DOOM: The Dark Ages | Revelations Review: Witness the Destructive Finale of DOOM's Modern Era

It was confusing for players, but it also seemed confusing for the developers. Was DOOM a fast-paced shooter with horror elements or a horror game that happened to be a shooter? Or was it both? No one really seemed to know until 2016.

The soft reboot of the series was truly a masterpiece, and remains one of my favorite shooters ever created. In the years since, DOOM has been gradually bringing back the ferocity and unrelenting speed of the original game, and that was never more evident than in DOOM: The Dark Ages in 2025.

Now, one year later, the Doom Slayer has returned with a brand-new DLC known as Revelations. As expected with the franchise, it's more of the same, which might not be what you want to hear if you're someone who has been wanting a new direction. And while I consider myself sort of in that boat, there's no denying how much genuine love the team has put into this climactic conclusion to The Dark Ages saga.

The End of the Dark Ages

DOOM: The Dark Ages | Revelations takes place after the main game, pitting the Slayer against an ever-increasing horde of demons both large and small. If you've played a DOOM game before, then you likely won't find that surprising. The speed and tenacity are a crucial part of the franchise's DNA, and it's something that I don't think id Software will ever let die, thankfully.

At this point, the trajectory of DOOM seems to be focused on incremental improvements to the things that the franchise has often struggled with or outright ignored, while refining the core gameplay. Story and narrative always felt a little undercooked in previous efforts, which The Dark Ages, and now certainly Revelations, have looked to improve upon.

The story in The Dark Ages was enjoyable, though I personally grew a bit tired of its word fairly quickly. Revelations does suffer from the same feeling, with a world and story that just isn't terribly interesting. I appreciate the effort, but the goofy Frankenstein's monster mash-up of Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings just doesn't do much for me.

That said, it's nice to see the franchise trying. Whether you like these elements depends entirely on how you enjoyed them in their previous efforts, be it Eternal or The Dark Ages. If you hate stories in DOOM and just want to destroy, feel free to skip as it's all fairly bland to begin with, but if you liked the way the story was handled, it's all in that same style. The cutscenes are also rather uninspired in their direction, and their awkward pacing leaves the game's story feeling a bit messy.

Master of the Spear

Following DOOM's return to the spotlight in 2016, there was a strong, focused effort to return the franchise to its roots. There was always some outspoken respect for DOOM 3, but with the acknowledgment that the series needed to find its heart again. The team has done just that, as Revelations feels like the culmination of everything they have been doing since the 2016 reboot.

Revelations is outrageously fast and over the top. It feels like the most complete, refined vision of classic DOOM gameplay I've ever seen. There's a certain nastiness to it that no other first-person shooter can even come close to replicating, and it's the kind of game that gives you all the tools to be as completely destructive as you'd like.

So much of modern DOOM is built less on having cool guns for you to shoot, though there are certainly those, and more on finding a way to accentuate those guns. In The Dark Ages, it was the Shield Saw, which was crucial to carving your play style out in the bloodiest possible way.

With Revelations, the focus of the campaign is on the Chain Spear, which has added even more dimension to the game's frenetic combat. I hadn't played The Dark Ages in roughly a year, so I was worried about feeling a bit rusty, especially with a new weapon in the mix. Thankfully, getting back into DOOM always seems to feel like riding a bike. It just comes back naturally, and my muscle memory kicks in.

The Chain Spear is absolutely wonderful. I previewed the DLC earlier this month, and was excited to get my time with this delightfully gory new weapon. It is just as bonkers as the team at id promised, and I'd rank it up there with one of the most entertaining weapons in DOOM history.

It just feels absolutely phenomenal, and I haven't had this much fun with a video game weapon in a long time. The Shield Saw was fantastic, and a revelation, so to speak, for the DOOM franchise. It showed just how much more fun the franchise could be if it branched out into even more insane weapons, and leaned into the madness as it did in the past.

The Chain Spear is just one part of what makes Revelations so much fun. It is a key ingredient to the game's rhythmic, pulse-pounding feeling of absolute chaos. Once you're locked in, and you start feeling it, there's just no shooter on the market that's going to play like this one. It's easily one of the best shooter campaigns of the year.

One minor issue with the Chain Spear, however, is that while it's incredibly fun to use, it potentially has too many functions. All its moves are stupendous fun, including the ability to use the inertia of your toss to jab it into enemies and swing around them, but it also has multiple other moves. Binding that many moves to a keyboard can leave you feeling like you're reaching across the keyboard quite awkwardly at times.

An Appropriate Finale

Revelations seems poised to be the final act of this trilogy that started with DOOM Eternal in 2020. We've come a long way, and DOOM has certainly come a long way in the process. It's both embraced the past and experimented with new ideas, while keeping the spirit of the franchise alive beautifully.

As a longtime fan of DOOM, however, I can't help but feel like this needs to be something of a clean break. I think there's a lot more that can be explored with the franchise's story, and done so in a way that feels a bit more compelling.

I'm not asking the team to risk DOOM's identity, but if we're going to explore lore in addition to the ultra-violence, I feel like it needs to be more comprehensive. As sad as it sounds, I think DOOM genuinely needs a break after this in order to find a new avenue to express its gory power fantasy.

Revelations has exceptional performance on PC. That's not entirely surprising for an id Software game, but what is surprising is just how often I had issues with the game crashing. I even ran into a blue screen of death, which I haven't seen in probably a decade or more. I've seen a lot of users reporting similar issues on the Steam forums, so it appears to have been a widespread issue that occurred with the update for the DLC.

Altogether, Revelations is an appropriately apocalyptic ending for this era of DOOM. It has everything you love about DOOM and a bit more, offering new weapons, a batch of retro-inspired levels and some of the most intensely satisfying combat I've ever played in an FPS. This year has a lot of great FPS games coming out, some of which may be a better overall package than Revelations, but few will be able to compete with its minute-to-minute gameplay in a meaningful way.

DOOM: The Dark Ages | Revelations is a loud, blistering conclusion to a story that started all the way back in 2020 with DOOM Eternal. In terms of raw gameplay, it may be the franchise at its absolute best. The package surrounding that is exceedingly familiar, however, and I can't help but feel like the franchise needs some fresh perspective. It's all quite enjoyable, but in a way that's starting to seem a bit rote. Revelations also suffers from some odd technical issues and a bland story, but if you only care about the shooting, then you're going to have an absolute blast.