Developer: id Software
Publisher: id Software
Series: Doom
Release date: December 10, 1993
(MS-DOS)
Can it run Doom? YES!!!
Genre: First Person Shooter (FPS)
Mode: Single Player &
Multiplayer
FEAR (noun) - an
unpleasant emotion caused by the threat of danger, pain, or harm.
AGONY (noun) - extreme
physical or mental suffering.
SUFFERING (noun) - the
state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship.
DESPAIR (noun) - the
complete loss or absence of hope.
DOOM – The main reason why hell and the devil are living in
constant FEAR, AGONY, SUFFERING and DESPAIR.
To be quite honest, I
could’ve started off the introduction in a much different way and still
wouldn’t make sense, like for example: “The only thing that bring chaos, death
and destruction on its path to absolute destruction of all existence. The
reason why innocents fear it…” OR “When in the presence of evil, pray to God to
get rid of it. Or ask Him to give you a chainsaw to fight it yourself!” The
last one is kind of awesome, but couldn’t figure out how to continue it later
on.
Or I could’ve just said
the following: “DOOM! JUST FUCKING PLAY DOOM!” insert a music
track of the game, sign off and call it a day. Even that wouldn’t be wrong
since… THIS… IS… DOOM!!!
Oh who am I kidding! I
love Doom! It’s a video game franchise that I’ve entered relatively recently,
but somehow ended up playing every single game released from start to finish,
with every item picked up and secret discovered, with all its quirks and stuff
performed, and studied the history of the development of these games and the
studio behind it like a prayer before bed. It is a video game with a simple
premise, simple gameplay loop that not only is it “easy to play, hard to
master” but it’s ADDICTING. Everything and everyone has a place in these games.
From the plot, all the way to the BADASS METAL SOUNDTRACK, Doom can’t go wrong.
If Tomb Raider is my Yun, then Doom is my Yang. If Tomb Raider is a game where
I am calm and precise with my actions, Doom is a game where I’m reckless and
brutish. Yet, they work together like the aforementioned concept: opposite but
interconnected. Also it should be Yin and Yang, but I wanted to add yet another
Street Fighter reference to the mix, so I am well aware the pun is shit.
So! What is Doom?
Doom is a First Person
Shooter game, where you navigate through levels, killing demons, collecting
items and reaching the end of the level. That’s it! That’s basically it. I
could stop right here, post the links for the games and wish you a day filled
with ripping and tearing demons apart, but for all its simplicity, it can be a
bit complicated. We will jump over to the PLOT of the game real
soon, but I would like to dedicate a portion of this review to give some
backstory of the developers that made the games possible: id Software!
Id Software is a video game developer founded on
February 1, 1991, by a group of 4 young individuals: John Carmack, John Romero,
Tom Hall and Adrian Carmack (not related to John, just a funny coincidence).
These 4 young men at the time worked for a video game publisher at the time,
Softdisk, producing all sorts of games. One day, John Carmack, who is a genius
programmer, found a way to make side scrolling possible on PC, something that
was impossible to do back in the 90s. With his colleague Hall, they worked one
night on recreating the first level of Super Mario Bros. 3 and sent it to
Nintendo. Their way of suggesting them a PC port of the popular game. Nintendo
politely declined the offer. Instead of being distraught, the 4 guys were more
than happy about it, as the possibilities of making a side scrolling video game
on a PC was right there in front of them.
After the rejection, they were approached by a CEO
of another publisher, Apogee Software, named Scott Miller. His approach was a
bit weird, but it worked. They started negotiations and John Romero suggested
him a side scrolling game for the PC called “Commander Keen” where you play as
a boy who is trapped on Mars and has to fight enemies. The game became a smash
hit and sold lots of copies and made lots of money for both Apogee and id
Software (who at this point were already created). Then, Romero suggested to
remake a rather obscure game from the 80s called “Return to Castle
Wolfenstein”. You play as a POW (Prisoner Of War) trying to escape your imprisonment
and assassinate Hitler. Instead of making the game stealth based, Romero opted
to make the game action-packed. With a new game engine created by John Carmack,
John Romero, who was another programmer of id, started working on the game with
Tom Hall, the creative director, and Adrian Carmack, the artist of the group.
