Doom: The Dark Ages, playable

FYI since it's big and new: for Nvidia users it wants driver 576 when 575 is still in beta on Linux, and when I told it to play anyway, there was an anti-tamper failure. Juuust in case anyone was tempted to take the risk before reports go up. Looks and plays great, but until something changes, don't put your money out there.

(Driver expectations like that are why I've always pushed for the absolute latest I can get.)

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I remember playing the reboot (2016) and enjoying it for about, halfway? I liked the first half with some levels having a bit of backtracking, keycards, little maze like stuff going on. The latter half got a little too hallway-arena for me and kind of let it down a bit in my eyes, but still overall a good game.

I actually ended up refunding the second game because I found it sort of went all-in on the second half of the first game (at least the first 4 hours I played) and I just decided I didn't really want that. I'd be curious on what they've done for this one.

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I like 2016 better, but this is a big step up from Eternal in my opinion. I finished 2016 and might finish this, but it doesn't feel like Doom to me. It feels like a spin-off. A good spin-off, to be sure, but the whole universe they concocted for Eternal isn't Doom to me; it's something else. I played the originals as a teen. The farther you stray from that, the less it's Doom.

Anyway, there's VASTLY less platforming than Eternal, which is what killed Eternal for me. Instead, they're overdoing it with the shield. It's an actual buckler and timing parries correctly will reflect some attacks, recharging your melee attack. Which... what the hell? That's just not Doom. The shield charge mechanic is definitely fun. I hate the shield throw, but I hate every shield throw in everything ever.

I bounced back to Windows to play when Linux proved to be a no go, got to the first cyberdemon, failed around 10x, and reimaged to Zorin. Maybe I'll try again if/when it's playable on Linux.

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Never thought I'd hear about a Doom game having parries and a shield lol. I'm imagining a Captain America shield and using it to parry like Dark Souls. Probably not what you mean, but I like the silliness of it.

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No, that's EXACTLY what I mean, but the timing is vastly more forgiving than Dark Souls. Only certain, telegraphed attacks can be parried, otherwise it's a block. On ranged attacks, a parry will reflect the attack for substantial effect. On melee it's somewhat less impressive, but it does stun the enemy for a moment, and refills your melee attack more quickly.

For the shield throw, it'll stick in larger enemies stunning them, and can be used to break heated metal. Heated metal happens when you damage armored enemies enough for their armor to glow, at which point a shield throw will shatter it. The weakest armored enemies come in a rank, shoulder to shoulder, and shattering one will kill the lot. Against more powerful enemies, it's a slow process of breaking down their armor so you can actually kill them properly.

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I watched some gameplay videos that dropped recently. I love the overall look, but I developed some sort of motion sickness for first-person view, so I won't be able to play that, unfortunately. (Doom was always first-person, so it's no surprise. Still would have liked a third-person view. :slight_smile: )

I don't actually know if it's motion sickness. Someone told me it was, based on the following I wrote on one of my blogs:

I have a health issue. I don’t know exactly what that is, but certain first-person games make me nauseous, sweat, and feel extremely unwell. I don’t know exactly what types — like Far Cry 1, 3, and 4 never made me physically unwell. But games like Just Cause 4, certain portions of Far Cry 5, Half-Life 2, etc., make me extremely sweaty, even when I’m sitting directly below an air conditioner.

I don’t know the reason. But I know that it happens when it’s a first-person game and I’m looking for something (as opposed to, say, shooting, driving, or generally engaged in some form of activity).

Oof, that's unfortunate. I wonder if it's something that can be addressed by developers. Accessibility features are more and more common these days.

I think some people find changing the field of view helpful, but I haven't tested much. It's funny because I thoroughly enjoy found-footage movies which are famously motion sickness-inducing. :smiley: It only happens when I'm playing certain first-person games. Doesn't even happen if I'm only watching. So weird.

A buddy of mine suffers from it, but only certain games. For instance, if we play vermintide 2 for hours, he's perfectly fine. But if he plays risk of rain 2 (great game btw) for more than about 15 minutes, he gets sick. And usually more people have an issue with vermintide 2 over something like ror2.

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I have read today that Doom: The Dark Ages works on Steam Deck. Notably, that bypasses the Nvidia driver issue I hit, but not necessarily the anti-tamper. However, I tried with an Xbox Play Anywhere copy I received, so I was jumping through a lot of hoops: getting Proton 10 in Steam, running Battle.net through Steam, running Doom through Battle.net... it was a pain. If I can get my hands on a Steam version, I'll update on its suitability for Linux, though by then I imagine ProtonDB will have results.

Edit: Sadly, today's release of GE-Proton 10 did not fix this. It fixed the Battle.net problem I posted about, but Doom continues to fail. That's 0-2 on Xbox Play Anywhere using the Battle.net client, while normal Blizzard games I have that way Diablo 3 & 4) work just fine. Can't help but wonder if it's an extra step or something in finalizing Play Anywhere installs.

Thank you so very much for the report. Just another example of a game, unnecessarily requiring the latest Nvidia video driver, just to make life difficult for users, especially Linux users.

