The last thing I expected Doom: The Dark Ages to remind me of was Halo 3. And yet, half way through a recent hands-on demo with id Softwares gothic prequel, I was mounted on the back of a cyborg dragon and unleashing a salvo of machinegun fire across the side of a demonic battle barge. With the vessels defensive turrets destroyed, I landed my beast atop the ship and proceeded to charge through its lower decks, turning the entire crew into a few gallons of red slop. Seconds later, the warmachine was toast and I burst through its hull, leaping onto my dragon to continue my crusade against the machines of Hell. Those familiar with Bungies landmark Xbox 360 shooter will instantly recognise the shape of Master Chiefs assault on the Covenants scarab tanks. The helicopter-like Hornet may have been swapped for a holographic-winged dragon and the giant laser-firing mech for an occult flying boat, but the core of the experience is all here: an aerial assault that transitions into a devastating boarding action. Surprisingly, this wasnt the only moment in the demo that reminded me of Halo. While the combat core of The Dark Ages is unmistakably and singularly Doom, the campaigns design seems to have a very late-2000s shooter spin thanks to its love of elaborate cutscenes and a greater push for gameplay novelty. A dragon assault on Hell's battle barge. | Image credit: id Software / BethesdaAcross two and a half hours I played four levels of Doom: The Dark Ages. Only the first of them, the campaigns opener, resembled the tightly paced, immaculately mapped design of Doom (2016) and its sequel. The others saw me piloting a colossal mech, flying the aforementioned dragon, and exploring a wide-open battlefield dotted with secrets and powerful minibosses. Its a big departure from Dooms usual pursuit of mechanical purity, instead feeling akin to the likes of Halo, Call of Duty, and weirdly old James Bond games like Nightfire, all of which thrive on scripted setpieces and novelty mechanics that guest star for a mission or two. This is a fascinating direction for Doom to head in, because once upon a time the series made something of a U-turn away from this. The cancelled Doom 4 was set to resemble Call of Duty, not only due to its modern military aesthetic but also thanks to an increased emphasis on characters, cinematic storytelling, and scripted events. After years of work id Software concluded that such ideas simply werent a good fit for the series, scrapping them in favour of the much more focused Doom (2016). And yet, in 2025, here they are in The Dark Ages. The campaigns rapid pace is punctuated with new gameplay ideas that are reminiscent of Call of Dutys biggest novelties.My demo opened on a long and elaborate cutscene, (re)introducing the realm of Argent D'Nur, the opulent Maykrs, and the Night Sentinels the knightly brothers-in-arms of the Doom Slayer. The big guy himself is depicted as a terrifying legend; a nuclear-level threat on two legs. While all of this lore will be familiar to Doom obsessives who poured over the prior games codex entries, the deeply cinematic approach with which its now presented feels very new. Very different. Very Halo. That continues into the levels themselves, with NPC Night Sentinels scattered about the environment akin to UNSC Marines. While they dont fight alongside you (at least not in the levels I demoed) theres certainly a greater sense that youre part of an army like Master Chief, youre the invincible spearhead of a large force. Theres a lot of character work in the introductory cutscene and it remains to be seen if this is something Doom really needs. Im a big fan of the prior games slight approach to story, and part of me would rather The Dark Ages continued to tell the Slayers tale through environment design and codex entries, reserving cinematics only for the big reveals la Eternal. But while I have my reservations, the cutscenes thankfully know their place: they tee up a mission and are never seen again, refusing to interrupt Dooms signature intense flow. There are interruptions in other forms, though. After that opening mission, which starts with pure shotgun slaughter and ends with you parrying Hell Knights using the Slayers incredible new shield, I was thrown into the cockpit of a Pacific Rim-like Atlan mech and asked to wrestle demonic kaiju. After that, I was soaring through the skies on that cybernetic dragon, taking down battle barges and picking off gun emplacements. These tightly scripted levels create a significant gear shift, punctuating the campaigns rapid pace with new gameplay ideas that are reminiscent of Call of Dutys biggest novelties, such as Modern Warfares AC-130 gunship sequence or Infinite Warfares dogfighting missions. The Atlan is slow and heavy, and the skyscraper-high perspective makes Hells armies look like Warhammer miniatures. The dragon, meanwhile, is fast and agile, and the shift to a wide-angle third-person camera results in a very different experience that feels a dimension away from classic Doom. The mech battles are Pacific Rim-scale punch ups. | Image credit: id Software / BethesdaMany of the