Back in the mid 90's, my brothers and I used to stay over at our dad's condo/personal office when he was busy with work but still wanted to have us around. He had a desktop computer there apart from his work laptop, and we were allowed to play whatever games were on it. For most of those days, we would just play Solitaire and Minesweeper. When my ultra conservative Christian parents weren't around though, we'd load up Doom.
It was scary for us 6, 7, and 8-year old boys, the way those green-haired, gun-toting zombie soldiers and spiked, red-eyed imps would appear as doors opened and get right up to our faces before murdering us, and that without warning, Our dad would walk in on us playing this hellish thing Satan handcrafted to possess naive children.
The only way my brothers and I managed to make any sort of progress without shitting ourselves was by typing in that magic combination of letters: iddqd. That secret incantation that gave angry white dude at the bottom center of the screen glowing yellow eyes made us believe that we could be gods.
It took another 20+ years for that intoxicating feeling of forbidden power to resurface with a first-person shooter, and of course it had to be DOOM.
It's not fair, really, how you, as the Doomguy aka "the Doomslayer", can run through every enemy with almost reckless fury. These demons from literal Hell take all the time to set up ambushes via portals and swarm you with their claws and teeth and fireballs and infernal energy beams, and you just get right up in their face to rip and tear them in half with your bare hands, stealing their life essence to refuel your engine of destruction.
Sometimes, you use their own deadly appendages on them. Other times, you use a chainsaw to do the ripping and tearing. They burst into a fountain of bullets and rockets and plasma energy and all sorts of goodies when you do that. Whichever way, you keep barrelling through. You're unstoppable.
The only thing that stopped me was the desire to find every secret. It's devilish how they're hidden in plain sight, the markers in stark relief on the map, pointing exactly where they are.
These levels are labyrinthine, too. It's a gift to uncover them all, as you only grow even stronger with every upgrade point and early weapon discovery. I'm not supposed to have this laser cannon right now! I'm getting away with something again.
It could have been mean-spirited, too, all this ultraviolence. But no, the absurdity of reverential demonic speech and imagery mixed with straight-faced corporate spirit, the jetpack djent metal soundtrack, and that shotgun cock as exclamation point to the intro and starting pistol for the rest of the game only leave me with a shit-eating grin on my face.
DOOM is maniacally laughing with childish glee as you lay waste to everything. DOOM is power fantasy at its purest.
It was scary for us 6, 7, and 8-year old boys, the way those green-haired, gun-toting zombie soldiers and spiked, red-eyed imps would appear as doors opened and get right up to our faces before murdering us, and that without warning, Our dad would walk in on us playing this hellish thing Satan handcrafted to possess naive children.
The only way my brothers and I managed to make any sort of progress without shitting ourselves was by typing in that magic combination of letters: iddqd. That secret incantation that gave angry white dude at the bottom center of the screen glowing yellow eyes made us believe that we could be gods.
It took another 20+ years for that intoxicating feeling of forbidden power to resurface with a first-person shooter, and of course it had to be DOOM.
It's not fair, really, how you, as the Doomguy aka "the Doomslayer", can run through every enemy with almost reckless fury. These demons from literal Hell take all the time to set up ambushes via portals and swarm you with their claws and teeth and fireballs and infernal energy beams, and you just get right up in their face to rip and tear them in half with your bare hands, stealing their life essence to refuel your engine of destruction.
Sometimes, you use their own deadly appendages on them. Other times, you use a chainsaw to do the ripping and tearing. They burst into a fountain of bullets and rockets and plasma energy and all sorts of goodies when you do that. Whichever way, you keep barrelling through. You're unstoppable.
The only thing that stopped me was the desire to find every secret. It's devilish how they're hidden in plain sight, the markers in stark relief on the map, pointing exactly where they are.
These levels are labyrinthine, too. It's a gift to uncover them all, as you only grow even stronger with every upgrade point and early weapon discovery. I'm not supposed to have this laser cannon right now! I'm getting away with something again.
It could have been mean-spirited, too, all this ultraviolence. But no, the absurdity of reverential demonic speech and imagery mixed with straight-faced corporate spirit, the jetpack djent metal soundtrack, and that shotgun cock as exclamation point to the intro and starting pistol for the rest of the game only leave me with a shit-eating grin on my face.
DOOM is maniacally laughing with childish glee as you lay waste to everything. DOOM is power fantasy at its purest.