If your main problems with Doom: The Dark Ages were that you wished it was faster, harder, and took more cues from Doom Eternal’s mobility options, then oh boy do I have great news for you. The Revelations DLC ramps the intensity up to 11 by introducing a brand new sub-weapon that totally changes the flow of combat, doubling the amount of options you have to dispatch demons, and most importantly, giving the Slayer his dash back. All of this builds off the already enormous arsenal of weapons, techniques, and mods from the end of the base game which, admittedly, does make juggling all of these new options a little bit overwhelming. That said, if you can overcome the steep learning curve, this is quite simply the most exhilarating Doom’s combat has been since Doom Eternal’s The Ancient Gods DLC, and the clearest evidence yet that Id is the best in the business when it comes to single-player first-person shooters.
Revelations’ story picks up right where the main campaign left off, and while you can technically jump straight into it first, you’ll be missing out on some pretty important context. Of course, you don’t need much context to enjoy blasting an imp to pieces with the Super Shotgun or jamming a spear through a Mancubus’ skull. The bigger reason why you’ll want to make sure you play through the campaign first is to familiarize yourself with the Slayer’s arsenal of weapons and techniques so you know what tool is right for which job, because this DLC throws you into the deep end right from the start and demands that you know what you’re doing. Even as someone who did play through Doom: the Dark Ages on Nightmare difficulty more than a year ago, Revelations started kicking my ass right from the start.
What I said about Doom: The Dark Ages
Far from just being “More Doom,” Doom: The Dark Ages is a new flavor of the legendary shooter series that’s heavier and more grounded, but no less energetic and exhilarating. The new shield is an outstanding addition that adds a ton of both offensive and defensive options, and when combined with the extensive arsenal of traditional Doom guns, provides a ton of fun and exciting ways to dispatch the hundreds upon thousands of demons that stand in your way. Add on top of that another pumped-up heavy metal soundtrack backing the excellent weapon, level, and enemy design, and Id has once again proven that like a super shotgun blast from point blank range, they don’t miss. – Mitchell Saltzman, May 9, 2025
Score: 9
Read the full Doom: The Dark Ages review.
And then, just when I started to find my footing again, Revelations did something truly bold and took away the defining element of The Dark Ages’ combat: the Shield Saw. In its place, I gained the Chain Spear, which has a lot of the same functions as the Shield, but all handled in very different ways that end up totally changing the flow of combat. For example, the Spear can still parry green enemy attacks, but now you have to time a strike so that you essentially clash with theirs. It’s uniquely satisfying to bat back projectiles and smack away swipes and slashes, but you do lose the safety net of having a shield to negate damage if you mistime the parry.
The biggest difference between the Spear and the Shield is how you get around. With the Shield, you were able to use a shield bash that let you zip towards and slam into any target at high speed, but you didn’t have much mobility outside of that. With the spear, you can no longer instantly close the distance between you and an enemy. Instead, you throw it into a foe and slowly pull yourself towards them, maintaining full directional control as you launch either above, around, or right in front of your target. It works almost exactly like the grappling hook on the Super Shotgun in Doom Eternal, which is appropriate, as the entirety of the Spear’s kit feels designed to inject Eternal’s focus on mobility back into the grounded and heavy feel of The Dark Ages’ combat.
The Spear feels designed to inject Doom Eternal’s focus on mobility back in.
Perhaps the best addition, though, is also the simplest one: the Slayer can dash again! I knew I missed the dash throughout my playthrough of the base game, but I didn’t realize just how much until Revelations gave it back to me. It completely changes how The Dark Ages plays. Instead of basically being required to stand my ground and parry a sequence of attacks, now I can slip past foes, use my grapple to leap over them, dash behind cover, and just stay more mobile overall much like I would in Doom Eternal. It’s an added layer of creative combat expression that was missing here, and while it still isn’t quite at the same level as Eternal, it gets pretty dang close.
