A couple of weeks ago when id held a digital preview event showcasing the new DLC for DOOM: The Dark Ages, I was left a little bit unsure of how I would take to it. Director Hugo Martin promised that Revelations would be pushing the challenge of the game further than the base game, incorporating some of the movement and feel of DOOM Eternal.

As someone who liked The Dark Ages but bounced off of Eternal, this made me a little bit worried. Thankfully, they do not remove the heavy combat that The Dark Ages’ shield brought into the mix, while layering on new options to add quick movement with the introduction of the new spear.

Revelations picks up right after the events of The Dark Ages, but quickly takes you down a peg and removes some of your high level upgrades, including taking away the iconic shield. It continues The Dark Ages’ strange insistence on being more narrative-focused, with dramatic cutscenes and self-important lore. This was something id started doing in DOOM Eternal, and I feel like it’s one of the things that pushed me away from enjoying the game.

I’m not entirely sure why, but it always feels sacrilegious to me when I see a third person view of the Doomslayer, especially after DOOM (2016) did such a great job of humorously rejecting deep narrative through its first-person sequences. I don’t remember this happening in other games, but Revelations even goes as far as to have narrative sequences when you walk through areas without being able to shoot anything, which feels very bizarre for a series that’s known for its focus on gameplay.

The game is asking me to have a reverence for the lore of this world that I just don’t feel like they’ve earned, which is off-putting to me, at times. Every time I get into a cutscene where I’m watching paper-thin characters discuss the war against Hell, I’m just looking at my watch waiting for the moment I can get back to ripping and tearing.

The Spear Changes the Rhythm of Combat

The biggest introduction that Revelations brings to the franchise is the brand new spear, which goes in your left hand slot where the shield resided. Eventually, you will be juggling both, but much of the beginning of the DLC is spent with only the spear. While the shield gave you the ability to tank hits when under fire, the spear is all about mobility, giving you a dash ability to dance between projectiles rather than blocking them. Replacing the shield ramming ability is a grapple that lets you pull yourself towards an enemy, albeit slower than the shield bash.

You can also slash with the spear, which doubles as the weapon’s version of the parry, making it a versatile tool that creates a different playstyle that’s distinct from the shield, but still fits into the established gameplay.

It did take me a while to get used to the spear, though. Oddly, the slash that you use to parry is mapped to a different button than the shield’s block/parry, which was an adjustment for my brain. Modern DOOM games are so much about muscle memory, so having to switch parry buttons depending on which weapon I was carrying always caused me to stumble for a fraction of a second, and those moments can be critical ones in such an aggressive game. Some of the more fun and useful moves, like the ability to chain yourself to an enemy and orbit around them while firing, were locked behind an upgrade tree, making it an even slower curve for the spear to start firing on all cylinders.

For the most part, once the narrative restored my shield, I was once again using that most of the time, switching to spear for the more movement-based exploration sections. The spear definitely had its usefulness in battle, but the rhythm I had with the shield from the base game was just too good for me to permanently make the switch.

Fresh Locations Keep Hell Interesting

After a brief prologue, the Doomslayer finds himself cast down into a purgatory prison, aided by a mysterious creature that resides within. To escape, he must complete three challenges in three different stages. These are accessed through a hub area that has a light Metroidvania aspect, allowing you to explore more areas as your abilities are returned to you. I actually had some fun trying to track down secrets, which usually come in the form of extra encounters and some upgrade resources, but the reward was usually the act of discovery itself, in this case.

My favorite example of these involved finding the anchors for chains and smashing them with your shields, then chasing down the reward that dropped once you broke them all. It’s not like the hub is the most compelling part of the game, but I did appreciate that Revelations rewarded me for exploring.

Despite really liking DOOM: The Dark Ages, I got a bit tired of its more bland medieval setting by the end, so I was glad to see that each of these levels changed up the visual style. The first section and the hub were ice-themed, bringing to mind the final circle of Dante’s hell. The brightness was a refreshing change of pace, with blues and whites being the dominant color palette rather than the muddy browns. The second level brought to mind the cosmic realm of the base game, leaning more into clever puzzles and shifting spaces that felt like DOOM’s version of Control. The final level is called Osseus, and its environments are constructed out of bones, making for some satisfyingly destructible arenas. None of these areas were too long, each about an hour or two, so the density of Revelations’ variety felt a lot higher than the base game.

