As someone who loves FPS games in general (or tries to, despite my right wrist disagreeing with it sometimes), I felt like I should play this eventually. I just never got around to it, but I figured it 30-year anniversary was the perfect time to hop on. The original version of DOOM released like 6 months after I was born, too.

Level design can be annoying, and I've never fucked too heavily with old ass FPS because I like actually aiming at what I want to shoot instead of just shooting in the general direction of enemies, but it was a pretty fun game nonetheless.

Game's surprisingly easy most of the time, too, save a few spikes (dark areas with the mostly-invisible enemies are pretty cheeky). But Episode 4 sure was some shit in that first stage...

Anyway, if they hordes of Hell didn't wanna get fucking owned, they shouldn't have stockpilled so many shotguns.

(IMPORTANT NOTE: This is a review for the extra chapter introduced in The Ultimate Doom: Thy Flesh Consumed. If you want to read my opinions on the base game and my in-depth thoughts on the original three episodes, you can check my review here. )

''Hey, remember how for Doom we made a really cool artwork that manages to represent the game and look quite good?''

''Yeah, why?''

''What if, and hear me out on this, for The Ultimate Doom... we put a funny looking smiling demon?''


And that's the story of how someone made the single best decision in the entirety of ID Software's existence.

Before I even played DOOM, one statement that was echoed a lot by people when talking about and even some friends of mine was how the only really good episode was the first one, ''Knee-Deep in the Dead'', and the next two, ‘’The Shores of Hell’’ and ‘’Inferno’’, where kind a bit of a downgrade at best and a dip in quality at worst, and after beating the game myself, while that's a sentiment I'm totally able to understand, it's not one that I share at all. ''Knee-Deep in the Dead'' is indeed an outstanding first chapter, it doesn’t stop at simply establishing the basis for the rest of the game, it also goes above and beyond and delivers some spectacular level design; I totally get the love for it, specially since it’s probably the chapter that the most people have played, but I just can’t get enough of both ‘’The Shores of Hell’’ and ‘’Inferno’’, the former explores what the first episode set and expands on it in brand new interesting ways, and the latter experiments with brand new ideas that result in really challenging and interesting maps. The only thing I can really say that the two last chapters fail in comparison to the first is both the feeling of surprise (which is kind of inevitable) and the bosses (turns out that two Hell Barons are way better final bosses that one that can one-shot you and the giant enemy spider), because otherwise they are all on par when it comes to greatness. So, suffices to say that after finishing the game, I really wouldn’t have any complains if there was even more of it, and when I realized that The Ultimate Doom included a totally brand new episode, let’s just say… I acted appropriately…


Thy Flesh Consumed didn’t need to exist, the original game was perfectly fine on its own and while of course more of it is always fine, that necessity was kinda filled by Doom II, which came out just a year after the original, but still, they did it, yet another year after, the re-release under the ‘’Ultimate’’ banner included a brand new 9-map episode, and it set in being one and one thing only: both a way to connect better DOOM with Doom II and to give players harder, more challenging almost purely combat focused levels. On paper, that’s a fire idea, not only it experiments on yet another layer that DOOM’s formula can have, not only it's a really nice addition to an otherwise two-year old game that gives it a bit more life as it finally released on a physical retail format, but also, if it had the same level quality as the three original chapters, we could be witnessing a even greater package that was already excellent… but you probably can imagine where I’m going with all this…



Thy Flesh Consumed is, for all intends and purposes, competent, and I wanna make that clear; it doesn’t devaluate the overall game by any stretch of the imagination and having even more content is nothing to scoff at, but still… I cannot but wish it tried to not do more, but that it made things differently. As I said, it’s a collection of more challenging maps, and it’s not like DOOM was a walk in the park in the first place, but the idea of more difficult level is a prospect that I think few would dislike, and my problem isn’t that at it’s basis it’s pretty much just that, but rather the execution. The first three maps are hell on earth (pun VERY intended), while in this episode you get your fulll arsenal much sooner than in any previous part, it’s still takes some time for you to be fully arm, double if you miss some secrets, and when in the first time, at which point you’ll only have the shotgun and the gatling and very little ammo, you get thrown hordes upon hordes of Imps, Pinkies, Specters and even a Hell Baron thrown in for good measure.. you might start seeing the problem. That alongside the incredibly claustrophobic level design, filled to the brim with narrow passages and poison pits, and you get a map that’s way more frustrating than anything else, which it’s a sentiment that also goes for M2 and M3.Things do get better M4 onwards, some challenges are very interesting and there are segments here and there can be fun… but that’s only a select few. Overall, I just get this overall feeling of… apathy, nothing on these maps really speaks to me aside of those few stellar moments of pure satisfaction, and in some aspects it just feels like they went ‘’Random bullshit, go!’’ with the enemy placement, none feels particular inspired; it’s as if the ingenuity of the first game was almost completely gone, like they forgot why they decided to do certain things or to not include certain stuff, ‘cause even if M4 to M8 aren’t as consistently tedious as the previously three maps, the dark maze full of invisible pinkies, rooms full of enemies opening on your back and the entire second half of M6… well, made me react appropriately..

