Oh hey there's a Doom category.
A long time ago, one of the Doom games (didn't know which then, now I do: Doom 2) made me cry tears of blood because I was too dumb to configure the keys and jump, and I needed to jump to progress in a certain part of a level. After suddenly remembering that, I went on a quest to download the first two games, beat the offending party and finally have some peace of mind. Having gone through more games, I knew to configure the shit properly now, and I about cried more tears of blood (out of joy this time) when I discovered I could jump now.
EDIT: you really CAN'T jump in Doom 1 or 2 - at least not in an unmodded game.
DOOM 2
So I went on my merry way and played Doom 2 in God Mode (invulnerable) because I'm a coward. And because I am invulnerable, why not try the Ultra-Violence difficulty too?
I absolutely loved it.
Awesome music, pretty good level design and architecture and, of course, killing stuff is fun. Monsters were good too, aside from the flying meatball that is the Pain Elemental, which is possibly the most annoying thing in the game; the Cacodemon, on the other hand, is absolutely adorable and makes a purring-like sound when you kill it, so I just wanted to pet it instead :I /conflicted feelings
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DOOM 1
Was boring. Apart from a few levels and music tracks I can't remember ATM, the level design wasn't that good: everything felt disjointed and just randomly thrown in. Game's divided into 4 episodes and the fourth one may as well be designed to make you tear your hair out if you play with no cheats, 'cause you'll probably be dead by the time you've noticed the level has loaded.
I get it: Doom 1 was awesome for its time and without it I probably wouldn't have had all those fun times with the rocket launcher in Quake 1, which was inspired by the first Doom. But so far it's Doom 2 all the way for me.
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DOOM 3
I confess: I'd played Doom 3 before for a bit but gave up because of all the cutscenes (there's a ridiculous number of them for about the first 2-3 parts of the game). As a conclusion, I never made it past that part the first time.
But I figured "hey, you're a more patient adult now, it's not fair to just dismiss it without giving it another shot". So I did just that: fired it up again, entered my coward cheat and went on to brave the cutscenes.
And was greeted by this fairly early into the game.
To be honest, it's quite good in terms of environment; I probably spent half the time gawking at the stuff going on in the background, like the time I installed a new texture pack for Quake and spent more time looking at the walls than fighting shit that was trying to kill me. Machinery, a nuclear reactor that probably reached a billion degrees while I was crawling under pipes looking for unrelated crap
and a room where you had to operate a claw to drop some barrels of toxic waste into an incinerator before you could enter (there was a dead guy in there and I totally didn't throw him in first, nope)
among others.
The cutscenes annoyed me sometimes. Every time a new monster appeared, there'd be a cutscene of it breaking through a wall or tearing someone apart, then the cutscene would end JUST before it lunged at the pretty little flower you who sat there staring like an idiot instead of running like there's no tomorrow. And, of course, you'd be left to fend for yourself.
And all the characters had almost-white, dead-looking eyes. WTF game, the sudden sounds already shortened my heart's expiration date by a few years, now you gotta give me nightmares too?!
I'm not the only one who thinks this looks like a dog, right? I even nicknamed it "Doggie".
You know how people have a certain monster that they're afraid of? Well, I used to be scared shitless of zombies. As a result, I know a lot of tropes related to them. What is going to happen when you step into an abandoned-looking, ruined, alien-infested, very dimly lit bathroom?
IT IS INEVITABLE. GRAB THE ROCKET LAUNCHER.
I'm not afraid of spiders but JESUS CHRIST THIS GAME AIN'T HELPING.
Imagine crawling around in a dark, short and narrow underground passageway and seeing this about 4 meters away. Then taking another step and seeing it yanked away by an invisible force, followed by a fit of silent, psychotic laughter. You're welcome.
I haven't finished it yet at the time I'm writing this. It may turn out to be the most horrible game ever but I think it's neat for now.
FUN PARTS WOO
- monster infighting! Trick those bastards into taking each other out while you lay back and point and laugh.
- Doom 3 guy made funny wheezing sounds when his oxygen depleted while messing around on the Mars surface. I may have kept him there longer on purpose. Oops.
- the sentry bots are absolutely ADORABLE and I want one - killing machines that make little squeaky noises, protect you and guide you around. THEY EVEN TURN AROUND AND MAKE SURE YOU'RE FOLLOWING OMGCUTE
- CHAINSAW.
- conk monsters over the head with a FLASHLIGHT. It does next to nothing but it's HILARIOUS.
- Doom 1&2 Demons snort at you when they die.
BORING PARTS BOO
- Doom 3 imps are annoying and refuse to die unless you pump half your ammo into them.
- Throughout Doom 3 you collect the PDA of every unfortunate dead guy that has it lying next to them. It has data like ammo storage unit codes, info on the people, audio clips etc. But it gets SO crowded, and you only need the info once and can't delete it after you're done with it :I
- Doom 1 is 90% boring compared to the other two.
- Doom 3 is DARK. I mean jesus, I had to crank up the brightness to even SEE anything. Which made the rest of my screen brighter than the sun because I play in window mode. Yes, see those screenshots above? That's with the brightness CRANKED UP. Can't win.
OFF TO PLAY SOME MORE. And maybe do a feature on Quake or Duke Nukem next time, how's that sound? :D
