"Even in 2002, Doom lives on"

While Doom set the standard for first person shooters it was Doom II which perfected the ''Doom Experience.''

First I would like to make one thing clear. Doom II really should of been an expansion pack to the original Doom rather than being a fully fledged new game. The engine was virtually the same with the only differences being that there was one new weapon (The Super Shot Gun) and a few new monsters (Chain Gunners, Manucubus etc.) Having said that there is definitely enough new here to give the player who completely dominated the original Doom a reason to go out and buy this sequel.

Story (6/10): There really was no Story with Doom. There really didn't need to be one. The game managed to suck you in without the story really being present.

Sound/Music(9/10): The sound effects in this game were really great. For example the sound of the Arch-Ville to this day still can send a chill down my spine. The Mancubi's ''blug'' sound is also an instant classic. The Music was also good for its time. While by today's standards it is repetitive and low quality (it uses midi's) the tunes are still rememberable and along with the sound effects help to suck you into the game.

Graphics (9/10): Today everything is about polygons. However back when Doom II was released few games if any had polygons and games such as Doom II relied on sprites. The advantage in using sprites was that many enemies and items could be displayed on the screen at one time even on the modest hardware that Mac Users had access to back when Doom II was first released. Doom II for the Macintosh could run on a 68040 Mac (roughly equivalent to a 486) As an added bonus Doom II for the Mac ran at a much higher screen resolution than the PC version which gave the games graphics a much cleaner overall appearance.

Control (7/10): While the control was near perfect on the PC this was unfortunately not the case on the Mac. The game had (very) limited key mapping which really limited the way you could control the game. For example you could not assign a modifier (keys such as Shift, Control and Option) to any of the controls in the game. Fortunately Scott Kevill (better known for his later work including Quiver and Game Ranger) released Doom II keys which got around this problem (if you can't find it anyway feel free to e-mail me and I will send it to you)

Game Player (9/10): The Single Player game unfortunately was a let down compared to the original Doom. Don't get me wrong, the game play is still great however there is just something that Doom II's single player lacks over the original Doom. On the other hand multiplayer proved to be more fun thanks to the ID team spending more time optimizing there levels for multiplayer (perhaps that is why Single Player was a little bit of a let down)

Difficulty (Medium to Hard): This game starts off relatively easy but gets harder extremely quickly. Although these days the Doom II levels are ''relatively'' easy compared to the custom levels out there, don't let that fool you. This is still one very tough game, especially compared to the original Doom. This was probably because of the many new monsters that the ID software team could unleash against you.

Replayability (10/10): Doom II has got to be close to being the most supported game in Computer History. Just check out for thousands upon thousands of wads available at ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/levels/. Some of the better wads (wads are doom levels) include Memento Mori, Batman Doom and The Requiem. All the wads mentioned above included 32 maps which were far tougher and far better than the original Doom II levels. However this is just a small sample of the levels available on the FTP site. Download a few and try them out. I guess what I'm trying to say is that you will never get bored of the Game, only the Game engine (does that make sense to anyone out there?!?)

Overall (10/10): When people talk about the greatest game ever, one name always keeps popping up. Yep, you guessed it, the Doom Series. This game is an instant classic and anyone who has any interest at all in the first person genre would be a fool not to play through this game at least once.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 06/27/02, Updated 06/27/02