Somehow I managed to spend 30 years of gaming and not getting around to playing Doom and that is a damn shame. I can confidently say that the Grand Father of the FPS genre is still a very enjoyable game to play in 2023. I was surprised at how many puzzles were in the levels. I always just imagined Doom as just a point A to B straight line kill em all but the puzzles and the bangin sound track kept levels fresh all the way through. The weapons were varied and fun to use even though i basically just used the shotgun and the plasma gun 95% of the time. If I would have played this when it first came out I feel like my nostalgia for it would be unreal and it would probably have been one of my favorite games growing up.

If you are someone that has never played this game but wanted to but also wasn't sure how it held up do youself a favor and try it out.

For context on how I'm approaching this game and the others soon-ish to come, back in Elementary and Middle school, I was the kid who never really played FPS games despite them being the biggest things around at the time. I was quite happy with my Nintendo games and the occasional PS3 game in the form of Little Big Planet, and for the most part I still really am. Really hasn't stopped me from feeling like I'm missing out on a lot of great games though, especially when a couple months ago I got Ultrakill and quite honestly was not able to tap into the greatness everyone else sees in that game. So in an effort to better understand the appeal of this genre, here we are, with me having completed DOOM. Honestly did not expect to like it as much as I did, with it being 1. an FPS game and 2. practically the beginning of its genre. The focus on exploration was honestly what did it most for me, aside from the aiming which while basically just being a line, helps me be more accurate in my inexperience. If I had to bring up a con it would be some levels in the third episode are slightly irritating. But like. This is DOOM. I can't really say much else because you already know why its good. Looking forward to more!

O pai do gênero FPS.

Esse daqui é um dos jogos que envelheceram MUITO bem. Doom apresenta um level design simplesmente brilhante, e um jogo de 93 que permanece desafiador até hoje merece um reconhecimento.

Olhando para época que o jogo saiu é compreensível entender o motivo dele literalmente roubar a cena. Doom consegue unir bem o ritmo frenético de tiroteio + puzzles desafiadores e bem pensados (Cada fase é muito bem feita, cheia de detalhes e segredos).

Diferente do Doom 64 que zerei semana passada, aqui no primeiro Doom a trilha sonora é UMA DELICIA (As músicas das fases dão um clima absurdo pro game).

(O Boss final desse game não é NADA comparado com o Boss final do Doom 64).

PRÓS:
- Level design satisfatório.
- Ótima trilha sonora.

CONTRAS:
- Mapa caótico.

For those who are familiar with first-person shooters, you would know that it is a genre that is pretty easy for developers to take advantage of. I mean, most games simply just have you, some random dude, be given a gun, and you then go off and start blasting every single thing that moves around you, until you ultimately succeed in stopping the force you are fighting against. That in itself is easy enough to replicate, and it has been used time and time again to make plenty of titles over time, but this then comes with an issue: most of these games are insanely generic. Yes, they can be a bit of fun at first, giving you the proper amount of excitement and adrenaline that these titles should be giving you, but most of them at the end of the day don’t really show any signs of creativity or innovation. You just shoot guys, and that’s it, which is enough for a lot of people (including me, in some instances), but it doesn’t evolve the genre any further from where it already is. Truly great FPS games, however, manage to do that while also keeping the base game fast and fun, such as the case with one of the best and most important FPS games ever made, Doom.

I have played many different FPS games over the course of my life, ranging from generic ones to the more experimental ones, but out of all of them, the Doom series is, without a doubt, my favorite set of FPS games ever made. They may not have the most creative gameplay over all of the other games, and some of them just flat out aren’t that good, but let me tell you, there is nothing more satisfying and cathartic then the feeling of just taking a shotgun and blasting off the faces of many different demonic freaks in a slaughtering frenzy, which Doom usually manages to nail perfectly. With that being said though, I am more so referring to the modern Doom games when it comes to my complete adoration of this series, with Doom Eternal in particular being not just my favorite FPS of all time, but one of my favorite games in general. As for the original Doom games though, I still love them to an insane degree, and in terms of the original Doom, the one that started it all, it manages to be a pretty great time even to this day. At its core, it is very similar to other FPS games from before and since, but it manages to do so much with seemingly so little, while also innovating the genre more than any other game at that point in time.

The story that we have here is one that is primarily kept out of the game, because most people just usually settle with “demons are here, go kill them all”, which is all anyone needs to get going, but when you take the time to check out the story, it is pretty good, the graphics are incredible for the time, and while future games would take what was done here and make it look much better, the original still holds up supremely well even after almost 30 years, the music is amazing, with so many rocking tunes to hear throughout the entire game, and if you try to tell me that you don’t at least like the At Doom’s Gate, then you are a fucking liar, the control is pretty great for this game, and while it does take some getting used to, you can take full advantage of it to kick some demonic ass, even if movement can be pretty wonky at points, and the gameplay is classic FPS action in the best way it possibly could be.

The game is a first-person-shooter, where you take control of an unnamed marine that we all collectively just call Doomguy, go through plenty of different stages through abandoned research facilities on Mars and even Hell itself, use whatever equipment you have to mutilate and destroy any demonic scum in your way, whether it be by shooting them to bits, slashing through them with a chainsaw, or even ripping through them with your own two hands, find plenty of different weapons, health, armor, and keycards throughout to help you proceed forward and deal more devastation, and take on more demonic forces that get bigger, badder, and more aggressive, even though at the end of the day, the only thing in these facilities anyone needs to fear…… is you. As you could probably gather, the main gameplay itself doesn’t differ too much from other FPS games at the time, but it manages to innovate and be exciting in many other ways, such as with the graphics, the music, the levels, the puzzles, the annihilation at hand, and many more.

