"I'm still waiting to see the improvements!"

Continuing on with the 32X game library, you come across some of the more classic games that run along the lines of Doom. Doom is probably one of the most influential first person shooters that you can play without returning to the days of old with the Castle Wolfenstein game being at the top. Featuring plenty of gore, destructive tendencies and several weapons of mass destruction, you’ll be hard pressed to find another game that captures the true feel of this classic like Doom does! The 32X on the other hand, doesn’t do much to complete the game and keep it on the up and up, with sub-par visuals, partially decent sound and a rather screwed up control interface, and you’ll find that if you don’t have this game for any other system, then it’s a quick fix for the first person shooting addict. Where the game seems to go wrong, is with the leveled difficulty that doesn’t seem to give you an easy mark in learning how the game works. Although there are plenty of things to shoot and there are secrets from one end of the game to the other, the true challenge is to be able to actually see what it is that you’re shooting at and ultimately look for the secrets in question.

You're trapped on a planet of demons, where the only way off, is to kill everything. Think of Hell, and this is where you're at. Giving you several different demons to fight, ranging from the easy to the ridiculously hard, you'll find that if you're ganged up on, you'll find that getting killed is all too familiar, and you'll find the computer A . I. {even on easy} is rather cheap. Add in a few puzzles to the mix, and you're looking at a partially solid game! There are secrets to find, but you're not unlocking anything important by finding them. Most of the game is about killing off enemies and finding keys, weapons and opening doors to be able to proceed. Unfortunately, once you've killed off all the monsters, you'll be wandering around looking for a door to get out, and the stages can be massively intense! The wide variety of weapons that you'll find here are the same as they have been in every other version of Doom, and all of them have a particular function and purpose, even though you may find that ammunition is located in strange places. You'll have to do plenty of exploration, so grab a six pack of soda and some munchies, cause you're in for a long ride!

Hard to play and hard to control go hand in hand. Strafing with the shoulder buttons is easy after plenty of practice, but weapon switching in the heat of battle can be down right murderous. Moving around corners, up stairs, opening doors, and getting weapon accuracy down to a science can take some time. Veteran Doom players will have problems from the start with just the weapon switching and keeping the weapon firing in the spot they need it to. All of this is assuming that you have the six-button controller, which is seemingly the only way that you can play any of the games that are on the 32X! This will be something of a challenge to beginners, and even PC gamers who have played the game will have a hard time actually getting the game to work, simply because the game takes so much effort to learn and control. If you can get past all of this, then you may find that there really isn’t much to the game, and that it’s simply a point and shoot kind of game.

First person shooters mainly rely on the player's perspective of the world ahead of them. When you have that, you need to have a visual accuracy and detail that allows you to immerse yourself into the world that you're playing in. Unfortunately, Doom doesn't quite do that with grainy visuals, and half-decent effects to greet you. While the mood of the game is dark, the biggest help is the darkness helps with keeping the lack of detail hidden. The 32X doesn’t seem to help matters any, because the entire game looks as though it’s been through a wash of sand and the grainy textures have a tendency to throw you for a complete loop! The character designs are interesting to look at and even the stages are huge and expansive, but the distancing and the way that the game seems to jerk if you move a little too fast is enough to make most Doom purists cringe. Now, if you’re into the Genesis games, then you may find this to be a slight annoyance, but for a gamer like me, I found it to be a little less than what the 32X was boasting the capability of doing and the more I played, the more I found wrong with the visuals.

Audio wise, the 32X doesn’t help matters much either. Even though the stage music changes, the 32X is still running through the Genesis hardware, and you’ll find that there are no improvements on anything, music and sound effect wise! Tinny and synthesized music doesn't give you the Doom feel that the games of the PC do. Placing the player in a world that is dark, the music matches every stage, with decent highs and lows. Effects included grunting, growling and groaning with gunfire and explosions thrown in. Unfortunately, they all come out as a tinny mix of sounds that becomes annoying after twenty or thirty minutes. The worst thing about this, is that the game is sound intensive, which means that you have to keep the sound on in order to hear whatever it is that is coming at you through the darkness. Because of this feature, you’ll find that shutting off the sound is just not an option and you’ll be forced to listen to the crap for a few hours until you finish the game!

Doom for the 32X is below par in my opinion of any other Doom game that I’ve played. With the 32X boasting such an incredible difference in the audio and visuals, the game play is still the same as you’ve played it before. A giant part of the game has to do with the control, and you’ll find that unless you can get used to the different ways that you have to move, jump and fire, the game can end virtually before it begins! Doom gamers who are looking for a fix from an older system would do well to skip right to the SNES version if they want the old school feel. Because of the limitations that the 32X has on the different games, it all runs through the Genesis system and leaves very little to work with. With no improvements on the game play and the different problems that frequently come up, you’ll have a hard time spending any sort of money on this title, simply because it’s no better than anything else out there!

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 01/12/02, Updated 01/12/02