best FPS campaigns thrive on this kind of variety. Half-Life 2 and Titanfall 2 are the gold standard for it. Halo has endured so long partly because its mix of vehicular and on-foot sequences provides it with a rich texture. But Im unsure if this will work for Doom. As with Eternal, The Dark Ages is once again a wonderfully complex shooter to play every second demands your complete attention as you weave together shots, shield tosses, parries, and brutal melee combos. In comparison, the mech and dragon sequences feel anemic, stripped back, and practically on-rails their combat engagements so tightly controlled they almost resemble QTEs. In Call of Duty the switch to driving a tank or firing from a circling gunship works because the mechanical complexity of such scripted sequences isnt that far removed from the on-foot missions. But in The Dark Ages theres a clear gulf between gameplay styles, so much so its akin to a middle school guitar student playing alongside Eddie Van Halen. And while I know Dooms core combat will always be the star, when Im beating the snot out of a giant demon with a rocket-powered mech punch I shouldnt be wishing I was back on the ground using a mere double-barrelled shotgun.My final hour of play saw The Dark Ages shift into another unusual guise, but one built on what feels like a much sturdier foundation. Siege is a level that returns its focus to ids best-in-class gunplay, but it opens up Dooms typically claustrophobic level design into a huge open battlefield, its geography shifting between narrow and wide to provide a myriad of pathways and combat arenas. The goal, to destroy five Gore Portals, has the same energy as Call of Dutys multi-objective, complete-in-any-order missions, but I was reminded once more of Halo the grand scale of this map versus the tighter routes of the opening level evokes the contrast between Halos interior and exterior environments. And, like Halo, the novelty here is that the excellent core shooter systems are given new context in much larger spaces. You must rethink the effective range of every single weapon in your arsenal. Your charge attack is employed to close football field-length distances. And the shield is used to deflect artillery fired from oversized tank cannons. Were these ideas always a bad idea for Doom, or were they just a bad idea when they looked too much like Call of Duty?The downside of expanding Dooms playspace is that things can become a little unfocused I found myself backtracking and looping through empty pathways, which really does kill the pace. Its here Id like to have seen The Dark Ages veer even closer to Halo by throwing the dragon into the mix and using it like a Banshee; being able to fly across this battlefield, raining down fire before divebombing into a miniboss battle, would have helped maintain the pace and make the dragon feel more integral to the experience. If such a level exists beyond what Ive seen, Ill be very happy. Regardless of the overall shape of the full campaign, though, I am fascinated that so much of what Ive seen feels like a resurrection and reinterpretation of ideas that were once considered an ill-fit for the series. Very little of the cancelled Doom 4 was released for the public to see, but a Kotaku report from 2013 paints a distinct picture. There were a lot of scripted set pieces, a source told the publication, among them allegedly an obligatory vehicle scene. And thats exactly what weve got in the Atlan and dragon sections mechanically simple scripted sequences that hark back to the novelty vehicle levels of Xbox 360-era shooters. Talking to Noclip in 2016, id Softwares 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 that was scrapped, and so its genuinely fascinating to see so much of it return in The Dark Ages. This is a campaign set to feature big boarding action setpieces, lusciously rendered cinematics, a much wider cast of characters, and huge lore reveals. The question now is: were those ideas always a bad idea for Doom, or were they just a bad idea when they looked too much like Call of Duty? Part of me is just as skeptical as the fans who once decried Call of Doom, but Im also excited at the idea of id Software finally making that approach work by grafting it on to the now-proven modern Doom formula.The beating, gory heart of The Dark Ages unquestionably remains its on-foot, gun-in-hand combat. Nothing in this demo suggested that it will not be centre stage, and everything I played affirms it's another fantastic reinvention of Dooms core. I think that alone is strong enough to support an entire campaign, but id Software obviously has other designs. Im surprised that a couple of the studios new ideas feel so mechanically slim, and I am concerned that they will feel more like contaminants than fresh air. But theres still a lot more to see, and only in time will these fractured demo missions be contextualised. And so I eagerly await May 15th, not just to return to ids unrivaled gunplay, but to satisfy my curiosity. Is Doom: The Dark Ages a good late-2000s FPS campaign or a messy one? Matt Purslow is IGN's Senior Features Editor.