shoutout to the teachers, coaches, and bosses through my days that i've ignored wasting time away booting this thing up on whatever nearest device i had on me throughout my teenage years. it was never a matter of "can i get doom on it", but "how do i get doom on it". being that i'm a y2k baby it might sound a little strange that doom was one of my early formal personal gaming experiences, but growing up with a pair of early 90s kids in my house and a bulky desktop pc running windows 95 meant that was an obvious early step in my journey. that copy of ultimate doom (which i believe came with doom '95? that should be the one i owned) sits in a similar spot as stuff like space cadet pinball and pajama sam in my head... which kind of explains a bit in retrospect.
i ended up properly sitting down and playing this one when i took it with me on a move around 2009, 2010, firmly in my nintendo kid phase, and it marked a fairly major shift in my interests in games. i loved the look of the gruff 3d corrdidors, the muddy midi-based soundtrack, and the impact of the guns. hell, i still do. i'm sure it's a point that 1,000,000 people before me have made but for all the hubbub made (especially by the modern dooms themselves) of the In Your Face Epic Metal Bloodbath stuff, i always felt the uncanny valley of doom's ambience and general emptiness was my personal takeaway from the game - something especially brought home in the sequel, my favorite doom game. doom gets very same-y as the game rolls on with tons of identical corridors to chord progressions, but god help me if it still doesn't invoke something in me even in my 20s.
i miss this puzzle-centric, explorative form of fps. i think it's done to perfection in the next few years of fpses that would follow, sure, but doom set the standard. this was the manifesto which went "hey, wolfenstein, that's a pretty neat concept you got there, but let's crank it all up a notch." nothing feels missing in doom. its multi-level stage layouts aren't marred by the lack of jump or vertical aim - they're designed around them. doom shifts from dim and claustrophobic to breadth and overwhelming scale at the turn of a dime. you'll play this game a few times and think you've got it made, but when you watch someone who REALLY knows their stuff, they'll disembowel these levels, rip out the secrets, and you'll realize you missed out on like half of what this game had to show you. that said, the level design admittedly staggers and trips a lot near the finish line, and while i agree that doom ii's levels by and large get to be a lot bigger and emptier, i enjoy the exploration there, where doom's lesser levels boil into serious repetition. still, though, it's fucking doom. if you haven't played it, i promise it's at least as interesting and more timeless than that next thing on your list. tight pacing, effortlessly fun gameplay, and one hell of a legacy to leave behind.
i ended up properly sitting down and playing this one when i took it with me on a move around 2009, 2010, firmly in my nintendo kid phase, and it marked a fairly major shift in my interests in games. i loved the look of the gruff 3d corrdidors, the muddy midi-based soundtrack, and the impact of the guns. hell, i still do. i'm sure it's a point that 1,000,000 people before me have made but for all the hubbub made (especially by the modern dooms themselves) of the In Your Face Epic Metal Bloodbath stuff, i always felt the uncanny valley of doom's ambience and general emptiness was my personal takeaway from the game - something especially brought home in the sequel, my favorite doom game. doom gets very same-y as the game rolls on with tons of identical corridors to chord progressions, but god help me if it still doesn't invoke something in me even in my 20s.
i miss this puzzle-centric, explorative form of fps. i think it's done to perfection in the next few years of fpses that would follow, sure, but doom set the standard. this was the manifesto which went "hey, wolfenstein, that's a pretty neat concept you got there, but let's crank it all up a notch." nothing feels missing in doom. its multi-level stage layouts aren't marred by the lack of jump or vertical aim - they're designed around them. doom shifts from dim and claustrophobic to breadth and overwhelming scale at the turn of a dime. you'll play this game a few times and think you've got it made, but when you watch someone who REALLY knows their stuff, they'll disembowel these levels, rip out the secrets, and you'll realize you missed out on like half of what this game had to show you. that said, the level design admittedly staggers and trips a lot near the finish line, and while i agree that doom ii's levels by and large get to be a lot bigger and emptier, i enjoy the exploration there, where doom's lesser levels boil into serious repetition. still, though, it's fucking doom. if you haven't played it, i promise it's at least as interesting and more timeless than that next thing on your list. tight pacing, effortlessly fun gameplay, and one hell of a legacy to leave behind.