Doom

"One of the greatest games of all time"

Doom. The name now can be automatically associated with any one for the bloody first person shooter that later began the great empire of games such as Quake, Unreal, Halflife, and others. This, no doubt, was ID's greatest accomplishment. Wolfenstein was a great game, as was Quake, but this was one of the first real games to show that a computer can and should be used for gaming.

Graphics: 10/10
Beautiful graphics for the time. The backgrounds were huge for the time, and, unlike Wolfenstein, the areas actually looked different. They ranged from space dungeons to more disturbing space dungeons, to hell. That sounds pretty pathetic now but when this game came out a noticeable change in a level was amazing. The sprites also look fantastic. For one thing most of them are huge. Another thing, even though they are pixilated (which was not possible at the time to have smooth ones anyway), they look very detailed, and the game runs rather smoothly. The game is very gory, but, for the time, everyone could use a little gore.

Story: 10/10
The story is you go to the moon because its being conquered by aliens. The first place is just the moon base, and the aliens end up mind controlling your friends, so you must pretty much kill everything that moves. You later go to different bases, and finally find a portal that teleports you to Hell to fight the final bosses. I won't ruin the story for you, but I think you'll find the ending quiet surprising. I know I found it amusing. Again, at the time this was a great story, and, more to the point, the game actually had a story.

Gameplay: 10/10
The gameplay is the real experience of the game. It was a first person shooter, which not many companies had attempted at the time. Unlike Wolfeinstein where you are shooting Nazis, here you are fighting a group of demon-like aliens. The gameplay type is simple. You are given a gun; you kill aliens, find keys, find more guns, find keys, and go to new levels. Pretty simple concept, huh? Well, it is. And it is amusing beyond the laws of physics. What makes it so good as how much variety you can have. You are not limited to regular guns. Now your imagination can run wild with these new weapons like a grenade launcher, an electric shocker, and who could forget the might BFG, one of the best weapons ever? Also, you are no longer confounded to Nazis. Now there are people ranging from Aliens to demons to even your own friends! Also, the levels are huge, which leaves room for tons of exploration and secrets, even though you are confined to a first person view where you can't jump! It provides a great deal of pure action mixed in with some cool adventure and alot of horror. It also has a very good atmosphere. You can really feel like your in this alien world and it's so terrible. Or, you really feel like you're in hell (which, despite what it may seem, is a really great place for a game). It's understandable why this game was so great.

Sound/Music: 10/10
The sounds were very realistic. If the weapons were real I would think those sounds would be what they sounded like. And, as for the aliens, they sounded pretty tormented, which is good. As far as the music goes, even though you can't hear it, its there, and it sounds great. It fits the areas really well and has nice catchy tunes.

Replay Value: 10/10
You can play these levels over and over again, thanks to the magical world of save states. You can try it on its number of difficulties, which is quite fun comparing the easiest portion of hell to the hardest. It's hard, and you wouldn't think playing such a hard game would be fun, but it is.

Overall: 10/10
Doom is one of those games which when the company finished must've thought ''What the hell have we created?'', because this game is just amazing in every aspect. It was unrivaled as the best shooter ever for me until Jedi Knight and Half-life came out. Now there have been enough versions of it to wonder why it wasn't on the Atari, but I still stand that the original had at the time reached a new level of greatness never though of by computer games. I mean, this game rivals some of my favorite console games. It's a shame ID was never able to make a game quite as sweet as Doom again, but at least its there and we all remember it.

Pros:
Perfected gaming experience
Very polished

Cons:
No multiplayer (if you could consider that a con of the time)

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 03/13/02, Updated 03/13/02