Technologies

Doom: The Dark Ages Preview: Hands-On With a Heavy Metal Album-Turned-Shooter

The next action-packed FPS in the vaunted Doom franchise slows down the pace for a different flavor of gothic carnage.

The reboot of the Doom franchise starting with the titular 2016 title into a fast-paced shooter was a resounding success, and its 2020 sequel Doom Eternal ramped up the speed even more. So it may have come to surprise fans that developer id Software decided to slow things down for the third installment, Doom: The Dark Ages — but after playing several hours of the game, I’ve mostly enjoyed the new direction they’ve taken the gruesome shooter, which admirably reshuffles the ingredients to tickle similar Doom urges with new flavors.

At a preview event in Los Angeles, California, id Software and publisher Bethesda brought journalists and influencers to play an over 3-hour chunk of Doom: The Dark Ages. The substantial playtime included an early slice of the linear campaign, samplings of the mecha and dragon-back combat and a later extended segment in a huge map carved into arenas — enough time to get a feel for the flow of fights and upgrades.

The Dark Ages is a prequel to the 2016 Doom game, which itself had such a thin story that players shouldn’t worry terribly if they’ve forgotten what happened (or never played). The newest game is flung so far in the past that it doesn’t really matter — the Doom Slayer as a character is functionally immortal, so this adventure seems to be opening the games up to flinging him around in time to shake up the setting.

And boy, what a setting. As trailers have shown, The Dark Ages takes place in the kind of medieval fantasy splayed on metal album covers and airbrushed on the sides of vans — demons, dragons and Doom Slayers make for a rollicking mix of blood and thunder. Sure, there are some sci-fi starships and tech to handwave players teleporting between stages and equipping a plethora of firearms, but everyone agrees that it also makes sense to bring a shield with a buzzsaw to a gunfight.

That gun-and-melee alchemy is at the center of The Dark Ages, and it’s clear a ton of tinkering has gone into how players employ their new shield. This time around, players are rooted to the ground — no more dashing around — to transition from the frenetic fights of the recent Doom games into the brutal slugfests of The Dark Ages. Shoot, block, shoot, counter, deathblow — it’s a ballet of brutality.

I found myself missing the air-dashes of the earlier Doom games, and it took time to get used to bringing up my shield instead of keeping constantly on the move. But there are a handful of tools to keep you from hunkering behind the shield (which can only take so many shots before being temporarily disabled) — you can dash and bash with your shield to close distance as well as make special melee attacks (which have a certain amount of uses before needing to recharge).

I had to watch my limited ammo, health and armor on top of tracking enemies, which was a lot to keep track of, and it took practically the whole preview session to feel halfway competent in the combat flow. It’s color-coded: avoid the orange blasts but use your shield to block the green ones to damage or disable enemies; when near death, they’ll glow purple for you to finish them off. Further into the demo, I found more interactions — like enemies wearing armor, which needed to be shot enough to glow red-hot, after which I could throw my shield to shatter it, leaving them vulnerable.

The fantasy setting liberates the franchise from its high-tech veneer, setting aside pulse rifles for a menagerie of inventive, medieval destruction methods: a buzzsaw added to the shield to throw into enemies, a magazine-fed stake thrower, a gun that churns up skulls to spew room-clearing bone fragments and even a gun that fires a heavy ball on a chain like a projectile flail. Upgrades creatively expand the moveset: the plasma-firing gun, for instance, can be shot at an enemy you’ve lodged your shield into to electrify surrounding enemies.

Slaughter from on high: Mech and dragon segments are fun diversions

Amid the carnage of its new shield-and-gun focus, early trailers of Doom: The Dark Ages showed peeks at new gameplay sequences that got fans excited: piloting a colossal mech and riding a cybernetically enhanced dragon. My preview jumped to time with both, and I have a clear favorite. (It’s the mech.)