Other people were involved too, but these 4 are the great giants of the studio
and gaming in general. Once the game was completed and shipped, it became even
more popular than Commander Keen. Gunning down Nazis never gets tiresome, even
to this day. This greatness is also accompanied by Bobby Prince, the composer
for the game. With hundreds of thousands units sold, fans and journalists kept
asking id Software what would the next project be like? And will it be able to
surpass Wolfenstein?
“It’s going to be Wolfenstein times million”- id
Software replied. And the rest is history.
PLOT
Our Hero…
“You are a marine. One of Earth’s toughest! Hardened
and ready for war. Three years ago, your Commanding Officer ordered your unit
to fire on innocent civilians, but you refused and beat the snot out of him. As
a punishment, you were sent on Mars to do cleaning duty, whereas your Officer’s
body was sent to the Pentagon to recover from his injuries. The days spent
there were pretty much boring. Dusting off the light bulbs has never been fun.
On Mars, the UAC (Union Aerospace Corporation) is in charge. The UAC is a
megacorporation that operates on Mars, where they’ve been testing with
teleportation to other dimensions. One day, a radio signal from Mars’ moon,
Phobos, was received. It sounded like bad news: guns blazing, painful screams,
people dying… You and three others hopped in to see what’s going on. Upon
arrival, you’re told to wait and guard the gates, whilst your buddies enter the
building. Moments later, you hear their agonizing screams of death. Alone and
with no backup, your only way out of there is by mowing the unknown enemy
down.”
This is more of a short
retelling of the story found in the manual of the game. If you want the short
version, here it is:
“DEMONS FROM HELL INVADE
PHOBS!!! KILL THEM ALL!!!”
Your character has no
name, but his face is visible on the HUD (more on that in a bit). Some
speculate that he’s an ancestor of the protagonist of Wolfenstein, some say
he’s just Doomguy, or the Doom Marine. John Romero jokingly said he has no name
and he’s simply just… DOOMGUY. And that’s a badass name. No ifs, no buts.
Not much about the story
from this point on. The story progresses as you play more of the game. Which
means we move over to the GAMEPLAY.
GAMEPLAY
Doom’s gameplay can only
be described with those simple words. You start off with a pistol and your
objective is to reach the end of the stage. Each stage has enemies you need to
kill, keys to open specific doors to progress or find secrets, items to pick
up, etc. Below are the controls for the game:
|
ACTION |
KEY |
|
Movement |
Arrow Keys (MS-DOS), WASD (Standard) |
|
Fire |
Ctrl (MS-DOS), Left Mouse Button (Standard) |
|
Interaction |
Spacebar (MS-DOS), E (Standard) |
|
Weapons |
1-7 |
|
Strafe |
Alt (MS-DOS only) |
|
Sprint |
Shift (can be toggled) |
|
Automap |
Tab |
|
+&- |
Increases screen size (+ can also act as hiding the HUD) |
I will explain more on
the controls a bit later, but this all you need to know for now. The game
doesn’t have verticality, meaning you can’t jump nor crouch. Despite the game
“being 3D”, it’s basically a top down 2.5D video game. John Carmack did some
magic with the game engine to allow us to play it in First Person. This
explains why you can shoot enemies that are bellow or above us, but we can’t
move our vision to see them well.
