HEAVY HITTER

Defence really is the best form of -attack, it seems or at least the most satisfying. With the Slayer busy focusing fire on its brethren, a burly hell knight flanks him to the right.
Stomping into range in the Slayer's peripheral vision, it launches itself forward for a double-fisted slam. The Slayer rotates, raises his shield and - pang! the hell knight comes off worse from the collision, the Slayer unmoved, shockwaves reverberating, the demon reeling.
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To follow, two punches and a dismissive boot that sends the half-ton monster's broken body arcing over a nearby precipice, Parrying is a familiar component of videogame violence these days, but in Doom: The Dark Ages its inclusion is as much about what it communicates as its table-turning effect. The rippling, green shockwave on a timed block or projectile deflection conveys the point that evil simply bounces off you here. Indeed, from the soaring acrobatics of Doom Eternal, this prequel casts you as a hulk. When PR materials suggest this game is more 'grounded; it isn't meant in the sense of a stronger basis in reality - the mayhem in The Dark Ages will have anything but. Rather, it's grounded quite literally - you're stripped of the luxury of a double jump and too bulky to leave terra firma for more than a short hop.
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For the two faces of the modern Doom games, studio director Marty Stratton and game director and studio creative director Hugo Martin, the desire to create something big and heavy has endured a lengthy gestation. "We've been thinking about it since 2016," Martin says. A prototype codenamed Slayer Year One was inspired by the comic Batman Year One, with the aim of returning to the roots of the character. Another classic Batman comic, The Dark Knight, which depicts the caped crusader as a hefty brute, was also an influence. The fantasy setting was already in mind, too: a faction in The Dark Ages' story, the Sentinels, was laced into the fiction from Doom 2016, their culture defined as medieval. "It's interesting to go back and look at some of our early prototypes," Stratton says. "It's amazing to see not only how far they've come, but how the vision was so tangible." The Dark Ages would have to wait its turn, however, with 2020's Doom Eternal ahead in the queue. To continue the pattern of the original series, as 2016 was a reboot of the first game, Eternal reworked Doom II, taking the fight to Earth. Only after that did it feel right to go off-piste (there's no mention of Doom 3 here, which increasingly feels like the family's black sheep). "You follow the IP development rulebook that was created by a lot of great people, [such as] George Lucas," Martin says. "You start with a fictional world that has a history, characters and heroes that have a past, and then, and if the audience likes what you made, you get to explore that in sequels and prequels." He and his team are fortunate to have that chance, he adds, with two acclaimed games behind them. His tone is one of hunger and excitement. "The motto throughout the studio for me, Marty and everyone has been, 'Let's try to make the best game we've ever made together!" In statements like this and general demeanour, the duo's enthusiasm, of a kind that feels uniquely American, is undeniable. If it weren't for the name of the series they're working on, it's hard to believe the word 'doom' would ever enter their vocabulary. Still, they aren't beyond reflection and self-critique, and while the weighty feel of The Dark Ages was decided from the start, the execution is in part a response to previous shortcomings. In particular, they recognise, the approach to combat taken in Eternal split opinion.
Some players adored its intricacy (our own review a case in point), while others felt it over-egged the pudding.
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"With 2016, [some people] said it was too repetitive," Martin explains. "That was fair. We did a lot of work on Eternal to fix that. But then feedback coming out of Eternal was that the control scheme was a little too complex." The trick, then, has been to maintain variety while simplifying the controls, or having fewer strings on the guitar, as Martin puts it. "With The Dark Ages, when we press the player, because the control scheme has been streamlined, getting the right answer is easier." One way to get to grips with what they wanted to create was obvious: go back to the very beginning.
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At the start of each Doom project, Martin explains, he plays the original Doom games, and continues to find fresh inspiration. "It's like a classic piece of art," he says. "It's like a painter going to a museum and studying the Norman Rockwell painting he's already studied 50 times. Every time you look at it, you learn something new." The spark this time came from noticing how slowly the enemy projectiles moved, and that, even though it's challenging, the skills it requires not least strafe aiming - aren't difficult to perform. "The projectiles start to collect in the world," Martin says, "and they create this maze that the player has to weave through." The combat loop of The Dark Ages thus emerges from this core characteristic. When a fat mancubus pumps out flame-red globules from its arm cannons, they don't so much whistle as swim past the Slayer's visor. Of course, that means they linger on screen for longer, and we can imagine how, when several demons are pulsing out plasma at once, picking out a safe path may become an ordeal. Mercifully, another inspiration from the Doom of old here is that everything you need to watch should conglomerate at eye level. "In Eternal, there's a lot of activity along the [vertical] Y-axis," Martin says.
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"But [here] it felt better to focus the threats and the targets along the horizon line. It's a movement shooter still, but the movement is more about what's happening along the X-axis." What's clear for Martin and Stratton is that you can continually tinker under the bonnet of Doom, without breaking what makes it Doom in the first place. "The ingredients are pretty universal and open-ended," Stratton says. "An aggressive, cathartic play style and simple things like unbelievably big guns, no reloading, incredible realms - these are universal truths of Doom that are more liberating than restrictive." Since Doom 2016, the series has also fully leant into a certain tone, foregoing any remnants of quiet suspense in favour of a high concentration of fierce, heavy-metal violence. "I ran into Adrian Carmack at a bar," Martin says, "and he said [the original team] really just wanted to make each other laugh. I think it's summarised as a ridiculous premise with sincere execution. That's the secret sauce of the brand." The changes they've made in their varied modern interpretations, then, honour this essence rather than shifting away from it, he believes. "The Dark Ages is not 'new but still Doom, it's 'new but more Doom!" The standard bearer for this philosophy is undoubtedly the shield (or shield saw, to use its full name), the spinning serrated blade around its circumference a crucial aspect of its utility. While you won't find anything like it in the classics, it appears to be the key to making this back-to-basics approach tick. Worn on the Slayer's left arm, the shield saw occupies the left shoulder buttons on the controller, with the right given to shooting and melee strikes. A squeeze of the bumper throws the shield, launching it like a discus in the style of Captain America, while the trigger raises it to block. "You're using the fingers that are right near that object on the screen," Stratton says, "and it feels very intuitive." More importantly, those two inputs are designed to provide a wealth of context-sensitive nuance the result of all that control streamlining. When thrown, the shield produces different effects depending on the material it strikes.
