of these challenge rooms are incredible. Never played a shooter that feels this much like a fight. Just tooth and nail brawling. People in your face going ham on you and you just have to counter and tear them down while strafing and planning crowd control and long range threats. Some of the pacing may be a little slow at times but the moment to moment combat gameplay is amazing.
 
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Bartski said:
Just bumped into Marty Stratton randomly on the street in Amsterdam. He was super cool, apparently his daughter is here for college. Doom16 is still my fav fps of all time so I was happy to take the opportunity chat and shake hands with the man

UHVhuPv0WmZKp12L.jpeg
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Odd angle for a selfie photo lol
 
Punished Miku said:
On level 18. Some of these challenge rooms are incredible. Never played a shooter that feels this much like a fight. Just tooth and nail brawling. People in your face going ham on you and you just have to counter and tear them down while strafing and planning crowd control and long range threats. Some of the pacing may be a little slow at times but the moment to moment combat gameplay is amazing.
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Pacing is a bit of a issue. Gets a bit lengthy. I did took a bit of a break.

My guess is they struggled a bit with the gameplay, to get it together. So couldn't work on that.

I mean who does shooters like this? On paper something like this shouldn't work. Intense battles in large open areas, shield and parry. But it does somehow. Lol.
 


Finished. One of my favorite FPS games ever. Chapters 20 and 21 really delivered the goods. Great combat non stop. Great bosses. Great music. Even a few feels.



There were a few parts the pacing was a little slow because there's so many levels. A lot of missed opportunities for cooler cutscenes that weren't fully capitalized on. They need a new event director just for sick ass action cutscenes. And a few parts I felt the colors were a little drab, but I suspect it looks a lot better on PC. Overall totally loved it and will play chapters again on higher difficulty for sure. Towards the end they also had a few well done optional puzzles with underwater stuff too. Wish they had more of that. Some great level design. Enjoyed all the dragon levels as well. The core combat just shines and carries the game. I'd probably give it a 9/10. If they capitalized on a better story, cutscenes, and pacing it could have been higher because the core gameplay is so fun.
 
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On the last chapter of this game. What an incredible experience. The modern DOOM trilogy has got to be one of the best trilogies in gaming history.

Also, people saying this looks no better than DOOM: Eternal are fucking nuts. The game is absolutely stunning.

Some of my shots:

YG2LSRNdiFHZKdIs.png
vw3lXm3GDoYFnEhq.png
rZTzw9GDwZGijCPQ.jpg


SPOILERS screenshots from the final act:

vDfbFIxeF5wGSiMK.png
W9IbyhTdoOjMesT4.png
LBE7gqGBlnsTweTp.png
 
analog_future said:
On the last chapter of this game. What an incredible experience. The modern DOOM trilogy has got to be one of the best trilogies in gaming history.

Also, people saying this looks no better than DOOM: Eternal are fucking nuts. The game is absolutely stunning.

Some of my shots:

YG2LSRNdiFHZKdIs.png
vw3lXm3GDoYFnEhq.png
rZTzw9GDwZGijCPQ.jpg


SPOILERS screenshots from the final act:

vDfbFIxeF5wGSiMK.png
W9IbyhTdoOjMesT4.png
LBE7gqGBlnsTweTp.png
Click to expand...
The game absolutely looks better in cut scenes and close ups, but in general levels look bad, enemies are blurry messes, and lighting is caca.

This isn't even subjective or PC vs console.
 