There are a lot of video games out there that are all about starting at the essentials, getting better through getting stronger and getting new equipment, and being able to thwart any evil force that stands in your way, and Doom is one of the best examples of this that I have ever seen. You start out with a mere pistol, which is enough to handle what is thrown at you at the beginning, but as you keep going, you find more weapons, more ammo, more powerups, and enemies everywhere you look, and if you play your cards just right, you can end up absolutely decimating hordes of demons with the right tools, and it feels oh so sweet whenever you do so. In addition, the weapons you use are just as sweet as the gameplay itself, with there being many you can obtain like shotguns, rocket launchers, a plasma rifle, a chaingun, and without a doubt, the best weapon in the game, the BFG 9000, or as we all know it as, the Big FUCKING Gun. This baby can be used to absolutely obliterate enemies and it makes bosses absolute jokes, and that is why I will forever love it until the day I die.

Aside from the main campaign though, there are several multiplayer modes that you can try out as well, such as the co-op gameplay where you and others can run through the campaign together, and your typical deathmatch, where you can fight against a group of friends until you or one of them comes out on top as the ultimate Doom Slayer. I myself don’t typically play multiplayer modes in FPS games, except for FPS games that have nothing but multiplayer modes, but hey, if you ever wanted to experience classic Doom with your friends, there you have it.

I really don’t have any huge issues with the original Doom, or at least, none that bring down the game as a whole. Even from the beginning, they had a solid formula that could be improved upon further and made even better in future games. But, if I had to get extremely nitpicky, I guess you could find the gameplay to be pretty repetitive. There isn’t much else that you will be doing through the entire game other then going through these levels and slaughtering demons, which is all good in my book, but if you are the type who wants more variety in their games, and different guns and demons just won’t cut it, then you probably won’t get too invested in this. In addition, obviously, future games would take what was established here and improve upon it even further, which does make this game feel somewhat hard to come back to, but the core gameplay is still solid enough to the point where I don’t really even care about that. It is still classic Doom at its bloody, demonic core, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Overall, despite being repetitive and not having too much over other installments, the original Doom is still an incredible FPS from the early 90s, and a great way to start off what would become one of the most iconic and legendary FPS franchises of all time. I would definitely recommend it for those who are Doom fans, as well as fans of FPS games in general, because if you somehow haven’t played this game yet, then… what are you waiting for? Besides, it's available on all modern platforms, and not just video game consoles either! You can play it in your car, on your smart fridge, on your microwave, and you can even play Doom INSIDE of Doom! Hell, I would say that, if you managed to somehow implant a screen into the palm of your hand, and you managed to load up the game in there, you could play Doom on your hand as well. That is just the magic of Doom, folks.

Game #399

Along with it being a genre-defining landmark of the first-person shooter genre, the birthplace of speedrunning, and a haven for a mod community that is thriving to this day, John Romero's Doom is also known for the slew of game consoles, calculators, thermostats, and pregnancy tests that it has been ported to both officially and unofficially, and while I did like how this gave me a ton of options to choose from when I decided to finally give the game a shot, it also made actually settling on one somewhat difficult due to how different some of these versions are. Initially, I played up to the 14th mission using the Doom 32X Resurrection hack of the Sega 32X port, but since that version wouldn't let me make any kinds of saves for some reason, I decide to cut out the middle man and play the original MS-DOS version after wrapping my head around how DOSBox worked (although not before accidentally downloading and playing through the shareware version). This was a very good decision on my part, as it meant that I got to play this awesome game the way that it was originally intended to be played, and I had an absolute blast while doing so.

Even with all of the innovations that have come to first-person shooters over the years, Doom is still as fun of a game as it's ever been in part due to its simplicity. Whether you're blasting the armies of Hell away with a shotgun, ripping them apart with a chainsaw, or decimating them with the iconic BFG 9000, the combat in Doom is consistently hectic, thrilling, and satisfying, and that applies to both the power fantasy moments of turning waves of demons into assortments of gory pastes and the more tense encounters where you're low on health and ammo and need to make every shot count. There were several times in my playthrough where I was so invested in the game's action that I was literally ducking and dodging my head in real life whenever an Imp's hell-fire or a Cacodemon's ball-lighting came my way, and I feel like that sums up just how fun this game is to play. Doomguy's blisteringly fast running speed not only made maneuvering around enemy attacks and even tricking them into fighting each other by luring them out feel responsive, but it also helped with the game's moments of exploration, as each level is filled to the brim with secrets that lead you to ammo dumps, powerups, and even hidden levels. Doom also features some immensely charming presentation, as the 2.5D blend of nightmarish 2D sprites and 3D environments ranging from futuristic military bases on the moons of Mars to the fleshy, rugged terrain of Hell were a great match for both Bobby Prince's blend of blood-pumping metal and ominous ambient music and the humorous text crawls that show up at the end of each chapter.