It’s just a bunch weird decisions that sometimes borderline the absurd, like, the final boss on this is even more anticlimactic and weird than the final boss of the original, which it’s kind of an accomplishment considering they are the same boss! And do you know the worst part? That the only reason I’m able to say all of this and be this flabbergasted is because not only the three previous episodes are fantastic, but because I still had my fun with this collection of maps; this new addition really has some fun moments and surprises, but I can’t say in good conscience it was an experience I’d be glad to go back to: it is done, I’m fine with it, but I very much doubt I’ll be revisiting it. It’s fine to ask for perfection on my end, it’s fine to try to make some extremely impressive challenges, it’s even fine to do a bit of trolling to the player if you want! But ''Thy Flesh Consumed'' crosses certain lines that do not make it ‘’the hardest DOOM experience, but just the more tedious one.

It’s a shame that this will be now the black sheep of the episodes for me, ‘cause I really, REALLY wanted to love it as hard as I love the rest of the game, but in the end, too many things stopped it from achieving that level of greatness, at least for me. But hey, it’s very much still DOOM, and I at least got to partially avenge Daisy, so it was all worth it.

There is one more thing I have yet to do before I’m fully done with the original DOOM, one last rodeo brought by one of the makers of the game ,but for now, I just have one last thing to say… PLEASE ID Software do the funny demon in the cover more PLEASE; you kinda did it with Doom 3 ’s expansion and Doom VR, but still, I need MORE!

The video game of all time. Does a great job of acclimating you to its verbs and controls. Movement feels fantastic (played on KB). Guns feel great.

Level design really falls off after E1 (Romero's levels). E2 was still mostly a good time, but E3 really lost me. Have yet to play E4.

Played on a 60% KB, so couldn't properly circle strafe without rebinding some keys, but that's really only necessary for the Cyberdemon fight on E2M8.

All of the weapons are fun and feel good and have their place, and finding newer, bigger guns that you don't have was such enjoyable progression, BUT.

I truly believe that somewhere up in heaven there is a perfect version of this game where you only use the shotgun.

When we were so young, playing Doom all night long, tied our hearts together, and chose the left hand path~

It's hard to put into words just what this game did for the world. It spawned one of the most important genres in gaming history, brought about a new wave of video game violence, and redefined video games as something the whole world should pay attention to. For god's sake, it's DOOM, and even with it's age, dated mechanics, and overall archaic nature, I can't help but still love it.

The variety of enemies in Doom is minimal, but every single one is beyond iconic, and more importantly, fun to take down. Everything from Zombiemen to Cyberdemons require their own strategy and plan to take down efficiently, and it never gets old, in no small part thanks to the ever-iconic weapon selection. The shotgun, chainsaw, plasma rifle, rocket launcher, and of course the BFG, are all a blast to use from start to finish, but never left me feeling overpowered. The challenge ramped up slowly but surely, and nothing ever felt unfair. Challenging, sure, but completely fair, and even when it felt overwhelming, that kickass metal MIDI soundtrack kept me going through it all.

Doom is maybe the most important game ever made. But if you put that legacy aside, and treat it for what it is, does it still hold up? In my mind, yes, absolutely.

Obey is an action, obedience a state of being, come and join us to see, the video game violence~

Still holds up. Amazingly, there's a certain space DOOM and its first sequel occupy that can never be replaced, no matter how many DOOM clones have been released since.

DOOM is one of the most quintessential video games, and quaint as it might seem in the face of how FPSes have grown from it, there's a reason why you'd want to try running DOOM on everything. There's just something intrinsically satisfying to its high-octane action, mowing down the legions of the damned with a trusty shotgun. DOOM's one of those few games where I basically expect anyone would have a good time playing it (assuming you don't take issue with the gore and demons, naturally).

I go back and forth on whether I prefer the first or second game. I generally side with the first, more symbolically to represent what DOOM was and is as a cultural phenomenon. But there are other reasons to prefer the first game, too. There's a stronger sense of pacing here, since DOOM still wants you to work for your power trip. It says a lot that the BFG 9000 - maybe the most likely thing you'd know about DOOM if you haven't played it - is tucked away in 'Inferno', the base game's final campaign. Levels are generally more atmospheric and based on settings, which gives more of a sense of place - it's fun to see the environment shift from clear sci-fi trappings on the Phobos base to the nightmarish Hell, decorated in skin and bones. This is all helped with the intermission screens; it's very video game-y, but I always love tracking progress on overworld maps. And for as much fun as the levels get in DOOM II, nothing hits as hard as the 'Tower of Babel' and your first run-in with the terrible Cyberdemon.

I don't love the Spider Mastermind, admittedly. She always feels like a step down from the Cyberdemon. In a way I think it's even cooler that the Cyberdemon is Vader to the Spider Mastermind's Palpatine, but I dunno - dodging projectile rockets feels like more of a test of player skill than dodging hitscan chainguns.

Since this review is about Ultimate DOOM, specifically, I should comment on 'Thy Flesh Consumed'. It's okay; you can tell this was made after DOOM II, since the high-concept levels feel more in line with the sequel than with this game. I think reusing the Cyberdemon here dilutes the effect of it in 'Tower of Babel', particularly the jumpscare Cyberdemon in 'Perfect Hatred'. Speaking of - and I recongize this is more on me than anyone else, but it bears mention - 'Perfect Hatred' was when I learned you could run in DOOM, since that skill had never been required to that point. Sort of a frustrating moment. But heck, I'll never say no to more DOOM.