How cheerful and fun it still feels! I'm really surprised how id Software in 1994 not only literally created the genre, but also immediately gave it just a reference lesson in level design, which is the first chapter. In the second and third they start to experiment and the results vary, but it is still very high quality, very easy to understand at first and quite difficult towards the end. Small details like the swinging of weapons when walking, the face of the main character at the bottom of the screen, secrets in levels that often trick you at the same time, or interesting design solutions so easily raise the cult status of this game years later. Did Carmack, Romero and company know that they were creating such a cult project then? I don’t know if there is an exact answer to this question, but I think that they definitely knew that dynamically destroying demons with a lot of blood and a cheerful soundtrack would be a fun experience. And in this they were absolutely right.

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.

I've played through Doom (and more specifically, Knee-Deep in the Dead- the other two chapters are a lot more varied in quality) more times than I can even count, and every time the timelessness and slickness of it surprises me. The movement is great, the level design is mostly excellent and the soundtrack is phenomenal. Suspense, Sign of Evil, I Sawed the Demons, Nobody Told Me about ID- the list of great Doom tracks is pretty much just an OST list. It's an all-timer.

Early, influential games don't always hold up. I LOVE the first Resident Evil, but the door animations and fixed camera angles haven't aged great- I don't mind them personally but they're a huge turn-off for most people, which is fair. The first Zelda game, the first Metroid game, the first Devil May Cry, all were very influential for their respective genres but none of them hold up all that well. Doom does. It's timeless in a way that even other all-time greats like Ocarina of Time aren't. Just phenomenal all-round, and I can't wait to play it for the thousandth time in a couple of days.