GAME: DOOM
RELEASED: 12/10/1993
DEVELOPER: id Software
PUBLISHER: id Software
AVAILABLE ON: PC + all major platforms
1993
was an amazing year. Norwegian electro-rock group Apoptygma Berzerk
released their debut album “Soli Deo Gloria”, Intel shipped the first
Pentium chips, Windows 3.11 was released and a little game from a small
indie developer was released on the 10th of December. The developer was
the Texas based “id Software”. The game was simply titled “Doom”.
Leading
up to the date, id Software had already released Commander Keen, which
became a pretty big hit for the company due to being one of the first PC
sidescrollers that actually smoothly scrolled the screen similar to
console games like Super Mario Bros. They had also released the
grand-daddy of FPS’s, Wolfenstein 3D a mere year earlier. But
Wolfenstein 3D would look a generation behind what was to come and the
moment Doom released, the hype had already reached a fever pitch. Demos
had been released to the press, screenshots had been shown. People
already knew that what was to come would be groundbreaking.
The
day it released, the server it was hosted on crashed. It became a game
that would define the 90’s for gaming as Nirvana’s Nevermind album had
for music. It would be installed on more PC’s than Microsoft Windows,
prompting Bill Gates himself to acknowledge the game’s immense
popularity in a Windows 95 press conference. And it was one of the games
that prompted the ESRB rating system to be created. When Doom arrived
in December of 1993, the world changed and nothing was ever the same
again.
Doom
was a groundbreaking title mostly for the technology behind it. Back in
the days of the early 90’s, 3D was seen as the next step in gaming. A
lot of developers seeked to create a 3D game that could not only deliver
a fully 3-dimensional immersive experience, but also run very fast on
consumer hardware of the time. Wolfenstein 3D had achieved this by
utilizing a technology called raycasting, where it would only draw the
parts of the world the player looked at and the rest of it would not be
in memory. This had its limitations of course and id Software dropped
this engine in favour of something that would make a far more believable
3D world, without actually being 3D.
Due to CPU’s of the time
still not being powerful enough to actually draw a true 3D world fast
enough, and dedicated GPU’s not having even been made available yet,
certain tricks were employed to make the game seem 3D without it
actually being it. In reality, what you see on the screen is not
actually 3D, but rather a 2D plane that appears 3D. This is why you
can’t look up or down in vanilla Doom, and why your aim generally
doesn’t matter since if an enemy is in front of you, he’s still on the
same plane even if he’s drawn higher up than you.
What this meant
for computers at the time was that Doom could run on any standard 486
computer of the time, and it would generally run very fast, and still
deliver a world that seemed like true 3D. For many, myself included,
playing Doom was like witchcraft. It turned your PC into a dimension to
another world. The marine, who was left intentionally nameless (though
he’s been affectionately known as Doomguy by the fandom), was meant to
be you. Doom transported you into a world of demons, shotguns and heavy
metal music unlike any game before it. It sucked you in relentlessly in a
mercyless grip. It’s not without reason Doom was banned at several
workplaces due to how insanely immersive (and ADDICTIVE) it was at the
time.
Doom’s
story is simple, almost cliché to a point. Science experiments on Mars’
moons Phobos and Deimos have unintentionally opened a portal to hell
itself, and hordes of demonic forces have made their way through these
portals and either killed everyone or turned them into zombies. Everyone
except you. As the lone survivor of the invasion, it is up to you to
put an end to it, and shooting, punching, chainsawing, exploding,
eviscerating and all around killing every single demon that stands in
your way of doing so.
John Carmack has been quoted saying “stories
in games are like stories in porn movies; they are nice but ultimately
pointless.” And that mantra certainly holds true in Doom as the game is
almost solely about its gameplay and the story takes a massive backseat
to it, almost feeling trivial as the only story you get are a few text
screens at the end of each episode.
Doom is split into 3 episodes,
with a 4th episode added in the Ultimate Doom retail release (which is
the basis for all future releases of the game on PC).
