If you have not played Doom by now, go out and buy it. Right now.
User Rating: 9.9 | The Ultimate DOOM PC
Doom is perhaps the most influential game in the past 20 years. Forget Quake or Mario 64--the game that started the 3D revolution in earnest was Doom (Wolfenstein 3-D wasn't quite the megahit that was needed to get the ball rolling), three years before either of those games. Doom was also the game that turned small independent developer Id Software into one of the best-known game developers in the world. Doom has sold on the order of 20 million copies during its nearly twelve-year history (hard to believe it's been 12 years already!) and still has countless thousands of raving, devoted fans today, With the advent of Doom source ports that allow high resolutions, colored lighting, powerful scripting, etc., mods have been made for Doom that go so far beyond the scope of the original game that they are massive works in their own right. Of course, if you want more Doom in the original idiom, there are tens of thousands of customized levels on the internet. Even today, Doom is a good-looking game. Its textures, though limited in resolution, are stylish and compellingly gritty in their appearance. A few areas of the original Doom games actually look like they could exist in real life (a quality that does not appear in Doonm 3's levels). Stylistically, Doom's military-base levels abjure the curving metal and glowy bits aesthetic of current sci-fi games for a more conventional look--walls of concrete and sheetrock, flourescent lights, and weapons that look a lot like modern weapons (the minigun and energy weapons are exceptions). The hell levels are satisfyingly grotesque and surreal, although one wonders if the design is not quite as twisted and surreal as it should've been. Overall, Doom looks great and has a few moments in the first episode where you feel like you could actually be standing there. Doom is also quite colorful, with a rich and vibrant array of colors that shame even many modern games, which have a palette of 4 trillion different shades (as opposed to Doom's 256) to work with but end up looking like black and white movies. Doom has fantastic gameplay, fast-paced and vicious like all Id games. Despite the simplistic nature of everything (kill-things-find key-kill-things-open-door-kill-things-find-other-key-kill-things-open-other-door-kill-more-things-exit level) and the utter absence of plot, it has virtually infinite replay value. The story is simple: You are a space marine sent to clear out a base on Phobos (a moon of Mars) that was overrun by demon spawn from hell. Your buddies went in while you waited outside as a sentry, and they were massacred.. Now you have to go in with your pistol, find some decent weapons, crack demon skulls, and get out alive. Doom has multiplayer, though it is rather limited (it was made in 1993, remember?). You have either cooperative mode (you and your buddies fight through hell together) or deathmatch (you and your buddies spawn in a level with no monsters and blow the bejesus out of each other). Either way, the game is limited to four players. The deathmatch especially is blindingly fast and fun and, with multiplayer source ports such as Skulltag, can be played online with an in-game server list like modern games, and in additional modes like capture the flag and team deathmatch with up to 32 players. The monsters in the game range from zombies to classical horned demons to flaming kamikaze skulls to floating cyclops heads that shoot ball lightning at you. Although none of them are very bright, they can be tough and are used en masse in many places. Nothing is more satisfying than blowing through fifty imps in the course of a few seconds. Perhaps the most memorable monster is the cyberdemon, the boss of the second episode. If you haven't played Doom, I won't spoil the surprise. It will scare the hell out of you. The sounds are excellent, and include beefy, powerful-sounding gunshots, monster roars and screams, and the like. They're all great, and will stick in your memory forever. The music is MIDI, and it is all good. The songs range from nerve-fraying metal to dark and moody orchestral pieces. Each one seems perfectly suited to the level it accompanies. A sound card with good MIDI drivers ia must. Doom can be quite difficult for people unused to playing first-person shooters, but won't pose too much of a challenge for people who have played FPS games before. The average gamer will beat Doom in a few hours, but fanatical Doom gods can do it in twenty minutes. If you want a tougher experience, play on Nightmare mode (demons shoot faster and come back to life a few seconds after you kill them), or play some of the endless variety of levels out on the Internet. Recommended for total masochists is Deus Vult, a grueling four-hour monstrosity of a level that can pit you against hundreds of man-eating creatures at a time. Overall, Doom is an unbelievably good game, quite possibly the best PC game ever. If you have not played Doom before, go out and buy it. Right now. You won't be disappointed. What's Hot: Gameplay to die for, great graphics (especially considering the game's age), amazing sounds, great music What's Not: The Doom 95 source port included with Id's Doom Collector's Edition falls way short of the free noncommercial ports available on the web Also Try: Wolfenstein 3-D, Doom II, Blake Stone/Planet Strike, Rise of the Triad
