Doom

THE BAD:
Bad???

SUMMARY:
What is there to say about this game? This is really the game that started it all off. Without this we probably wouldn’t have Unreal Tournament or Halo. There was Castle Wolfenstein before this, but Doom built upon that and this game was so incredibly popular and in a move of marketing genius, the first 8 levels (and one secret level) were free to the world on the Internet. This meant that millions of people got to play it and it was probably one of the best decisions ID ever made. People were so incredibly impressed by the game that when the full version was released in the shops people snapped it up pretty damn quickly.

I remember none of that as I was only 8 at the time, I merely read up on how that ID couldn’t actually log onto their server the next day after releasing the shareware version because so many people had logged on to get the game that their servers simply couldn’t handle the demand. They probably weren’t expecting such a response for the game. By today’s standards the game is pretty crude, but it is the game that set it all off and paved the way for Halo. Some people don’t realise just how important this game was and are fairly ignorant of it. I once heard a boy criticise the graphics of the game, plainly he didn’t realise when this game was made.

The story of the game is that Earth has been invaded by aliens and the marine forces dispatched to kill them have all been killed and you are the only one left. It’s all up to you to repel this invasion single handedly and you only have a basic pistol to start the game off. As far as the enemies go you start off with people you can kill in a few pistol hits up to the hugely powerful Cyberdemon. There is no ability to jump in this game, meaning a ledge above knee height can stop you in your tracks. So areas which you could get into by merely lifting your leg are out of reach in this game.

You start off with a pistol, but the other weapons are a Chainsaw, Shotgun, Chain gun, Rocket Launcher, Plasma Rifle and the BFG. (Big Freakin’ Gun – clean version of the name) The shotgun is the gun I used most in this game, it’s deadly at short range but useless at long range. When coming against large numbers of enemies or single powerful ones I’d swap to something bigger like a rocket launcher. The BFG is the legendary gun form this game and fired a large green ball. Upon impact it decimated anyone within it’s large impact radius. It did take up 40 of your plasma ammo to use, but it was impressive and not many people could stand up after taking that one. The chainsaw was something to use in times of low ammunition and you could even punch people. Powerful as you are, your fist was pretty weak in the grand scheme of things.

The first enemies you would encounter were weak infantry using your first few weapons. These guys could be dispatched in a shotgun blast or two if you were inaccurate. Soon you would start coming across Imps and Demons who took a bit more punishment. Moving up the hierarchy you have Cocademons who were big, red floating things that launched small fireballs at you. Then you’ve got Hell Knights who took 3-4 rockets to dispatch and threw green balls of plasma at you. There are Arachnatrons who fired green balls of plasma at you rapid-fire style and took a few rockets to silence. There are a couple of others but then you move up to the Spider Mastermind who was a much larger version of the Arachnatrons but had a large Chain gun and could kill you easily at short range. Long range fighting was the key to beating him. And then there’s the Cyberdemon. A huge hulking brute with a deadly rocket launcher for an arm. He was hugely tall so you couldn’t miss him and it took several BFG shots to down him or over 40 hits from the rocket launcher. You would encounter him in the Tower of Babel level which was a massive level where you could hide behind pillars which came in very handy.

There are items to pick up as well. There’s the usual health and ammunition. There are also health viles which you can pick up. These give you five points of health but importantly it takes you over the normal 100 limit up to a maximum of 200. Mega Armour (which is blue) will give you 200 Armour points instantly, the green armour takes you up to 100. If you find a white sphere then pick that up as it gives you 200 health and armour instantly. The green sphere is the invincibility sphere. Your screen will go white and while it stays like that you will take no damage. So you can use this to charge head first into a bunch of enemies, or go at them with a chainsaw to save your ammo. And there are other items like maps, night vision goggles and radiation suits. The most useful one over time is the backpack though. This doubles your maximum ammunition carrying capacity and comes in very handy on later levels because you can stock up on earlier levels in preparation for later levels where you’ll be using ammo faster than you can pick it up.

If this game wasn’t challenging enough for you on the first 4 difficulty levels, the fifth one would be a challenge for anyone. Here, any enemy you killed would respawn after a short amount of time. This meant that there were unlimited numbers of enemies on every level and you couldn’t hang around because the enemies did incredible amounts of damage. Weak enemies in other difficulty levels suddenly have the firepower to down you in no time at all. Ironically, the Cyberdemon is easier to hit in this mode because he’s nearly always standing still firing at you. Of course you won’t think that if you’re on the end of one of his rockets but I don’t know anyone who was able to do this difficulty level.

One thing about this game I haven’t seen in too many others is the way the enemies interact. If one enemy should hit a different enemy accidentally while aiming at you, before you’ve hit them then that enemy will retaliate and fire back at them. This is an easy way to get some of the work done for you as enemies can spend ages fighting amongst themselves. It’s a brilliant touch because it’s like what would happen in a situation like this. I haven’t seen it in too many other games, but it’s a sublime little touch.

Again, by today’s standards this game is pretty basic and some of the younger fans of Halo probably won’t even know that this is the game that set the ball rolling. But without a doubt this was a game that revolutionised the genre. Other games would make large leaps forward in areas like online gaming and Halo managed to pull everything off almost perfectly. But Doom started it all off and no-one can really dispute that fact.

THE BAD:
Does not have the option to look up and down.

SUMMARY:
If you like shooting down zombies,imps and cacodemons,get this game.It has good graphics,good gameplay and even better skill level ratings.
From "I'm too young to die!"For *bleep*s who can't complete the first level without getting a bloody nose,to "NIGHTMARE",for those people like me,who make a pack of cyberdemons look like complete idiots.Plus there is a large variety of enemies.The multiplayer I have to say is the best part.The deathmatch is the mode I love most.There is nothing more fun than totally blowing your family members away and listening to them scream"Oh,Shit"!!!In misery.
Then there are the wads.Levels,new looks for enemies,glowing plazma,smoking rockets,new music,new sounds,you name it!

THE BAD:
Lack of storyline

SUMMARY:
When I 1st got this game way back when I was 7 (1993) the year the game came out, I was absolutely blown away! I'd never played a game like this since Wolfenstein 3D and the range of characters was awesome!

This game definately propelled the FPS genre up to where it is today. I mean you ask anyone who was old enough to play video games back then and they'll say Doom was their 1st FPS ever.

The gameplay was just awesome even though you just went around killing people and monsters and there was no real puzzle solving or storyline it was still awesome to just run around as fast as you could and kill anything in sight. It was also easy because there was only the use of the keyboard so you didn't have to aim up and down to shoot enemies.

Bottom Line: If you don't have this game or haven't played it, you shouldn't be allowed to live!!