The Ultimate Doom

"It Came.. but what for?"

DOOM has hit the Mac. Whoopie.

Do I sound overly ecstatic? I shouldn't. I shouldn't at all. Sure, Doom is a good game in its own right and everything, but.. well, let's be frank. Doom is old news. Mac Users, having to contend with having no Doom in the past, have actually found superior games in Marathon one and two. Now, Doom II is facing release on the Macintosh.. and we get the original at virtually the same time?

Well, maybe you just don't care. If you're still interested in DOOM, let me tell you about it.

Remember Wolfenstein? No? Well.. it was a game where you wandered around 3D labryinths made of flat hallways. You collected guns, shot bad guys, and found the exit. Again and again. Well, Doom is basically the same thing, except with a few cosmetic retouches. First of all, the levels can now take on multiple floors. Also, floors and ceilings can now be texture mapped. Also, not everything takes place in square rooms now -- rooms can be shapped in any number of polygons. There's stairs, drop offs, elevators within levels. If you've never played anything beyond Wolfenstein, it's really quite cool. If you've played Marathon, it seems kind of half done.

As far as core action goes, Doom adds on its predecessor, Wolfenstein, in several places. First of all, the variety of enemies. These aren't just Nazis anymore.. now they are demons, hellspawn, and undead. You get attacked by zombies and Imps.. pink things... eyeballs and cyberdemons. Some pretty sick creations, although pixellation is not kind to these beasts. Instead of just being gradually stronger enemies, they do actually differ in speed and attack, a nice change from the enemies of Wolfenstein.

The choice of weapons ain't all that much to brag about. Pistols, Shotguns all around.. the only real additions worth noting in Doom are the Chainsaw and the BFG. The chainsaw is little more than a sicko melee weapon.. you walk up to stuff and press the attack button to just mow em down. The BFG fires big energy blasts... nothing spectacular, but it's pretty strong.

The Graphics were once stupendous on the PCs.. now, they just look like they need some more detail. Everything is dark and relatively unremarkable, and moving in close to stuff just makes the screen a mess of pixels. The enemies are well drawn, but again, draw too close to them and they'll just look like moving static. The stages are well enough produced, although you'll soon be noticing that not much thought was put into them. You pretty much just shoot and pick stuff up, find the next level, move on. No brain teasers here.. which is okay if you aren't a fan of that kind of stuff.

The sounds are memorable. It won't be long before you start linking the telltale blast of the shotgun with the sound of a demon screaming. However, there just aren't enough sounds... some of those perfect sounds will just get old after awhile. Soon, it will just be shoot shoot shoot away. The sounds don't get annoying, they just get.. ignoreable.

The music is MIDI based, and not very good MIDI based at that. The first tune of the game is memorable.. but it made methink of a PC.. and I don't like sitting down at my Mac and thinking of a PC. There isn't much to the music, even as progress, although I must admit there is a good variety of it. Considering how versatile MIDI is, however, they could have done better. Or they could have let go of the soundtrack all together, in favor of ambient sounds... yeah.. ambient sounds are the bomb.

If you simply must own this "Classic," it won't cost you too grandly... they still sell the mac version at shareware price. (Although, you should probably notice that the demo does NOT include one full episode, which the PC demo did.. what a rip.) However, I think you'd be better off saving your money and buying the sequel, Doom 2, if you really want to play Doom. That one is ALMOST worth the asking price. If you just want a good 1st person shooter but don't have the computer to support newer games like Quake 2 or Oni, then I'd settle for something better than Doom.. take Marathon or Marathon 2 out for a spin.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 11/01/99