Dead Good.

Stunning animations that enhance the already abundantly Bri'ish charm, Voices that (sure aren't all entirely accurate to Northern English accents, [Matt Berry's is funny but Northerners have said he's "missing the distinctive Northern twang"] but...) delight with some insanely hilarious lines and writing that remind me of the kind of 'must-experience' comedy that rivals The Simpsons golden era.

I very rarely tell anyone to not look into a game before purchasing, however I feel because of the kind of game this is, it's short length and highly impactful jokes that this is the exception. Buy it, go through the first hour and a bit and if it's somehow not to your tastes refund it. I know you can say that about every steam game, but with this one the content is the writing and jokes, which are at their strongest on a first or second playthrough. I had to edit someone else's video of their first hour of play for my work and I since wish I had the time to experience the start of the game myself beforehand, so the first few jokes were unfortunately spoiled for me.

The only issue I could see people having with this game is the price. Not necessarily because the game is only roughly 4 hours long, but more because its price point puts it in direct comparison with both 'Hollow Knight' and 'Cuphead', both games with hand drawn animations but are both infamous for being bang-for-your-buck, high quality games experiences. Then again even if the game was just a few dollars cheaper I know some people would still take issue with the price due to the length, however I like to think of it more that the game has all of its exceptionally high quality packed very tightly into an extremely enjoyable experience.

'Thank Goodness You're Here!' is a MUST experience game, filled to the brim with British humour. However, be cautious thinking it's an accurate portrayal of Northern England. It's not. English people everywhere are rarely as happy as the characters in this game.

(100% on Ultra Violence)
The 'difficult 3rd album' labels this game has attracted isn't purely because it's the 3rd game in New-Doom. This is still an amazing game and some of my complaints might make it sound worse than it is, but overall I recommend this game for any price below $60 USD. $70 launch-price for AAA games becoming the norm still hurts too much, no matter the game.

I love the decision to make Doomguy more of a bulwark in this one, but it's implementation isn't perfect. Focusing more on gameplay that encourages you to 'stand-your-ground' to focus on parrying and melee-ing, regardless of how lenient or strict the parry-window, invites the game to ask perfection from the player. This would be fine, but I had a lot of instances where the game would either temporarily conk out and not work properly, or certain aspects would sometimes kill the flow.

Flow-killing issues such as:
- Ledges have strange hitboxes when you stand on them causing you to sometimes get stuck, float weirdly (this also happened for barriers on uneven terrain) or bounce off them when hitting right on the edge from a height
- Enemies sometimes use their range attacks when you're right in their face for no reason causing them to get quick and cheap hits messing with your flow
- Certain parry-able melee attacks would cause the enemies to go through me and miss or push around my parry and hit me in the back
- Enemies get stuck on environment objects and thus can't hit you (sometimes only for a short while and sometimes until I killed them)
- The sound balancing isn't anywhere near as good as it should be so fodder enemies behind me would hit me from off screen because I had no way of knowing they were there
- Pressing sprint doesn't always mean you'll sprint. Certain instances like landing or jumping twice or more in a row means Doomguy has to get settled before he can sprint again. The solution should be to turn auto-sprint on but there will still be times where you're not sprinting when you should be, so all this does is start you sprinting at the earliest possible frame after Doomguy settles back into the movement. This can be a big problem in platforming or avoiding floor based hurt-zones
- You can't parry whilst swapping weapons meaning you have to wait till an aggressive enemy is staggered before swapping (yes increasing the game speed is a workaround but that affects so many aspects of the game it's not an actual solution to that problem)
- You can clip through walls by leaning against them whilst holding the weapon-select-wheel button for a short amount of time
- Enemies can still miss you with their parry-able attacks despite movement that would normally mean they would still hit you, meaning your parry won't parry, killing the flow since you don't get the slight slow-down or potential enemy stagger. This is sometimes because of minor changes in the ground height (like ankle deep liquid or ramps), or just because the game felt like it. Meaning when the enemies are inaccurate, YOU get punished for it

To summarise all this is to say; if the game demands perfection from me, it's not unfair to demand perfection of the game. I'm not talking bugs and glitches, I mean the semi-regular behaviour of the game and enemies killing the flow of combat when it feels like those instances should not be in the game.