When I climbed into the Atlan, as the Doom Slayer-looking mech is called, the game zoomed out to accommodate my skyscraper frame. The scale is the fun here. Each prodigious step made the ground quake, and I effortlessly plowed through bridges filled with enemies that would’ve taken a lot of effort to eliminate on foot. I stomped on squads of tanks to get in range of massive demons — which, naturally, I punched the daylights out of.

Atlan combat is a slugfest, with amazing sound selling the colossal crunch of my massive fists colliding with a demon’s face. And yes, there’s a bit of a mechanical flow: pummeling enemies builds up a meter to stomp a directional column or fire energy blasts. While out of range, I engaged a rocket punch to close the distance. It sold me on how these Pacific Rim-esque sequences clashing with Kaiju-size demons will break up the extended gunplay on the ground (and feel metal as heck).

The dragon sequences were, sad to say, not as fun.

I hear you, readers: how can the Doom Slayer clambering on the back of a dragon with neon red holo-wings, jet thrusters and a machine gun be droll? But all that promised speed and excitement of riding an iconic fantasy beast straight off the cover of Heavy Metal gets slowed way, way down for the sections I played.

I dashed through levels at top speed until it was time to take on enemies, which just led to my dragon hovering around while I took out stationary foes shooting at me — which is fine to mix in some bullet hell gameplay, but disappointing compared with the swift and lithe dragon combat I was expecting. I might as well have been shooting out of a stationary helicopter.

There’s some cool toying with scope in the dragon section I played, wherein I systematically took down a demon battleship’s (Hell Carrier, technically) turrets and main gun before diving in to destroy the massive vessel’s central core from the inside. Rinse and repeat for a few more ships, which gave me time to understand and grudgingly adapt to a dodge mechanic in the stationary sections, which felt more punishing than rewarding.

But even after struggling through this section, there was the undeniable bright spot of the game’s commitment to fist-pumping moments — like whittling down an annoying colossal demon until I could activate a finisher, when my dragon flew forward and wrenched its jaws apart to spew jets of flame down its throat. Heavy metal as hell.

The best for last: Siege, an open range of death-dealing

The fourth and final section of the demo was simply called Siege. Whereas the first on-foot section I played followed early Doom games in a fairly linear path with a few offshoots, the siege opened up to a huge map — essentially multiple contained arenas connected by paths and walkways, each of which you could assault in the order you choose, with plenty of secret areas tucked into the sides.

If the first levels were a classroom teaching the rhythms of combat, this was the test: broad swaths of enemies, from foot soldiers to towering Cyberdemons, all hitting you at once. But hey, you’ve trained for this (right?), and in this section, Bethesda gave me plenty of tools to dish out death.

Like in previous Doom games, Dark Ages has a spread of difficulty settings for the gluttons for punishment — and in a big win for accessibility, there are lots of toggles to tweak enemy health, damage taken, lengthening the parry window and more to get the player experience just right. Of the six difficulties, I brazenly chose the third (Ultra-Violence), a hard mode just above normal (Hurt Me Plenty), and muscled through the demo session.

The first area of the siege stopped me short, and try as I might, the Cyberdemon leading that first array of enemies wiped the floor with me. After reluctantly dipping down to the normal difficulty, I eked out a win and pushed forward into the massive map, looking over the surrounding hills and deciding which pack of enemies to take on next.

Tucked into the corners of the maps were caches and secret sections that often awarded gold, which could be spent at Sentinel Shrine statues to upgrade my skills. These are split into multiple trees for melee, shield and guns, the latter of which I felt were most rewarding and brought out the individuality of each gun. Unlike previous Doom games where I mainlined one or two weapons, Dark Ages’ variety of enemies and situations had me fluidly rotating between my arsenal of guns (when I remembered to in the heat of battle, anyway).

