Doom

"Another lousy port of Doom."

The original Doom was an extravaganza. Released on the PC in late 1993, it further capitalized upon the First Person Shooter craze that developer id Software brought upon the world a year earlier with Wolfenstein 3d. As a result, Doom was ported to almost every video game console that was up for sale during the mid 1990s. One of the many consoles chosen was Sega's second add-on to the Genesis, the ill-fated 32X. How did this port turn out? Read on for my review...

To start things out, let's talk about the story of Doom. You are a lone Marine soldier, the sole survivor of a demonic onslaught that has devastated the rest of your Marine unit on a military base overlooking Mars. Your objective is to shoot through, annihilate, or blow up any demons that come your way. The gameplay is that of a 3D first person shooter; putting things simply, you must run your way around 17 levels of mayhem and destruction and somehow escape your confined hell.

The graphics and framerate are actually pretty good, but they aren't as good as the PC version or some of the other Doom ports. The sound and music is pretty much the same as the PC version. The controls are sharp, but they can be pretty problematic if all you have the 3-button Genesis controller; make sure you have the 6-button controller so you can cycle weapons two ways.

The biggest problem with this port is easily it's length. There are only 17 levels, and that's not counting the fact that if you don't start at the beginning of the game and never use a single cheat code, you can't access the last two levels, which ain't good if you want to regain progress by simply selecting any of the 15 selectable levels (or if you're a filthy cheater). To make things worse, these levels are the ones taken from the Atari Jaguar port, which means they are edited down and get rid of a few key enemies.

To add to this problem, enemies are only one-dimensional, which means they're only visible from their front side. This means that an enemy that would be facing away from you in the PC version appears blind and doesn't even notice you in this version. Also, you can only grab the BFG 9000 if you use the "Unlock All Weapons" cheat code, which is bad news for BFG lovers such as myself who are against cheating. The border issue that the 3DO port had is here, which means that the screen is reduced down to a smaller size to keep the action going, and there is a border wall taking up the empty space in between (though this problem isn't nearly as disastrous as it was for the 3DO version).

This port certainly has it's problems, and I can only recommend it to big time Doom collectors and 32X enthusiasts looking for some FPS action. Otherwise, ignore this port.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 07/05/06