Speaking of the enemies, there are a bunch of them. They all differ from one another: from their looks, to their attacks and sounds. This makes it easy for the player to know what type of enemy they’re about to slaughter (or to be slaughtered by them) before moving on. So let’s see what kind of denizens from Hell we’re forced to deal with on our war…
I mentioned a few weapons
that can be found and used in the game, so next stop, THE ARSENAL:
|
WEAPON |
DESCRIPTION |
|
|
FISTS (SLOT 1) - Extremely basic close-range weapon. Never runs
out of ammo, but only about as powerful as a pistol shot; normally used only
as a last resort or with a berserk power-up. |
|
|
CHAINSAW (SLOT 1) - Does damage like the normal fist, but four
times faster. |
|
|
PISTOL (SLOT 2) - The default long-range weapon. Almost entirely
useless against anything stronger than a Zombieman or Shotgun Guy. |
|
|
SHOTGUN (SLOT 3) - A good general-purpose weapon capable of
dealing medium-high damage, especially at close range. Also works better at
longer ranges. |
|
|
CHAIN GUN (SLOT 4) - Very good against large crowds of small
monsters or single large monsters, but its rapid rate of fire can quickly
deplete its ammo supply. |
|
|
ROCKET LAUNCHER (SLOT 5) - Fires explosive rockets. Does a lot
of damage, but can also seriously hurt the player if used indiscriminately at
close range. |
|
|
PLASMA GUN (SLOT 6) - Shoots pulses of blue-hot plasma at high
speed, which can take down groups of incoming enemies easily, if aimed
properly. |
|
|
BFG 9000 (SLOT 7) - The "Big Fucking Gun." Somewhat
counter-intuitive to operate at first, but kills almost any monster in one
shot. |
No mere mortal is capable
of fighting like Hell without being in proper shape and carrying a suit that is
able to absorb the damage. Throughout the game, you’ll also find various items
that can come of aid, such as tons of healing items, armour sets, light amplification visor, maps that reveal every
single known location in the level, invulnerability power-ups… And many others.
After completing a level, you're thrown into a statistics screen, showing how many kills, items and secrets have been found. It also shows the level and total time. This screen has given birth to the gaming phenomenon known as SPEEDRUN.
Before we go over to the
EPISODES, you have to select your difficulty. And these are as iconic as the
games themselves:
-
I’M TOO YOUNG TO DIE
-
HEY, NOT TOO ROUGH
-
HURT ME PLENTY
-
ULTRA – VIOLENCE (The gentleman’s way of playing the game)
-
NIGHTMARE! (ARE YOU SURE?
THIS SKILL ISN’T EVEN REMOTELY FAIR!)
EPISODES
Doom is an episodic game. 3 episodes consisting of 8 levels + a hidden secret 9th level that can only be found if you truly want to defeat your foes. Bellow, I’ll give a short description of each episode and its themes, provided with a cover map of where each episode takes place…
EPISODE I: KNEE-DEEP IN THE DEAD
The shareware episode, as it was basically the demo for this game when it was first launched back in 1993. It’s not hard nor long. The main objective of the story is to reach the end to see who or what is the cause of this weird invasion of Hell on Phobos. In terms of gameplay, it’s a fast-paced episode that has only 5 demon types and 5 weapon types. The music in these levels is fast paced and adrenaline pumping. “At Doom’s Gate” may even be the greatest video game music track of all time… Oh and I forgot to mention you deal with the “Bruiser Brothers” in the end: 2 Barons of Hell…
EPISODE II: THE SHORES OF HELL
This episode takes us
from Phobos and puts us on Deimos, Mars’ second moon, where it’s a mixture of
the installations found on Phobos and Hell’s own demonic structure. As you
descend more, the futuristic space stations slowly get replaced with fiery red
and blue walls, skulls, beating hearts, chained up soldiers, and more. It’s
more horror themed this time around, save it for one moment where you are given
the power-fantasy to wreck shit up. You end up fighting the monstrous
Cyberdemon in this episode, on the Tower of Babel.
EPISODE III: INFERNO
The final episode of the
game. The location is in the title…HELL! You’re in Hell. The maximum amount of
enemies are fought here of all different types and species. Fire and brimstone
cover the levels, lava replaces water, and the bloody mountains serve as a
reminder the fieldtrip you’re taking at the moment is not a pretty one. But you
know what’s pretty? You get to use ALL the weapons in this episode. From your
fists, to the BIG!!! FUCKING!!! GUN!!! Oh and the final boss of the game is
here, The Spider Mastermind. That bitch and the demons will pay for what they
have done… ESPECIALLY TO OUR BUNNY, DAISY!!!