The siege section took me about an hour to work through in its entirety, prying into secret areas and systematically clearing out arenas full of different mixes of demons. I wandered across grassy hills between gothic village buildings while, in the background, a friendly Atlan engaged in a prolonged slugging match with a colossal archfiend. It was atmospheric but not distractingly so; the game is tuned to keep the focus on the enemies in front of you.

In the first section of the demo, the grim future-fantasy story unfurls with the captive Doom Slayer, restrained by a mysterious energy bolt on his chest, shot down to a medieval planet as a last resort to save the people of a king. «Before he became a hero, he was the super weapon of gods and kings,» a title card read. It’s soon clear that the Doom Slayer is a pawn in a political game between squabbling humans and demonic nobility. It laid the groundwork for what is, canonically, the first story told about the mythical man who only knows combat against the forces of Hell.

But the last section of the demo, the siege, was the real bones of what players will experience in Doom: The Dark Ages. Bethesda has tinkered and tweaked the Doom formula to force players to shoot to a different beat; from the demo, they’ve succeeded, which is admirable considering how much players enjoyed the fast-paced combat of the earlier games. The gunplay is tight, but so are the animations and deliciously crunchy sound effects, timed perfectly to make the player feel they’re battering apart the meanest baddies Hell can summon.

These days, the games industry seems risk-averse, producing sequels that feel too much like rehashes of whatever came before. Judging by the demo, which was only about four hours of play, the Dark Ages could be the difference, delivering the brutal feel of fighting through a Doom game with entirely new systems, weapons and mechanics as medieval as its theme.

We’ll know if this demo is representative of the whole game when Doom: The Dark Ages comes out on May 13 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.

Technologies

Zelle App Is Gone. Use These Alternatives to Send Money Digitally

You still have lots of free ways to send money to friends and family electronically.

If Zelle has been your go-to app for sending money digitally, it’s time to find a new method. The digital payment app shut down on April 1.

That doesn’t mean you can’t use Zelle altogether, however. Zelle has only discontinued its standalone app. You can still send money using Zelle if your bank belongs to the Zelle network. You’ll just need to do it through your bank’s app or website. You also have other services to choose from. Here’s what you need to know about this change and your options moving forward.

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Why the Zelle app is shutting down

When Zelle launched in 2017, only about 60 US financial institutions offered the service by the end of that year. Today, that number exceeds 2,200. As a result, less than 2% of Zelle transactions occur through the standalone app. Zelle has been phasing out the ability to make transactions on its mobile app since October 2024.

«Today, the vast majority of people using Zelle to send money use it through their financial institution’s mobile app or online banking experience, and we believe this is the best place for Zelle transactions to occur,» Zelle said in an October 2024 press release.

In December, Zelle was in the spotlight when the Consumer Financial Protected Bureau sued the company and three of the largest US banks for failing to protect consumers from widespread fraud on the peer-to-peer payment network. The lawsuit has since been dropped.

Other ways to send money digitally

You can still use Zelle through your bank’s app or website if it belongs to the Zelle network. You can also switch to another digital payment app, such as:

Apple Wallet
Cash App
PayPal
Venmo

Take some basic precautions when using Zelle or any other digital payment service. These apps are a frequent target for scammers, and Chase Bank has started blocking some Zelle payments it believes could be fraudulent. Only send money to people you know and trust, and watch for red flags like an urgent message claiming to be from your bank or an online ad for concert tickets that seem impossibly cheap.

Technologies

Marvel Rivals Season 2 Starts Next Week, Devs Drop Big News

Emma Frost and Ultron are joining the Rivals roster in season 2, and developers are upping the pace to one new hero per month starting with season 3.

After surviving the endless night in New York City with the Fantastic Four, Marvel Rivals players are getting invited to the shores of Krakoa for the start of season 2 on April 11. The game dropped the first trailer for the new season, giving us our first official look at the new heroes, and a developer vision video dropped major news about the future of hero releases.

