Doom extravaganza!

To kick off The Nostalgia Binge, I am going to be doing a late Doomsday extravaganza! As of December 10th 2008, Doom became 15 years old!

I'm going to share my memories of Doom, Doom trivia, and reviews of the games themselves! Brace yourself for Doom, Doom, Doom, Doom, Doom, and more Doom!

My beginnings with Doom
1995. I was 4 years old, maybe a little young to play Doom, but my mum watched me play the shareware first and thought that I handled it well (Didn't become gun crazy, violent, didn't get scared, and I knew it was all fiction.) so that year for Christmas, I got a copy of The Ultimate Doom and Doom II: Hell on Earth! This was a landmark day in my early gaming years, as even though I enjoyed the Doom shareware, I had no idea how important a thing Doom would become to me. Every day I would spend hours playing Doom, trying to find all the secrets, learning shortcuts, and solving brand new mazes and since this was the beginning of Doom editing, new mods would stream down from the BBSes of old to my computer! This tradition has been carried on to this day. I want the time line in this post to be in order, so before I go on down memory lane, lets quickly review the first two games!

Doom 1/The Ultimate Doom review
Ah, yes. The one that started it all. The one that perfected Wolfenstein 3Ds formula and laid down the foundations of future FPS games to come. The one that still kicks the most ass. The original Doom and its 3 (4 in the updated 'Ultimate Doom' edition) episodes are some of the most addictive twitch gaming even today. While it is simple by today's standards, it still holds up as pure, mindless fun. Truly, it is hard to review the game as a whole as each episode has a different feel, so lets do a quick review of all 4 episodes!

Knee Deep in the Dead- Probably the easiest episode, but that is not really a surprise considering its the first one. It has the quickest mazes and puzzles, but its secrets are as well hidden as any other episode. This episode is memorable mostly because it was the shareware episode and paved Doom's success and still stands as the most downloaded shareware game or demo to date. It's fun, but its just the appetizer. 8.5/10

The Shores of Hell - Personally, this is my favourite episode. It's the where some of the most challenging, yet fun mazes are and it introduces to two of the most important things in Doom history, the BFG-9,000 and The Cyberdemon. While The Cyberdemon is not the main 'villain' of the game, he is truly the arch nemesis of Doomguy and no Doom game is complete without this badass bastard. The BFG-9,000 really speaks for itself; 'Big Fucking Gun!' This is the Doom guys' ultimate weapon, and is still one of the most important weapons in all of gaming history. It spouts out a big ball of plasma, kills everything, 'Nuff said. 9.0/10

Inferno - While Inferno is fun, it does push the boundaries of being fairly frustrating. Some of the mazes, while complex and challenging much like the previous episode, they are less fun and a bit more frustrating. The final boss fight also seems a bit of a push-over compared to the Cyberdemon. This foe wasn't nearly as terrifying or memorable as ol' Cybie, the only real thing that makes him worse is hes a tad deadlier with a more rapid rate of fire. This is by far my least favourite episode in the game. 7.0/10

Thy Flesh Consumed - Do not wander into this episode if you haven't played through the previous 3 to the point of contracting carpal tunnel and knowing everything there is to know to kick ass on the previous three episodes on Ultra-Violence or even Nightmare, and even then, your ass will be handed to you on a golden platter by a butler with a chainsaw who is ready to hand your ass back to you on another golden platter as soon as you reattach it. Thy Flesh Consumed is for Hardcore Doom players only. However, unless you aren't a hardcore Doom player, the difficulty is only a bonus and never feels frustrating. While they are certainly the most complex, harrowing, and dangerous levels of the game (Hello? There's a cyberdemon after the first level and 3 barons on the first!) they are very fun and constructed from the best of Dooms parts. While I still favour Shores of Hell, this is the meatiest piece and its quite filling.

9.0/10

Overall, Ultimate Doom gets a 9.5/10 and is still the cream of the Doom crop.