Before I got into Doom, one of my biggest worries about the game was that I would spend most of it just trying to look for where I was supposed to go next due to how often I've heard people make that exact criticism, but thankfully, that rarely ever happened. Because all of the halls and rooms in each level end up either looping back to a central hub or overlapping with each other, I pretty much never got lost (especially with how the corpses I'd leave in my wake ended up serving as markers for where I had already been), and I rarely even checked the in-game map because of how distinct every area felt. I will say that I wasn't that big of a fan of the more open levels that showed up later on, though, because while they were still good, the amount of empty space that they featured made them a lot less interesting to navigate than the rest of the game's levels. Despite this, Doom was still a fantastic first-person shooter that aged incredibly well, and not only am I excited to check out Doom II and Doom 64, but I also want to try out a few more of the earlier boomer shooters such as Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, and Blood as well.

shoutout to the teachers, coaches, and bosses through my days that i've ignored wasting time away booting this thing up on whatever nearest device i had on me throughout my teenage years. it was never a matter of "can i get doom on it", but "how do i get doom on it". being that i'm a y2k baby it might sound a little strange that doom was one of my early formal personal gaming experiences, but growing up with a pair of early 90s kids in my house and a bulky desktop pc running windows 95 meant that was an obvious early step in my journey. that copy of ultimate doom (which i believe came with doom '95? that should be the one i owned) sits in a similar spot as stuff like space cadet pinball and pajama sam in my head... which kind of explains a bit in retrospect.

i ended up properly sitting down and playing this one when i took it with me on a move around 2009, 2010, firmly in my nintendo kid phase, and it marked a fairly major shift in my interests in games. i loved the look of the gruff 3d corrdidors, the muddy midi-based soundtrack, and the impact of the guns. hell, i still do. i'm sure it's a point that 1,000,000 people before me have made but for all the hubbub made (especially by the modern dooms themselves) of the In Your Face Epic Metal Bloodbath stuff, i always felt the uncanny valley of doom's ambience and general emptiness was my personal takeaway from the game - something especially brought home in the sequel, my favorite doom game. doom gets very same-y as the game rolls on with tons of identical corridors to chord progressions, but god help me if it still doesn't invoke something in me even in my 20s.

i miss this puzzle-centric, explorative form of fps. i think it's done to perfection in the next few years of fpses that would follow, sure, but doom set the standard. this was the manifesto which went "hey, wolfenstein, that's a pretty neat concept you got there, but let's crank it all up a notch." nothing feels missing in doom. its multi-level stage layouts aren't marred by the lack of jump or vertical aim - they're designed around them. doom shifts from dim and claustrophobic to breadth and overwhelming scale at the turn of a dime. you'll play this game a few times and think you've got it made, but when you watch someone who REALLY knows their stuff, they'll disembowel these levels, rip out the secrets, and you'll realize you missed out on like half of what this game had to show you. that said, the level design admittedly staggers and trips a lot near the finish line, and while i agree that doom ii's levels by and large get to be a lot bigger and emptier, i enjoy the exploration there, where doom's lesser levels boil into serious repetition. still, though, it's fucking doom. if you haven't played it, i promise it's at least as interesting and more timeless than that next thing on your list. tight pacing, effortlessly fun gameplay, and one hell of a legacy to leave behind.

Played via Doom Slayers Collection on the PS5.

I never felt much of a need to sit down and play Doom. After all, it felt like I had already absorbed the entire game through cultural osmosis. Doom is a known quantity, I've played Sonic Robo Blast 2, I know what its legacy is thank you very much. However, after falling down the boomer shooter rabbit hole this year with Duke Nukem 3D and Powerslave, continuing to drag my heels with Doom started to seem ridiculous. It's like being a fan of platformers without having ever played Super Mario Bros. or getting deep into puzzle games but never touching Tetris; it's weird, frankly sick behavior.

Having now played all four core episodes of vanilla Doom as well as the more recently released fifth episode, Sigil, my main takeaway is that a lifetime of experiencing Doom by proxy is a piss-poor substitute for actually playing it. Sure, I knew that it was a "genre defining game," that it's a classic by every conceivable metric, but all that praise didn't really set in and click until I sat down and spent some time with it. By E1M3, my ass gliding around racking my shotgun and blasting demons, I finally "got" Doom.

Of course Doom is not perfect, it has some issues, particularly in how labyrinthine some of its levels are (especially by the third episode), but I never got so horrendously lost that it took away from the fun I was having. Comparatively, I think some of Duke Nukem 3D's levels are easier to get turned around in and a lot vaguer about where to go. Doom's placement of its keys and locked doors often require you to loop back to areas you've already visited, helping build familiarity with your surroundings while carefully placing ambushes and "monster closests" to constantly keep you on your toes. Insidious enemy placements teach you to use your surroundings to your advantage and to never treat any one part of a map as "safe," and limited ammunition keeps you cycling through weapons, helping build familiarity with your arsenal while demons put you on your back foot. The way Doom measures empowering you and putting you under duress is graceful, though the sadism and creativity of Doom's design doesn't really hit its zenith until episode 4, Thy Flesh Consumed, which is a profoundly unforgiving gauntlet of bonus levels intended to test those who had "mastered" the base game, subverting what they've come to expect, at times dropping enemies on them in ways that border on comical dickishness. This is especially true of the first two missions, which start spawning cyber demons on your head while keeping you confined to tight corridors and narrow walkways. John Romero wanted to make me his bitch in 2000, and he finally succeeded in making me "suck it down" in 2022.

