DOOM: The Dark Ages Enters Early Access: Players Call for FPS, Not Forced Rays
The gates to the underworld creaked a little too early for some. DOOM: The Dark Ages, id Software's newest gore-fest shooter, has come down onto premium edition holders in their hands. Anticipate the internet to already be rife with first impressions, and it is largely a mixed bag.
Whereas the previous DOOM games were praised for their silky-smooth performance, The Dark Ages is seemingly having some glitches. Most players are laying the blame on one particular villain: ray tracing. The catch? You can't switch it off, seemingly.
The Good, The Bad, and The Frame Drops
So, what does the word on the street from those who've jumped in say? Well, the essence of demon-killing mayhem that DOOM is renowned for appears to remain, and lots of people are enjoying it. The new shield system, particularly with its chain, is receiving some thumbs of approval. The revised monster models are also a success, and let's face it, seeing them blow up in a shower of gibs is always rewarding.
But that pleasure is being foiled for some by performance problems. Players are complaining even on solid rigs (like a 12400F with an RTX 4060 and 32GB RAM) the game can't maintain a fluid frame rate. The word is out: "I need FPS, not rays!" That it can't be disabled is one of the chief causes of aggravation, as many are curious why this functionality isn't included in the game to begin with when it hampers performance so badly.
One of the players caught the eye view despite the cumbersome requisites:
"With such dreadful requisites, the graphon is really mediocre. The fire burns awfully, the character floats around the level like a specter. Perhaps in 2025 they failed to create the character's legs?"
There are also a few references to minor bugs and a general lack of polish, which is not entirely unexpected from an early release but still a bit of a problem. The new game formula, though altered from DOOM Eternal, does have its fans. Some enjoy the new mechanics and the work that id Software does to continue to attempt to expand the series with each release, even if that entails altering the dynamics a bit.
Another player commented on the shift in gameplay:
"The dynamics are somewhat different from DOOM Eternal, but spam block, deflecting projectiles with a shield, repost, punch kombuhi and finish, and you have a pretty fast game where you can slash hordes of demons and tirelessly move around the map no worse than the previous part."
Of course, not everyone is experiencing difficulties. Some players are experiencing smooth sailing with no bugs and are wondering why all the fuss. Your mileage does indeed seem to vary.
What's Next for The Dark Ages?
Despite the early negative criticism, the game enjoys a "solid" Steam reputation with an approximately 83% level of approval among these early reports. This follows reasonably well with critic scores around 86/100 on OpenCritic. Therefore, it would seem that gamers and critics are almost as one this time around.
DOOM: The Dark Ages drops its full release on May 15th on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series. Fingers crossed they've got ironed out some of those early problems, at least on the performance front and the ability to toggle ray tracing on and off. I mean, if you're tearing through hell you don't need the frame rate stuttering.
you can read our review of the game for more detail where we already highlighted this issue.