- Knee Deep In The Dead (shareware episode)
- Shores Of Hell
- Inferno
- Thy Flesh Consumed (Ultimate Doom)
The
first 3 episodes are where the main story is and the fourth episode
provides little more than some extra levels of extremely high difficulty
compared to the main trilogy. It ties losely into the events of Doom 2
but otherwise was probably meant more as a bonus to those who bought the
retail release.
To
aid you in the battle for humanity, you have access to an arsenal that
would serve as practically the prototype for all future games in the FPS
genre. Your fists serve as your last resort, a mostly useless weapon,
unless you get yourself a berzerk pack. Your starting gun, a pistol
serve as a way of dispatching with the weakest of enemies and is only
useful for dealing with zombies. You’ll soon acquire the most iconic
weapon of the game and its main workhorse, the shotgun. A weapon that
can efficiently deal with most of the game’s enemies and has a lot of
ammo available for it.
The chaingun, which you first pick up in
E1M2 if you gain access to a secret area, is the game’s main automatic
weapon and can easily deal with large groups of enemies. And if you look
closely in E1M3 you can pick up your very own rocket launcher. A weapon
that can splatter most weaker enemies and deal reliable splash damage
to larger enemies. Just make sure you don’t stand too close when firing
it as the splash damage applies to you too.
Of course that is just
the beginning. Episode 2 also gives you access to the Plasma Rifle, a
powerful automatic rifle that can deal with most enemies quickly. And if
you are clever you can even get access to the legendary BFG (Big
Freakin’ Gun) 9000. A weapon with such devastating power that it can
clear an entire room of enemies. In addition to these weapons you can
also pick up a chainsaw, which becomes the default weapon on your number
1 key. It’s a more powerful melee weapon that is useful against some
enemies that like to get up in your face such as the pinky demons and
the spectres.
Guns aren’t the only thing helping you though. In
addition you also have numerous powerups. Green armor will boost your
armor to a maximum of 100%, while blue armor will boost it up to 200%. A
blue sphere will boost your health to 200%. In addition you have the
invisibility sphere, which turns you invisible. You have the berzerk
pack which turns your fists into some of the deadliest CQC weapons in
the entire game, able to splat weaker enemies in a single punch. The
radiation suit which protects you against hazardous chemicals, including
lava. And finally the invincibility powerup which makes you immune to
all damage while it lasts.
The
hordes of hell are definitely not to be trifled with and even if most
of the enemies you fight are fairly weak, they do face you in large
numbers. Especially if playing on the higher difficulties. Zombies come
in two varieties. The normal pistol zombie and the more powerful shotgun
sergeant. The shotgun sergeant in particular needs to be a priority in
firefights as their shotgun can dish out some serious hitscan damage if
you’re not careful. The imp is a fairly weak demon that flings fireballs
at you and does claw attacks up close.
The pinky is a lumbering
pink (hence the name) beast that likes to run up to your face and eat it
off. Spectres are pinkies that are invisible. Barons of hell are
towering demons that have more of a typical devil look with goat legs
and a bloodcurdling roar. They fling plasma balls and can take quite a
beating before going down and two of them serve as the episode 1 boss
fight. Later on you’ll face the cacodemon, a floating monstrosity that
belches plasma at you.
Boss fights are also a bit of an ordeal in
Doom. At the end of episode 2 you’ll be face to face with the
Cyberdemon, an enormous towering beast of cybernetics and flesh that
fires rockets at you. Best dealt with if you have a BFG-9000 handy. The
episode 3 boss is the Spider Mastermind, a frightening demon consisting
of a brain with cybernetic spider legs that fires massive gatling guns
at you. Both need to be dealt with using superior weaponry and fast
skills.
Some of the demons, such as the aforementioned cacodemon,
seem to be largely influenced by DND, which is no surprise given that
the game started out as a DND campaign the team were playing.
