The Ultimate Doom

"A Blast from the Past!"

In the beginning there was Wolfenstein and ID saw that it was good. Then ID created Doom and saw that it was better..........

Doom is one of those games that I can still see people playing in 10 - 20 years time. To see proof that it is alive and well today you only have to go as far as www.doomworld.com or www.newdoom.com to see a thriving community supporting a classic game. Doom itself was released in 93 for the PC and the Mac port for this timeless game was released in 1996 AFTER Doom II for the Mac was released. This wasn't a direct port of the original game, it added a few features and it lost a few features. The features it gained was the inclusion of another episode, high resolution graphics and a more mac-like interface. Features that it lost was the ability to load external demos(recordings of people playing the game) and limited key mapping. Although Mac Users didn't take to Doom quite as well as PC Users (by the time Doom came to the Mac, Marathon had established itself as the premier Mac FPS) it was still well received and got a lot of support from the mac community.

Story (6/10) The story isn't exactly a world beater, it is just there as an excuse for you to go kill some monsters. Still, I suppose it is better than no story at all........

Sound/Music (8/10) For its time the music and sounds were well done. The Music while repetitive had a certain charm about it. The sound effects however were great, from the sound of the shotgun to the death cry of the Hell Night it helped involve you more into the game.

Graphics (9/10) Unlike toady's FPS games that uses polygons to display the monsters and items in the game, Doom used Sprites. The advantage was that even on the hardware back then it was possible to display many, many monsters on the screen at one time. The disadvantage is that it made the Graphics look far, far less realistic then they are today. An advantage of Doom on the Mac was that while the PC was stuck at 320*200 low resolution graphics, Mac Users were rejoicing in beautiful (for its time) 640*400 high resolution graphics. With all that being said I believe that together with the sounds and music it helped create an atmosphere that sucked you into the game.

Control (7/10) This is a bit of a mixed bag. The actual in-game controls are fine, however the limited key mapping is a serious problem. For Instance you can not use buttons such as option and control and you had a choice between using the arrow keys and the ijkl keys for movement. There are however 2 ways around this limitation. The first one was to use a gamepad, the second way is to use an extension called ''Doom II keys'' which allowed you to change the controls to what ever you liked. However it was very annoying that full key mapping support was not included in the retail release.

Single Player (10/10) This is where the game really came into its own. Imagine this: ''You are walking down a corridor on 50% health with a Shotgun and 10 Shells when all of a sudden you hear a noise behind you, you turn and see 10-20 monsters coming towards you, before you even have time to duck for cover you are already dead.'' No modern FPS has this kind of action in it. In toady's FPS games you are stuck with maybe 4 or 5 monsters attacking you at once, not so in doom, legions of monsters make sure that there is rarely a dull moment in the game. To be fair Modern FPS games have fully 3D interactive environments that even allow you to jump however personally I take non-stop action over the modern games. The game wasn't all about killing monsters, there were also a few puzzles spread around the place to keep things interesting however if you are smarter enough to read this review you should have no problem solving them!

MultiPlayer (10/10) This was what made multiplayer games on the PC popular. Sure there was a maximum of 4 players however it was still extremely fun. Especially Co-op mode when you teamed up with your mates and took on the spawn of hell together.

Difficulty (Easy to Hard) The Original 3 episode Doom is relatively easy, even on higher difficulty settings. The 4th episode however is extremely difficult and you would have to be a Doom Veteran to beat it even on the Easiest of Difficulty Settings.

Expandability (10/10) The real reason Doom has retained its popularity online after all these years is because of add-ons. Almost everything can be replaced in Doom; Maps, Graphics and Music to name a few and when DeHacked came along on the PC (which later came to the Mac under the name DeMacked) allowed you to change absolutely everything in the game such as making imps fly and making your pistol fire rockets. The real fun began however in 1998 when ID released the Source Code to the public which allowed people to edit the game to become whatever they wanted. For instance there is a source ports out there that allow doom to take advantage of the latest 3D cards. Today there is only one source port available on the Mac which is available at www.newdoom.com/doomlegacy

Overall (10/10) Doom is a brilliant game. It may not be as advanced as the modern games but in my lifetime of playing First Person Shootemups I have never found an FPS that is as fun as Doom (Except, maybe Goldeneye) Do yourself a favour and go looking for it in the Bargain Bins, you won't be disappointed if you can look past its dated graphics.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 06/14/01, Updated 06/14/01