The Cockatrice said:
CNgvUf6.jpeg


finished it a week ago, and it was a good game, however Doom Eternal is still the best Doom game and so much higher in quality and enjoyment than this one that it was kinda disappointed. Played it on Nightmare with 130% speed, and min low parry window and I feel like wthe weapons in this game are really meh, second class citizens while the shield does most of the work, 75% of the game I was using just the basic shotgun because on Nightmare I really needed the armor drops and fully upgraded it drops a ton of armor from everyone. The melee weapons are trash except the last one so theres absolute no point in them, the parry upgrades are overall average and I ended up just using the stun one while the rest were trash. Speaking of weapons, I take it back a bit, I did love the rocket launcher as once you parry you can heal yourself quite decently with it. The BFC was shit and outside of some challenges I completely forgot I even had it. The music is fine, but I have 0 favorite songs while Doom Eternal I have quite a few, so another minus compared to it. Visuals are pretty fucking bad, theres absolutely 0 reasons why this should require raytracing hardware, nothing looks advanced, projectiles dont feel better or better looking, the architecture was absolutely boring. Level design was ok, but inferior to previous ones. The story was shit, I had 0 investment in its lore and they just memed the Doom Guy being an unstopable force, while in previous games, especially Doom Eternal, it made a huge impact, you could see in the voice recordings, the lore was amazingly written, here it's just generic stuff.

Now all this sounds very negative, but it's still a good game, like an 8ish/10, but compared to Doom Eternal it's not very good, at all. Considering how long it took them to make this short game, being a gamepass product and an 80+euro game that's inferior to its previous ones, it seems that id's future is in the shitter imo.
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I prefer this game's combat loop. The shield integration with the weapons is more fun and ads a better variety of gameplay styles than the quick swapping focus of Eternal. Eternal was my favorite shooter of all time. I played through Ultra Nightmare multiple times on the campaign, dlcs and Master Levels but I find the shield, runes and melee with the new weapons mods an overall better and more flexible experience after a number of playthroughs of Nightmare, Pandemonium and Ultra Nightmare. Every weapon and mod is effective except the Pulverizer.
 
Bulletzen72 said:
Really? It was pin sharp for me. Throughout!
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The regular jobber enemies with a blue helmet. Walk up close to them and see all their details.

Walk back 10 feet and it all goes away.

Eternal didn't suffer from any loss in character model detail close or farther. It also helps you're constantly glory killing so the game emphasizes those details up close.
 
Arsic said:
The game absolutely looks better in cut scenes and close ups, but in general levels look bad, enemies are blurry messes, and lighting is caca.

This isn't even subjective or PC vs console.
Click to expand...

Nope. I have endless gameplay shots that look spectacular and very sharp.

Here's a few:

dNGKimFO8QsPuuJe.png


KCC6RN2XiVFlOpna.jpg
B5M7a0r212Tf95OI.jpg
vcGDzp8IbpkSjm7r.png
tw1w6s2QANsTik5p.jpg
 
Arsic said:
The regular jobber enemies with a blue helmet. Walk up close to them and see all their details.

Walk back 10 feet and it all goes away.

Eternal didn't suffer from any loss in character model detail close or farther. It also helps you're constantly glory killing so the game emphasizes those details up close.
Click to expand...
Maybe you didn't use DLSS but instead Dynamic Resolution? I mean could be.
 
analog_future said:
Nope. I have endless gameplay shots that look spectacular and very sharp.

Here's a few:

dNGKimFO8QsPuuJe.png


KCC6RN2XiVFlOpna.jpg
B5M7a0r212Tf95OI.jpg
vcGDzp8IbpkSjm7r.png
tw1w6s2QANsTik5p.jpg
Click to expand...
Cut scenes, close ups, standing still.

Put some enemies on screen and movement and all of those details turn into a blur on ps5 pro.



1:17:18 for a timestamp here. Idk this YTer but illustrates perfectly the blur effect making these enemies in the hall just haven't got any details in motion but eternal does.

This game looks good in cut scenes, standing still, or up close moments. I played 2016 and eternal after dark ages again and eternal looks far more crisp and detailed, plus the ray traced lighting is amazing because of the neon lights and type of surfaces in the game.
 
Arsic said:
Cut scenes, close ups, standing still.

Put some enemies on screen and movement and all of those details turn into a blur on ps5 pro.



1:17:18 for a timestamp here. Idk this YTer but illustrates perfectly the blur effect making these enemies in the hall just haven't got any details in motion but eternal does.

This game looks good in cut scenes, standing still, or up close moments. I played 2016 and eternal after dark ages again and eternal looks far more crisp and detailed, plus the ray traced lighting is amazing because of the neon lights and type of surfaces in the game.
Click to expand...