The trailer features the former foe and sometimes-leader of the X-Men, Emma Frost, inviting people from across Rivals’ various timelines to the mutant nation of Krakoa, where everyone gets dressed up for a fancy gala — even Wolverine puts on a white tux. The event, however, is unceremoniously interrupted when Ultron shows up preaching extermination.

We also got a look at some of the cosmetics in season 2, though it’s unclear which are from the shop and which might be in the battle pass. In addition to the dressed-up Wolverine, we also got looks at Magik and Psylocke in the traditional X-Men blue and yellow. Nonmutant guests are also getting in on the fun, with fancy attire for heroes like Cap, Widow and Luna Snow.

New Heroes and balance changes in Marvel Rivals Season 2

Emma Frost joins the roster as a Vanguard. We don’t have detailed information about her abilities yet but expect that information to drop ahead of next week’s season launch. Ultron is coming in the season 2.5 update, which should be in late May.

Some team-ups are changing in season 2, including three new team-up abilities that were previewed in the newest developer vision video.

Emma Frost allows Magneto and Psylocke to create illusions of themselves.
Doctor Strange teams up with Scarlet Witch allowing her to use small portals to seemingly increase her damage output via a rapid-shooting alternate fire.
Cap finally teams up with Bucky, allowing the Winter Soldier to leap to allies.

A few existing team-ups are getting adjustments, with Psylocke, Winter Soldier and Doctor Strange being removed from older team-ups in favor of new ones, and Namor moving from working with Luna’s anchor to Hulk’s to empower his ultimate with gamma energy. Two team-ups are being removed entirely: Magneto can no longer team up with Scarlet Witch, and Thor is no longer anchoring Cap and Storm.

The developers vaguely teased other balance changes, including buffs to Peni, Mister Fantastic and Moon Knight, with Strange trading offensive pressure for more survivability and Rocket getting more utility while Loki and Adam Warlock receive nerfs to their Regeneration Domain and Soul Bond abilities.

Future seasons will be shorter, which means more new heroes

One of the most surprising moments in the developer video was the announcement that, beginning with season 3, seasons will be two months long instead of roughly three. There has been a lot of discussion online about whether Rivals’ pace of new heroes (about eight per year based on three-month seasons) was sustainable. Well, apparently the Rivals devs took that personally and are cranking up that pace to a new hero every month, meaning 12 new heroes per year.

This feels borderline ludicrous compared with other hero shooters that average about three new heroes per year, or even MOBAs like League of Legends, which has averaged about four new champions per year over the past five years. Rivals benefits from having an overflowing stable of Marvel characters to pull from rather than inventing their own hero concepts, and compared with Overwatch, the developers seem less worried about mechanical overlap in their heroes, as seen with many support ultimates. Still, a new hero every month feels unheard of for a hero shooter.

New Krakoa map and competitive changes

A new Krakoa-themed domination map is being added in season 2, and Yggsgard: Royal Palace (domination) and Tokyo 2099: Shin-Shibuya (convergence) will rotate out of the map pool for ranked modes, though they’ll still be available in quick play and custom games.

The threshold for competitive picks and bans, which currently only happen in diamond-ranked lobbies, will be lowered to gold 3. Players in Eternity or One Above All ranks will only be able to duo queue, instead of queuing with larger groups — a measure that’s likely intended to keep high-level teams from stomping lobbies.

Speaking of ranks, season 2 will drop everyone by 9 divisions, which is equal to 3 ranks. That means players in Eternity will drop to diamond, and any players at platinum 3 or below will start their climb from bronze 3 again. (AGAIN… AGAIN.)

Rivals developers also announced that individual player performance will be weighted higher when determining competitive progress after a match, meaning if your stats outperform your team’s, you’ll earn more for winning and drop less for losing. This change can help elevate smurfs and other high-skill players in lower-ranked lobbies by getting them into their appropriate ranks faster. However, it can also lead to players stat-farming, instead of playing in a way that is most effective for winning games. Overall, given that Rivals doesn’t use any sort of competitive placement matches, this should be a net positive for the game.