Upon completion of each of these levels, you’re dropped in sections where you are playing as the Doom Marine. As I mentioned before, I’m a bit allergic to the lore of this game, so I’m not exactly up-to-date on how this may or may not help unify the Doom timelines narratively, but it was a cool change of pace to see the action in a more modern setting again. To make it feel more like the old school version of DOOM, your shotgun is placed in the center of the screen with a strong headbob, putting you right back into 1993. Oddly the actual content of these sequences felt a bit like Call of Duty, putting you on a linear path to blast your way through soldiers, but I appreciated the change of pace, and I’m sure DOOM lorehounds will eat it up.

High-Level Encounters Reward Skilled Play

Encounters in Revelations pick up right along the difficulty curve of The Dark Ages, throwing you into a high-level deep end pretty early on. Given your new set of tools, it’s a lot of fun to blast your way through hordes in well laid out arenas with strong encounter design. Everything I said in my review of The Dark Ages still stands, the combat is exciting and challenging, creating an exhilerating rhythm through the parry mechanic that adds a layer of complexity to an already great combat feel. While I still leaned a lot on the shield, the addition of the spear is awesome for those that appreciated the mobility focus that DOOM Eternal provided, so there’s something for lovers of all modern DOOM games.

There are a couple new additions to the enemy roster for the DLC, but unfortunately they were some of my least favorites. The classic Archville is back, but I didn’t like the style of challenge he brought to the encounters. He belongs to one of my least favorite enemy types, which is “guy who moves around the battlefield avoiding you and making things worse while still around.” He is constantly summoning glowing red spectral versions of standard enemies that continue to swarm you until he’s defeated.

As you’re getting overwhelmed, it becomes hard to spot him as he teleports around, especially when his glowing summons are a lot more visible than he is. Encounters where he showed up felt overwhelming in a frustrating way more than an exciting way, which made me sigh in disappointment any time he showed up.

Other than that, I appreciated the addition of the Cosmic Elemental, who flies around and throws smaller elementals at you. It was clear anytime that he showed up that he was an immediate emergency that needed to be dealt with, adding an interesting dynamic to the battlefield. While some of the encounters frustrated me with the inclusion of the Archville, I still came out of them feeling like an unstoppable killing machine, which is exactly the feeling I come to DOOM for, so mission accomplished.

In addition to the combat, there’s some nice traversal challenges and puzzle solving, though nothing like the precise platforming that I remember disliking from DOOM Eternal. The puzzles, which peak in the second trial, feel really clever when you have to alternate between using the shield and the spear to accomplish your tasks. Like other DOOM games, there are plenty of secrets to find hidden throughout, though this time they did not mark them on the map. It felt weird in The Dark Ages that their locations were shown to you, so I welcome this change, as it makes finding them feel more satisfying.

Endgame Content Gives Players More to Conquer

After completing the three trials, there is a suitably epic conclusion with some memorable boss fights and setpieces. While the narrative isn’t too deep or complex, it gets the job done when it stays out of the way, providing a satisfying-enough story that leaves room for further adventures. Given that id was hit with massive layoffs, a fact that was floating in the back of my mind throughout the entire time I was playing Revelations, it’s unclear whether or not they will be able to follow up on this cliffhanger or not.

When you complete the main story, you are given the Master Key, which opens previously locked doors throughout the stages. With this new tool, you can backtrack through levels and find new challenges, which come along with new rewards. There are Rituals of Power, challenge stages that award you a tiered medal based on your performance, Praetor Fights, extra-hard encounters meant to push your combat abilities to their limits, and Classic Levels, recreations of stages from older games. Fully completing Rituals of Power and Praetor Fights will give you pieces to another key that will unlock the game’s true final boss, giving you an Endgame goal should you decide you want more of what Revelations has to offer.

Completing the Classic Levels will eventually give you access to the ‘93 Shotgun, an extra-powerful recreation of the original game’s weapon. I’m not usually one for post-game content like this, but I did find the Classic Levels to be particularly satisfying, and playing them even made me re-install the classics on my Steam Deck.

It’s bittersweet to play DOOM: The Dark Ages | Revelations knowing that the team behind it has been left in a diminished capacity. They did an excellent job merging the successes of The Dark Ages and Eternal into one challenging package, putting a neat bow on this era of DOOM. Even if some of the enemies were more frustrating than fun, I left every encounter with a triumphant smile on my face, fistpumping at the carnage I created.

While I don’t have the reverence for the DOOM lore that the game wants me to, the journey the six to eight hour narrative took me on was a fun blockbuster with an appropriately exciting conclusion, along with post-game content to discover if you want more. It may not convert new fans to the franchise, but Revelations is a worthy addition to the series that feels like a triumphant culmination of the last two games.

Code provided by publisher. DOOM: The Dark Ages | Revelations is available now on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series and the PC via Steam.