Doom

"An underrated port of a classic game."

I have played many ports of Doom. I started on the PC, but I lost my Ultimate Doom and Doom II discs and had to live with playing the game on the PC without any music, until my PC got infected with a virus so bad that we had to wipe everything on the hard drive. I went to the console ports. I had the Super NES version, but it was so sluggish I sold it years later. I had the GBA Doom I, but I let a friend borrow it and some kid stole it from him. And, of course, I have played most of the other ports at friends houses and such, from the Jaguar to the 32X, all the way to Doom 64. Anyway, I found this in excellent condition for $14, so I got it. How does it turn out? On to the review.............

Graphics: I would've given this category a higher score, if it wasn't for the framerate making the graphics look bad. For a Saturn game in 1997, Doom doesn't look half bad. Sure, there's pixellation, but every Doom console port (Doom 64 doesn't count) has that. Unfortunately, the framerate of some of the levels makes the graphics look rather sad. Not horrible, just mediocre.
Overall Score: 7

Music/Sound FX: Awesome. Just friggin' awesome. Rage Software did great making this category feel like you're trapped in a living Hell, with enemies all around you, and when you've wasted most of the ones in front of you, it feels like just one of them might come up behind you and rip your friggin' head off. The ambient soundtrack is perfect for the environment created, and while the sound effects are noticeably weaker than the PC version, they are still dead-on for the effects in the game.
Overall Score: 9

Control: This category has nothing to worry about, except that you can only cycle weapons one way, and when the framerate gets to a rather low point, the controls seem rather, well, sluggish. Other than that, no worries here.
Overall Score: 8

Gameplay: C'mon, it's Doom. What's not to love? It doesn't matter if you're making it through the relatively unpopulated first level or using the BFG 9000 on the dreadful Cyberdemon. Doom is a classic, and it's gameplay easily deserves a 10.

But, however, there is a rather large problem with this port. As mentioned earlier, the framerate is the problem. However, the problem is not the framerate itself. It's actually where the framerate is the problem, you see. Ultimate Doom is not much of a problem. In fact, there is only one level that comes to mind where the framerate made the game become nearly unplayable (Map 25: Perfect Hatred). It's some of Doom II's later levels where the framerate becomes a problem. Not all, but some. It's not as bad as some people say it is, but is a big enough problem to drag this score down a couple points.
Overall Score: 8

Bottom Line: Should you get this? It depends. Have you finished Saturn Quake (and a couple of other Saturn shooters that don't come to mind right now, maybe later)? Is PC Doom (and Doom II) a rather faint memory and you've experienced ports of Doom worse than this? Can you live without multiplayer (falsely advertised on the back of the box: It's deathmatch ready with 2-player Link capabilities)? If so, give Saturn Doom a shot. Otherwise, go back to playing the PC version (never played the PS1 port), though this is still an underrated product.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/10/05