For
its time, Doom’s graphics were unparalleled in gaming. It marked the
point where consoles could no longer deliver an experience that PC
could, although attempts were certainly made given the game’s immense
popularity at the time. A lot of it stemmed from the fact that the team
put a lot of effort into making its world as realistic as possible with
limited resources. Unlike today where everything in a game world is 3D,
given the limitations of the engine most of the in-game assets are
2-dimensional sprites and textures. A lot of the textures were made from
photo-references of various things. Even a fresh wound from one of the
team members was used as a source for one of the textures.
The use
of real-life objects also extended to the game’s weaponry and enemies.
Several enemies, particularly bosses were modeled out of clay and then
digitized into the game to give them a realistic look. And some of the
weapons such as the chainsaw and shotgun were photographed from real
life props. The shotgun was a toy shotgun they bought at Toys R Us and
the chainsaw was borrowed from one of the team members. This immense
attention to detail and dedication helped give the world a more
realistic feel than most shooters of its time.
The graphical
display became another essential part of Doom. Not only displaying all
important information about your current state, it also shows a portrait
of the helpless dude you’re playing as, and as your health drops the
face will get bloodier and bloodier, similar to BJ’s face portrait in
id’s previous game Wolfenstein 3D.
Sound-wise
Doom has since become legendary for its use of stock library sound
effects for pretty much all of its sounds. This is probably the reason a
lot of the sounds from Doom can be heard in a multitude of other media,
especially movies. Which often makes people assume the sound effects
are taken from Doom, not realizing not a lot of sounds were made
exclusively for Doom to begin with. Even its music is somewhat
derivative, with a lot of it almost copying other works by hard rock
bands such as Judas Priest and Metallica. Not that it’s necessarily a
bad thing, given the music fits the game perfectly. It’s very hard to
imagine Doom without its iconic soundtrack.
But there’s no doubt
that from its legendary shotgun sound, to the haunting cries and roars
of its demonic hordes, and its mostly silent but grunting protagonist,
Doom’s soundscape is as memorable as it is perfectly fitting its
setting. id Software did a lot with very little and it paid off. And
with a decent sound card such as the Roland SoundCanvas or MT-32, the
music sounds amazing.
It
is hard to imagine a gaming world without Doom. Doom was a
groundbreaking achievement not for how well it did 3D graphics, but how
well it did them for machines at the time. And while it may seem
outdated and not as shocking nowadays, it is important to remember that
at the time, there simply was no other game like it. It marked the
beginning of an era, the true beginning of the 90’s era of gaming. With
Doom came the first person shooter genre. With Doom came multiplayer,
modding, and a lot of the culture we now take for granted with first
person shooters. It coined terms such as fragging, deathmatches and gibs
(short for giblets).
The only sad thing about Doom is really what
it could’ve been. Originally it was meant to have more RPG elements,
and more of a story and be a more cinematic game. The team even
envisioned hub worlds that one could travel back and forth in. Imagine
how groundbreaking the game could’ve truly been if the team hadn’t
decided to make a pure action game. But perhaps the world was not truly
ready for that yet and needed Doom as a stepping stone. Because as fun
as it is, Doom is also repetitive and very little new is added in each
episode. And once you have completed it in its entirety, there’s not
much incentive to revisit it beyond playing mods.
It’s not a game that is fun to play for long periods given its lack of
story and gameplay beyond simple shooting. But it’s definitely really
good at what it set out to do.
And regardless, Doom is a true
classic in every sense of the word. A game that despite showing its age
will continue to age like wine. Or perhaps blood. Because Doom has
served as the life blood for so many following games after it. Games
that will be remembered for a long time in the future. And with Doom Eternal soon showing its face, there is certainly no reason to stop celebrating this game’s 25th anniversary any time soon!
SCORE
STORY: 8/10
GAMEPLAY: 9/10
GRAPHICS: 10/10
SOUND: 10/10
FINAL SCORE: 9/10
