DOOM I & II
Year: 1993 & 1994
Developer: id Software Publisher: id Software (DOOM) GT Interactive (DOOM II) Platform: 3DO, Amiga, Atari Jaguar, Game Boy Advance, iOS, PC, PS1, PS3, PS4, Sega 32X, Sega Saturn, SNES, Switch, Xbox 360, Xbox One (and basically any other electronic device) PEGI: 16 Published: 01/04/22 |
When I decided that I was going to review the Doom franchise I had my reservations about reviewing the first two games. Not that I don’t like them, but that reviewing the 1993 original is, to quote Zero Punctuation’s Ben ‘Yahtzee’ Croshaw, ‘like reviewing gravity’. There’s nothing I can say about Doom or Doom II that hasn’t already been said before (including by people who tend to use bigger and more intelligent words than I), and what can I genuinely say about the games without saying that they were great and basically birthed an entire genre. So, I compromised and decided to lump Doom and its sequel together in a single review…talk about value for money! Mainly because I don’t feel like I could write a full review for either game, and Doom II is (whether you want to admit it or not) a glorified expansion pack for the original game (I mean why fix what wasn't broken am I right?). I’m sure by saying that there’s a Doom II fanboy lynch mob on their way for me, so I won’t waste any more time in getting down to what I think about Doom and Doom II: Hell on Earth!
There’s a distinct period in gaming history that can be defined as pre-Doom. Back in the sepia tone days of pre-Doom the First-Person Shooter didn’t really exist. I mean there were definitely games where you were in a first-person viewpoint shooting at people, but nobody had really ever referred to games as first-person shooters before Doom, even with its precursor, Wolfenstein 3D.
But with the arrival of Doom (and full technicolour) came the true birth of the FPS genre. You are the Doomguy, the last surviving space marine left on Mars following a demonic attack. You must punch, shoot, explode, and chainsaw your way through hordes of Hell spawn to make it out alive.
There’s a distinct period in gaming history that can be defined as pre-Doom. Back in the sepia tone days of pre-Doom the First-Person Shooter didn’t really exist. I mean there were definitely games where you were in a first-person viewpoint shooting at people, but nobody had really ever referred to games as first-person shooters before Doom, even with its precursor, Wolfenstein 3D.
But with the arrival of Doom (and full technicolour) came the true birth of the FPS genre. You are the Doomguy, the last surviving space marine left on Mars following a demonic attack. You must punch, shoot, explode, and chainsaw your way through hordes of Hell spawn to make it out alive.
Doom’s satanic and bloody presentation was no laughing matter with fledgling developer id Software believing that nobody in their right mind would ever publish their game, so self-publishing it was. Using the power of the internet Doom became a shareware sensation with the first third of the game available to download for free, with the final two thirds of the game locked behind a paywall which you purchased from id directly. Whilst this wasn’t exactly new, shareware was often associated with cheap to produce software created by first time developers looking to break into the industry. With Doom, id utilised that model to reach the masses faster than any other game in history.
Within hours of release, Doom was causing havoc on University campuses and office blocks around the world as the game was downloaded onto every machine just so people could blast demons during work and school hours, as well as set up LAN multiplayer matches with their colleagues and peers.
The money id made from releasing the original game this way allowed Doom II to get a traditional retail release thanks to publishers GT Interactive. But by birthing the franchise through shareware, id ensured that the community was just as integral to Doom’s growth as its development team. Id supported both games after launch with a slew of post-release content, and within a few years even released the source code online for free, ensuring the community could continue to create content for the games forever. Even now, almost thirty years after the original games launch, the Doom community is still going strong with new maps and mods available all the time…some of them even created by the original developers.
With the source code being freely available, it only helped Doom spread beyond the confines of PC’s and is now available on almost every single electronic device known to man (if you think I’m joking you should see people playing it on refrigerators and calculators). Of course, many of these aren’t official versions of the game, but with ZeniMax’s (Bethesda) acquisition of id Software in 2009 they are more than likely better versions of the game (almost every version released since this acquisition has been hindered in some little but incredibly frustrating way).
Gameplay in Doom is extremely simple by modern standards. Move around the map killing and collecting everything in sight to open doors, discover secrets, and reach the exit. The further you progress the more frequent and more powerful your foes will be. You’ll have access to an arsenal of pistol, shotgun, chaingun, plasma gun, rocket launcher, and the infamous BFG. Doom II adds the Super Shotgun to this roster as well as a handful of new enemy types, but the gameplay remains otherwise unchanged.
It was so simple that anyone could learn it, and it was so addictive that everyone wanted to imitate it (it was so popular that Bill Gates even used Doom to promote Windows 95! Check out the video at the bottom of the review). In the immediate aftermath of Doom’s release, ‘Doomclones’ became a hot commodity with every computer programmer under the sun shuffling out some kind of iteration of the formula. Some were more creative iterations, but others were just straight up knock-off’s. But once the wheat was separated from the chaff, the First-Person Shooter genre was truly birthed which paved the way for other iconic titles that progressed the genre forward like Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, and Half-Life.
