If your main problems with Doom: The Dark Ages were that you wished it was faster, harder, and took more cues from Doom Eternal’s mobility options, then oh boy do I have great news for you. The Revelations DLC ramps the intensity up to 11 by introducing a brand new sub-weapon that totally changes the flow of combat, doubling the amount of options you have to dispatch demons, and most importantly, giving the Slayer his dash back. All of this builds off the already enormous arsenal of weapons, techniques, and mods from the end of the base game which, admittedly, does make juggling all of these new options a little bit overwhelming. That said, if you can overcome the steep learning curve, this is quite simply the most exhilarating Doom’s combat has been since Doom Eternal’s The Ancient Gods DLC, and the clearest evidence yet that Id is the best in the business when it comes to single-player first-person shooters.
Revelations’ story picks up right where the main campaign left off, and while you can technically jump straight into it first, you’ll be missing out on some pretty important context. Of course, you don’t need much context to enjoy blasting an imp to pieces with the Super Shotgun or jamming a spear through a Mancubus’ skull. The bigger reason why you’ll want to make sure you play through the campaign first is to familiarize yourself with the Slayer’s arsenal of weapons and techniques so you know what tool is right for which job, because this DLC throws you into the deep end right from the start and demands that you know what you’re doing. Even as someone who did play through Doom: the Dark Ages on Nightmare difficulty more than a year ago, Revelations started kicking my ass right from the start.
And then, just when I started to find my footing again, Revelations did something truly bold and took away the defining element of The Dark Ages’ combat: the Shield Saw. In its place, I gained the Chain Spear, which has a lot of the same functions as the Shield, but all handled in very different ways that end up totally changing the flow of combat. For example, the Spear can still parry green enemy attacks, but now you have to time a strike so that you essentially clash with theirs. It’s uniquely satisfying to bat back projectiles and smack away swipes and slashes, but you do lose the safety net of having a shield to negate damage if you mistime the parry.
The biggest difference between the Spear and the Shield is how you get around. With the Shield, you were able to use a shield bash that let you zip towards and slam into any target at high speed, but you didn’t have much mobility outside of that. With the spear, you can no longer instantly close the distance between you and an enemy. Instead, you throw it into a foe and slowly pull yourself towards them, maintaining full directional control as you launch either above, around, or right in front of your target. It works almost exactly like the grappling hook on the Super Shotgun in Doom Eternal, which is appropriate, as the entirety of the Spear’s kit feels designed to inject Eternal’s focus on mobility back into the grounded and heavy feel of The Dark Ages’ combat.
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