Speaking of John, he hasn't lost his touch for level design if Sigil is anything to go by. I debated covering this as part of this review or handle it as its own thing, but since I played all of these sequentially, it feels like part of the whole package to me. Sigil amps up the brutality of Thy Flesh Consumed, but also goes in hard on more complex level maps, and adds a wrinkle to the red/blue/orange key formula by introducing eye sigils that must be shot to raise and lower pathways. Sigil's levels are a lot more puzzle driven than previous episodes, its environments deadlier, and more densely packed with demons. Dying and losing all of your progress is certainly punishing, but at the same time satisfying. Doing another loop through the level, knowing what to expect, reopening secret rooms to arm yourself and pushing back even harder feels great. Something these last two episodes really help highlight is how rhythmic this loop of death and progress can be... unless you use quick saves like a pansy (you should probably use quick saves though, it's fine, there's nothing wrong with it. John doesn't actually want to make you his bitch, he feels bad about that.)

So yeah, sure, Doom isn't perfect, but it's still a solid 5 out of 5 for me. I usually feel ready to put some distance between myself and a game after I beat it, even the ones I really like, but I kinda just want to keep playing Doom. If anyone has some good WADs to recommend, please drop them in the comments, because I'm not ready to put this one down yet.

Can't believe I was even allowed to make an account on this website having never completed even the first episode of this until today smh.

1/3rds of this game being given away completely free on launch AND id making the game completely open source just 4 years after launch is an act of kindness that the games industry has never repeated on this scale ever again.

Like the weirdo mishmash of painted textures, stock art, fun stop motion dudes and G.I. Joe figures that people thought was Mussolini's corpse.

ENG: How to beat Wolfenstein 3D? It was an arduous task. But it not only surpassed it, it eclipsed it. Gone were the repetitive and labyrinthine scenarios, the Nazis, the scores and the lives. DOOM came to change all that. The scenarios are much more detailed and more changing: from space bases to hell itself. What generates that we do not get lost and gives a great atmosphere to the game. And if we leave the castle to go to other places, so should the enemies. Enough Nazis and dogs, now the important thing is demons, aliens, possessed humans, whatever it is, there is a greater number of enemies with their respective abilities and weaknesses. And finally, who cares about scores? You're here to kill bugs, period. Lives are also over; unconscionable punishment. But beware, that doesn't make this game easy. Not even for a moment.

For all these reasons, it is not surprising that there have been, and still are, the famous "DOOM clones" and there have never been "Wolfenstein clones", or at least not so many and so popular. So many things made DOOM the almost perfect game. And you know what was missing? I'll tell you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSsfjHCFosw&ab_channel=JimDarkMagic

ESP: ¿Cómo superar a Wolfenstein 3D? Era una ardua tarea. Pero no solo lo superó, lo eclipsó. Atrás quedaron los escenarios repetitivos y laberínticos, los nazis, los puntajes y las vidas. DOOM vino a cambiar todo eso. Los escenarios son muchísimo más detallados y más cambiantes: desde bases espaciales hasta el infierno mismo. Lo que genera que no nos perdamos y le otorga una gran ambientación al juego. Y si abandonamos el castillo para ir a otros lugares, por ende los enemigos también deberían hacerlo. Basta de nazis y perros, ahora lo importante son los demonios, extraterrestres, humanos poseídos, fuere lo que fuere plantea una mayor cantidad de enemigos con sus respectivas habilidades y debilidades. Y por último, ¿a quién le importan los puntajes? Acá estás para matar bichos y punto. También se terminaron las vidas; castigo desmedido. Pero ojo, que no por ello este juego se hace fácil. Ni por un momento.

Por todo lo dicho, no es de extrañar que hayan, y sigan existiendo, los famosos "DOOM clones" y nunca hayan existido los "Wolfenstein clones", o al menos no tantos y tan populares. Tantas cosas hicieron que DOOM fuera el juego casi perfecto ¿Y saben que era lo que faltaba? Yo se los digo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSsfjHCFosw&ab_channel=JimDarkMagic

Recommended by @ZapRowsdower (Thank you so much!)

We are still trying to find the key of eternal happiness when the answer has been right in front of us since 1993: using the shotgun in DOOM and one tapping every Imp you come across.

Today is one hell of a day for me huh? Not only it's the day I've FINALLY finished DOOM after multiple attempts at getting into it, not only this is my 150th review, which just saying it's fucking coo-coo crazy to me, can't believe I've written so many reviews on here in just a bit less than a year, but today also happens to be my birthday! So, today is the day, the stars align and my time it's right, it's time for me to shook the entire world with what I'm about to say, my opinion on DOOM will forever change the course of videogame discourse, so buckle up motherfuckers, 'cause this is it; Deemon's verdict on DOOM is..............









Yeah game good.


DOOM is, in a ton of ways, THE PC game, it's not only THE grand-father of the so called ''boomer-shooters'', but it's alsoTHE FPS; we now have the meme spawned by both the press and some players about how ''everything is Dark Souls'', but during the 90's, if your game was in first person, it was bound to get universally compared to DOOM in some capacity. It revolutionized the industry in such a way it's effects are still palpable to this very day, and it spawned a series that time and time again has caused discourse around it. Many people still put hundreds of hours replaying this game or trying many of the community made maps or levels, also known as WADs. It's a game that finds way to modernize itself while never truly changing, sporting level and enemy design that some of its contemporaries and even modern outputs could only dream of.