This image alone must’ve scared a lot of people
back in the day. All of that fighting… All for nothing…
MUSIC
Soundtrack inspired by
the greatest heavy metal bands of all time. You’d think they composed the music
for the game, but you’d be wrong. The maestro for the game’s soundtrack is
Bobby Prince.
The legend…
I don’t think I need to
explain more about the music of this game. Just LISTEN TO THIS MASTERPIECE…
This is the original SoundBlaster format
And this is the Roland SC-155 format
This is a personal remix of the original tracks by
the composer Andrew Hulshult. He has done remixes of other stuff as well.
Mainly in the metal genre. Overall a cool dude…
DOOM II
Developer: id Software
Publisher: GT Interactive
Series: Doom
Release date: October 10, 1993
(MS-DOS)
Can it run Doom? YES!!!
Genre: First Person Shooter (FPS)
Mode: Single Player &
Multiplayer
Wait! Did you think that id
Software were done after Doom released to the public? That they would hit the
retire button and not bother making anything every again? Even after creating
one of the most important video game in history, that to this day, its engine
and assets are USED to make fan-made levels or used in colleges to learn
programing?
FUCK NO!!!
After the release of
Doom, the bois at id got to work on a sequel. 11 months of hard work and labor,
they presented to the world the definitive way to play Doom…
Hell on Earth! Hell for Hell! Time for everyone to
pay!
PLOT
It’s been mere minutes since the invasion on Mars
and its moons. The sole survivor, the unnamed Doomed Space Marine, kicked the
demons’ asses so hard, they had no other choice but to “surrender” and grant
him his “victory”.
Little did he know how mean Hell is.
After returning back home, Doomguy finds that Earth
is overrun by the armies of Hell. Billions dead, cities in ruin, demons
enjoying the carnage. This is what happens when you let a huge megacorporation
in charge with scientific stuff and teleportation experiments.
In the ruins of a nearby station, Doomguy finds his
wife and son dead, amongst many others. Some turned into zombies, some dead for
good. The despair and tragedy he felt when he saw their bodies is
indescribable.
Before entering a fueling station, he stumbles
across a rabbit’s head. THE DEMONS KILLED HIS BUNNY!!!
Saddened and distraught from everything he saw, he
takes off its paw from its nearby destroyed corpse, as a reminder of innocence
lost. And vows to make sure Satan and Hell pay for what they have done to him,
his family, and everything else…
GAMEPLAY
There are barely any
changes in the gameplay. The only new change is that the game is no longer in
an episodic format, but rather like a normal game. You select new game, select
your difficulty and you play from start to finish. You don’t lose your weapons
(unless you die and you start the level using only your pistol). The game has
30 levels (2 secret levels with HUGE Easter Eggs), and their visuals change
depending on the setting. The first 11 levels are subterranean, levels from 12
to 20 are city levels and from level 21 to level 30, they all take place in
Hell, where the final showdown against the big bad guy awaits you.
In terms of demons, new
baddies have entered in the Doom Disco Ball Room…
|
|
CHAINGUNNER – A commando with a chain gun. The worst type of
human enemy, as his bullets will end you before you even finish saying FUCK
(this applies on Nightmare! Only)… |
|
|
HELL KNIGHT – A foot soldier and some sort of an underling to
the Barons. They attack the same way their red counterparts do, but have less
health and do less damage with their projectiles. They do become a common
enemy as the game progresses… |
|
|
REVENANT – A skelly boi that used to be something before dying.