Yeah, I'm not playing on console, but on a high end PC those problems aren't happening.
 
analog_future said:
Yeah, I'm not playing on console, but on a high end PC those problems aren't happening.
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Yeah 4090+ club only game it feels like.

Doom eternal ray tracing mode on ps5 pro is a jaw dropping game to this day both in motion and being still. Dark ages is not.
 
Yeah! I'm play
analog_future said:
Yeah, I'm not playing on console, but on a high end PC those problems aren't happening.
Click to expand...

Yeah! I was playing on PC too. 9800X3D CPU, Radeon 9700XT @ ultrawide 3440x1440 resolution. Max settings (before path tracing patch) @ 100+ fps and It was sharp throughout. Nothing blurred when at a distance from enemies.
 
analog_future said:
Yeah, I'm not playing on console, but on a high end PC those problems aren't happening.
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i have a low end PC (rtx 3070) but that didn't happen on my end either. playing at 1440p dlss 4 quality, game looked sharp and clean even in motion. probably thanks to dlss 4 but still
 
I really loved this game. The theme and level design is so good. It's almost exactly what I wanted. I didn't want the epic battles to end just keep FEEDING ME. Only minor quibbles really. I would love a permanent bodies mod. Dragon stuff was done a little better than expected and having you land at points was the right move. Mech was fine but neither overstayed their welcome.

Doom 2016 9/10
Eternal 10/10
TDA 9/10




I can't figure out the track number here. The beat is so sick
 
New update on ps5 today finally fixed the berserker trophy. Got my platinum. :)

Also I noticed they got rid of the weird white on screen edges effect when running? Nice!
 
I just finished Doom the Dark Ages and got all Steam Achievements.

Here are my thoughts.

I LOVED the game. Absolutely loved the game. It was polished, ran well on my 4090 and 5070 Ti. I did not use pathtracing as I wanted to prioritize higher frames.
It is a different game from Eternal and 2016. But its not THAT different.

It had a little bit of a learning curve, especially if you are fresh off of playing Eternal and/or 2016. It has a TON of customization options to adjust the difficulty. At first I thought this was an attempt to make the game too easy, but the reality is that you will not do well in this game, if you dont use your shield and melee effectively. That is simply how the game is built and id software largely made it work well. The difficulty options enable you to adjust the windows so that you can play to your liking without having to rely on frustrating precision that other parry games may require. The game is beautiful, the cutscenes are well rendered. i felt the story was fine and the locations were great.

What I didn't like:
1. IMO this should have been a new Quake game. Given how different the mechanics are in this game, vs the previous two games, this could have been easily retooled into a Quake game. I don't hold that against it, but I felt id/Bethesda/Microsoft wasted an opportunity to revive a dormant franchise. Have doom as the fast paced, in your face game and Quake as the more defensive more methodical game. This never truly felt like Doom to me.
2. Some of the boss fights became a test of patience and not skill. The last couple of levels had boss encounters that dragged on and on and fucking on. With many moments in those fights where the bosses had a shield up. I wont say they were really hard per se, but having to parry over and over and wait for the melee meter to refill to get in meaningful hits. Just got tiring
3. This is a personal thing, but one that REALLY pisses me off is when you get locked out of certain areas with no warning. I wanted to get all the collectibles and many times it wasn't obvious whether I would end up back around after or rather I was forced to push forward. I ended up having to replay several levels, when I could no longer access certain areas. often time the levels would just end without warning that you were reaching the exit, which brings me to my next complaint...
4. Why did they get rid of fast travel? In Eternal, the game allowed you to go back to previous areas before you exited the levels to clean up any collectibles you may have missed, which was done to fix 2016's complaint of locking players out.
5. On a personal note, why did the enemies look so vastly different in this game compared to previous games. The one that bothered me the most was the Cacodemon. it looked nothing like the Cacodemon that we all knew. That annoyed


WHen all is said and done, this game was a solid 9/10 for me. It is abundantly clear that id software is a top tier developer and one that Bethesda/Microsoft needs to protect at all costs.
 
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