The standout Steam Black Friday deal is undoubtedly Doom: The Dark Ages for 50% off

If you haven't heard, Steam is having a Black Friday sale for the first time ever. Yep, despite hosting nonstop sale events all year along, this is the first one formally branded around post-Thanksgiving consumerism.

It's not one of Steam's "big" sales of the year—the kind that takes over the entire store page and gives away stickers—but it does have one standout deal that you should really consider for the FPS enjoyer in your life. Doom: The Dark Ages is on sale at 50% off, marked down to $34.99.

That's a tremendous deal on one of the best (and only) big budget singleplayer shooters in recent years, especially considering it's barely six months old. Is it the best Doom of the modern trilogy? No, but id gave itself a tough act to follow, and The Dark Ages is still gigantic and impressive in different ways than Doom '16 and its 2020 followup, Eternal.

As I wrote in my 80% Doom: The Dark Ages review back in May:

"This is Doom at its most indulgent and deliciously violent, but it's also dumbed down and undeniably the easiest of the trilogy. Maps are uncharacteristically barren, secrets abnormally obvious, and puzzles so simple that they hardly fit the description. Viewed through the lens of loud feedback that insisted Doom Eternal was too complicated, The Dark Ages is an overcorrection."

If you were a big fan of the swings id took with Eternal, you might not glom onto The Dark Ages' deliberately slower combat. Months later, I do understand it better now that I've played through the original Doom for the first time on Steam Deck—The Dark Ages' flat maps and weapon simplicity could be viewed as a throwback, though even so, the aggressiveness of OG Doom's tight quarters and demon density provide the deeper thrills.

This is all to say that The Dark Ages is a much easier recommendation to FPS fans of all tastes at $35. It's a meaty, 22-level campaign stuffed with memorable guns and more cutscenes than you'd probably expect from id. And if you're one of many who lost access to The Dark Ages when Game Pass skyrocketed in price and drove a bunch of people to cancel, here's your shot at an also-inherently-fleeting digital copy.

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