Brought back using Hell magic and UAC technology, they punch up close and
fire homing missiles when afar. Fun to fight them, and they have a bit of a
reputation because of their looks… |
|
|
MANCUBUS – BIG!!! THICC!!! AND DOWNRIGHT SCARY!!! These monstrosities
have flamethrowers attached on their arms. They’re like a mini-me version of
the Cyberdemon. They can take a beating. Their death is the most gruesome out
of all entities… |
|
|
PAIN ELEMENTAL – What do you get when you combine a Cacodemon,
paint it brown, attach Imp arms, Cyberdemon horns, and put one giant eye? You
get a demon that spits Lost Souls and asks if you have games on your phone. Up
close it bites. THANK GOD it has no corpse when it dies. Nope, it releases
the remaining Lost Souls that were inside of it. HOW FUN!!! |
|
|
ARACHNOTRON – Mini-me version of the Spider Master mind. Has a
plasma rifle instead of a chain gun. Not a real threat… |
|
|
ARCH-VILE – NOW THIS IS A SERIOUS THREAT!!! An arch-mage of the
darkest pits of Hell, this bastard is rare on the battlefield, but has caused
the most PTSD out of all demons. Can resurrect fallen enemies, and when he
sees you, he sets you on fire before he blows you up. Break line of sight to
avoid being thrown in the air by his dark magic… |
|
|
ICON OF SIN – The Baphomet. The Demon Gatekeeper. The main
source of Earth’s invasion. Summons demons from its exposed forehead. Only way
to kill it is to fill its exposed hole with plenty of rockets. Oh and he
greets you with a sentence in reverse… |
In terms of weapons, only one brand new weapon is introduced in Doom
II. The Super Shotgun, otherwise known as the SSG, or known as Lucifer’s Bane,
or Archangel Michael’s Flaming Sword, or the gun that sounds a lot like Queen’s
“We Will Rock You” if fired on repeat.
In other words… GOD’S CHOSEN WEAPON WHEN BATTLING THE FORCES OF HELL.
MUSIC
Bobby Prince was tasked once more to make the soundtrack for the
sequel. Need I say more?
SCREENSHOTS
VIDEOS
Reviews on both Doom games done by the youtuber
That Trav Guy. They’re relaxing and good to watch. Also give the guy some watch
time cause his content is fun…
Or if you want a more professional take on the doom
games, check out Civve 11’s videos on Doom. He also does content on old and
retro games alike, and tackles them in a more sassy and grumpy way that is
entertaining and educational…
LEGACY
Doom has left an unprecedented legacy in the world of gaming, and
outside of it. The fact that a simple shooter made 31 years ago can still be
fun even today is a testament to its greatness. On top of that, Doom is perhaps
the most ported video game of all time. EVEN DEVICES THAT ARE MEANT FOR
PREGNANCY CHECKS CAN RUN DOOM! So my initials when I said “Can it run Doom?”
was because of this.
The simple gameplay that Doom has cannot be described with mere words.
You have to experience it. Each weapon and enemy is like a chess piece, and you
have to figure out which weapon fits best for the situation. Shotgun can be
devastating up close, but it can serve as a good sniping weapon when your
enemies are far away. Chain gun can stun lock enemies, preventing them from
attacking, the Rocket Launcher has splash damage, and the BFG can either be
used as a crazed psycho to clear out rooms of enemies or conserved for the
special moment when you really need it. Or just use the SSG to rip and tear,
until it is done.
Multiplayer was also invented through this game. Players could play LAN
deathmatch up to 4 players, or play the game via 2 player co-op.
Doom’s source code was released to the public under a non-commercial
license in 1997. And to this day, it’s still being used. Thanks to the release
of the source code, several source ports have been created to play Doom, making
the game more accessible for everyone to enjoy. No need to rely on playing the
game through MS-DOS only. Here’s a bunch of these source ports that are easy to
download, run, configure and enjoy:
-
Chocolate Doom - A play on the word Vanilla Doom
(Vanilla meaning original or default in this case). It’s basically the MS-DOS
version, but it doesn’t require that to run the game. It uses the game data
files (the .wad file, which basically contains everything) to run the thing.
Supports various screen resolutions, an option to enable or disable
auto-sprinting, easier way to change the controls, and take screenshots. It’s
free to download too…
-
GZDoom – The source port of choice if you want to
tweak the game to its maximum potential. Has more settings than Chocolate Doom
(and I mean it has A LOT of options to tweak and customise) and is the primary
source port for playing Doom with mods. Yeah, after the code was released, mods
and total conversion mods soon followed. This source port allows the player to
do whatever they want with Doom.
