YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF ANYONE ESCAPING HELL, BUT YOU'LL MAKE THE BASTARDS SORRY THEY EVER HEARD OF YOU!!

Okay, you know what Doom is, I know what Doom is, we all know what Doom is. The base gameplay is amazing, running is fast as hell, guns feel amazing, and the enemies are fun to fight (except for the shotgunner). However, what really irks me about this game is the level design.

EPISODE 1 - KNEE DEEP IN THE DEAD
A pretty fun start! Let's you get the hang of how the game works, pulling it's punches until the last boss fight against two, count em, TWO Barons of Hell. The level design isn't too confusing nor long, so levels are nice and snappy and fun. Plus, the shotgunners aren't too annoying.

EPISODE 2 - THE SHORES OF HELL
Starts out kinda rough. I found myself getting a bit frustrated at times. However, the episode picks up pretty fast, with the last few levels getting pretty fun! The boss against the Cyberdemon is probably one of my favorite moments in the game!

EPISODE 3 - INFERNO!
This is pretty much where the game lost me. While there were some moments I liked, most of the time I spent in Inferno was spent bored, lost, infuriated, or all three. The final boss, the Spider Mastermind, is kinda annoying thanks to her "chaingun" (which actually acts more like an auto-shotgun), but she still was more fun than the rest of the episode. And with that, we beat the game and watch the ending...
Wait...

EPISODE 4 - THY FLESH CONSUMED
I got killed by shotgunners through a wall. Fuck Thy Flesh Consumed.

As someone who loves FPS games in general (or tries to, despite my right wrist disagreeing with it sometimes), I felt like I should play this eventually. I just never got around to it, but I figured it 30-year anniversary was the perfect time to hop on. The original version of DOOM released like 6 months after I was born, too.

Level design can be annoying, and I've never fucked too heavily with old ass FPS because I like actually aiming at what I want to shoot instead of just shooting in the general direction of enemies, but it was a pretty fun game nonetheless.

Game's surprisingly easy most of the time, too, save a few spikes (dark areas with the mostly-invisible enemies are pretty cheeky). But Episode 4 sure was some shit in that first stage...

Anyway, if they hordes of Hell didn't wanna get fucking owned, they shouldn't have stockpilled so many shotguns.

(IMPORTANT NOTE: This is a review for the extra chapter introduced in The Ultimate Doom: Thy Flesh Consumed. If you want to read my opinions on the base game and my in-depth thoughts on the original three episodes, you can check my review here. )

''Hey, remember how for Doom we made a really cool artwork that manages to represent the game and look quite good?''

''Yeah, why?''

''What if, and hear me out on this, for The Ultimate Doom... we put a funny looking smiling demon?''


And that's the story of how someone made the single best decision in the entirety of ID Software's existence.

Before I even played DOOM, one statement that was echoed a lot by people when talking about and even some friends of mine was how the only really good episode was the first one, ''Knee-Deep in the Dead'', and the next two, ‘’The Shores of Hell’’ and ‘’Inferno’’, where kind a bit of a downgrade at best and a dip in quality at worst, and after beating the game myself, while that's a sentiment I'm totally able to understand, it's not one that I share at all. ''Knee-Deep in the Dead'' is indeed an outstanding first chapter, it doesn’t stop at simply establishing the basis for the rest of the game, it also goes above and beyond and delivers some spectacular level design; I totally get the love for it, specially since it’s probably the chapter that the most people have played, but I just can’t get enough of both ‘’The Shores of Hell’’ and ‘’Inferno’’, the former explores what the first episode set and expands on it in brand new interesting ways, and the latter experiments with brand new ideas that result in really challenging and interesting maps. The only thing I can really say that the two last chapters fail in comparison to the first is both the feeling of surprise (which is kind of inevitable) and the bosses (turns out that two Hell Barons are way better final bosses that one that can one-shot you and the giant enemy spider), because otherwise they are all on par when it comes to greatness. So, suffices to say that after finishing the game, I really wouldn’t have any complains if there was even more of it, and when I realized that The Ultimate Doom included a totally brand new episode, let’s just say… I acted appropriately…


Thy Flesh Consumed didn’t need to exist, the original game was perfectly fine on its own and while of course more of it is always fine, that necessity was kinda filled by Doom II, which came out just a year after the original, but still, they did it, yet another year after, the re-release under the ‘’Ultimate’’ banner included a brand new 9-map episode, and it set in being one and one thing only: both a way to connect better DOOM with Doom II and to give players harder, more challenging almost purely combat focused levels. On paper, that’s a fire idea, not only it experiments on yet another layer that DOOM’s formula can have, not only it's a really nice addition to an otherwise two-year old game that gives it a bit more life as it finally released on a physical retail format, but also, if it had the same level quality as the three original chapters, we could be witnessing a even greater package that was already excellent… but you probably can imagine where I’m going with all this…