And here I am, 30 years later, 30 goddam years after it released, to talk about a game almost 10 years older than me. Out of all the games I've written about, this is the one that it feels comical to try to say something new, to add a new perspective to the conversation, because what’s left for me to say? What value can I contribute to the overall conversation around the legend of DOOM? The honest answer, being totally realistic, is… probably none, and while that may be discouraging… but that won’t stop me from trying to sing its praises and faults with my own voice!

And singing its praises I will, and to be honest, I lied. Game isn’t good. Game is FANTASTIC. DOOM’s approach to design is not to introduce as many elements as it can, to make very level distinct by making it have completely new stuff, but instead it focuses on only a bunch of elements and makes the absolute most out of them. You can count all the enemies with the two hands, including bosses, and yet, at no point the repetition settled in. Traversing this seemingly endless mazes, the variety on how challenges and encounters are designed is staggering; no two shoot-outs really feel the shame, and the seeing the non-stop moment that made Eternal so much fun for me being already present in 1993 made feel a certain feeling of happiness I really can’t describe. Kiting around enemies, dodging projectiles or running backwards from Pinkies while pumping bullets onto them produces that feeling of adrenaline so unique to DOOM. It isn’t scared to mess with you; new small rooms filles with enemies will open up after grabbing an item or activating a switch will open up out of nowhere, or maybe enemies will surprise you behind corners, right after open doors or hidden within darker areas, and it not only it never feels cheap or unfair, but also keeps you on your toes and makes it so certain sequences can be kinda scary and creepy, and make you doubt even the most innocent of empty rooms. But the greatness of the enemy placement only means something because of how fantastic the level themselves are: the three chapters have their own flare to own another and overarching elements, the first one for example is the one that introduces all the elements that will be explored upon in the next maps and focuses around shorter, more easy to navigate mazes, while the third one, Inferno, explores the limits of DOOM’s level structure and experiments upon that, one of the maps being a small sandbox.

Even beyond this chapter to chapter distinctions, no two levels feel the same; they all present an unique new perspective within the same ‘’find the correct color key’’ structure; they all feel like real places while at the same time being artificial enough to offer fun and weird- ass moments, and when you factor all the secrets, hidden weapons, power ups and the such, it compels you to look to each and every nook and cranny that the levels have to offer, and who knows, you may end up finding the wonderful BFG or a secret exit that might send you to an extra map. It’s all feels purposeful, natural and… kind of ethereal, the music manages work both as a perfect battle companion and as incredibly atmospheric background, like the grunts and sounds of demons heard across the walls. Those moments of quiet creepiness, like walking around the corpse filled rooms or seeing demons surrounding monuments to a greater superior being, blend with the non-stop weapon changing action and the 90’s dumb ‘’coolness’’ so well it still surprises me; a game that at the end of each chapter presents you with a overly stupid and cheesy ending text and basically makes you lose all your progress but still manages to be so fantastic and have so many more serious moments within gameplay, it’s a game unlike any other.

DOOM shys away from perfection: bosses feel unbalanced, like they Cyberdemon pretty much one-shoting you even at ‘’Hurt me plenty’’ difficulty, and even anti-climactic, like the final boss; some secrets feel too hidden and I think the backtracking, while mostly done excellently, in the final levels is too much and some of the exists should have been a bit clearer, and yet, despite this few gripes, I only walk away from this experience feeling a great sense of joy; DOOM is amazing, dumb in all the right ways and masterfully designed, everyone involved felt for this nothing but a great passion and work, and that it’s made clear through each pixel of this hellish lands. Such confidence emanates from this game that in a lot of ways, it feels like they already wanted to make a DOOM 2 in the future, and I only applaud them for it. Here I am, 30 years later, and having enjoyed this game as if it came out yesterday; Doom is indeed eternal, and even if some may not enjoy it, I think everyone should be compelled to at least try it. This is one of those games which I think everyone will feel completely differently towards, love it for different reasons, hate it for different reasons; maybe everything that has to be said about has already been told, but shouldn’t stop anyone from writing their own piece, from talking about it as if it was 1993 again. The magic of some games should forever relished, talked about, hell, some more flawed games also deserve discourse around them, both positive and negative. Because when everything is truly said, then there’s not much room for enjoyment or surprises, and those are the only things I felt during my playtime in the lunar bases and hell. What a Big Fucking Great Time…

And also, if it just so happens that today it’s also your birthday or it is at the time you are reading this… then happy birthday, and stay safe!

DOOM is phenomenal. ID software team really created the Fast FPS genre with this one. This is not worth understating. The only other game that came close to what this game was doing was Wolfenstien-3D. It only takes a few minutes of play to recognize just how sluggish it is. No title had this degree of 1st person haptic feedback by this point in history¹.

I love this one and I could gush about why in an endless multitude of ways. I could go for the comparative approach by looking at how this game does Fast FPS combat better than any game after it. How effective it is in creating atmosphere without relying on thick shadows and darkness (DOOM 2 really drops the ball here). I want to keep things simple though, so I'll just focus on this: DOOM solved the Door Problem of combat design before the genre was even the cashcow we know it as today. If you're unfamiliar with the Door Problem its quite simple: You as the player instead of entering an aggressive and dynamic room back off using the door as a shield with which to leash enemies, simplifying the dynamic within you control often in ways that rob the fiction of its bite.

