Doom: The Dark Ages - Revelations gives players even deadlier tools to work with

Hell has frozen over in the DLC for 2025's Doom: The Dark Ages.

There’s a reason Doom: The Dark Ages - Revelations, the game’s first (and perhaps only?) DLC expansion pack releases a little more than a year over the base game graced your PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PS5. According to Game Director Hugo Martin, Revelations took more than a year to create and balance. That was evident in the hands-off presentation I watched in late June, and it left me excited to get my hands on the expansion. 

For lore buffs, Doom: The Dark Ages - Revelations takes place in a pit of hell that has literally frozen over, and focuses on the fall of the Doom Slayer and his path to re-ascension. You’ll navigate through frozen hellscapes as you battle familiar foes and fresh enemies alike. The Pain Elemental returns, backed up by the all-new wizard and explosive variations of the hell knight and zombies. Plus, the Arch-Vile, everyone’s favorite demon since 1994’s Doom II, makes a triumphant return as well.

Combat lies at the bloody, beating heart of Revelations, as you would expect from a Doom game. Your shield is still a powerful tool in the expansion, but it takes a backseat to the chain spear. Combining a grappling hook with melee combat, the chain spear will take you the entire Revelations campaign to upgrade, but that investment looks to be worthwhile. You can dash, parry attacks, slash enemies to break their armor, swing through the air from baddie to baddie, and stab the ground to deal massive damage to anything caught in your blast radius.

While Martin says the guns in Revelations are mostly the same, pairing them with the chain spear opens up brand-new opportunities for feeling like the badass id Software has encouraged us to be since 1993. You can also swap between the chain spear and the returning shield, although Martin stresses that you’ll need to rely on the spear to survive the endgame—and there’s quite an endgame in store.

For the first time in the modern trilogy, Doom’s maps are split into two types of content: base game, and endgame. The base game accounts for approximately 60 percent of content, while the endgame challenges you to master unique paths, encounters, and resources that only become available after clearing the base game. As you go through the endgame, you’ll build a key to fight what Martin calls the uber boss, and you’ll also discover doors that lead to secret areas where variations on classic Doom II levels await. 

Martin says Doom: The Dark Ages - Revelations is roughly the size of both of Doom Eternal’s DLC expansions. That’s a lot of fresh meat for you to feast on when the expansion launches on July 7, 2026.

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