Doom 2: Hell on Earth Review

I'm probably going to get flak from a lot of Doom fans for saying this, but Doom II is probably my least favourite of the ID developed Doom games (This means I am excluding Doom 64, Final Doom, and Resurrection of Evil since they were only produced/endorsed by ID.). Doom II feels in many ways like an extremely long expansion pack for Doom 1, with a totally new style of levels. While the gameplay isn't much different, you still run through mazes trying to survive the forces of hell, the level design just feels different, and not as memorable. While Doom is powered by Nitrous and has action that blazes even when you get stuck in a maze, Doom II is powered by Regular gas and on rare occasion, gets a premium boost. It just feels slower. While it was easy to get lost in the original Doom, Doom II will often having you going back to find out what you did wrong to progress. In the original Doom, even if you weren't at a button or key to solve a maze, you had a window and knew where you were going. In Doom II there's a lot of retreaded ground, and some levels are just plain boring or confusing and not very much fun. That doesn't mean Doom II is a bad game, no no no. While its disappointing that there is only one new weapon, the new monsters are all memorable and classic, and when Doom II stops for a premium upgrade, it is going to wrack your nerves and give you crazy challenges that are well worth it. I give Doom II, overall, a 7.5 for lackluster level design, but its still fun even if its not as addictive or memorable.

The Following Year...
1996 was debatably a very important year for not just ID fans and their newest game, Quake which became the foundation for true 3D technology in FPS games as well as true Internet Deathmatch, but an important year for Doom fans as well. While ID was working on Quake, the Doom community began to truly hit it off. Maps became more complex, and we were even given what was possibly the first total conversion for the game, the Aliens TC. Many groups arose to develop 'megawads,' which were completely new 32 levels for Doom II. One such group was Team TNT. ID took notice of Team TNT and its megawads, TNT: Evilution and The Plutonia Experiment. John Romero approached Team TNT and ID purchased the rights to these two megawads and planned to bundle them together as Final Doom. Final Doom would be the last ID endorsed Doom game to appear on the PC for 8 years. While not a critical success, Doom fans lapped it up, including myself. When we moved to the United States, it was my first purchase within the country.

Final Doom review

Once again, Final Doom returns to episodic format, although each episode is the length of Doom 2 so this means a whopping 64 levels. I am going to review them both seperately again.

TNT: Evilution The 'easier' half of Final Doom, and thats not saying much. It's still made for the hardcore, but its definitely easier than Plutonia. This also makes it, oddly enough, the best part. As I mentioned before, Thy Flesh Consumed was a hardcore challenge but it was still incredibly fun. TNT Evilution isn't as hard as its counterpart, but its better for it in this case because it is reminicent of Thy Flesh Consumed being hard but fun, where as I can't say the same for Plutonia.. 7.5

The Plutonia Experiment: Oh. Dear. God. This episode is just frustrating. While some levels are fun, and its arguably the best episode of the ID produced games for 4 player Co-Op, it is simply not very fun alone and its extremely annoying. It pushes the limits of what a Doom wad should be in terms if difficulty, and it seems to take pride in changing that difficulty curve poorly, swapping from large sprawling levels that are boring and impossible to navigate, and levels that send out so many fucking demons that you are going to get raped and before you have time to grab a health pack, you get raped again and this time you die. That's not fun. It's hard to explain, but you can be tough as hell and be fun and you can be tough as hell and frustrating. Plutonia goes down the latter category, and is only really fun when played with a group of 4 players, and you better make sure that those four know what they are doing or you are all going to wander aimlessly for hours or get pwned. 3.5/10

Overall, I have to give Final Doom a 6.0

Restarting the engine and a new game
1997 and Doom is still a phenomenon. The game has been ported to the Super Nintendo, The Jaguar, The 32x, the Playstation, and The Saturn. Eventually, a Doom game is announced for the Nintendo 64, but its not a port. It's a whole new game, but more on it later. Once again this year was a turning point for the Doom community. While there were many programs that enhanced the Doom engine, there were no complete replacements. This all changed with the Boom engine, an enhanced Doom engine made by Team TNT. While it was still DOS Based, it actually proved to be a better alternative than the Doom 95 upgrade made by Microsoft and Monolith. It had better editing capabilities and it proved Doom's true versatility. Since the game was all packed into one file, it was not hardwired to the engine and could be made to work with any engine that supported that file. This led to the creation of the ID games archive, a place where gamers could submit their new wads and mods for the new fangled Boom engine and many new engines to come. Once again, ID was releasing a new Doom game as mentioned above, but they did not develop it as they were busy with Quake II at the time. Instead, it was developed by Midway who were responsible for porting Doom 1 & II to the Playstation in one package and subsequently porting Final Doom to the PS.

