<p><img loading="lazy" src="https://www.gameinformer.com/sites/default/files/styles/body_default/public/2025/05/09/39f11ffa/doom-thedarkages_art.jpg" width="800" height="450" alt="Doom: The Dark Ages gameplay story boring " typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-body-default" /></p> <p>Every single time someone who is not the Slayer appears on my screen in <a href="https://gameinformer.com/review/doom-the-dark-ages/believe-in-the-shield">Doom: The Dark Ages</a>, I feel ripped (and torn) out of the game. There are some Maykr alien guys, humans dressed like Viking warriors and sci-fi soldiers, and a whole lot of proper nouns about a heart and a prince from Hell not played by Adam Sandler. It’s not that any of it is inherently bad. As far as I can tell, the voice acting is solid, the cutscene cinematography is clean, and the art direction lines up with the rest of the game. I just can’t bring myself to care about the story at all, especially when it’s what paused my first-person demon-killing experience.</p><p>That’s besides the point because I am still enjoying my time with id Software’s latest shooter. I’m enjoying the moment-to-moment gameplay so much that I truly don’t care about my thinking that the story is bad. Should I? If I were reviewing the game, perhaps it’s a point I mention, but even then, if it’s not affecting my enjoyment, does it matter? These are the ethereal questions spinning around in my brain as I play Doom: The Dark Ages. It has me thinking: I just simply don’t care about the story in a game, unless I do.</p><p>To play devil’s advocate with myself, I thought about the flipside. A game whose story is so good that I don’t care about the gameplay. Unless I do. Until I did.</p><iframe width="560" height="315" frameBorder="0" width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dLrLzuwWbCI" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay" allowfullscreen="true">&nbsp;</iframe><p>When I first started playing Citizen Sleeper back in 2022, I was immediately pulled in by its narrative premise. The idea of being a Sleeper, which is a synthetic body embedded with a consciousness of someone back on Earth that must work for a corporation, what that means in the context of this world, and what it means to be a Sleeper who is breaking out of the system it was meant to remain in, was fascinating to me. I was committed to hearing more of this tale, even if I found its gameplay confusing and boring at first. As I continued playing, though, the dice system began to click in my head, the relationship between the mechanics and the storytelling devices began to embrace each other, and before long, I was infatuated with the gameplay. It was like playing a great tabletop game, stress and randomness included. This packaged harmony emerged and ended with me giving the game a 9 out of 10 in my <a href="https://gameinformer.com/review/citizen-sleeper/a-sleeper-hit">review</a>. I didn’t care about the gameplay until I did.</p><p>I’ve been thinking a lot about my Citizen Sleeper <a href="https://www.gameinformer.com/review/citizen-sleeper-2-starward-vector/its-about-the-journey">review</a>, as I play through each chapter in Doom: The Dark Ages. I don’t think I’ll come around on the story, but I’m getting all the satisfaction of a great Doom game without it. Do I need (want) more? I don’t think so.</p><p>There are plenty of other games I treat the same way. Just this year, <a href="https://www.gameinformer.com/review/monster-hunter-wilds/happy-hunting-playground">Monster Hunter Wilds</a> comes to mind. I love hunting monsters, collecting resources, and returning to camp to craft the next piece of my armor puzzle. I couldn’t tell you a name amongst the NPCs or what’s actually going on – no, my friends and I are too busy talking over chat for me to understand that. Of course, I could pull back from the conversation and take in the narrative Wilds is trying to deliver, but why? I’m getting the fun and satisfaction Capcom promised with Wilds without it.</p><iframe width="560" height="315" frameBorder="0" width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FHR-NtrgeNQ" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay" allowfullscreen="true">&nbsp;</iframe><p>Other notable inclusions include last year’s <a href="https://www.gameinformer.com/review/dragons-dogma-2/on-the-shoulders-of-giants">Dragon’s Dogma 2</a>, the first Borderlands, <a href="https://www.gameinformer.com/review/dying-light-2-stay-human/dying-light-2-stay-human-review-an-apocalyptic-renaissance">Dying Light 2</a>, and the <a href="https://www.gameinformer.com/review/hitman-3/hitman-3-review-a-killer-conclusion">Hitman</a> games – admittedly, genre plays a major role. In Citizen Sleeper, my actions directly influence how the narrative unfolds. In Doom: The Dark Ages, the demons I shoot, the weapons I use, and the secrets I discover all lead to the same cutscene. How much does one aspect of a game matter over another? Is it a scale to 100 percent, perhaps? If 80 percent of my enjoyment is derived from the gameplay, does the story, music, visuals, and everything else only need to account for the remaining 20 percent, and vice versa?</p><p>This line of thinking had me questioning so much about reviews and their purpose this past weekend as I shotgunned probably the thousandth demon in the face. What if someone who is more invested in the story of Doom: The Dark Ages reviewed the game and liked it considerably less? Their review could lead me to not giving this game a chance, and I’d be missing out on what has been, so far, a great FPS.</p><p>I extrapolate further and ponder how many times I’ve missed a game because of a review where I took it on face value and didn’t consider how said reviewer arrived at their feelings, didn’t consider their “ratio,” as it were. I take another step, extrapolating even further, and question why I’m being so scientific about this thought experiment. It’s weird. I should stop. &nbsp;Games are art. Sure, they’re commercial products meant to make business people happy, but ideally, a few select (or in a utopia, zero) people think about this so the rest of the team can focus on the art of it all. It doesn’t matter if the story is delivered poorly if it still works to wondrous results. FromSoftware takes the cake here.</p> <img loading="lazy" src="https://www.gameinformer.com/sites/default/files/styles/body_default/public/2024/05/21/826e990f/erdtreeheader.jpg" typeof="foaf:Image" alt class="image-style-body-default"> From Software's Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree <p>It doesn’t matter if a gameplay mechanic is poorly derived in-world if the mechanic feels good. Why are there so many things in the world of Doom: The Dark Ages meant to be hit by the Slayer’s shield? Why do my melee hits have ammo? Can Slayer not swing his arm a fourth time? I wrestle with these questions at times when thinking about a game, but I realize it’s often because the gameplay isn’t doing enough to put my mind at ease. I question why Slayer’s melee hits have a cooldown (and ammo pick-ups) because I don’t find the melee mechanic very satisfying. I don’t ask, however, where all the skulls for the new Pulverizer weapon, which shreds skulls into ammo, come from because I don’t care. The mechanic, the act of using the Pulverizer, is so great, so satisfying, that I don’t need the explanation. The fun outweighs the mystery behind its logic.</p><p>I don’t care about a game’s story if the gameplay succeeds so much that I simply don’t need it to keep me moving forward. And I don’t care about the gameplay if the story is gripping enough that I’ll flip to the next page (or reach the next checkpoint, as it were) regardless of what it takes mechanically to do so.</p><p>In other words, I don’t care about the story or the gameplay, unless I do. Until I do.&nbsp;</p><p><em>I'd love to know what games you love that have a poor story but great gameplay or vice versa! Let me know in the comments below!</em></p>