‘Doom: The Dark Ages’ Is My First Game in the Series—and It Absolutely Rips (and Tears)

I’d always known Doom was a highly regarded video game franchise. Still, up until now I’d only watched from the sidelines—seeing an amalgamation of wild Let’s Plays of its chaotic run-and-gun combat in my poor college days, witnessing folks play it on unconventional computer appliances, and blasting composer Mick Gordon’s heavy metal original soundtrack in my leisure without fully grasping the context to why its gnarly songs went so unbelievably hard on Doom (2016). Now, with id Software and Bethesda Softworks’ latest entry in the 32-year-old first-person-shooter series, Doom: The Dark Ages, serving as a prequel to its newly christened trilogy—while wedding two action genres I have a high affinity for and am coming around to, sci-fi and fantasy—I’ve finally jumped into the deep end on the series with its newly released game on my PlayStation 5. I went into Doom: The Dark Ages expecting its signature FPS chaos mixed with the demonic, style-switching combat I love in the Devil May Cry— ... Read full article.