DOOM: The Dark Ages is on my gaming plate at the moment. While the combat’s fine, if a bit underwhelming, the levels where you control a gigantic mech called Atlan are the best parts of it. All I’m thinking about now is how cool a new Pacific Rim game would be, but one where you play as massive Kaijus.

Atlan Levels Are The Best Parts of DOOM: The Dark Ages

DOOM: The Dark Ages is trying to rejuvenate the DOOM formula left and right. The main tool in your arsenal is a massive, bladed shield you use to block and parry incoming attacks, and you also get to ride a giant, magma-spitting dragon that looks cool in videos but is a pain to control.

Another way id Software has tried to refresh the tried-and-true DOOM formula is with levels where you control a giant robot called Atlan and use it to crush 20-storey-high Hell-spawn demons. And, oh boy, these levels are hands down my favorite part of DOOM: The Dark Ages.

Atlans are huge and focused on delivering ginormous amounts of melee damage. In other words, they simply smash demons to oblivion.

I like how they feel massive and unwieldy, but are capable of lightning-fast movement when dodging incoming attacks. All you’ve got to do is press the spacebar and your Atlan turns from a hulking, lumbering mech into the fastest-moving thing in the universe in a fraction of a second.

What I like even more are its melee attacks, which feel like they carry gigatons of force. If I crank my PC speakers enough, I can feel my monitor shaking to the rhythm of Atlan’s beatdown of gigantic demons, their skin tearing and flesh falling off with every landing punch.

Landing punches without getting hit builds your combo meter. Once you fill it up, you can launch a ginormously powerful punch that turns demons into pulp, all with impressive visuals and loud-as-heck sound effects that make it all feel extra visceral and straight-up nasty. The rocket punch that launches your mech forward into enemies, accompanied by thunderously appropriate effects, is another weapon in your arsenal.

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Oh, and those sound effects. While I’m disappointed with the fact that the game’s weapons feel anemic and lack the kick you’d expect from guns in a DOOM game (especially DOOM 2016, which is a brilliant boomer shooter), the designers completely nailed the sounds of Atlan mechs. You can feel the movement of each joint while walking around, and also hear the machinery switching into higher gear the moment before you start sprinting.

I haven’t finished the game yet, and from what I’ve seen, I can look forward to a couple more hulking demon-bashing escapades before I see the end credits. To be honest, this is my main motivation to continue playing DOOM: The Dark Ages. But even after playing just a couple of Atlan levels, all I can think about is that I want to see another Pacific Rim game, but one that’s as far from that underwhelming disappointment released in 2013 as possible.

Armored Core and MechWarrior Don’t Cut It

Now, you might say, “What about the Armored Core and MechWarrior games?” Well, they simply don’t cut it.

Armored Core games, especially the latest one, are cool and incorporate many challenging set pieces. But, firstly, controlling your mech in those games doesn’t have that sense of weight and inertia you get from moving around in Atlan mechs in DOOM: The Dark Ages.

Also, Armored Core titles are mostly focused on ranged combat. Yes, you can unleash an occasional slash with that energy sword thingy, but most of the time, the game is all about bullets and rockets.

MechWarrior games, on the other hand, do incorporate that pleasant sense of mechanized movement, that feeling of your mech weighing a thousand tonnes and requiring an immensely complex assortment of machinery to move around. Machinery you can hear working with every step you take.

But the game falls flat when combat enters the picture. MechWarrior games are all about ranged combat. To me, they feel like an Ace Combat game, but with giant mechs instead of fighter jets.

Nope, the best Atlan-like experience would definitely be a Pacific Rim game, one where you can play as both Jaegers and Kaijus.

I Want a Pacific Rim Game Where You Play as Kaijus

At first, I thought I wanted a Titanfall game where you only play as Titans. After I had let the idea simmer in my brain for a while and watched some Titanfall Titan gameplay footage, I realized that a Pacific Rim game would work much better, but only if you could play as both Jaegers and Kaiju.

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Controlling Jaegers would be an experience close to the Atlan levels in the new DOOM game, if the designers manage to capture that Atlan magic, of course: thunderfully visceral combat and intricately mechanized movement mechanics, where you feel each step your mech takes down to your bones.

Jaegers pitting against Kaiju would feel very similar to the Atlan mechs beating the living hell out of gigantic demons in the latest DOOM, landing 100-ton punches that break bones and pierce skin, dashing away from incoming hits, and closing distances with rocket-powered punches that launch your whole mech straight into enemies.

But this would get old pretty soon. I mean, I love controlling Atlans, but a whole game revolving around beating demons with giant mechs back into Hell without occasionally mixing it up with different gameplay approaches would quickly outstay its welcome.

On the other hand, incorporating levels where the player controls Kaijus would turn the tables and allow for some pure chaos that would keep the game fresh. Just imagine getting unleashed as a Kaiju on a massive city, with the goal of eradicating it while also having to fend off Jaegers, tanks, planes, and other man-made machinery.

That’s the kind of pure, unadulterated fun that video games are supposed to provide. Completely leveling buildings by throwing Jaegers at them, smashing tanks and choppers while trying to fulfill bonus objectives (destroy a nearby bridge without directly making contact with it, for instance), and just having a bloody good time while making the whole world burn.

Then it’s back into a Jaeger’s boots, trying to take down the monster you had just controlled and its friends, chasing them around the city’s ruins. Add levels where you play as flying Kaijus, create a campaign where you switch between playing as Kaijus and Jaegers, and you’ve got yourself a brilliant mech and giant monsters game that will stay fresh even after a dozen hours of unbridled destruction.

Add a multiplayer component where teams of Jaegers and Kaijus battle it out in a classic deathmatch, or have Kaijus destroy a city while Jaegers have to defend it, and you’ve surely got a GOTY candidate.

The last, and only, Pacific Rim game completely missed the point. Instead of allowing players to sow destruction on the world’s biggest cities as Kaiju, and then switching to Jaegers to deliver justice and send the giant monsters back from where they came from, we got that sorry excuse for a fighting game that completely flopped, and made sure no one would try to make another Pacific Rim game every again. This is a crying shame because DOOM: The Dark Ages has shown what is possible at such a huge scale.

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