Confirmed Kill: DOOM (1993)

Title: DOOM

Original Release: December 10, 1993 (MS-DOS)

Finished Release: The Ultimate DOOM (1995) [Modded]

Oh, here we go.

So let's be straight with each other right from the beginning.  See, you don't need me to write this review.  If you're my age or older (or even several years younger), you've probably played DOOM.  If you haven't played it you probably know someone who has.  No matter your age, the odds are very high that you've heard of it, and seen bits and pieces of it here and there.

So much has been said about what a masterpiece this game is, and you don't need me to tell you it's all true.  Beyond that, I don't even know if I could do the game any justice by attempting to be analytical towards it.  This game and the legacy it created is so much bigger than me that all I can really offer you is an explanation of what it means to me.  So that's all I'm going to do.

The shareware version of DOOM was originally released six days after my fourth birthday, so my memories of its beginning are hazy at best, and almost certainly unreliable.  Even once I was older I can't remember ever really playing it all that much myself.  I definitely started it, probably several times, but my attention span then was somehow worse than it is now.  It was also probably a bit too difficult for me, if I had to guess.

Instead, my earliest memories of DOOM are of my dad playing it.  He was still in his early twenties at the time, and PC gaming was always his thing, and so of course DOOM was installed on every computer he built for years to come.  I can vaguely remember him starting it up on new computers all throughout my childhood, just to see how it ran on the new hardware.

In a lot of ways, DOOM is to Wolfenstein 3D what Super Mario Bros. 3 is to Super Mario Bros.  That is to say, the original showed what a particular style of game could do, while the follow-up showed what that same style of game could be.  I'll always love Wolf3D, and it may have more or less created the FPS genre, but DOOM made sure it was here to stay.

And we can't forget shovelware!

The reason for that is that DOOM is more than just one amazing game.  Sure, it had a sequel the next year, and it was great too, but that's really just one part of the wave that DOOM brought with it.  This was the Age of the FPS, and it's an era that lasted for more than a decade and was responsible for some of my fondest memories.  I miss those days, but I'm happy that I now live in a

n age where it's easier than ever to appreciate them.

And beyond that, nostalgia has brought about a resurgence of interest in games from that time.  New, awesome mods for DOOM are still being made to this day (such as this one), and that's to say nothing of the throwback games currently being developed.  DUSK looks amazing. Amid Evil is basically a new version of Heretic.  And there's rumblings that 3D Realms is even developing a new game using the Build Engine, the same development suite used to make Duke Nukem 3D.  It's a great time to be a gamer.

And yet, with all that said, I still never got around to actually sitting down and playing it through until now, just under a year shy of its 25th anniversary.  I dunno what took me so long, but I expected greatness, and I was not disappointed.

In the interest of clarity, I'll just quickly explain that I played through all four episodes of The Ultimate DOOM release currently available on Steam and GOG.  I applied the latest release of fan mod GZDoom, but the only options I had applied were a more modern mouse and keyboard control scheme (but still with no Y axis) and a larger screen resolution.  I played on the neutral difficulty level, Hurt Me Plenty, and didn't put any great effort into finding secrets.

My amazement with DOOM began before I had even reached the title screen, right from the staff credits screen:

The sheer amount of talent represented on that screen is staggering.  You have the obvious ones, like John Carmack, John Romero, and Adrian Carmack, all founding fathers of id Software and titans in their own right.  But then you also have names like American McGee, who would later create the underrated American McGee's Alice just a few years later, which was one of my favorite games as a kid.  And my personal favorite on this list, Sandy Petersen, creator of the classic Call of Cthulhu tabletop RPG.   Not only that, but he would later go on to create one of my favorite board games, Cthulhu Wars, and here he is designing levels for one of the most influential games of all time.

Anyway, I then went on to start up the game itself, and a weird thing happened: the controls threw me off.  I don't know if it was because I had gotten so used to Wolf3D or if DOOM is just that particular, but it didn't feel the way I expected it to.  There's this momentum-based movement that was strange at first, where it takes a split second to get up to full speed and another split second to stop. It took me a while to get used to.

And when I say "a while" I actually mean 30 seconds.  At most.  Because as strange as the whole thing felt at first blush, it immediately became second-nature.  By the end of the game movement in DOOM had become an automatic function of my biology so that I all I needed to be concerned about was killing demons... and switch puzzles.

There was also some D&D mixed in.

Other than that, everything is exactly what everyone else says it is.  The graphics are bright and colorful, but in a way that it still brings across the gloomy and deadly atmosphere.  I especially loved how the locations slowly transitioned away from the futuristic colony feeling and more into a very hard rock version of Hell itself.

In fact, "hard rock," is a good thing to bring up, since the whole game is just metal.  From the soundtrack itself (sometimes liberally borrowed from bands such as Black Sabbath and the like) to the creature designs, the whole game just feels like you stepped into a rock album, and I meant that in the best possible way.  Just look at the game cover up there; it perfectly captures the feel of the game.

Except for that other space marine.  I dunno why he's there.

It's difficult for me to find bad things to say about this game.  I can look at it as a whole, and I can tell you that it's not perfect, but I'd be hard-pressed to tell you why.  I mean, I guess the very fact that I had to mod the control scheme is technically a point against it, but that's not really the fault of the game.  Some of the levels aren't as good as the rest, maybe?

I dunno, I'm genuinely trying to come up with negative things and I find myself at a loss.  Logically speaking, nothing is perfect.  But DOOM is just so enjoyable that looking back over it I guess I manage to ignore the little things that may have bothered me when I was playing it.  It is the game that every other game like it was measured against for years after for good reason, and it still puts up a good fight against most games released since. I fully believe that it will continue to be looked upon as one of the best the genre has ever had to offer for years and years to come.

Hell, I'd play it again right now.

Until next time!

Current interests:

Listening - Various

Playing - DOOM II (1994)

Reading - Thor: God of Thunder (2011)

Watching - Lazy Game Reviews

I'm apocryphal!