Doom (1993)

 First thing I realised is that the strafing set-up is more similar to Wolf 3D than I remembered - rotating is still the standard. But at least there are separate strafing left and right keys now. I just need to figure out the best set-up...

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I had a quick 5 minute play with the crappy standard key layout, and this game is immediately so much more satisfying than Wolf in every way. The speed, the bobbing movement of your character, the music, the lighting, the level design (outside bits! memorable layouts!), the score screen (nice map, gunshots instead of bleeps), map view, exploding barrels! Also of course the graphics being a higher resolution helps.

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I played a bit more with some adjusted controls, and it really is great fun. So well-balanced and satisfying - little stuff like seeing your bullets hit the wall when you miss, being able to play cowboy with the grunts by waiting for them to draw then popping them, taking two enemies out at once with a shotgun blast. Also, the increased speed of the player means that navigating without strafing is much easier (though integrating it into your movement is great for sweeping round corridors). The music is all so sweet as well - there's a great creepy John Carpenter-y track a few levels in. I'm breezing through the first episode on the 2nd lowest difficulty level, but I think I'll be glad of that choice when I get further in.

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DooM's 2nd episode is starting to introduce teleporters (scary for someone who gets lost so easily) and a few new baddy types, which is good. I think one thing an FPS should do is introduce new baddies on a regular basis. The only thing I feel a little disappointment with HL2 for (to get ahead of myself chronologically) is the relative lack of enemy variety, especially compared to the first HL - different types of head-crabs, different types of zombies, different types of Combine - which makes it feels like nothing really new gets rolled out after the first hour or so (even though there's so much variety in the level, mechanics and encounter design to make up for it).

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I defeated the Cyber Demon Lord and am onto the third episode, Inferno, which is set in Hell. It's really cool how the level design suddenly feels less orderly, bridges collapsing behind you, loads more demons. I feel like they actually could have pushed this a bit harder - held back on the demonic textures and potions etc until now, using more sci-fi stuff (except for the enemies) then switching to that stuff for Hell and leaving the possessed soldiers and med packs behind. Although I do like the row of cells with soldiers that you come across early on which suggests they're doomed souls rather than zombie dudes.

I do have to take relatively long breaks between play sessions because while I'm loving it, it is quite samey outside of new textures.

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Done! I killed the Spider Demon and completed Inferno. (I'm not going to bother with Ultimate DooM or whatever.)

It's a great game, but I did feel like I could have handled it either being a bit shorter or continuing to introduce new stuff after E2M1. This is probably due to me knowing it pretty well indirectly, it being a backlog game, and my modern narrative-driven-FPS sensibilities; I likely wouldn't be thinking that if I had just bought and completed this back in '93...

Rating: Green