Thy Flesh Consumed is, for all intends and purposes, competent, and I wanna make that clear; it doesn’t devaluate the overall game by any stretch of the imagination and having even more content is nothing to scoff at, but still… I cannot but wish it tried to not do more, but that it made things differently. As I said, it’s a collection of more challenging maps, and it’s not like DOOM was a walk in the park in the first place, but the idea of more difficult level is a prospect that I think few would dislike, and my problem isn’t that at it’s basis it’s pretty much just that, but rather the execution. The first three maps are hell on earth (pun VERY intended), while in this episode you get your fulll arsenal much sooner than in any previous part, it’s still takes some time for you to be fully arm, double if you miss some secrets, and when in the first time, at which point you’ll only have the shotgun and the gatling and very little ammo, you get thrown hordes upon hordes of Imps, Pinkies, Specters and even a Hell Baron thrown in for good measure.. you might start seeing the problem. That alongside the incredibly claustrophobic level design, filled to the brim with narrow passages and poison pits, and you get a map that’s way more frustrating than anything else, which it’s a sentiment that also goes for M2 and M3.Things do get better M4 onwards, some challenges are very interesting and there are segments here and there can be fun… but that’s only a select few. Overall, I just get this overall feeling of… apathy, nothing on these maps really speaks to me aside of those few stellar moments of pure satisfaction, and in some aspects it just feels like they went ‘’Random bullshit, go!’’ with the enemy placement, none feels particular inspired; it’s as if the ingenuity of the first game was almost completely gone, like they forgot why they decided to do certain things or to not include certain stuff, ‘cause even if M4 to M8 aren’t as consistently tedious as the previously three maps, the dark maze full of invisible pinkies, rooms full of enemies opening on your back and the entire second half of M6… well, made me react appropriately..

It’s just a bunch weird decisions that sometimes borderline the absurd, like, the final boss on this is even more anticlimactic and weird than the final boss of the original, which it’s kind of an accomplishment considering they are the same boss! And do you know the worst part? That the only reason I’m able to say all of this and be this flabbergasted is because not only the three previous episodes are fantastic, but because I still had my fun with this collection of maps; this new addition really has some fun moments and surprises, but I can’t say in good conscience it was an experience I’d be glad to go back to: it is done, I’m fine with it, but I very much doubt I’ll be revisiting it. It’s fine to ask for perfection on my end, it’s fine to try to make some extremely impressive challenges, it’s even fine to do a bit of trolling to the player if you want! But ''Thy Flesh Consumed'' crosses certain lines that do not make it ‘’the hardest DOOM experience, but just the more tedious one.

It’s a shame that this will be now the black sheep of the episodes for me, ‘cause I really, REALLY wanted to love it as hard as I love the rest of the game, but in the end, too many things stopped it from achieving that level of greatness, at least for me. But hey, it’s very much still DOOM, and I at least got to partially avenge Daisy, so it was all worth it.

There is one more thing I have yet to do before I’m fully done with the original DOOM, one last rodeo brought by one of the makers of the game ,but for now, I just have one last thing to say… PLEASE ID Software do the funny demon in the cover more PLEASE; you kinda did it with Doom 3 ’s expansion and Doom VR, but still, I need MORE!

This review is exclusively for Chapter 4 (Thy Flesh Consumed)

Ok, I can see why the rating is high for this one, Ultimate Doom includes all of the first game AND the additional content, so it's not like this is a DLC or something like that.
I was about to rate both experiences in the same review, but I just found out they are pretty different, so this review was born.

Not gonna lie, I reviewed the base game with a lot of information from chapter 4 in mind, due to this, I included some criticism there which I had to remove to bring it here.
Chapter 4, launched in Ultimate Doom includes everything you had before, it's just an additional chapter, so, new stages, new mechanics, basic the same but more, right?
Not really.

It seems this was launched next to Doom ll (after it) so the team thought they had to do some marketing, bring something a little different, and some challenge for the veterans, this resulted in some issues.

In base game's review, I mentioned acid/lava floors being an annoying mechanic but used a few times. For the new chapter, it turned into a core element, it's like the main theme of the chapter, it is everywhere, bringing down your HP each step you explore the map to find out the solution. Geez, what a great way to kill the first training experience and already punish those who did not figure out what needs to be done next, forcing you to die and restart with the now-acquired necessary "knowledge".

Also, there is another mechanic I'm not a fan in the original Doom used a LOT in this, which is the overuse of the basic movement/running to achieve different platforms. Maybe that's optional to get some extra items or secrets, but often it is part of the main objectives of the stage, basically, they are platform challenges in an FPS without a JUMP ability, also enemies' hits have knockbacks and below you, there is a pool of lava, bruh wtf.

And what can I say about the first two levels? What the heck happened there lmao, the difficulty is on steroids on those, and then the game is on normal again for the rest of the chapter, until level 6, which is both hard AND annoying as hell, with a main elevator placed in the middle of the acid, hidden behind basic map elements, like a secret, except it is not a secret, it is NEEDED to progress in the stage, also there are tons of enemies around the room shooting projectiles nonstop, barons of hell AND cyberdemon, this stage is the truly Doom '93 final boss.
Worth mentioning that they reused the chapter 3 final boss, just adding more random enemies on a new battle arena.

Chapter 4 is not as good as the main game, but is a big challenge for those seeking for more carnage, just be aware of some poor design choices and you're fine. In the end of the day, is still Doom, and still fun to play.

This rating is for Episode 4, Thy Flesh Consumed, not the full game.
Not as good as the first 3 episodes, but it's still alright. The main design philosophy here seems to be getting mauled by enemies from all angles at all times. E4 M2 is also really overrated in terms of difficulty, Personally, I think M6 and M8 were harder. Also, idk why they decided to make you go through a whole level before fighting the spider-mastermind.

Glad to finally have this off my chest, but if I ever revisit Doom, I am NOT playing this episode again.

(Episodes 1 - 3, will revisit E4 after Doom II)

I don't think there's anything I could say about Doom that hasn't been said better by someone else, so I won't. Instead, I'll talk about the VR port by Team Beef because that's how I played it. It was also my first time playing Doom I all the way through.

The game looks surprisingly great in VR, I would have expected sprites to look jarring but it is all incredibly immersive. The environments look really cool and seeing them in this way really helps you appreciate the detail.

The controls are also incredible, very smooth and very natural for the most part. My only gripe is jump being on B, it's easy to forget but there is also isn't really a better option so it isn't major.

Really enjoyed playing it in VR and I think I'm just gonna play all of the "essential" classic FPS games this way.