DOOM: The Dark Ages | Revelations

9.7/10 As I sit here writing the review, I just beat the DLC moments ago. WOW. What an experience.I have never experienced such a fantastic DLC I think ever. There are a few Fallout DLC's and Oblivion DLC's that come to mind. But this is so good it might top those. In my opinion Doom Dark Ages is not complete until you get this. The spear and the shield compliment each other. 20 hours of DLC and 40 hours to beat base game with HEAVY exploration on nightmare. Highly recommended. And also.... There are TONS of people who say "its a melee game" when you get spear. Its NoT DoOm iF yOU HavE to Melee blah blah blah The DLC is extremely Challenging. The spear does NOT ruin the gameplay. It takes QUITE some time to get used to it. When it clicks its SO GOOD you wont want to go back. This DLC has THE hardest fights of ANY DOOM I have ever played and I played them all outside of DOOM64. The play style changes totally. On nightmare this is VERY hard, and the spear when you upgrade it flows and counters enemies while speeding up game play. Its a LOT of buttons and little upgrade counters to keep track of and manage .Most of people downvote this game b/c its so hard to manage shield/spear. But they just need to get good. Play on nightmare or uninstall. My only gripe is that even after you beat the story there is more to unlock with the spear. As well as some VERY demanding scenes that tanks FPS. I wanted to "finish the game" but I guess ill be playing a bit more :) Seriously I bought this for 15$ and I would EASILY pay 30. After playing the DLC I can say this was the best DOOM game I have ever experienced. DOOM II is in the game btw so dont even start ;D

Even better than the base game.

The DLC takes away from how good the game was. They added new mechanics that just junk the game up and try too hard to fit in with already established mechanics. Another example of the Devs cashing out and ruining their game.

The spear just sucks. Not sure what ID was thinking here. It's so clunky and awful to use! This is the worst DLC for Doom yet. Hope you guys get back to your roots for the next game...if it ever happens.

It's a modern Doom game. If you liked exploding demons in the Doom: The Dark Ages, you'll generally have a good time. That being said, the devs did make a few questionable design decisions in this DLC, which significantly detract from the experience. I don't believe it's so bad as to be worthy of a thumbs-down - but it's incompletely deserving of a thumbs up. What should have been a spectacularly awesome DLC ends up being merely...satisfactory. Adequate. Mid. The game isn't transparent about how the final upgrades for the suit & chain spear are unlocked. I wasted platinum trying to unlock them, and reloading a previous save doesn't undo that. As it turns out, you have to finish the game and get to the 'endgame' phase before those are unlockable - and they take their own special currency too. The levels feature a large number of locked doors, and you can't ever find a key to open them - you can only open them by defeating the 'final' boss (which isn't actually the final boss) and entering the endgame state. And then you have to go back and re-explore all the levels a second time. The combat encounters don't even reset in the non-endgame areas, so you don't even get treated to an extra-rich demon-slaughtering experience in the endgame - you get to wander through empty areas before you're allowed to continue having fun. This essentially converts the endgame into a disjointed mashup of a demon-slaughtering simulator (which is thrilling) with a walking-around simulator (which is not thrilling). Accessing the actual final boss fight (in the endgame state) is gated behind three speedrun challenges. I am the exact opposite of a speedrunner, I take my time in combat, and I rush absolutely nothing. That being said, it's not unforgivably awful - you can press the escape key and change the multitude of game difficulty sliders to calibrate for individual taste. But having to open up those settings for one specific fight, just to pass an arbitrary timed challenge to get to the final boss fight? That shouldn't have ever been necessary. It's like a 100x worse version of unlocking the Unmaykr in Doom Eternal. I found the chain spear to be a much less-good survival tool than the shield, and unfortunately, there is one level that you have to slog through without the shield. But it's not all bad. You do get the shield back. And the game does let you swap to the chain spear & use dash if you stun an enemy by throwing the shield, or if the shield becomes unavailable due to absorbing too much damage. The chain spear has just enough utility to cover for those few moments when the shield isn't usable. As always, the demon-slaughtering experience is top-tier excellence, and the fights and the environments seem...better in Revelations than the base game. None of the guns or melee weapons are different, so if you liked the weapons in The Dark Ages, it delivers more of that. If you average out the good & the bad, it's...fine. Technically I do not regret buying it. But I expected better from the legendary Id Software. I know that Id suffered layoffs, because the bean-counter demons at Microsoft are evil (and there is no Doom Slayer to stop them). But Id Software did not need to resort to such obviously underhanded tricks to pad out the length of their DLC. I would have respected a short & awesome DLC.