These combat options only expand the deeper you get into the DLC, as not only do you get your shield back – with the ability to hot swap between the two sub-weapons at any time – but you can also collect hidden bundles of Platinum to purchase new abilities for the spear. These include a damaging stab, an aerial slam, or a damaging javelin toss, and each of those abilities come with their own upgrades that add either additional utility or a direct counter against specific types of enemies. For example, the stab will deal extra damage to heavy melee enemies; the throw will deal extra damage to flying baddies, and can be upgraded to pierce through the fence-like projectiles that Mancubi toss out; and the slam can be upgraded to make health pickups pour out of foes that get hit by the resulting explosion. It again calls back to Doom Eternal’s style of making different weapons counters against specific enemy types, except here you don’t have to worry about constantly swapping between them. Everything is tied to the many abilities of the Spear.
It’s so much that it can honestly be a little hard to keep all of your different combat tools straight, and I often found myself getting tripped up by the fact that the button to throw the shield is different than the button to throw the spear – the buttons to parry are different between the two sub-weapons as well. This leads to lots of moments where my brain says “parry!” while using the spear, only to press the right mouse button (which is parry on the shield) to do a throw instead and launch myself into a terrible spot. Remapping the controls is something I can do, of course, but because so many abilities have overlapping functions, it’s hard to find a control scheme that feels universally good. Ultimately, it’s a learning curve that I was able to overcome, but the road to retrain my brain was a rocky one, to say the least.
Instead of just dropping you into a series of levels one after another, Revelations introduces Purgatory, which is a new hub area that you can explore with minimal enemies, puzzles to solve, and plenty of secrets that those puzzles help to uncover. It’s a very welcome reprieve from the relentless action of the main levels. I always enjoyed coming back with a new ability so I could venture into a part that I hadn’t explored yet, or discovering a new code for the teleporter that would bring me behind one of the many gates that are locked from the other side.
That’s right, even collectible gathering has been made harder in this DLC.
The main levels themselves also do a good job of meeting in the middle between the acrobatics-heavy level design of Eternal and the wide open arenas where you face down a literal army of demons that were so heavily utilized in the base game of The Dark Ages. No longer are collectibles shown on the map when you get close to them, either. Now they only show up as a checkmark once you collect them. Yes, that’s right, even collectible gathering has been made harder in this DLC. The one bummer about this is the fact that there is no returning to previously completed levels, nor is there fast travel between checkpoints, until you beat the campaign. So if you miss a collectible and pass a point of no return, there is no way to go back for it until the very end. That’s pretty brutal in a game as tough as this, especially when it comes to the artifacts you must find all of the pieces of in order to reap a large platinum reward.
As far as new enemies go, Revelations brings back the notorious Archvile, who stays true to his name as a straight up vile nightmare. Like in previous iterations, he will summon enemies into the fight unless you’re able to stop his ritual. To do that, though, you need to first break through his cage of shields, then deal enough damage to him to interrupt the summoning. Sounds simple, only you need to do all of this while also avoiding getting mobbed by the surrounding enemies. Then there’s the Cosmic Elemental, who flies around and summons a bunch of smaller elementals that he sends one at a time to home in on you and deal big damage. As difficult as these big bads are, as mentioned before, they all have weaknesses, and identifying and attacking those weaknesses while still focusing on survival is a huge part of what makes Revelations’ combat so much fun.
Like my original playthrough of The Dark Ages, I made it through Revelations on Nightmare difficulty, and did it in about eight or so hours. Granted, I imagine most people will not attempt this DLC on the hardest non-permadeath difficulty setting their first time out, so your mileage may vary when it comes to length. Whatever the case may be, there’s a ton of game left to play after defeating the final boss and piecing together the Master Key.
The Master Key can be used to unlock purple doors strewn all across the four main levels, and even Purgatory. These doors open the way to more puzzles, more combat challenges, new challenge rooms, new currencies to unlock the capstone abilities for your spear and armor, and even classic Doom levels that reward you with a piece of the ‘93 Shotgun, a super powered version of the OG shotgun from the original Doom. Needless to say, there’s more than enough incentive to play through these levels again to try and complete all of the optional challenges, especially since it all culminates in one last battle against the true final boss of this expansion.