Other announcements

Rivals is adding new skin recolors to certain hero skins and (finally) giving players the option to gift costumes to their friends so they can surprise someone for their birthday, which you definitely did not forget about.

Missions are changing a bit, with the addition of weekly missions and a redistribution of where battle-pass-progressing chrono tokens are earned. The devs framed this as creating a «smoother expectation» of how to earn chrono tokens, but the surface-level description sounds like they’re just making it harder to earn battle pass progress over the season by tucking away more progress under missions with shorter time limits.

The developer vision update also gave us our first look at the competitive distribution, showing how many Rivals players are in each tier as of season 1.5.

The Hellfire Gala trailer says season 2 will start on April 11. While it doesn’t give a specific start time, expect the between-seasons maintenance to finish sometime in the middle of the night in the US.

For more on Marvel Rivals, check out which heroes and roles you should play and how to get free skins.

Technologies

Nintendo Switch 2 vs. Switch 1: Every Detail Compared

The Nintendo Switch 2’s official specs aren’t too different, but the new console has a lot of upgrades on the original Switch.

The Nintendo Switch 2 may look like its predecessor, but there’s been a lot of changes to its features and under the hood. The new console has «10x the graphics performance» compared to the original Switch, says Nvidia, which built the custom processor powering the Switch 2.

The Switch 2, with a release date on June 5, is priced at $450 alone or $500 in a bundle with Mario Kart World, the headliner of the console’s launch games. Here’s all the info on how to preorder the Switch 2.

Note that we’re mostly comparing the Switch 2 to the original Switch 1 released in March 2017, because looping in the Switch Lite and Switch OLED gets complicated.

Design

Broadly, the Switch 2 is a larger version of its predecessor, with everything looking slightly inflated: bigger footprint, bigger screen, bigger Joy-Cons.

Original Switch: The original Switch, with Joy-Cons slotted into the side rails, is a little over 9.4 inches wide, 4 inches tall, a little over half an inch thick and weighs about 10.5 ounces (297 grams). The Joy-Cons slide into place from the top of the device’s sides, while a thin wedge of plastic pops out of the back of the console to serve as a kickstand.

The Switch also came with a dock, which the console could slot into to for recharging and outputting to a TV or large display via HDMI port.

Switch 2: The new Switch 2 is bigger in every way, but it has the same overall shape and layout as the original. The new Joy-Cons will indeed be held in place on the console magnetically, and connect to the console via pins. The new console also sports a wide U-shaped kickstand that spans almost its entire rear width, which can be moved around to prop up the Switch 2 at a variety of angles. Nintendo says the console has more powerful speakers, which we’re looking forward to testing.

The Switch 2’s dock is largely similar in function though it has rounded edges and an internal fan to cool down the console during long game sessions. More importantly, it can output games in 4K to TVs, but only for select games.

Joy-Cons

The Joy-Cons were a marvel when they arrived on the first Switch, and while they’re functionally similar in its successor, there have been upgrades in the Switch 2’s controllers.

Original Switch: The Switch Joy-Cons are simple but powerful controllers that slid on and off the console via plastic rails, connecting and recharging via pins on the side. Detach and they become their own micro-controllers, with little shoulder buttons to boot.

Switch 2: The new console’s Joy-Cons are larger to fit the Switch 2, and lock into the side of the console via powerful magnets — there are small inward-facing buttons to the side of ZR and ZL to detach the controllers from the console. The larger-size Joy-Cons have longer L and R outside shoulder buttons, as well as much wider SL and SR internal shoulder buttons, which are accessible when detached from the console.

And yes, you can use the Switch 2 Joy-Cons as mice by placing their inner edges flat on a surface. During the Nintendo Direct, we saw it being used to control active action games like the wheelchair basketball-simulating DragXDrive and strategy games like Civilization VII.

