James and Nic kick a thing: Doom: The Dark Ages edition

Doom: The Dark Ages has encouraged us to redirect our booting utensils away from Rematch's leather balls and into the vital organs of Hell's revolting soldiers. Along with various punches, flail strikes, and shield thrusts, most of which aren't even allowed in football. But could the manner of their delivery also be cause for a critical kicking? The Dark Ages notably replaces the lavishly animated glory kills of recent Dooms with faster, simpler melee strikes, so reviewer Nic and I sat down for a gentle argument over whether this was a change for a better.

James: Nic, I know you personally aren't on trial here, but at 10:43am on Thursday the 8th of May, did you or did you not say in the Super Secret RPS Slack Channel that The Dark Ages' new executions "take the same amount of time as Eternal's"? Because I had nothing better to do earlier than sit watching game capture clips with a stopwatch out, and have determined that the average shield bop or manly kick in The Dark Ages lasts for 0.97 seconds, whereas Doom Eternal's glory kills average 1.85 seconds. Which, mathematically speaking, is more longer.

Specifically, and regardless of whether you barely use executions or near-exclusively gorge yourself on their resource drops, that's nearly twice as much time spent watching the game play itself. The Dark Ages' cutting back of Eternal's movement tools might make it slower in some respects, but to me it's even better at maintaining that red-eyed flow state just by virtue of making its interruptions less interrupting.

Nic: Well, James. I guess that's me told. I'll just hang my head and solemnly pace toward the door and... but wait, what's this? A perk you can quite easily acquire in Doom Eternal that shortens the glory kill duration to a mere 0.7 seconds? And you get i-frames, allowing you a second to think about your next move? And you're usually comboing melee strikes in The Dark Ages anyway, so you can triple or even quadruple that time on many occasions? And the glory just plain look better?

I will, however, offer you supportive hand to pull you up from where you now lie, in the mud, coated in stupid sauce, and concede that The Dark Ages is probably at offering a certain type of interrupted, flowy power fantasy, in that you never have to be evasive - your defensive tools are also offensive tools, which does contribute to the feeling of pushing forward at all times, rather than having to dance in the air for several seconds to reposition yourself when you're in trouble.

Also the flail is cool, obviously. Would you like to put me on trial for any other excellent opinions?

James: No need when your defence is an unlockable perk that needs to squat in the slot of someone more interesting, but then I also want to move on from timing animations. I do indeed like the more direct fighting style in The Dark Ages – I love an agile shooter, usually above all other shooters, but Eternal's always felt a bit too stop-start for me. You'll have a few seconds of the most outrageous air-dashing, double-jumping evasive manoeuvres ever portrayed in first-person, then one or two of... standing there, I guess, while your guy bisects another guy's head with his hands. Which is more of a visual flourish than punting a ragdoll, though becomes less so when you've done it seven times before the opening tutorial has finished.

The relatively modest spectacle of TDA's quick hits don't just make it less conspicuous that you're repeating them, it also helps them slip in more seamlessly to the moment-to-moment brawling without halting the sense of momentum. They're commas, not full stops, especially as they don't mess around with your field of view like glory kills do. Well, except the boss kills. But then they probably deserve a full stop.

I do wonder if we just have incompatible approaches to playing these games – I sensed from your review that you like to dig around the sandbox more, experimenting with tools and guns, whereas I'm largely vibes-based and will happily stick to just two or three favourite pieces of kit. D'you think that extends to our differing finisher tastes?

Nic: Full stops! They're semi-colons at most, you swine. I guess my main point is that I don't think The Dark Ages melee hits are all that transformative in comparison to glory kills, but I'm left thinking: well, maybe if it was just another set of glory kills, I would have gotten bored easily. Plus, The Dark Ages does actually have glory kills still, they're just less frequent. I didn't work out exactly what the triggers are, but you do seem to get them if you jump before swinging.

I do like digging! But it's ultimately in service of vibes too, I think. It's just I got to a point here where the vibes were getting stale. I should add, just as an addendum to my review, that I think Morgan Park at Percy Coswald Gamer actually expressed my feelings better than I did when he said that "viewed through the lens of loud feedback that insisted Doom Eternal was too complicated, The Dark Ages is an overcorrection." I feel that could probably be applied to glory kills too. There's been misgivings about them since they first revealed 2016, and I feel maybe there's people opposed to them on principle even though they're beautiful and perfect and good.

And that overcorrection idea is really the whole issue I was having, I think. It really isn't that this is a bad game. It can be an excellent time. I think it's really going to come down to what you want out of it. I wanted something that I can play for months and really dig into. But I don't think it's designed for that. Or, maybe that was the intention initially but fear of those same complaints about overcomplication stymied it along the way. But, if you're just after a fleshy, quite simple shooter you can tear through once or twice quickly and never think about again, you'll likely find its Doom: U-ternal approach a huge positive.

Anyway, what about a theoretical next one? Would you like to see them try a few more diversions like the mech and dragon? I felt the mech actually turned out pretty well, although I'd probably feel differently if those sequences were more than ten minutes or so each. The dragon, not so much, although I did enjoy the skyboxes. Next time? Give the Doom Slayer a motorbike, I reckon. Have the wheels be chainshields. You?

James: I wouldn't normally say this, but I could do without the dragon. The fact that you're shoved into a weird dodge/lock-on/shoot rhythm minigame every time you want to blast a turret suggests that maybe id don't have quite the same masterful grasp on aerial combat as they do to classic FPSing. I guess I'd just like more ways to interact with the demons (not talking) besides shooting or dodging them? The Dark Ages' parrying is a good start, though still ultimately depends at least partly on waiting for the baddies to strike first. I like it, to be clear. Only a wrong'un wouldn't like parrying being in more games. Right Nic?

Nic: You heard it here first: Sekiro ruined everything by being too good.