DOOM: The Dark Ages is not done soaking its arenas in demon guts, and update 2.3 proves it by ripping apart the Rip-Around arena mode and rebuilding it as a round-based gauntlet where players decide how brutal things get, on top of a batch of balance tweaks and gameplay improvements spread across the rest of the experience.

DOOM: The Dark Ages has already cemented itself as one of the biggest shooters of the year, with a vicious campaign, a surprisingly strong narrative focus, and a twisted medieval hellscape that feels like nothing else on the market. On top of that, id Software deserves credit for how it has handled the game after launch, since there is still new content in the pipeline and a full expansion on the horizon. Right now, though, all eyes are on update 2.3, which completely retools the arena mode.

This Is Doom: The Dark Ages’ Rip-Around 2.0

A few weeks ago, we talked about how DOOM: The Dark Ages introduced a frenetic arena mode called Rip-Around, a playlist where players could tweak different parameters to put their skills to the test in tightly contained deathboxes. That first version landed alongside a handful of fixes and adjustments for the main game, but Rip-Around 2.0 pushes the idea much further than a simple side distraction.

Rip-Around 2.0 ditches the straightforward wave-based format and replaces it with a chained round structure. You can configure up to five separate rounds, each one with its own enemy lineup, number of respawns, and as many as ten internal waves, so every encounter builds a sense of progression instead of forcing you to replay the same pattern again and again. The most eye-catching addition, however, is the system of shareable arena codes that sits on top of all that customization.

Because Rip-Around 2.0 is such a flexible mode, players can push it to extremes and design arenas that feel almost indistinguishable from official id Software challenges. Every configuration can be saved with a short code, shared with other users, and loaded in seconds, so anyone can jump into the same scenario. According to PC Gamer, the studio even plans to handpick the best community creations and feature them as highlighted presets inside the game itself.

In practice, that means DOOM: The Dark Ages has just had its most chaotic and visceral mode completely rebuilt, and from now on, it will be the community that decides how far the carnage goes. The freedom to share arena codes massively expands what Rip-Around 2.0 can do, opening the door to brutal experiments that the stock version never would have allowed.

This will inevitably encourage players to design their own matches and blast those codes all over social networks, and it would not be surprising if we see a dedicated category for the best community arenas pop up in a few weeks. Meanwhile, DOOM Eternal has finally made good on a long-standing promise by adding official mod support, complete with a new launcher that lets users browse more than 650 community creations, install them with a couple of clicks, and organize them by category to avoid conflicts between different mods.

Source: 3djuegos