For example, it will explode enemy plasma shields, causing an electrical blast, before ricocheting around the area. If it hits flesh, the blade will dig in and spin, stun-locking the unfortunate victim. It will bounce harmlessly off armour, but armour that's been subjected to heat will shatter, creating a blast around it.
This single throw also works its way into environmental navigation, a little like Kratos' multi-purpose ice axe in God of War. Weakened links on chains can be shattered like hot armour to reveal hidden areas, or the shield will lodge in machinery and activate it, or stick into marked props so you can leap across to it. "All of this from one input," Martin reiterates. "That might have been two or three buttons in Eternal." Block, meanwhile, is useful for soaking up smaller missiles, but it's also a means of creating openings for devastating assaults. Parrying an attack causes the aggressor to 'falter', a momentary stun effect familiar from 2016 and Eternal, which leaves them open to punishing retribution.
Or, when a demon spews out larger orbs of fire or projectile blades, look out for any that are coloured green, signifying that you can deflect them.
As well as sending the offending object back to its origins, once you've unlocked the ability this will also charge up and activate shield runes. "For example," Martin says, "ethereal daggers fly out from above the player and start attacking enemies on screen. It's a great crowdcontrol mechanic." Variety here comes from synergies and equipment selection, he continues. "It's the depth of Eternal, but with a more ergonomic control scheme." There's more. Holding block acts as a kind of lock-on feature, attaching to enemies and certain objects in front of you. Hit the right trigger while locked on and you perform a shield bash, which sends you rocketing towards the target. While sprinting also enables accelerated movement, this will be the one way to truly get this tank-like iteration of the Slayer zipping around. The combat applications for this are obvious instantly closing the space on a specific threat or escaping an encroaching crowd. But, like the throw, the bash is also a means of traversal.
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Lock on to a distant object and you can 'bash' across the space between.
For its part, the right arm operates more conventional FPS weaponry, if you can call the array of tools in The Dark Ages that. Melee uses are now charged through successful parries, and in their turn refill the ammo that constantly haemorrhages whenever you cling to the right trigger. The three options thus have to be combined, like incorporating the chainsaw into play in Doom 2016 and Eternal, forcing you to enter the fray rather than snipe from outside. Yet this time the chainsaw is replaced by three melee options that befit the game's medieval trappings.
The gauntlet is the quickest and weakest of these, delivering that punch, punch, kick combo - the weapon itself effectively softening a foe up for a heavy boot. The flail takes longer to charge, but strikes hard and has better reach, with the added bonus of setting fire to its victims (the burning status once again coughing up a drip feed of armour shards). The mace, finally, is the biggest hitter, a great sledgehammer of an attack that takes time to charge and cool down but tops up all resources, as well as cratering whatever it strikes. If you want to use it regularly, Martin says, it's up to you to parry often to refill melee charges, but it's not compulsory. "If you don't like the mace and you want more melee strikes, you can use the gauntlets. Those are viable throughout the whole game."
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It seems odd at this stage, having already spoken at length about the methods of destruction at your disposal in The Dark Ages, that we've yet to mention the series' bread and butter: guns. Despite all the focus on getting in close to your enemies, we shouldn't forget that FPS stands for firstperson shooter. Fortunately, Martin and Stratton haven't.
"Everything has been reimagined for this game", Martin tells us. "A lot of the engagement with a game when you first play is the novelty of discovering, learning and mastering new weapons. When you're already familiar with the tools, it's more like saying hello to an old friend, which is nice, but it doesn't engage quite as much as making friends with an entirely new weapon." That's not to say there aren't old pals within The Dark Ages' armoury, but they have changed since you last saw them.
The plasma rifle, for instance, offers twice the output thanks to a pair of twin piston barrels. And there's an accelerated version, more like a plasma SMG.
Futuristic plasma guns are something of an exception in The Dark Ages, though; the game's loadout otherwise revels in the grimness of medieval engineering. Take the super shotgun, Stratton says, which has a flintlock design that makes it feel all the more crudely brutal. "When you fire it, you feel like you're firing something that's dangerous, like it could explode in your hands." Indeed, if there's a single texture that defines these deadly mechanisms, it's that of iron, dense and blackened, the scrape of metal on metal audible between the chatter and boom as the parts interact.
This crudeness goes double for the game's new ordnance. "Part of the reason we chose the fantasy genre is that we could get more dark and sinister with the tool kit," Martin says. "When you think medieval, dark fantasy, you think torture device, ropes and chains and spikes." Some of these are the simplest of mechanisms, he explains, such as a weapon that shoots out a ball on a chain "to break bones with", or the rail spike, which "is literally a hammer and a giant spike" the hammer slams into the base of the spike to launch it like a spear, impaling the demon you're targeting on the sharp end, perhaps even pinning them to the nearest wall.
As for the skull crusher, it's not, as you may assume, a means of delivering a literal splitting headache.
The skull in this case acts as ammunition, fed into a kind of handheld woodchipper, which chews it up and sprays out fragments of shredding red-hot bone...