Doom was a game that was designed by id Software back in 1993, as their own little story continuation from a Dungeons & Dragons campaign that ended with demons from Hell being unleashed into whatever world or campaign setting that that particular D&D campaign took place in/on. (I’m not making that up, by the way, look it up if you don’t believe me.)
Doom is cited as one of the greatest games of all time, and many state that it, along with Wolfenstein 3D, helped to create the FPS (First-Person Shooter) genre, even though there were other FPS games out before Doom and even Wolfenstein, mostly because these games were the most widely available, but it occured to me... is Doom still worth playing today? We all know Wolfenstein 3D isn’t, but we’re not here to talk about Wolfenstein 3D, we’re here to talk about Doom. Is Doom (the classic, not the reboot) still worth playing to this day?
The answer to that question is of course it is! Even though I didn’t get to experience this personal treat in gaming myself until only a few years ago, even I can tell that the gameplay has held up tremendously well.
The game is now simply formulaic in terms of the FPS genre, yes, but it was one of the first, if not THE first (I think, but I can’t be sure, so take this bit with a grain of salt) to have the player run around levels not just shooting things, but having to solve puzzles and collect key cards/skull keys to move onwards through the game. Like I said earlier, formulaic by todays standards.
However, if the player had to just wander around these maze-like levels all day, the dev team figured that the game would be boring, and harkening back to the aforementioned Dungeons & Dragons campaign, they chose to use demons from Hell as the game’s enemies, as opposed to aliens or Nazi soldiers, and it works great.
Each demon looks different from the others, which was quite a rarity back then as far as I know, as most game companies just recolored the sprites of most enemies (especially with the RPG genre) or, God forbid, actually just reused the EXACT SAME SPRITES for different enemies of the same family! Doom doesn’t do that. Not totally, anyway. For example, Pinky enemies. You have the usual Pinkies running around the levels causing havoc, but there are some Pinkies who must have swallowed whatever it is that can make Doomguy invisible, because they have the same graphic effect he has when he grabs that particular item and becomes invisible. But that’s it, at least for the first game. The second game, however...
Anyway, you have all of these demons to fight, and the dev team went all out and decided to give the player multiple weapons with which to eviscerate the demons of Hell with, nine weapons in total: your bare fists, a chainsaw, a pistol, a shotgun, a chaingun, a rocket launcher, a plasma rifle, and a gun that I can’t really type, but it’s called the BFG9000. (That stands for Big F***ing Gun, by the way, but I’m sure you already knew that.) Firing off any single one of these weapons is great, but some are far more satisfying than the others. I think my personal favorite would be the shotgun. You may vary. Each weapon serves, or rather, CAN serve, a purpose. For example, use the pistol to shoot a barrel when multiple enemies are near to cause the barrel to explode and kill as many enemies as you can while conserving your ammo. Use the chaingun to mow down a room full of enemies and keep them as far away from you as possible. Use the shotgun against certain enemies (up to about Pinky level, anything beyond that and you’re asking for trouble) and listen the grunts of pain they make.The rocket launcher is used against tougher enemies (preferrably at a distance) that the shotgun just can’t handle. The plasma rifle and BFG 9000 have similar functions to the chaingun and the rocket launcher, just for even stronger enemies. However, unlike the rocket launcher, the BFG 9000 doesn’t cause damage to the player should the player be within a BFG shot’s range or radius.
All the graphics in Doom are sooo good! Remember, this is an MS-DOS game, back from when people didn’t have the time and money or even the disk space to have good graphics that didn’t look all pixelated! The enemies are still pixelated, and it shows when you get up all close and personal to them, as do the props, but the wall textures look gorgeous, and they still look pixelated, even when up close to them, although I should point out that I’m playing the game through GZDoom, so that probably has something to do with it.
Another good thing that goes along with the graphics are the enviroments. Each level in the game adheres to where the player is, and it gives off a feeling of being and belonging. For example, for the first episode of the game, Knee-deep in the Dead, you’re on one of the Mars’ Moon Bases, Phobos in this case, and you actually feel like you’re on an alien planet! Later in the game, when Doomguy is in the levels representing Hell, you feel like you’re actually in Hell, thankfully without all the supposed heat that’s supposed to come with it, maybe.
However, I realize that I have heaped praise upon praise on this game, and there is one part of the game where I have to make a criticism, and that’s with some of the game’s levels. For example, there is one level in the game where the player is up against a bunch of Barons of Hell and Cacodemons, smack-dab in the middle of the former, and they can see you, and the moment the level starts, you had best run for your muthaluvin’ life! Barons of Hell and Cacodemons are among the strongest demons in the game, and if you play on the higher levels of difficulty, then you will have to conserve ammo, and you’ll probably be running low anyway BUT! This one level also has an example of something you can do that, in addition to shooting barrels that I mentioned earlier, demons in this game can fight amongst themselves, if you know how to make them. Simply try to move behind one enemy while anothers attacking and if the first demon, the one from behind, hits the one directly in front of you, then they should start infighting. Unfortunately, there is a downside to this. The enemies MUST BE OF DIFFERENT GROUPS UNLESS THEY ARE PISTOL GUYS OR SHOTGUNNERS!! If they are in the same group of demon, the same family, then they will not only ignore that they got hit, no damage is registered either, the only exception to the rule being Pistol Guys and Shotgunners. Now that I think about it, certain levels in the game do seem to have a gimmick with them.
Ah, well, whatever. Next we move onto the music, and the soundtrack is BEAUTIFUL! It’s inspired by Heavy Metal and it goes extremely well with what Doomguy is going to be doing to the enemies that he’ll be up against throughout the game, although not every song in the game is all heavy, no, some of it is actually quite soft-sounding and even soothing, which is odd when you consider that Doom is a game about a guy who kills demons and then eats them for breakfast, but I’m not complaining. It still sounds good.
Overall, even though I never got the chance to play the game back when it was shining new and id Software had been on the map for a long time before I made it around to Doom, even I can tell that the game has held up well, VERY WELL, throughout the years, and it’s still worth playing today, IF you play through GZDoom. See, the original Doom, as great as it was in it’s original form, shows its age, but if you play through the game with GZDoom, then you can (hopefully) see why I think the game is great, and why I love it so much. There isn’t enough things that I or anyone else out there can say about Doom. What else is there to be said? I think that most of you will agree when I put it this way: It’s one HELL of a good time! HA, HA, HA...
That was cheesy as all HELL!
We should probably end this now for the HELL of it!
I could do this all day...
This review is © 2019 Jestan Diams. Please don’t repost this review anywhere else on the internet, in part or in full, without my express written consent.
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