This game is not the very first First Person Shooter ever made. That honor most likely goes to Maze War, a game made fifty-three years ago as of the writing of this review. By our standards, a basic, lackluster game with limited mechanics, clumsy movement, awkward shooting, and, to put it diplomatically, barebone graphics.
It was also, objectively speaking, revolutionary. Though I feel people could be forgiven for not believing it to be a ‘true’ First Person Shooter.
DOOM is also not the first FPS made by Id software. That honor goes to Wolfenstein 3D, where shooting Mecha-Hitler with mini gun arms until he melts into a puddle of blood and gizzards is your ultimate reward.
But DOOM can be credited with being the game that brought First Person Shooters into the ‘mainstream’ as it were, as for years after it came out, people referred to any game where the main gameplay loop was walking/running around with gun in hand and shooting enemies until they were no longer a problem as a ‘DOOM clone.’
Hell, DOOM had a larger install base than Windows. Way back when.
Yes, its controls were clanky, yes, you couldn’t turn the camera up, only side to side. Yes it mislabeled a Mini Gun as ‘the Chain Gun.’
But its movement mechanics were rock solid, and its shooting, while adequate and for the time revolutionary, have certainly not aged well. Even if several things in said mechanics work to make the game very satisfying to play at a subconscious level.
For example, getting shot will physically push your character back. So will shooting the shotgun. The combat consists of strafing at high speed while avoiding enemy projectiles and physical attacks, retaliating with a vast arsenal while navigating hazards, making the game play as something akin to a first person bullet-hell. And to top things off, the shotgun in DOOM is a more accurate representation of what a shotgun does and how it handles than the vast majority of shotguns in video games today.
Its graphics are likewise barebones now, but at the time it was like looking through a small window into the far future. The sprites used, while certainly basic by our current standards, were pictures of lovingly sculpted clay miniatures, and bring a certain level of corpulent physicality to the setting of the game.
What is this setting? Demons have taken over a base on Mars, this is your problem and you should go do something about it. Don’t sweat the details, just go kill demons.
Basic, but by golly can I get behind that.
All of this is aided by frankly genius map design that I’ll shamelessly admit I’ve lifted wholesale and used as maps for tabletop roleplaying and strategy games. Full of twists, turns, mazes, and hidden secrets that the map guards jealously and dares you to uncover. Offering you weapons that you’d not otherwise find until late in the game, ever scarce ammunition for your most powerful weapons, or just the joy of finding that one last goddamn monster so you can leave the level with a 100% kill score.
Despite all of that however, I cannot in good conscience recommend the base game. It is too ‘retro’, the controls are from a wild, primordial time, when we had yet to decide on the best configuration of key-bindings for movement. Mouse look was not yet a twinkle in some programmer’s eye, console controllers were incompatible with computers and would not settle on a design that didn’t hurt the hands to use for at least a decade still, and sound design was lacking due to rapidly changing technology that would, nonetheless, require some time before it could mature enough to properly recreate the apocalyptic roar of a firearm.
It is a good thing then that I am not here to recommend the base game.
Don’t get me wrong, many things in the base game should be required reading for anyone making games, even in this day and age. DOOM was that far ahead of its time. I honestly believe that there is a certain magic at the core of the original DOOM, one that has not and cannot be properly replicated.
But going on thirty-three years of iteration, as of the writing of this review, leads to many quality-of-life refinements, some of which I would call essential.
Brutal DOOM Version 22 Test 6 (link at the bottom) elevates DOOM into what (and I swear I’m trying to use this term in a way that is appropriate) a modern audience can freely enjoy. Textures are enhanced, graphics become a mix of sprites and particle effects. Blood and giblets become part of the environment rather than purely being part of a sprite. All enemies have more sprites so that the final resting pose of a zombie soldier that dies in the middle of a hallway will be different from the one who gets shotgun blasted against a wall. The sounds of the weapons you fire are crunchier, firing the shotgun shakes the screen just enough so you can almost feelthe buttstock slamming against your pectoral. Several weapons that were cut from the vanilla game see the light. You have an unarmed combo if you run out of ammo and need to throw hands. You can kick a Baron of Hell in the nuts, then laugh as you blow his head off while he clutches his family jewels.
There is even a button dedicated purely to flipping your enemies off. Some of them will get angry and have increased movement speed and damage.
Weapons aren’t the only thing that is updated. Enemies are faster and more aggressive, their weapons, just like yours, are far more lethal. Increasing the protection provided to you by armor is not a handout, it’s the bare minimum required for survival. Scouring the map for secrets is more important than ever because sometimes the red haze descends and you find yourself wasting five rounds of valuable shotgun shells reducing an enemy corpse to a stain on the ground. Why, with this mod, you can even jump. Some of the younger among you all may not understand how big a leap such a seemingly simple thing is.
There is far more that I haven’t said about this modernization. But if I were to sit here and list every single detail, this would turn out to be tens of thousands of words, and you all would be better off taking the time you would spend reading that, getting this mod and playing it yourself.
You find yourself being a console player and therefore you cannot play this mod?
Brother, the original DOOM can be played on a pregnancy test. If you have an eight year old laptop, you can play Brutal DOOM.
Oh, do yourself a favor and use the DOOM Metal Mod while you’re at it. The original soundtrack has its charm, but murdering thousands of demons is best done with Metallica, Slayer, Pantera, and Alice in Chains blasting into your earholes, punctuated by the roar of your minigun as you turn a room full of enemies into gizzards and ankle-deep blood. That’s it for now, stay safe out there.
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