Andrew Yoder has a great article that covers this phenomenon here . It's a fantastic read just in general if you have a chance but I want to pull 2 main excerpts. For one he notes that the Door Problem is not actually about the door, as he puts it "the door itself isn’t the problem. The problem is the relationship between these two spaces, a problem that the player experiences when crossing the threshold, which is often a door."

He also makes a much bolder claim which is that FPS combat has almost nothing to do with the gratification of violence from ballistic combat but instead is a complex game of territory control as he states

"Building a level for a classic shooter is not about killing scary monsters with cool guns, though this is part of their appeal. A classic shooter level also isn’t about its sequence of locks and keys. These are both means to an end, and that end is map control. As the player moves through a level, they are taking territory from their enemy and locking the level into a solved state."

So then how does DOOM solve this problem you might be wondering? It does this I believe in a couple ways. For one the weakest enemies, the Zombiemen and Shotgun Guy's have hitscan. What that means is there is no ballistic firing, these dude take a second to see if your in view, do their gun animation and instantly hit. So standing in place near a doorway means that these guys will hurt you, its not 'safe'.

On top of this you have the fact that if you try to escape to dispatch from a corner the 'Pinkies' which only do melee damage can cornor you and pummel you to death. This means that running around like a rabbit in an occupied zone is often actually safer than hiding. In part because of the fact enemies can hurt each other with projectiles causing infighting. You are rewarded for getting into the action rather than avoiding it.

The one other factor that raises the combat stakes is how bizarre enemy movement patterns are. In most contemporary shooter the enemies will walk in a straight line towards the player but in DOOM they do a zigzag and functionally wander in the players direction. This may seem bizarre at first glance but is justified by the demonic possession aspect in the narrative. This is crucial because if they were actually humans this pathing would be nonsensical. Regardless of their impressive symbolic justification for the unique movement patterns, when you actually play it it means you're always having to adjust your aim and be on your toes. Moving while shooting allows you not to have to move your retical as much. Precision is often best while moving as strange as it seems. This is yet another way in which the Door Problem is rebuffed, having to constantly adjust your aim when standing in one place is more ironically taxing than running around.

A lot of why this works is because there are no actual corridor levels in DOOM, every map has a reasonable open space for the combat encounters with the exception of some hallway sections in Map E2M6, "HALLS OF THE DAMNED". This is because the enemy pathing doesnt actually deal with hallways well, often getting stuck or confused. Thus the levels in DOOM are open and inviting allowing for players to dash around and get their bearings. Swapping weapons and planning their approach. It can not be understated enough that I think almost all the Maps in DOOM are fun to play on simply for the reason alone. I'm actually quite partial towards the later 2 episodes because of their wideness in comparison to some of the romero maps in episode 1 which feel claustrophobic and often require you to fetch keys.

In my mind this is what makes doom work and worth actually playing through and thinking about. This is not to say that there are no moments where hiding behind a door is the right call, but it no longer becomes the dominant strategy. It becomes another strategic tool in your wide arsenal.

With all that said I agree entirely with HPE's post on DOOM in both what it focuses on as its strength and the idea that 'Pistol Start' is the way to go. Pistol Start is where you die at the beginning of the level to only set you with 50 pistol bullets and none of the other guns or ammo. What this does is cause you to risk further into the map for resources and 'feel' out the level. On that point I played this game around the 2nd Episode in a very extreme 'purist' fashion: Ultra Violence difficulty, almost no saves, and pistol start. I played it like this my first ever play through of it and it greatly enhanced my play through of the game and appreciation of the artistic and novel qualities each map had for me. See, by this point Save Scumming would have been a relatively novel concept to the point that people may not have used it much beyond saving their point so they could come back later. Save Scumming started happening with point and click games which by this point had not been so profoundly popular yet. SCUMM only had the first 2 Monkey Island game by this point which didn't have a death mechanic anyway. Meanwhile the most applicable example of the King's Quest games were made up to Kings Quest 4 by this point, but the demographic for those games was not particularly the demographic for DOOM. My mom played King's Quest, she did not play DOOM. Point is most people were still playing No Save games so the prospect that you could leverage the save functions to create a new Door Problem via temporal trickery hadn't been established yet.

I mention this not to get into a rancid difficulty argument but instead to say that yes, in a contemporary context after the boom of save state emulation and anti death set back nueroticism a biased interface to save every 3 minutes and reload if you die is obviously going to trivialize DOOM. We all know how to play FPS games by this point, we don't need to make a game like this even more easier for ourselves. You will take out what you put in with this one. Play on at least the Pain difficulty and dont save often. Let yourself die sometimes and restart the map! Sometimes friction is good for you, it forces you to be more engaged with the system. DOOM taught me that and did it in the best way possible.

There is a lot of other factors I particularly enjoy about DOOM, I love the fact you can see your character portrait in the HUD, an alienation that later FPS games would introduce. I love how 'strafing' become this unique movement function that feels so satisfying. The horizontal mouse movement and QWE propulsion feels SO much nicer than the normal WASD layout I've become too accustomed to, it also means I can hit the number buttons easily. There are about 100 small little details like this I find deeply satisfying, but I wanted to hone on that 1 reason you should want to try and respect DOOM: It literally solved the Door Problem this early on.

