Final Doom

"A classic on the Playstation"

-Visuals 8/10-

This is the game to play if you're an old school Corridor shooter. Placing you in the darkest of levels, looking over the barrel of some insane weapon, you blast your way through the dark corridors of an evil army that is out for your blood. Doom is the King of Corridor shooters in many different aspects.

The first of these being the lighting. Dark and moody, it fits all of the levels that you traverse through, giving you the feeling of darkness, and the need to shed light on your enemies with the door opening shotgun. Every stage is different, giving you flashing light on the walls, glowing green puddles of toxic waste, and the red hot glow of lava beneath your feet.

The enemies of the game are well detailed, and for a game this old, not all that badly pixalated to the point of where you can't tell where the eyes are. Each one moves with a set course, and the animations of weither they walk, attack, or just move back and forth, all look nice, and very detailed. When you blast them apart, the old school blood and guts fall to the ground in detailed piles of blood and guts...it's good to play Doom!

-Sound 8/10-

Heavy metal set to a heavy duty game. Each stage has it's own little heavy metal tune that plays along with you through out the entire time of your travel through the level, blasting away the various mutants and monsters that get in your way. This is nice, because it doesn't really cut out and start over, but seems to be on a constant repeat. There was a problem with this in Quake II, where the music cut out, and loaded a new track.

The sound effects are from the original game, the blast of a shotgun, the explosion of a body. A roar int he distance, and the dying screams of a victim beneath your smoking gun. What more could you ask for to blast through your stereo speakers of headphones?

-Control 9/10-

Simple, and easy to use. You have your basic set up of a fire button, a jump, a weapon switch, and a strafe left, and a strafe right. All of these are at your fingertips, and all are easily accessable with just a couple of button presses. There isn't a need to change the configuration of the buttons for Doom. It's already a simplified set up.

The actual movement in-game is rather crisp, you run from place to place, blowing away anything in your path, and there is nothing to keep you from picking up an item or a new weapon with ammunition. No complex controls, and nothing that can't be figured out in the first 5 minutes of play.

-Gameplay 8/10-

Doom is a corridor shooter in which you look at the world around you in looking down the barrel of some various gun, at some enemy that's in your path. You have to collect card keys, and weapons to progress and take on the bigger and badder enemies that are found throughout the game. Each enemy has a weakness, but be aware, it's easy to get cornered and then killed by an onslaught of enemies.

There is a map function in the game, to help keep you from getting lost. As you progress, the map grows bigger and bigger, until you've reached all of the boundaries. This way, if you do get lost in one of the extensive worlds that you're blasting through, it's nothing but a press of the button to call up your map, and move to were you're familiar. This can be done with either looking at the map, and then moving, or by keeping the map up, and moving that way...again, be aware, make sure that you have an area cleared out before doing so, it's easy to get killed doing the 'blind' movement.

The Playstation version of Final Doom includes a couple of Playstation only levels and deathmatch settings that are rather fun to play through, and do extend the actual replayability of the game to the point of where you'll want to master every level in Doom on the hardest setting. That'll take some good playing, as the computer A.I. gets tougher with each passing level. Good luck.

-Overall 8/10-

The King of Corridor shooters is here on the Playstation. Although with the current shooters on the market, anyone coming across this version of Doom, will probably pass this up for soemthing along the lines of Quake II. The graphics still remain for those that remember what the original Doom was like, and will have many hours of memories playing through the stages of the game.

This game is a rental for those weekend players, and a purchase for the Playstation game collectors as a piece of the system's history. It's a great game, with the added levels, and even though it could be considered old hat to those that have played it, there is no denying the fact that Final Doom, is the Old School Corridor Shooter.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/04/00, Updated 04/04/00