ZOOM: The Dark Ages: A Zoomer Shooter Parry Mechanic

TL;DR: I hope you love parry mechanics in your DOOM, wait for a good sale on a step backwards in almost everything but graphics - truly the Dark Ages of the DOOM franchise. For "Dark Ages" there's noticeably less blood and FAR fewer glory kills.

It's fun for shieldzerker gameplay, has plenty of great moments, but it's really overproduced and under-delivering compared to DOOM 2016 (among so many other games that are either switching to gimmicks or going to filler content). If we're going by the $/hr valuation at the arcades instead of the usual Gamer Hamburger analogy (I saw someone just get to bread earlier lol) then since I got it free with a graphics card it was... still pretty disappointing compared to DOOM 2016.

After wiping my feet to 100% completion on this game, I went back to DOOM 2016 and re-played it for a much better time. "Dark Ages" definitely describes where the series is at now. The first DOOM game without a multiplayer.

The "story" is some half-assed He-Man heavy lifting in Hell and Beyond. The walking WMD is being girlbossed around by a character that does nothing but give orders, get captured, Captain Obvious, become the deus ex machina, then shows up the Slayer in setting lore and... yeah, I'm going to call it now: GG Doom Slayer, we've found the next DOOM's Terminator: Dark Fate-style replacement for John Connor.

It looks good, runs amazing on the target hardware, but isn't going to be worth anything more than $40 for most with the current content level once the gilt chips off to show the cracks. There's simultaneously lacking of the same content as DOOM 2016 because of the focus on narrative content and yet also more grind in the masteries through those stretched-out narrative levels. I hope you like walking. Not like that grind means much here except for another skin. In 2016 completing the masteries enhanced the weapon, here it is a skin.

The core gameplay loop:
10 Shield Charge Bumper Cars!
20 Super Shotgun/Chainshot
30 Block / "Glory Kill" Bumper Cars!
40 GOTO 20

There is no ammo conservation needed, especially once you receive the Dreadmace that refills your ammo on melee hit. You don't even need to find chainsaw fuel anymore.

If it's dragon or mech combat it's even simpler and more disappointing: parry mechanics

Dragon and mech combat consists primarily of locking on with required dodge of enemy attacks to power up your own vehicle attacks to simply be able to damage the enemy. What is this corposlop consolitis doing in a DOOM game?

There is now a literal "Secret Key" to pick up in many levels. It opens "Secret Doors" you can see like any other door, out in the open and on the map. Peak 2025 design, yo.

The worst part is how DOOM's meaty Berserk Mode has been tuned down into ZOOM's Slightly Impolite Mode with the loss of many glory kills and loss of bloody kills in exchange for... Bumper Cars! Berserk is now just Discount Quad Damage.

id has forged a shield to go with Daikatana.
What a coincidence on the 25th anniversary of John Romero making us all his ♥♥♥♥♥.