I feel like I should just tell you I wrote this entire thought in a fevered and smiling state. DOOM really did it so well. I wont lie, this game really does bring out my happy Boomer side :D

Sidenote: I reccomend playing a sourceport of DOOM, im particular Chocolate DOOM. Steam DOOM is fine but has some really irritating visual additions. Do not play any version of DOOM with vertical aim, it cant be trusted.

As for the rest, Surf on!

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1. I would understand if you don't believe me here. Surely there was an action shooter by this point that did what DOOM did? No there wasnt. Watch Errant Signal's Children of DOOM series if you dont believe me. This is by all accounts one of the first First Person Action games but absolutely the first shooter of its kind. Nothing else was doing this. It's a technological marvel. The fact the backgrounds and enemies look stunning as you run around is absolutely astonishing.

And on the 7th day, god gave us the resources to make sure doom was on every single thing with a screen and buttons because he’s just chill like that.

Doom definitely lives in one of those sorts of times where it has become so respected, some people just can’t live without it. It stands alongside games like final fantasy VII, Super Mario bros., and Tetris to become one of the most beloved titles of all time, a title that wouldn’t have had such a sick ass name of it wasn’t for Ethan Hunt from mission impossible himself. It’s certainly the game that truly coined the term first person shooter, and a game that has inspired countless after it.

You play as doom guy (or doom slayer or whatever the hell you want to call him) as he is posted on Mars and is forced to fight off a bunch of demons. It has a bit more to it but I can’t really be bothered to get into it. The game consists of 3 episodes, and an extra fourth episode, which are filled with simple levels with enemies and secrets to find and shoot.

Gameplay is pretty simple but it makes sense. You go around these simple maps, hunting down aliens and finding keys to open up new areas until eventually you make your way to the end. It’s pretty simple honestly but it definitely set the staple for how other fps games would work and build off it. They had quite little to work with so it makes sense why it seems so minimal. The music also works well with the levels. Some of it makes it seem so liminal and I think it works wonders with what the plot is trying to go for and meshes so well. My only complaint would probably be the lack of enemy and level variety. Most of it seems very similar and it kind of lowers it for me. It’s still a good game but it just slightly misses that variety that could’ve made it excellent.

So does doom still hold up? Surprisingly yes. It’s still an excellent precursor to most fps games and can still be enjoyed today. There are a few parts that stop it from being a masterpiece in my eyes, but it’s still a really solid game.

Good gameplay, excellent ambience, decent weapons, them bosses…

Could really use less confusing level design, particularly in episode 3, but it's insane how well this aged for one of the earliest FPS games released. Definitely as good as people say. It makes you wonder if the team working on this knew at the time that it would be essentially medium-defining for decades to come.

This has a lot of really fucking funny ports out there. Maybe I'll give a few a shot some day or another, purely for kicks. I think I've joked with friends about the 32x version's insanely ass soundtrack for years now.

After recently playing through a string of games I felt mostly lukewarm about, it's a fantastic feeling to revisit a game from my younger days that actually felt better now than when I first played it. (granted, that's mostly because I was a wuss when I was young and only played with cheats, but that's neither here nor there.)

I decided to go in for the authentic experience, eschewing the standard WASD/mouselook scheme and using the original keyboard controls, playing on the normal difficulty (Hurt Me Plenty). While it took a while to get used to and circle-strafing felt very stiff, it felt fantastic to experience the game as it was balanced for. I spent a fair bit of time on a knife-edge on the brink of death but the game never felt unfair (until the bonus chapter).

The beauty of this game lies in how it can suck anybody in and give you a viscerally satisfying experience no matter your skill level. I spent much of my run moving cautiously and conservatively while trying to kite enemies; an expert player would engage aggressively and blow through the levels with a time-attack approach. Both extremes are just as viable and just as satisfying thanks to some of the best level design I've seen in FPSs regardless of age.

With only brief text interludes between chapters, the game still manages to tell a story through its in-game details; the architecture becomes less mechanical and more organic as you descend further into Hell, and the dread you feel as you see the dead Hell Barons at the beginning of a certain level is one of the most iconic moments in all of gaming for me.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the soundtrack, which is both amazing as well as 100% suitable for the game's tone. One very small quibble with the soundtrack is how often they fall back onto the same chord progression. Fun activity: try to see how many tracks you can sing the Adam West Batman theme to. The answer: most of them.

This review is so gushy because there's so much good about the game. The secrets are rarely completely obtuse, but are so well-hidden and thought out that I missed out quite a few of them despite having played it before. And it seems the developers really thought of everything: you automatically switch to another weapon if you run out of ammo during a firefight, but the game is programmed to never auto-switch you to the rocket launcher so you won't accidentally blow yourself up. The amount of detail and thought put into every single aspect of this game was unmatched at the time, and I'd put this near the top of any list of games that everyone should experience at least once.

Slightly exposing my age here, but Doom 1 is the first game I’m reviewing that out-ages me. I knew going in it had a reputation of being the first person shooter in a pre-Half Life world & that intrigued me whether this reputation was overstated looking through a current day lens or it has aged like wine.

