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.

Reviewed on Feb 11, 2023


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1 year ago

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1 year ago

In case anybody is wondering my favourite map is E3M2: Slough of Despair for how chaotic the orthogonal walls are for open area combat. It's just so fun. Almost all of episode 3 is a banger tho. I'm definitely idiosyncratic for this as most people love Episode 1 and think the others are a step down, I would have to disagree. Romero did way to much Keyfetch design and the enemy combats are obviously on the easier side since its the first episode. It works but it's not my favourite.