Doom

"Another hackjob 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. Just one of them was the Sega Saturn. 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 almost 60 levels of mayhem and destruction and somehow escape your confined hell.

Gameplay wise, this is probably the worst port of Doom besides the 3DO version. The graphics are muddy compared to the PlayStation version, and the framerate is atrocious. It is impossible to run around in an open area with more than three enemies high on your tail without the framerate dropping to at least 10 frames per second. Unacceptable. This port was done on a state-of-the-art console in 1997, and the framerate is almost as bad as the 3DO port? Unbelievable!

The level design, soundtrack, and sound effects are all ripped straight from the PlayStation port, but without the smoothness and extra lighting effects of that particular version. The controls could be laid out better, your weapons can only be cycled one way, and due to the framerate, the control response is very shoddy. There is also no "Nightmare" skill level, and this game is fairly easy to complete compared to most other versions of Doom.

Whatever you do, do not get this port of Doom unless you are a huge collector. If you want the best version of Doom, get Doom Collector's Edition on PC for about $10, get the PlayStation version, or get the Collector's Edition of the Xbox version of Doom 3 that includes the first two Doom games. If you want a good shooter on the Sega Saturn, get Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, or Powerslave.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 07/05/06