To probably not many people’s shock - this game definitely is on “Age like wine” side of things. For somebody who grew up with fully 3D shooters, Doom 1 is without a doubt a more primitive presentation compared to later games in the same genre, but during my playtime I didn’t feel its simplification was much of a hindrance. You cannot aim directly where you want, but the hitbox still is quite generous to make up for this.

…And that’s really my only thing that took me a bit of time to get used to, but otherwise Doom 1 holds up fantastically & there’s a ton to like. The levels are sprawling & generally really well designed - filled with lots of hidden secrets that generally are worth trying to find if you’re willing to go for some extra challenge. Gameplay is superb, it just feels punchy/intense & does a great job supporting wanting to dive head first into your enemies instead of being overly cautious. Guns are varied, enemy variety is solid, etc.

Heck I’ll also mention another thing that really caught me off guard in a positive way. I had never heard before going into Doom 1 that enemy infighting was a thing, so that really surprised me! It makes the game feel alive that enemies also react/take eachother out on occasion. Even if it wasn't a super common occurrence it really put a smile on my face the odd times it happened.

If I had to give 1 complaint though it probably would be later levels become a bit too infested with enemies. Not to an outrageous degree, but for me it was just slightly noticeable where I started questioning if it was becoming excessive. Though otherwise I can definitely wholeheartedly recommend Doom 1. Might be a 31 year old game by now, but damn is it a great time even nowadays.

When I first gave this a shot many years ago, I felt very indifferent about it. For people who know me, it's no secret that a lot of the older FPS games I've played tend to get me motion sick. It may be a result of low FOV or low-res graphics. It just depends on the game, really. DOOM made me nauseous with its mix of pixelated graphics (which were no doubt impressive for its time), and maze-like level design that had me wanting to projectile vomit as I turned the same corner for the 10th time, completely lost.

Little did my dumbass younger self know, the game has a map! I recently decided to give this another shot, and after switching to a 4:3 aspect ratio and learning of said map, I was off, and I could not stop. Something about this game just works in a way that not even the 2016 reboot did for me (which I loved). I already knew just how influential this game was for the FPS genre, but I didn't really get it until now. Absolute peak level design, and with satisfyingly simple gameplay. Using the shotgun for most of my first run was pure ecstasy. These shotgun blasts felt somehow punchier and more satisfying than using any weapon in the modern DOOM games. I can already see myself replaying this every once in a while for funsies while trying new loadouts and hunting for more secrets.

It's raw, it's unhinged, it's freakin' DOOM, baby!

The Shores of Hell > Knee-Deep in the Dead > Inferno

Starting from the oppresive and cold facilities of Mars before everything takes clear form as the body horror-esque nightmares of hell paints the walls and floors that we navigate, it's the ultimate power fantasy.
Not only a great actioner, but also very uncomfortable in its progression and occacionally anxious when it gets closer to the horror of the concept. Looking at the lamented souls and visceras of our fallen allies complemented with the carnage that we produce creates a sort of unpleasantness that (intentional or not) tells us the kind of character we are making in the process. We are as much fighting evil as we are becoming one with it. And wether by lack of vision (the darkness in some sections of "The Shores of Hell" that channel Ridley Scott's Alien) or the direct result of faicing flesh and metal as one manifestation of the militaristic desire of being the savior of the universe, one thing is clear to me: the demented face of Doomguy pleased after finding another powerful weapon is my sleep paralysis demon.

DOOM owns.

i am tempted to say it rips. that, it rips and tears. but i think what makes DOOM own is less the adolescent hell-ish ultra violence that it peddles on the surface and more the artisan tech pulsing underneath, its supersonic gameplay and the increasingly complex, Escherian level design.

i don't think i've ever been wowed by a game on a technical level like this before. after the first shareware episode (i played all three episodes plus thy flesh consumed and then Romero's Sigil wad) i ended up turning God Mode on so I could vibe with the game and take in everything DOOM had to offer beyond killing demons because the levels, children. my god - the levels. the ones where the lights flicker on and off? mmmMmmm. i played this because it's a shooter but its charms lie just as much in exploration and puzzles and there is as much satisfaction finding your path forward as there is in blasting an imp with a shotgun (i turned on the give me everything cheat too and played the 90% of the game with the shotgun, maybe gaming's ultimate weapon?). i was expecting to find DNA in DOOM linking to future FPSs but playing DOOM is like seeing behind the curtain of every modern video game and glimpsing the super secret code behind there that's running every single one of them. there's halo, call of duty and fortnite in there. but also GTA and resident evil and some half-life and metal gear solid and A LOT of dark souls. in fact it's basically just dark souls with guns. if i were playing without cheats i could see the same tension at play in Souls where not only do you have to register how to defeat and bypass each enemy but you're also marrying that to the other side of your brain that's trying to memorise and map complex levels and the way out/forward.

i am reading masters of doom and i don't think i really needed to to understand that DOOM was a game made by people who subsisted off pizza, soda and various Metallica and Dokken cassette tapes. the game just oozes that vibe. but reading that book enlightens me to the idea that john romero and john carmack were the doomguy for real. their shotguns were computers and their demons were innovation. id software basically invented the modern video game. the question, "what's the citizen kane of games?" is such a stupid and useless one but the answer is def DOOM, because like citizen kane DOOM is a modern technical marvel made by some brash dudes in their early 20s that most people today are sick of hearing about. but here we are. DOOM owns.