Doom 64 Review

Doom 64 uses a new version of the engine, and has all new sprites, monsters, weapons and all new levels. The most impressive additions to the engine are coloured lighting, rooms above rooms, and higher resolution/coloured sprites. The sound effects for guns and monsters were taken from their Playstation port, and the music was brand new for the game. The music is one of my first problems with the game though. While new for the N64 game, the music follows the Playstation tone of being dark and depressing. What happened to the hard rock influenced tunes of the other Doom games? While they did sometimes get a bit grating if you had to hear them repeat, they had an action influenced tone that made the game seem faster and a bit more entertaining. The gameplay in Doom 64 also seems to be slower than ever before. Taking a note from Doom II, it is running on Regular, but this time its leaded. The game is slow, depressing, and all around unpleasant. While blasting demons still is fun for awhile, you just lose motivation. Doom was absolute chaos, Doom 64 is just mediocre. Trudging through environments browner than Quake and doing repetitive, boring puzzles was just not much fun after a bit. The enemies are a mixed bag. Most of the classic Doom enemies come back, but they get an extreme makeover as well as a few new pals. The makeovers I mentioned are both good and bad. While they are all creative and 'scarier,' they lack the charm of some of the old demons. My biggest case in point is the Cacodemon. When you first fought a Cacodemon in Doom, you probably laughed and giggled at the giant flying tomato with a grin, making you a sitting duck for him to unleash his plasmic wrath on your giddy arse. In Doom 64, they are given arms with shackles and are no longer funny, grinning red balls. Once again, rather depressing. Doom 64 isn't a horrible game, but its just downright depressing, mediocre and not a ton of fun. Another shit kicker is no multiplayer of any kind; no co-op, no death match, nothing.

4.5/10

The Dry Period, Flesh, and Doom Connector

After Doom 64, all was quiet in the world of 'Official' doom games, but the community raged on. While I admit other than downloading maps, I wasn't a huge part of the community until 2001, when I discovered the wonders of Doom Connector. Engines became more and more advanced each with its own style. The Doomsday engine was a souped up version of the original engine and its limited capabilities, but with smoothing and support for 3D models and vision. zDoom was for high end scripting. The Legacy Engine was for DEHacked files and most classic maps for the original Doom engine. The upcoming zDaemon was to be an internet based version of zDoom with new game modes and weapons. However, there was a service that beat zDaemon to the punch by taking the connectivity capabilities of all existing engines and putting them online. Thus, Doom Connector was born. Doom Connector had a lobby for chat, private rooms, public rooms, all on any engine you want and any map you want. Doom Connector is a part of my fondest Doom memories. Many memorable things happened here. For one, myself and many Doom fans met John Romero himself (Yes, he was able to prove it :P) as he came on for interviews and games with the fans. Doom clans began to arise, such as the Old Fogies of Doom and many others. Me and a doped out friend nicknamed 'Flesh' decided to start our own Doom Connector clan. The Flesh Clan primarily played on the Legacy engine and focused on honing tough Doom techniques. I was also assigned to create a mod for the clan. The first wad was truly practice, it was nothing more than a weapon and enemy pack for Doom 2. However, Flesh 2 was the real deal. With the exception of when I got lazy and decided to take a level from the Goldeneye TC, Flesh 2 featured 35 new maps that all had challenging levels meant to hone our skills. 2003 came and marked a sad day for the Flesh clan. Flesh 2.5 was coming out, which was a version of Flesh 2 with all the rampant bugs ironed out, and it was even ported to the Dreamcast Doom engine. However, Flesh died of a heroine overdose before it was ready. The clan crumbled and broke, and the only members who still played on Doom Connector were me and a guy under the nickname Makeveli. We wanted to continue the legacy of Flesh even without the clan, and began work on Flesh 3, a brand new megawad. This time there would be no more ripped monsters, graphics or levels, it would all be brand new content and continue the tradition of honing hard to do tricks, skills, and a rather surreal story introduced in Flesh 2. However, the project fell apart a year later with the release of Doom 3. Makeveli became interested in the Doom 3 engine, and wanted to upgrade the project to the engine, but I just wasn't ready and so the project was disbanded and forgotten. Now let us talk about Doom 3...

