Doom: The Dark Ages expansion Revelations fixes what the base game got wrong

Doom: The Dark Ages was a good game that probably should have been a great one. Now its expansion, Revelations, makes a strong case that id Software knows exactly what went wrong — and has fixed it.

Revelations picks up right after the base game ends. The Slayer heads into Hell, gets beaten badly, and gets thrown into Purgatory stripped of his shield — literally, a boss tears it in half in the opening level. id is not being subtle about acknowledging the criticism. In place of the shield, the Slayer gets the Chain Spear, a new traversal and combat tool that hooks into enemies or geometry and yanks him toward them, with trajectory controlled by camera movement. That means players can hook a target, aim mid-flight, and use demons as a catapult across an arena. Eternal's air dashes also return, and chaining a perfectly timed dodge charges a meter for special spear moves. Parrying green attacks goes to the spear; everything else gets dodged. There is no block button.

The shield in The Dark Ages was designed as addition through subtraction — a response to complaints that Doom Eternal overwhelmed players with too many guns, mods, grenades, and melee options to juggle at once. But stripping out high jumps and dashes in favor of blocking and point-blank shotgun blasts flattened the combat loop that made Eternal so celebrated. The Chain Spear threads the needle: it brings back the expressive mobility of Eternal while keeping The Dark Ages' heavier, more grounded feel. The result is a combat system that feels like a genuine synthesis rather than a correction.

Revelations launched just hours after id Software was hit by significant layoffs, which gives the expansion an uncomfortable backdrop. But the work itself reads as a confident, self-aware response to the base game's reception — and one of the stronger expansion releases the series has seen.