DOOM

As I was reading David Kushner's Masters of Doom, I was overcome with a powerful desire to replay DOOM. I grew up with the game. I have fond memories of being eleven or twelve years old and getting my hands on GZDoom for the first time. I had not played video games in a few years, putting a comfortable distance between now and my hardcore days and allowing me to approach a video game with entirely new, sober eyes for the first time in my life. DOOM might not have been the first first-person shooter but it is the alpha, one of the most important video games to ever exist. It's a watershed moment in history, where the course of gaming was changed forever, elevating it from a silly activity for children into a silly activity for adults. It was equally important to the world of computers, culminating with Bill Gates donning a black trench coat and shotgun in front of a green screen to sell Windows 95 as the Gamer's Operating System. Its impact on the software industry and the 90s as a whole cannot be understated. Made by a team of only six people, the development of DOOM and the rise of id Software is a picaresque example of the American Dream in action. Programmers, misfits, gamers; highly intelligent, possibly highly autistic too, with a dream and a vision and ludicrous profits from a radical new model of game distribution create something that has never been seen before. It's a classic tale, but does DOOM hold up? Of course it holds up; in part because of a brilliant decision in tech-anarchism by lead programmer John Carmack in releasing the source code to the public in 1997—allowing fans and programmers to break the game wide open and modify it to their liking, create their own tools, make their own maps, port it to whatever system they wanted and essentially ensuring the game eternal life by doing so—but also because of its stellar design. Where Carmack was the wiz kid, the programmer's programmer and the brains of the operation, Romero was the gamer's gamer and its heart. He knew what made a good level, what monsters needed to be in order to be fun to fight, how they needed to be placed in levels for interesting encounters, and most importantly, he understood the psychology of the player and how to play with their expectations. It's a masterclass in design. Every monster serves a distinct purpose. They have very distinct attacks. Each monster has a corresponding weapon they are most easily dealt with. The difficulty and fun comes from how these monsters are mixed and matched and where they're placed in the levels. It is so perfect that it approaches quintessence. DOOM is the video game equivalent of chess. This more so applies to the second game, where the roster of monsters was greatly expanded and the addition of the Super Shotgun essentially solved the tediousness that bogs down the latter half of this game. This brings me to the biggest issue with the first DOOM game: it starts high and ends low. Episode 1 is a blast whereas the other two lose steam quick. Episode 3 is the worst when it should be the coolest because that's when you're actually in hell. The levels get more abstract and less fun to navigate, downright frustrating at points, such as the infamous E3M2 - Slough of Despair, which is essentially a gimmick level, because Sandy Peterson thought it would be cool to make a level shaped like a hand. But DOOM is more than just the base 3 episodes. Two years later, in 1995, there was an Episode 4, Thy Flesh Consumed. In 2019, John Romero himself returned to make an Episode 5, SIGIL, and in 2023, for the 30th anniversary of the original game, he made SIGIL II. On top of that, there are thousands of brilliant user-made maps that essentially wipe the floor with DOOM's stock levels. There are ridiculous total conversion mods like Batman DOOM. There are mods that are crossovers with other games, like Bloom, mixing the game with 1997’s Blood. Even Bethesda is still keeping it alive with re-releases, ports, and new content. DOOM is timeless. It might be the one video game that will never be forgotten. Even though I might hate a lot of the later levels. I can always boot up Knee Deep In The Dead for an hour or so of great fun. In an industry where upwards of 85% of all games released before 2010 are no longer commercially available, where games get shutdown a handful of years into their life cycle or downright taken off of download servers for no reason, where current-gen titles get remastered on that same gen lest they become "obscure and forgotten," the persistence and continued cultural relevance of this now over 30 year old game just really warms the heart.

I pirated this game in 1996 since there was no way for me to buy it legally in the philippines at that time. Buying it 30 years later lol.

---{ Graphics }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☐ Beautiful ☐ Good ☐ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☑ MS-DOS ---{ Gameplay }--- ☑ Very good ☐ Good ☐ It's just gameplay ☐ Mehh ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't ---{ Audio }--- ☐ Eargasm ☑ Very good ☐ Good ☐ Not too bad ☐ Bad ☐ I'm now deaf ---{ Audience }--- ☐ Kids ☐ Teens ☑ Adults ☑ Grandma ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☑ Check if you can run paint ☐ Potato ☐ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ Rich boi ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer ---{ Game Size }--- ☑ Floppy Disk ☐ Old Fashioned ☐ Workable ☐ Big ☐ Will eat 15% of your 1TB hard drive ☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it ☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data ---{ Difficulty }--- ☐ Just press 'W' ☐ Easy ☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Significant brain usage ☐ Difficult ☐ Dark Souls ---{ Grind }--- ☐ Nothing to grind ☑ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks ☐ Isn't necessary to progress ☐ Average grind level ☐ Too much grind ☐ You'll need a second life for grinding ---{ Story }--- ☐ No Story ☐ Some lore ☑ Average ☐ Good ☐ Lovely ☐ It'll replace your life ---{ Game Time }--- ☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee ☐ Short ☐ Average ☑ Long ☐ To infinity and beyond ---{ Price }--- ☐ It's free! ☑ Worth the price ☐ If it's on sale ☐ If u have some spare money left ☐ Not recommended ☐ You could also just burn your money ---{ Bugs }--- ☐ Never heard of ☑ Minor bugs ☐ Can get annoying ☐ ARK: Survival Evolved ☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs ---{ ? / 10 }--- ☐ 1 ☐ 2 ☐ 3 ☐ 4 ☐ 5 ☐ 6 ☐ 7 ☐ 8 ☑ 9 ☐ 10 ---{ Author }--- ☑ https://vojtastruhar.github.io/steam-review-template