Doom 3 review

I have a feeling I'm going to piss off Doom fans again, but Doom 3 is the best Doom game since the first one. Whilst yes, it is much darker, slower, than either Doom 1 or Doom 2, it was a lot funner for me. It felt like it was running on premium even during the lame scare sequences, Doom was back at its chaotic heart with a new engine. When the game took a break from classic run, gun, kill, it provided some interesting sci-fi elements for you to intake. I don't mean the story, which is basically a retread of the original Doom - Phobos and much less Hell, but I mean the base itself. The base would be rather boring and bland without the tech littered about that makes it feel real and kind of cool. It helps compell you to go on. Doom 3 is underappreciated in my opinion, and I love the game. The only real disappointments are that the multiplayer had no co-op and only allowed 4 players, and that the cyberdemon was a real push over. I give it an 8.5/10

Resurrection of Evil and the Doom Movie

While Doom 3 got mixed reviews, it obviously brought Doom back to the table for people who had abandoned the game, weren't familiar, or just haven't been a part of the community and Doom was officially considered 'back,' and it was succesful. This brought back rumours of a Doom movie that had been kicking around since the mid 90s. 2005 would offer a double dose of Doom, an expansion pack for Doom 3 and a movie based on Doom. Let's check them out. Let us start with the movie first, I really want to rip into this shit stain.

Doom Movie Review

Doom could have worked as a movie. One of those brainless, violent, but exciting summer popcorn flicks if it had the right choreography and direction. Sadly, the Doom movie decided to go down the route of retardation and lame horror cliches. One of its first faults, it has a story. Oh god, save us all from this story. Let us look at what the 'story' should've been in Doom: A corporation on mars is researching teleportation technology, opens a gate to hell, marines get sent in, a single marine is separated from his team and has to regroup while fighting through hell. That's all it should've been. But oh-hoh-ho, they wanted to go a step beyond. First of all, they aren't demons. Wasn't Doom supposed to be all about Demons and Hell? Why no demons? Then the science comes in. The writers of this film need to go back to 1st grade science. The teleportation mechanic was completely improbable, then theres the fact that the marines are breathing on an unterraformed mars without helmets. What? There's no oxygen yet they can BREATHE!!?!? In Doom 3, when you went out to the mars surface, you had to go through an airlock, put on your helmet, and grab oxygen tanks if you were out for too long. There's also a scene where the marine looks out of a window and OPENS IT. In Doom 3, there is a section or two in which glass shatters, and a vaccum opens and you are gasping for air. Then the genetics. *FACEPALM.* Apparently instead of having 42 chromosomes, we are down to 24. Secondly, apparently we are related to martians, and the martians chromosomes have the ability to tell whether or not you've been an angel or a shit. HOW THE HELL DOES DNA TELL WHETHER OR NOT YOU ARE A GOOD OR BAD GUY?!?!?!? Apparently if you are a good guy, you get super powers. If you are a bad guy, you get a big middle finger and are turned into a mutant from Resident evil or a mutant made of cobwebs or maybe even a zombie, and just for perverted measure, you may even get to be a topless zombie if you are a woman. Hey, its what the Doom movie says! The only remotely entertaining part of this film comes in the form of the 5 minute first person sequence. It wouldn't be good for an entire film, but it was an interesting experiment and I loved the PinkyDaemon. While its legs were wheels instead of mechanical legs, it was still pretty awesome to see something that I could recognize from Doom 3, let alone my favourite monster of the game! They even pointed out the fact that the chainsaw pwns the bastards. The rest of the movie is garbage. 1.5/10 It BARELY got that 1.

Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil.

Doom 3: ROE is a surprisingly good expansion pack. In fact, it feels even closer to the original Doom as it pumps up the speed a bit more, brings back some monsters to their original design, adds the super shotgun and a new artifact as well as a new gravity gu-- erm, 'Grabber,' sorry. The grabber still has its own unique properties though, its pretty fun to launch fireballs back at the bad guys or grab lost souls/Doom 1 lost souls and fling them at other monsters. The super shotgun is classic. The artifact is pretty much jus tbullet time, but its nifty in puzzle sequences and boss battles, which are more numerous and inventive than in Doom 3. ROE is a great expansion, and a great Doom game.

9.0/10

I'm about done, but there's one last thing to discuss, and thats the novel Masters of Doom by David Kushner.

Masters Of Doom is the story of ID from their beginnings to around 2003. The book is full of technology, entertaining characters, history, and fun. It is easily my favourite non-fiction book next to Chaplin and it is recommendable to almost anyone, even people who aren't fans of ID or Doom but dig technology and humour. The characters are all very memorable, and if they were really like that in real life, ID had some pretty cool people. This novel is very well written, paced, memorable and just overall uplifting and entertaining. I've read it over and over and I still love it.

Fuck it, it gets a 10/10. It's a fascinating novel for anyone interested in IDs history, technology, or just a fun and suprisingly adventurous tale of the evolution of a great game company.

That's it! Since this was a long first post, I'm going to wait 2 weeks for the next one, but I'll see you there!

-Kadath