Additionally, Doom The Dark Ages is 1 of 2 games out right now, that requires an RTX capable video card. Most people should have one of those these days. However, for those who never upgrade and just buy new computers, may still be using GTX technology.

Also, the game has DRM security, which will be terrible for most people. I truly hate it when dev's force DRM on people!

Personally, I never buy a game when its brand new released. I wait till bugs are fixed, and game goes on sale. I'm not going to pay 70 whopping dollars for a game! I certainly won't buy a game thats not ready for Linux users, who can't use the latest Nvidia driver.

PS: This dev business to lock users into DRM, as well as requiring latest GPU drivers, (that might be full of bugs) needs to stop!


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Were you okay with $50 games in 1999? Because $50 in 1999 is worth $96.28 now. People like to complain about the cost of video games, but game prices have gone up a lot more slowly than everything else, even though they're vastly more expensive to make than they used to be.

Who says it's unnecessary? Nvidia works with developers to fix bugs and optimize pre-release, so the driver they ship with a game works well for it. I've been in the game industry for more than twenty years. Games would work worse if Nvidia weren't doing game specific fixes in their drivers. I've seen before and after during development, first hand. Also, they didn't require it; they pushed for it. As I said, I "told it to play anyway." There was literally a play button on the window that warned me to update my drivers. The game failed on Linux due to anti-tamper.

The real issue here isn't pushing for an up to date driver--it's shoddy Linux support in their drivers and late Linux releases.

Mesa with some GPU fixes for Doom for AMD users. In this case, updates were needed even outside of Nvidia, it seems.

And this was news to me, but apparently is a known thing: Denuvo anti-tamper will lock you out in Linux if you change Proton versions 5 times in 24 hours, seeing each as separate activations. Yes, this applies to Doom: The Dark Ages apparently.

I can only assume from the news regarding Doom running on Steam Deck and this article that Doom launched from Steam CAN work on Linux, though I still only have a Play Anywhere key, so I can't confirm that.

You would do well, to educate yourself on the latest Nvidia drivers from 570 and on. They have been well reported from all tech experts in the industry, to be full of bugs, for both Windows users, and Linux users.

Just cause a driver is new, don't mean its good. Thats all I will say, as I'm not interested in debating facts, which can easily be looked up, with folks who live in a bubble and don't want to know.


I was very clear that the 570s have issues in other threads. I've acknowledged that many times. I myself have stated that I'm running I'm running the BETA 575s just to get away from the 570s. You want to talk about debating facts? Look at published changelists, and the tons of bugs listed fixed for specific games. You want to talk about debating facts? Read up on DLSS and how support is built into each driver. As I said, I've had more than two decades working on games, personally, and have seen exactly how drivers change things on pre-release versions of games.

But sure. Get personal, make attacks on me instead of information. I've had you on mute for over a month as it is. I should've left you there.

I have my own opinions about Nvidia and the 570 is just the more recent of a rather long list of buggy drivers.
Now, I think it is understandable if the latest driver is going to be the likeliest for bugs.

This makes sense. New releases need time to discover and then mitigate bugs.

This also means that it does not make sense for game developers to push with nagware to use the Latest Nvidia Driver, every time.

Perhaps Nvidia does work with game developers in some capacity for optimization. Then they need to provide less damaging and buggy drivers if their game dev/ Nvidia dev agreement is to push users onto the latest. There is a clear contradiction, there.

It is not a Linux or GnuLinux issue.
And Stable Driver vs Cutting edge is an industry encompassing debate - any user can use Cutting Edge on a large number of Rolling release distros.
Zorin OS is not rolling release, it is Stable Release: Long Term Support. This means it provides a stable experience to the majority of users, not that it is somehow lagging behind.

Lastly, yes. Attack the merit of ideas not the person.

When opposing ideas meet, we often spend more time thinking about how to defend our position than we do listening to the merit of points raised by the opposition. As more gets said, the emphasis increases on trying to make a counter argument.
One thing that helps me to mitigate this kind of bias is to focus on the points the opposition makes that are valid - and make me mutter "Okay, fair enough..." and then address them in my post. Then once that is done, focus on the points I disagree with with my reasons for why and back that up with observation, statistics or whatever else I think supports it.
This helps the other person see that they are understood and their fair points were acknowledged.

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I was able to get a Steam key, and it looks like the problems I had installing and launching were more related to use of an Xbox Play Anywhere code through Battle.net than Doom. When running through Steam, as before it will warn that you need Nvidia driver 576 or later if using an Nvidia card, but if you click play anyway, it works, at least with the 575 beta driver. I played through the first chapter with no issues except when turning on frame generation, which gave the whole screen a purple tint. I'm not sure if that's Doom, Nvidia drivers, or Proton. (I tried hotfix, experimental, 10.1 beta, and 9.0-4. It works the same on all of them except 9.0-4, which has major issues and is unplayable.)

So, if someone particularly intended to play the game, it looks doable, minus frame generation (which requires a 40 or 50 series Nvidia card anyway). Caveat: I'm running the Nvidia 575 beta driver, which may or may not be helping.

Edited the thread title to reflect the situation.

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