During a recent hands-on demo of *Doom: The Dark Ages*, I found myself unexpectedly reminded of *Halo 3*. Midway through the experience, I was mounted on the back of a cyborg dragon, unleashing a barrage of machine gun fire across a demonic battle barge. After taking out the vessel's defensive turrets, I landed my beast atop the ship and charged through its lower decks, turning the crew into a bloody mess. Moments later, the warmachine was destroyed, and I burst through its hull, leaping back onto my dragon to continue my crusade against the machines of Hell.

Fans of Bungie's iconic Xbox 360 shooter will recognize the similarities to Master Chief's assault on the Covenant's scarab tanks. While the helicopter-like Hornet has been replaced by a holographic-winged dragon and the giant laser-firing mech by an occult flying boat, the essence of the experience remains: an aerial assault transitioning into a devastating boarding action. Surprisingly, this wasn't the only moment in the demo that echoed *Halo*. Although the combat core of *The Dark Ages* is unmistakably *Doom*, the campaign's design seems to embrace a "late-2000s shooter" vibe, with its elaborate cutscenes and emphasis on gameplay novelty.

Over the course of two and a half hours, I played through four levels of *Doom: The Dark Ages*. The first level, the campaign's opener, mirrored the tightly paced, meticulously designed levels of *Doom (2016)* and its sequel. The subsequent levels, however, introduced me to piloting a colossal mech, flying the aforementioned dragon, and exploring a wide-open battlefield filled with secrets and powerful minibosses. This represents a significant departure from *Doom*'s traditional focus on mechanical purity, instead drawing parallels to games like *Halo*, *Call of Duty*, and even older James Bond titles like *Nightfire*, which are known for their scripted setpieces and novel mechanics.

This direction is intriguing for *Doom*, especially considering the series once veered away from such elements. The cancelled *Doom 4* was set to resemble *Call of Duty* with its modern military aesthetic and emphasis on characters, cinematic storytelling, and scripted events. After years of development, id Software decided these ideas didn't fit the series, opting instead for the more focused *Doom (2016)*. Yet, here we are in 2025, with *The Dark Ages* reintroducing these elements.

The campaign's rapid pace is punctuated by new gameplay ideas reminiscent of *Call of Duty*'s most innovative moments. My demo began with a long, elaborate cutscene reintroducing the realm of Argent D'Nur, the opulent Maykrs, and the Night Sentinels—the knightly brothers-in-arms of the Doom Slayer. The Slayer himself is portrayed as a terrifying legend, a nuclear-level threat on two legs. While this lore is familiar to *Doom* enthusiasts who have delved into the prior games' codex entries, the deeply cinematic approach feels new and reminiscent of *Halo*. This continues into the levels, with NPC Night Sentinels scattered throughout the environment, similar to UNSC Marines. Although they don't fight alongside you in the levels I demoed, there's a greater sense of being part of an army, much like Master Chief leading the charge.

The introductory cutscene features significant character work, and it remains to be seen whether this is something *Doom* truly needs. I personally prefer the subtler storytelling of the previous games, conveyed through environment design and codex entries, with cinematics reserved for major reveals, as seen in *Eternal*. However, the cutscenes in *The Dark Ages* are well-placed, setting up missions without interrupting the game's intense flow.

There are other interruptions, though. After the opening mission, which starts with pure shotgun slaughter and ends with you parrying Hell Knights using the Slayer's new shield, I found myself in the cockpit of a Pacific Rim-like Atlan mech, wrestling demonic kaiju. Then, I was soaring through the skies on a cybernetic dragon, taking down battle barges and gun emplacements. These tightly scripted levels create a significant shift in gameplay, reminiscent of *Call of Duty*'s most novel sequences, such as the AC-130 gunship mission in *Modern Warfare* or the dogfighting missions in *Infinite Warfare*. The Atlan is slow and heavy, making Hell's armies look like Warhammer miniatures from a skyscraper-high perspective. The dragon, on the other hand, is fast and agile, with a wide-angle third-person camera that offers a very different experience from classic *Doom*.

