DOOM: The Dark Ages

I have played Doom on machines that gave us the phrase 'but can it run Doom', and the series is still around, maybe better than ever. The Dark Ages is shooter chaos in the best sense. You lead with a shield, parry the green-glowing attacks back at their owners, then empty a super shotgun into whatever is left. It does not let you stand still. Combat is a touch slower and less punishing than Eternal, which suits my slowed reflexes. The dragon and mech sections are the weakest stretches, but they are brief. If you download one shooter tonight, make it this one.

I always finished the Call of Duty campaign before touching multiplayer, and DOOM: The Dark Ages is the sort of campaign that justifies the habit. You carry a shield you can throw and parry with, so you plant your feet and punish enemies instead of strafing in circles. It plays heavier than the DOOM games before it. The spectacle is the pitch, and it delivers from the first level. Story takes a back seat to noise, which suits some evenings and not others. The difficulty settings are adjustable enough that a tired Tuesday does not have to end in frustration.

DOOM: The Dark Ages doesn't care about your reflexes the way online shooters do, and after years of Call of Duty lobbies humbling me, that matters more than it used to. This is pure, uncut gunplay: the Shield Saw closes distance in a heartbeat, the Skull Crusher turns crowds into confetti, and every encounter rewards aggression over hiding behind cover. I played most of it in hour-long evening sessions after the kids were asleep, and it never once punished me for showing up rusty. No online requirement. No matchmaking. Nobody waiting on me to catch up. If you want the best pure shooting mechanics on PS5 right now, this is it.

I did what I always do with a big single-player shooter: played the campaign start to finish before touching anything else, not that Dark Ages leaves you much else to touch. The shift toward slower, heavier combat with the shield saw and the melee-focused Glory Kills changes the rhythm from the last two DOOM games, and it took me a couple of levels to stop missing the old speed. Once it clicked, the sheer scale of some encounters, dozens of demons on screen at once, felt like the modern equivalent of the original game's chainsaw fantasy. Loud, relentless, occasionally exhausting. Exactly what a big-budget Xbox shooter should feel like.