Doom
Doom has a special place in my heart. When I say “Doom” I mean Doom II, because that’s the one I played. The first game was not sold in shops—so I missed it. Instead, my first experience of Doom was this, I guess towards the end of 1994.
Doom II: EntrywayIt hit hard. 3D games up until this point mostly did not deal in vertical space. The worlds you explored were, quite literally, flat. It sounds weird to say it now, but those angled steps in the screenshot were something amazing.
It was a huge leap forward in world building. It was exciting. It was visceral. From today’s point of view, the kit that the levels are built with is incredibly simple. They did amazing things with it: fortresses, city blocks, nightmares incarnated. It grabbed me completely, and never let go.
It introduced some of my favourite enemies of all time. The Revenant, with shoulder-mounted rocket launchers and a mean punch. The Mancubus, with dual fireball launchers.
The Arachnotron, because robot spiders are cool. And the Arch-Vile, a truly fearsome foe because it could resurrect enemies.
These enemies returned throughout the sequels, and each time it was like meeting an old friend.
Speaking of old friends, Doom II had the Super Shotgun, one of the greatest weapons in all of gaming.
Why is the Super Shotgun great? Because it’s perfect. It has the perfect range, the perfect spread, the perfect damage, the perfect reload time. You have to work to use it, and doing so is hugely rewarding.
Did I mention the sound? Great music, great sound effects—both still sound good today. But in context at the time, well, it was about the first game I played using a discrete sound card. Before sound cards, PCs could only manage single-tone beeps and bloops. I’m running out of superlatives.
As if all this wasn’t enough, Doom II was moddable. You could create new maps—but not just maps. I and many others used DeHackEd, a tool that could dive into and modify the internals of the game. It was incredibly rewarding—and educational!—to mess with the gameplay mechanics.
🔗 DeHackEd
After all this—is the original Doom still worth playing? Yes, yes it is. If you’ve never played it, I highly recommend sampling this utterly exquisite game.
📄 Games
📄 Doom