Many of the best FPS campaigns thrive on this kind of variety, with *Half-Life 2* and *Titanfall 2* setting the standard. *Halo* has endured partly due to its mix of vehicular and on-foot sequences, adding rich texture to the gameplay. However, I'm uncertain if this approach will work for *Doom*. Like *Eternal*, *The Dark Ages* is a wonderfully complex shooter, demanding your full attention as you weave together shots, shield tosses, parries, and brutal melee combos. In contrast, the mech and dragon sequences feel less engaging, almost like on-rails experiences with combat engagements that resemble QTEs.

In *Call of Duty*, switching to a tank or gunship works because the mechanical complexity isn't far removed from the on-foot missions. However, in *The Dark Ages*, there's a clear divide between gameplay styles, akin to a middle school guitar student playing alongside Eddie Van Halen. While *Doom*'s core combat will always be the star, when I'm beating a giant demon with a rocket-powered mech punch, I shouldn't be wishing I was back on the ground with a double-barreled shotgun.

My final hour of play saw *The Dark Ages* shift into another unusual guise, but one built on a much sturdier foundation. The "Siege" level returns the focus to id's best-in-class gunplay, but it opens up *Doom*'s typically claustrophobic level design into a huge open battlefield, with geography shifting between narrow and wide to provide multiple pathways and combat arenas. The goal—to destroy five Gore Portals—echoes *Call of Duty*'s multi-objective missions, but it also reminded me of *Halo*, with the grand scale of the map contrasting the tighter routes of the opening level. This level forces you to rethink the effective range of every weapon in your arsenal, using your charge attack to close vast distances and your shield to deflect artillery from oversized tank cannons.

Expanding *Doom*'s playspace can lead to a loss of focus—I found myself backtracking and looping through empty pathways, which disrupts the pace. I would have liked to see *The Dark Ages* incorporate the dragon more like *Halo*'s Banshee, allowing you to fly across the battlefield, rain down fire, and divebomb into miniboss battles to maintain the pace and integrate the dragon more seamlessly into the experience.

Despite the overall shape of the full campaign, I'm fascinated by how much of what I've seen feels like a resurrection and reinterpretation of ideas once deemed unsuitable for the series. Very little of the cancelled *Doom 4* was released to the public, but reports suggest it featured many scripted set pieces, including an "obligatory vehicle scene," which is exactly what we see in the Atlan and dragon sections—mechanically simple scripted sequences reminiscent of Xbox 360-era shooters.

In a 2016 interview with Noclip, id Software's Marty Stratton confirmed that *Doom 4* was "much closer to something like [Call of Duty]. A lot more cinematic, a lot more story to it. A lot more characters around you that you are with throughout the course of the gameplay." All of that was scrapped, making it genuinely fascinating to see so much of it return in *The Dark Ages*. This campaign is set to feature big boarding action setpieces, lusciously rendered cinematics, a much wider cast of characters, and significant lore reveals.

The question now is: were those ideas always a bad fit for *Doom*, or were they just a bad fit when they resembled *Call of Duty* too closely? While part of me remains skeptical, I'm also excited about the possibility of id Software successfully integrating these elements into the modern *Doom* formula.

The core of *The Dark Ages* remains its on-foot, gun-in-hand combat. Nothing in the demo suggested that this won't be the centerpiece, and everything I played reaffirmed that it's another fantastic reinvention of *Doom*'s core. I believe this alone is strong enough to support an entire campaign, but id Software clearly has other plans. I'm surprised that some of the studio's new ideas feel mechanically thin, and I'm concerned they might feel more like contaminants than fresh air. However, there's still much more to see, and only time will contextualize these fragmented demo missions. I eagerly await May 15th, not just to return to id's unrivaled gunplay, but to satisfy my curiosity: Is *Doom: The Dark Ages* a well-crafted late-2000s FPS campaign or a messy one?