-
Zandronum – If you want to play with or against
others online, then this is for you. It’s based on an older version of the
GZDoom source port, so its code is not up to date, but it has the best network
code that makes multiplayer gaming possible.
-
Or just skip all of these and get the games
following one of the links here: Steam (Doom & Doom II) or GOG.com (Doom & Doom II)
The game has garnered a lot of controversy over the
years, due to its depiction of demons, hell and mass murder. It was also the
main target and reason behind the horrible Columbine Massacre in 1999. Although
everyone would say otherwise.
On a more positive note, my parents refer to this
game as the “chainsaw game”. Never found it disturbing or offensive as they
clearly understood what it’s all about. Plus they LOVE the soundtrack of the
games.
In 1996, an expansion called Final Doom released
with 2 separate campaigns: TNT Evilution and The Plutonia Experiment. The
former has brand new composed soundtracks for each level, it’s kind of
lacklustre, whereas the latter uses the standard Doom II music, but its levels
focus heavily on combat and long exploration. Plutonia is highly regarded in
the Doom Community as being the superior version of Final Doom.
Honourable mention goes
to Doom 64, a Doom game that’s not a remake or a remaster of the first Doom
game, but it’s a continuation of the story from Doom II. Some of you may know
what the game is all about, but to those that don’t… It’s a bit complicated.
I’ll tell you the story when the opportunity comes.
In 1995, The Ultimate Doom was released for PCs.
It’s the first Doom game, but made available to run on Windows PCs rather than
MS-DOS only. Features some changes and adds 1 additional new episode: THY
FLESH CONSUMED. It bridges the gap between Doom and Doom 2. AND IT’S
HARD AS BALLS (at least the first 2 levels. The rest is a cake walk).
CONCLUSION
TRIVIA
-
The sprites
for the demons and the player were handmade, then scanned, then coloured over.
-
Doom went through a lot of changes during its
development. A video documenting the changes can be found here.
-
The title of
the game comes from a line in the 1986 movie “The Color of the Money”. Tom
Cruise’s character responds with “Doom” when questioned about something being
in a briefcase.
-
The chainsaw
and the super shotgun are inspired by the “Evil Dead” franchise
-
All of the
weapons in the game are based on toys the team bought to use for development.
-
The starting
riff of “At Doom’s Gate” is inspired from Metallica’s “No Remorse”.
-
The BFG 9000
was called the BFG 2704 in the beta version of the game. It didn’t fire a
single green energy ball, but would spam multiple projectiles. This was a mess
for the programs and was ultimately scrapped.
-
The Icon of
Sin’s starting line: ".oremoR nhoJ ,em llik tsum uoy ,emag eht niw
oT" when put in reverse (quite ironic) spells “To win the game, you must
kill me, John Romero." This was a banter between the developers.
-
One of the
hanging corpses that act as a decorate object in Doom is rumored to be the
hanged corpse of fascist leader Benito Mussolini.
-
The levels in
“Thy Flesh Consumed”, alongside the name of the episode, are all taken from
specific passages from King James’ Bible.
-
An Easter Egg
honoring the music band Nine Inch Nails can be found in Thy Flesh Consumed’s
first level.
-
Commander
Keen makes an appearance in Doom II. Except this time he’s an enemy to kill.
-
The “Nightmare!”
difficulty was added in a later version of the game. Fans that managed to beat
the game on UV wanted something harder, so Carmack implemented the difficulty
as a joke. Demons attack faster and deal more damage. And resurrect after 30
seconds. People, naturally found ways to break the difficulty and have a great
time with the game.
-
Doom is one
of the oldest franchises known for their speedruns. The absolute chad of
speedrunning Doom is Zero Master.
-
Doomguy is
one tough and mean son of a bitch.
Ѓорѓи „GioGio“ Илиев






























































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