DOOM: The Dark Ages - Revelations is the game’s first-ever DLC expansion, featuring a new chainspear weapon, additional story missions, and new enemies. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn’t do well, and if it’s worth buying.
Everything We Know About DOOM: The Dark Ages - Revelations DLC
DOOM: The Dark Ages - Revelations DLC Story
DOOM: The Dark Ages - Revelations’ story takes players through the massive, multi-century gap between the events of Dark Ages and DOOM (2016). Set in the aftermath of the war against Prince Ahzrak, Revelations sees the Slayer, under the command of the Khan-Maykr, taking on a council of powerful demons. Woefully outmatched by their combined power, he will have to accept help from an unlikely source to complete the mission using the new powers and weapons at his disposal.
DOOM: The Dark Ages - Revelations DLC Gameplay
DOOM: The Dark Ages - Revelations promises whole new story missions for players to enjoy in the post-game, bringing along the Slayer’s full arsenal of upgraded weapons, armor, and powers, while also taking new ones out for a spin.
Revelations spotlights the Slayer’s alternative off-hand to his Chainshield, the Chainspear. Operating as a far more mobile and melee-focused weapon, the new Chainspear also grants the Slayer the option to perform air-dashes, perfect dodges, and use spear charges to rain all new types of attacks on the enemy.
The DLC will also run the base game’s gauntlet of main areas for its additional story missions, challenging players through Argent D’nur, Hell’s Ramparts, The Cosmic Realm, and even Osseus for the endgame. New and powered-up versions of old enemies will be present to crank the difficulty to its highest setting and meet the Slayer’s new arsenal head-on.
DOOM: The Dark Ages - Revelations Release Date and Time
Began the Slaughter on July 7, 2026
DOOM: The Dark Ages - Revelations was released on July 7, 2026 for PC via Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
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| $19.99 | |||||
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| $34.99 Premium Edition Upgrade |
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DOOM: The Dark Ages - Revelations Review : Completes the Slayer's Modern Saga Perfectly
The Deed is Done, But the Slaughter Continues
As the saying goes for the Slayer, "Rip and tear, until it’s done", and we did end up doing a lot of ripping and tearing, and in the end, "it" was done. So what in Hell’s blazes is the Revelations DLC supposed to be?
We’ve already torn Ahzrak a new one, and half of the demons left in Hell consider the Slayer a nightmare among nightmares. Going in, I didn’t think there’d be much left to do for the Slayer except senseless violence (as opposed to his very purposeful violence in the campaign). Boy, was I wrong!
I should’ve known better, being an avid fan of the series’ revival since 2016 and having played every game since. There remains a gap between Dark Ages and DOOM (2016) that I hadn’t accounted for, and this game filled that in as beautifully as it could’ve.
Finally, the modern tapestry of the Doom Slayer is complete, from his troubled past to his ultimate victory over the Dark Lord in Eternal’s Ancient Gods DLC. It’s quite the journey, and not one without new toys to play with, so let’s buckle in and get this killstreak started, shall we?
Struck Down Into Hell’s Prisons
Let’s begin with the setup. Since this is a post-game DLC, you can expect the game’s narrative to either knock you down a peg to keep the challenge meaningful, or just pile on bigger and bigger demons to the same effect. Revelations went with the latter, and, tired as it may be, I do think it was the better choice between the two for one particular reason: continuity.
Had the devs gone with bigger demons, it’d conflict with the baseline power of hell that DOOM (2016) had, and some retconns would have to be made. It’s a whole mess of things that they avoided by choosing the right implementation from the bat, and I appreciate it greatly.
So how did this DLC knock down the Slayer of Ahzrak? Well, Ahzrak was but one of Hell’s princes. How well would the Slayer fare against an entire council of powerful demons who want nothing but his downfall?
Poorly. The answer is poorly, and the scripted tutorial boss beating you into submission before throwing you into Hell’s deepest pits sums up his chances rather aptly. With your chainshield broken and having lost access to most of your firepower, a new weapon is gifted to you by a mysterious stranger you meet down in the prisons.
Of course, since this is a modern DOOM game, you can’t expect just any old weapon to suffice. No, for the Slayer of Demons deserves something far cooler.
Introducing the Chainspear, Your New Best Friend
The Chainspear is the biggest mechanical addition to the boots-on-the-ground style of Dark Ages’ combat loop. Though it’s surprisingly not just a chainsaw attached to a stick, looking more like Kratos’ Blades of Chaos but with a spear instead of swords, the Chainspear is anything but unimpressive.
It carries with it an entire upgrade tree of new attacks and effects to go with the new combat focus its mechanics enable you to do. See, whereas the Chainshield allowed additional ranged offense through its throwing mechanics, as well as additional reactive offense with its parry mechanics, the Chainspear is all about pressing the attack at melee range.
The Chainspear still lets you swat away enemy projectiles with a parry, but it cannot be thrown normally, and has a charge gauge that you must fill to activate its most powerful attacks. Once you do, you unlock a plethora of abilities like throwing the spear to stagger enemies in an area, crashing straight down to the same effect, or my favorite, running laps around an enemy while peppering them with bullets.
It’s not all offense, though, since the Chainspear must also replace the Chainshield’s defensive options. Parries are fun, but perfect dodges, air dashes, and Scorpion-style, chain-based movement are where it’s at in Revelations, and the Chainspear lets you do all of that in quick succession.