Display size

Original Switch: The original Switch has a 6.2-inch LCD screen with 1,280×720-pixel resolution, which was reasonably impressive at launch in 2017 but has been outclassed by newer handhelds with sharper displays. The Switch OLED upgraded this with a larger 7-inch display showing deeper blacks and colors, but no upgrade in resolution. The Switch Lite has a 5.5-inch LCD screen.

Switch 2: Unsurprisingly, the Switch 2’s larger size means a larger display. The new console has a 7.9-inch 1080p LCD screen that can get up to 120Hz refresh rate in handheld mode, or up to 4K when docked and outputting to a TV.

Why no OLED display? Possibly to save on costs… or possibly to give Nintendo room to release a Switch 2 OLED version down the line.

CPU/GPU

Original Switch: The original Switch runs on an Nvidia custom Tegra X1 processor split into four ARM Cortex A57 CPU cores, and according to Hackaday, there are four extra A53 cores that aren’t used.

Switch 2: Once again, Nintendo hasn’t released any official info on the Switch 2’s specs, even after the Nintendo Direct reveal stream — and they most the company reveals is that it has a «custom processor made by Nvidia» on the Switch 2’s official specs page. Nvidia confirmed it also has a custom GPU, claiming that the new console has «10x the graphics performance» of the Switch 1, and the custom processor’s AI-powered features include Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS), face tracking and background removal for video chat and real-time ray tracing.

We do still have more supposed details from previous leaks. Months ago on X (formerly Twitter), leaker Zuby_Tech posted that the Switch 2’s CPU will be an eight-core Arm Cortex A78C. They also suggested that the GPU will be an Nvidia T239 Ampere, aligning with years of similar rumors reported on by Eurogamer and others about the custom chip, which derives from Nvidia’s Tegra line of chips for smartphones and mobile devices.

RAM and storage

Original Switch. The Switch has 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 32GB of onboard storage, expandable up to 2TB via microSD cards in the slot beneath the kickstand.

Switch 2: Even after the reveal stream, Nintendo didn’t release official specs for RAM. Leaker Zuby_Tech posted on X back in September suggesting the Switch 2 will have 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 256GB of onboard storage. That leak also suggested the new console will have two internal fans, up from the single one in the original Switch.

Nintendo did confirm that the new console will have 256GB of onboard storage, which can be expanded with special microSD Express cards — sorry, your old Switch-compatible microSD cards won’t work on the Switch 2.

Battery life

Original Switch: The original Switch packs a 4,310-mAh battery, which gives between 4.5 and 9 hours of battery life depending on screen brightness and other factors.

Switch 2: Though Nintendo didn’t release details on the Switch 2’s capacity in the reveal stream, the company does list specs on its website, showing it packs a 5,220mAh battery. While that’s notably larger than the one in its predecessor, Nintendo estimates this will only get players between an estimated 2 and 6.5 hours, depending on games played.

Ports

Original Switch: The first Switch sports a single USB-C port out the bottom, a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top and Wi-Fi 5 plus Bluetooth 4.1 connectivity. On the top is a slot at the top for Switch game cartridges as well as the microSD slot beneath the kickstand on the rear of the console.

Switch 2: The Switch 2 retains the original’s USB-C port on the bottom and 3.5mm jack on the top while adding another USB-C port topside, and now we know what it’s for: to connect with accessories like the Nintendo Switch Camera, a webcam-like camera on a stand to let you do Nintendo’s version of FaceTiming while you play games with your friends.

Nintendo hasn’t clarified the console’s connectivity options, and rumors are scarce on the subject.

As for cartridges, Switch 2 will play some original Switch games in physical versions. The cartridge slot is to the right of the headphone jack in the above image, which is where the slot is on the original Switch. You can tell game cartridges from the two console generations apart by color: ones for the new Switch 2 are red, while older Switch 1 games are black.