Review: Doom

Doom. The godfather of First Person Shooters. Call of Duty and Halo owe everything to id Software's romp through hell. But Doom came out in 1993 - eighteen years ago. So it can legally buy lottery tickets and cigarettes, but can it still entertain this generation of twitch happy gamers?

Design & Gameplay

Doom is for all intents and purposes, the blueprint for a First Person Shooter.  While it may look awfully rudimentary today, the design is still remarkably unchanged in these past eighteen years. 

The basic idea is that you are an unnamed green clad Space Marine sent to various Moon bases that have been overrun by demonic monsters; shoot everything. You start out with a simple pistol, but will quickly find upgrades such as the shotgun, chaingun, plasma gun - and everyone's favorite - the BFG 9000. 

BFG (bee-eff-GEE): noun - The first initial is Big. The last initial is Gun. I'm sure you can figure out the middle one. 

The one thing about this that did give off the antiquey feel was that you could hold six guns at once. This sounds nice, but without a keyboard to map a specific gun to a specific key, I was stuck SLOOOWWWLY cycling through my arsenal with the D pad. Modern FPS games usually only allow you to carry two guns, and now I see why that is the stronger design choice. 

On the other hand, the thing that gave me the most pleasant surprise was the level design. While the "this all looks the same" pixelated environments ended up getting me lost from time to time, the levels overall are masterful creations. Once within the second episode especially, the levels become HUGE monstrous beasts to overcome, sometimes more diabolical than the enemies themselves. Lava and poisonous liquid provided hazardous "no no" areas that could only be accessed with a shielding suit, while hidden doors and elevators satisfied my search-and-collect gaming instincts.

Each level also came with a set of goals: upon completion, you were shown the percentages of the total enemies which you killed, items you found and secret doorways you uncovered. There was also a "Par" completion time for each level which were ludicrously low - most are sub three minutes, while my first playthrough averaged me about 20 minutes per level. Regardless of how impossible the goals were, it was cool to see your numbers after a specifically difficult triumph.

Pfft. Get outta my face.

Crap crap crap!

The enemies range from possessed pistol shooting guards, to huge, demonic, fire flinging Satan spawn. And each enemy requires a different amount of bullets to be in them before dying. This sounds silly, but it really adds a ton of weight to the gravity of your situation when you've unloaded 15 shotgun blasts into something that has yet to show a single sign of pain. Which leads in perfectly to my next point: scavenging.

We've seen this design tactic in games as recent as 2007's Bioshock - where you are given just enough ammo to squeak by, but are essentially forced to seek out bullets and health on your own. It works, especially in a game with scary overtones, it adds a sense of desperation and panic from time to time. When you only have 3 shells left, you better effing make sure they hit their target.

Presentation

This is a tough one to judge. I don't remember it clearly enough from back in the day, but I'm sure the graphics were impressive when Doom was first released. My problem here is I'm playing it on XBOX Live, which usually upgrades old games into high res remakes. And while I'm glad they kept it pure, the game could have benefited from a little polish. I mentioned above that a lot of areas get that samey feel to them, and that was really my biggest gripe with the game. It was far to easy to get lost and lose track of where you have and haven't been. 

 

Awwgh! This looks just like that other room with the floor pentagram. Now I'm lost.

Overall though the game achieved the scariness it was going for. Especially toward the middle of the game, there are some areas that are covered in demonic symbols, which in general makes people uncomfortable but couple that with rooms where the power goes out and screaming, fire breathing demons, and you've got yourself a survival horror experience going on. 

Stuff I Loved: 

• Solid level design
• Variety of weapons
• Legit scary at points

Stuff I Hated: 

• Rooms all look the same sometimes
• Clunky, old design at points
• Slow weapon swap

Overall, Doom still lives up to its legend. It is a great, well crafted experience that should be played by anyone who's currently "pwning newbs" in CoD or Halo. I can't say I recommend the XBOX version, I think the PC version probably plays better, and more than likely you can get it for free. I think it's public domain at this point.

Review in Ten Words or Less: 
The godfather of FPS games still holds up