You can now grapple onto enemies, avoid attacks altogether, double jump, or pull terrain from a distance if you so choose. This much was a blast to play with, and really made the whole experience distinct from all other DOOM games. Dare I say, it even makes the base game seem like a sandwich run.
My only gripe with the new Chainspear is its high skill floor. You gain access to both it and the Chainshield after a couple of missions, so the option to use easier means is always allowed, but the Chainspear remains quite the ordeal to learn in a target-rich, post-game environment.
Perfect Dodges are easy enough, as are melee parries, but having to aim the spear when throwing it, reorienting yourself whenever you grapple enemies, or even just choosing when and where to airdash isn’t the easiest thing to practice when you’ve got three demons in your face.
I’ve thrown myself off of cliffs more times than I can count simply because the chainspear threw me much farther than I thought, or because the air dash wasn’t ready. If you know what you’re getting into and are willing to put in the time to learn the Chainspear properly, it’s a blast. Otherwise, stick to the shield. The game lets you, so you might as well.
Running Hell’s Gamut
More than the new weapon, Revelations also lets players rerun the base game’s greatest hits. By that, I mean that most of the new story takes place across a repeat of the base game’s main areas, like Argent D’nur, Hell, Osseus, The Cosmic Realm, etc. The game achieves this bit of diegetic rewinding by making each trip to previous mission areas a quest to find specific crystals that will open the way to the Slayer’s freedom.
The new missions themselves, though not set in unique locales, are entirely new to the DLC, require the Chainspear to traverse, and feature powered-up versions of base-game enemies. They also contain new puzzles, also featuring the Chainspear, so content variety might not be the biggest in terms of background setting, but actual content is by no means sparse.
Now, all of these are accessed through the game’s new hub world, an icy circle of hell meant to contain its undesirables, which happens to include you now. Dante’s Inferno reference aside, the new hub world is among my favorite places to explore in this game, mostly because it’s one of the few new ones.
It’s built like a Soulslike hub world, similar to the likes of Firelink Shrine, Majula, and the Roundtable Hold in that it opens up the more you finish missions. Previously inaccessible areas and unsolvable puzzles become portals to fun interactions and rewards as you gain new abilities through gameplay.
DOOM has done something similar before with the Fortress of Doom in Eternal, but this is something else entirely. I won’t go as far as to say that it’s as big as any of the examples I’ve mentioned, but it sure is unique in its presentation because of how it looks and the demonic combat present within it.
Overall, tallying up the DLC’s level, mission, and hub world design chops, Revelations impresses well enough to warrant an entire DLC around it. I’m quite glad the devs didn’t decide to get lazy with this one.
Backstory Sections Look Tacked On and are Largely Unhelpful
As much as I want to keep the accolades going, this DLC does try something that’s largely unsuccessful, at least in my opinion. Going with the fact that the base game of Dark Ages is all backstory, and the DLC itself is backstory for the interim between Dark Ages and DOOM (2016), Revelations had some sections dedicated to the Slayer’s time as a human.
These sections played out as downsized shooters, much simpler and grounded than even the first Doom ever was. All you had was a shotgun and some vanilla goons to shoot at. All things considered, this would’ve been a fun trip down memory lane, but its execution left some things to be desired.
For one thing, it’s more a rail-based shooter than backstory. They bothered to tell this tale of the once-human Slayer creatively, but kinda made it a boring return. There’s barely any dialogue, the combat itself is wickedly simple and borderline tedious, and whatever lore we get is stuff we already know.
It’s questionable to the point that I wonder why they even tried to do this. More than anything, it wasted time. No new mechanics were added, no lore points, not even a throwaway, wink-at-the-audience moment to make it worth slogging through.
They’re few and far between, so at least it won’t be too problematic a wade through muck; I just think it was a wasted opportunity to truly flesh out the tapestry of the Slayer from start to end.
Left The Base Game’s Eccentricities Behind
Another thing I didn’t like about the Revelations DLC is how it left behind everything that made the base game unique. Granted, I didn’t miss the Dragon Riding sections in the slightest, but the same can’t be said for the Atlan Mech sections, which I adored greatly and would’ve wanted to see more of.
I can see the devs trying to focus more on the Slayer’s core movement and Chainspear combat. I also understand that, the way the story’s going, it really wouldn’t have made sense for the dragon or the mech to return. I just think something else could’ve taken their place, something capable of capturing the same charm as those two did for the base game.
I like the Chainspear, I really do. I think it carries the game’s combat forward and makes it unique in its own way, much like the Chainshield did. I’m talking about breaking up the combat and puzzles with something different; something that, unfortunately, never came.
The Imperfect Last Piece to the Slayer’s Tapestry
And so, it is done. We’ve torn this DLC apart and checked out what its guts tell us, and this is what we’ve found. It is an imperfect but necessary continuation of the Slayer’s journey from the darkness of the Dark Ages to the visceral metallic teeth of the modern age.
Perhaps some of the pieces didn’t fall exactly into the place they were meant to, and maybe some questions remain unanswered still, but, true to its name, Revelations revealed what was missing from the grand epic. It is a fallible, imperfect piece, but a necessary, and not so awful one as well.
I’d still recommend this DLC to anyone who enjoyed the base game. The experience has been expanded without stepping on the toes of continuity though some of the base game’s tassel’s have been cut, it remains an impressive look into the tale of the Doom Slayer.
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