Within hours of release, Doom was causing havoc on University campuses and office blocks around the world as the game was downloaded onto every machine just so people could blast demons during work and school hours, as well as set up LAN multiplayer matches with their colleagues and peers.
The money id made from releasing the original game this way allowed Doom II to get a traditional retail release thanks to publishers GT Interactive. But by birthing the franchise through shareware, id ensured that the community was just as integral to Doom’s growth as its development team. Id supported both games after launch with a slew of post-release content, and within a few years even released the source code online for free, ensuring the community could continue to create content for the games forever. Even now, almost thirty years after the original games launch, the Doom community is still going strong with new maps and mods available all the time…some of them even created by the original developers.
With the source code being freely available, it only helped Doom spread beyond the confines of PC’s and is now available on almost every single electronic device known to man (if you think I’m joking you should see people playing it on refrigerators and calculators). Of course, many of these aren’t official versions of the game, but with ZeniMax’s (Bethesda) acquisition of id Software in 2009 they are more than likely better versions of the game (almost every version released since this acquisition has been hindered in some little but incredibly frustrating way).
Gameplay in Doom is extremely simple by modern standards. Move around the map killing and collecting everything in sight to open doors, discover secrets, and reach the exit. The further you progress the more frequent and more powerful your foes will be. You’ll have access to an arsenal of pistol, shotgun, chaingun, plasma gun, rocket launcher, and the infamous BFG. Doom II adds the Super Shotgun to this roster as well as a handful of new enemy types, but the gameplay remains otherwise unchanged.
It was so simple that anyone could learn it, and it was so addictive that everyone wanted to imitate it (it was so popular that Bill Gates even used Doom to promote Windows 95! Check out the video at the bottom of the review). In the immediate aftermath of Doom’s release, ‘Doomclones’ became a hot commodity with every computer programmer under the sun shuffling out some kind of iteration of the formula. Some were more creative iterations, but others were just straight up knock-off’s. But once the wheat was separated from the chaff, the First-Person Shooter genre was truly birthed which paved the way for other iconic titles that progressed the genre forward like Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, and Half-Life.
Doom was the lovechild between programmer John Carmack and level designer John Romero. Carmack refined his method of emulating 3D environments using 2D level design and some computer wizardry to create the id Tech engine. This allowed for considerably larger and far more detailed levels than had ever been achieved in a first-person game before and looked leagues ahead of its predecessor, Wolfenstein 3D, which had released just one year prior and used similar tech. Combined with Romero’s ambitious and devilishly designed levels meant that Doom was a certified smash hit from a gameplay standpoint…but it needed to look the part too.
Inspired by late nights of heavy metal, Romero settled on demons and the occult to bring the world of Doom to life in horrifying detail. This of course wouldn’t go without controversy with many Christian communities decrying that the game was literally the work of Satan and not safe for the public.
The game of course garnered more negative media attention when it was the scapegoat of numerous gun crime cases in the United States, most prolifically the Columbine High School massacre of 1999.
Despite all this Doom was a massive hit, with Carmack evolving the id Tech engine ever since (with it still being one of the most powerful videogame engines around today, now on its sixth major iteration), and Romero going on to work on a number of other hugely successful videogames in the years following; and the Doom franchise itself still going strong today.
Without Doom the videogame industry wouldn’t be what it is today. Is the game fun to play? Absolutely, but it is definitely a little antiquated when compared to stuff that released even just a couple of years later. It laid the groundwork for everything that was to come, and I personally use it as a palette cleanser of sorts for whenever I need to just go back to basics following many of today’s excessively complex or incredibly bloated AAA titles.
Whilst Doom and Doom II may not be the best first-person shooters of all time, they can claim to be the reason those games even exist which could be seen as a title worthy of higher recognition by some. But for me, I just love a good old fashioned demon slaying session every now and again.
Inspired by late nights of heavy metal, Romero settled on demons and the occult to bring the world of Doom to life in horrifying detail. This of course wouldn’t go without controversy with many Christian communities decrying that the game was literally the work of Satan and not safe for the public.
The game of course garnered more negative media attention when it was the scapegoat of numerous gun crime cases in the United States, most prolifically the Columbine High School massacre of 1999.
Despite all this Doom was a massive hit, with Carmack evolving the id Tech engine ever since (with it still being one of the most powerful videogame engines around today, now on its sixth major iteration), and Romero going on to work on a number of other hugely successful videogames in the years following; and the Doom franchise itself still going strong today.
Without Doom the videogame industry wouldn’t be what it is today. Is the game fun to play? Absolutely, but it is definitely a little antiquated when compared to stuff that released even just a couple of years later. It laid the groundwork for everything that was to come, and I personally use it as a palette cleanser of sorts for whenever I need to just go back to basics following many of today’s excessively complex or incredibly bloated AAA titles.
Whilst Doom and Doom II may not be the best first-person shooters of all time, they can claim to be the reason those games even exist which could be seen as a title worthy of higher recognition by some. But for me, I just love a good old fashioned demon slaying session every now and again.