Doom

Q: Can videogames be art?
A: cocks shotgun

In Doom, your health could go past 100% if you picked up vials while already at full health, just another reminder of the mindset and design principles behind this game: extreme and over the top! Demons, blood, guts, guns, mutants, Nazis, nuclear waste; and if it was possible in those days, this game would've had a thrash metal soundtrack without question. It's practically Slayer: The Game. It is unabashedly lurid and violent (albeit in a slightly campy way), the product of people who grew up listening to heavy metal and reading horror comics. My kinda people.

And, of course, it's one of the more influential games in history for bringing both the 3D perspective and first person shooter genre into the modern era along with id's Wolfenstein 3D from the previous year. First person shooters weren't even called that for nearly the first decade after Doom's debut, they were called Doom Clones, it's influence loomed over gaming to that much of a degree.

This game would have had a 3-3.5 if it wasn't for the "Official" Unity port add-ons, which elevate it to a 4.5. The game itself has good art direction and music, but that isn't what anyone plays it for. It's for the Demons, for the Guns. And the balance and interplay between the weapons and monsters is great, especially combined with the top-notch level design of the first and forth episodes (Although, it isn't quite on the level of Doom II: Hell on Earth's). That brings me into my one gripe with the game, though. That being, the shoddy maps in the middle. No disrespect to Sandy, but the maps in the second and third episodes just don't have the same tight flow and design that the other two do. Much of the community content however, matches and even surpasses that of original game. Take for instance, John Romero's Semi-official 5th episode SIGIL (which is now included in the official Unity port of the game). It exemplifies everything that can be done right doom map design, with tight combat puzzles, great exploration, and legitimately impressive visuals. Doom is a must Play, especially with all the extra content the community has developed over the years

I personally went from Wolfenstein to Quake, so I have no sentimental attachment to Doom. I only played it much, much later, and... meh. Just kidding. But I used to think less of it, because Wolfenstein came first and Quake was better, so why should I care? But of course, Quake wouldn't exist without it, and Doom improved Wolfenstein so damn much that it became obsolete straightaway. This is so well paced it's almost a rhythm game. How to make a map immediately accessible but also intricate, how to make the player part of the flow just by positioning enemies, there are so many lessons mastered here. The hell/metal theme hit the zeitgeist right on.

A lot of the legacy comes, as everyone knows, from everything that surrounded this as a franchise, including the sequel, pretty much the consolidation of internet gaming, with terms and concepts like mods, deathmatchs and speedruns starting to be heard around more. All of that went completely over my head, and the little I noticed, years later, was all gibberish to me. One thing I'd like to add, the original DOS game looks better than all the remasters, etc, I've come across. That says a lot about how definitive this game feels.

the quintessential boomer shooter, a masterpiece in its own right and the granddaddy of first person shooters. is this rating somewhat inflated by nostalgia and the joys of modern source ports? yes. do i care? no. without ever touching a single thing related to doom modding, this game is still great, i’ve played it vanilla many times and truly great level design, character designs, iconic sound selection, and moody environments stand the rest of time. but aside from that the modding community for doom is a whole other beast entirely. you could just have a copy of doom 1/2, GZDoom, and the ModDb catalogue and you’d probably have enough content for the next 10 years.

Please look at my avatar picture and make a guess of why did I rate this so high.