However, a lot of these issues are significantly overshadowed by what I loved about the game. There's an immense sense of charm during special cutscenes and animations I won't spoil here, and while that's definitely not the vibe of the entire game, those one-off moments do make for some nice levity between the seriousness and weight of the normal moment-to-moment gameplay & cutscenes. When the game wasn't getting on my nerves, it was scintillating. It was smile-inducing. It was unabashed fun. And the major fun aspect without a doubt was...

The Shield. Ohhh man this shield.
It lets me parry, it lets me slice, it chainsaw stuns, it blocks, it turns enemy shield walls into armour, it lets me zip right into enemies, it bashes and bursts low-tier trash in the immediate area, it has upgrade choices like a damaging shockwave, DMC style Vergil summon-swords, a shoulder-mounted cannon and an electric-shock chaining attack, IT HAS BUILT IN SLO-MO FROM THE START! I LOVE the shield.

At first when I knew it was gonna be tied to a parry mechanic, I wondered what a no-shield-use playthrough might look like (not from a dislike of parries, though I'm not always good at them I love parrying in games). Now I can't imagine playing the game without even one aspect of the carnage you can inflict with the shield.

The entire game looks like an insane heavy metal album, just like the last two games but with it's own medieval influences. However, the leap to IDTech8 feels limp. Dark Ages doesn't look that much better than Eternal on a technical level, though the incredibly quick loading times are brilliant. I mostly say that because I know for a fact I would've been able to crank the game to Ultra-Nightmare level performance at over 120fps if it wasn't for the fact that this game forces Ray-Tracing, apparently just like how that recent Indiana Jones game does. Instead I was getting between 70 to 80fps on Ultra in most areas, with quick but noticeable dips to 60 in more intense rooms.
I'm also gonna have to assume why this didn't feel as polished as Eternal. I can't recall a single major bug or game-breaking glitch in Eternal (I'm the kind of petty f**k that uses instant replay to record glitches, if it happened I would have a clip and I don't), but in Dark Ages there were a good few, including the three times I fell through the world.
With that being said, Argent (I think that's the planet you're on), Hell and the other areas are all distinct and gorgeous with the only exception being a level I won't spoil and that's mostly because it's whimsically gross to be in for obvious reasons.

I'd love to say that the game's soundtrack lives up to it's spectacle, but it just doesn't. It's not bad, far from it, but it is a more straight-forward kind of metal. Finishing Move did a great job, especially if what Mick Gordon said about Marty Stratton being a 'seagull-manager' is true, but I can't recall a single standout track from the entire game's OST. I can recall a prevailing motif of guitar-led, slow percussion to help illustrate the flow of most combat encounters in the game, but no "oh my god I HAVE to listen to this track later" music moments. This game doesn't really have it's own equivalent of 2016's At Doom's Gate, Rip & Tear, BFG Division or Harbinger, nor the equivalent to Eternal's Hell on Earth, Cultist Base, The Super Gore Nest, Meathook or The Only Thing They Fear is You that plays during a level. I'll be listening to the full OST while working and doing other stuff so if I find a standout track other than the one they used for all the marketting I'll correct this, but for now I can't think of one.

TL;DR = Good but lacklustre music, some moments where the flow of combat can break and a slightly too high launch price are still not enough to kill a recommendation due to how satisfying the bulwark-style combat can be, but I also can't say it's worth launch-price to anyone. I'd go as far to say it's a must-try if it's on Gamepass (currently is and likely will stay there but I say 'if' just in case), but maybe for someone who isn't sure on the vibes or gameplay, it's a definite pick-up for $40 or less. Trust me.