Review

Doom (PlayStation)

Demon Killing Never Gets Old

Game Doom

Genre(s) Shooter

Name: Doom
Platform: PS1
Year Released: 1995

In the early 1990s, when I was in elementary school, I didn’t know the phrase “first-person shooter”. However, what I did know was that I loved to sit at my family’s computer for hours at a time playing games like Wolfenstein 3D and the Doom series. Doom II in particular was my favorite game throughout fifth grade, and in those days, parents really didn’t think twice about buying a game with a big “M” and a bunch of guns on the cover. When I got a little older, I started to explore more games outside the FPS realm (or as shooters were known in those days, “Doom clones”), and didn’t really spend time with many games in the genre until Halo hit the Xbox years later. However, last year I happened to find an old port of Doom for the PS1 at GameStop for $1.75, and it seemed like way too good a deal to pass up. I have recently put the game in the system for the first time and was reminded how much I loved this series as a child.

It should be said that I started playing this game prepared for the worst. It’s not that I expected Doom to not be fun, although it is showing its age; I just didn’t have much faith in a PS1 port of one of the most influential PC games of all time. Maybe it’s because of the fact that I went in with such low expectations that I actually enjoyed my time with the game. Don’t get me wrong, the graphics are awful by today's standards, and the bloody corpses that were once so controversial are now barely recognizable. The controls are also less than ideal for a first-person shooter. Movement is mapped to the D-pad, with the R1 and L1 shoulder buttons allowing for a quick step to the right or left. Weapons can be changed with R2 or L2, with triangle being used for shooting and attacking, and circle opening doors. It took a bit of getting used to, that’s for sure.

There were some technical changes to the PS1 version to make it work on the system, but almost all of the levels and enemies from the original Doom are present in this version. There are some graphical differences, but overall I was impressed at the job iD Software did at preserving the feeling of the game. Not using the analog sticks to move and aim, and the shoulder buttons to shoot, took some getting used to, but it’s forgivable since the game was released three years before the original Dualshock controller. I would have liked to see some improvement in the aiming, like the ability to move the weapon up and down; shooting enemies on higher ground without actually pointing the gun upward just felt kind of cheap.

Many of the things that made the original Doom so enjoyable are present in this version, and quickly brought back many happy memories. I have always loved to see the unnamed protagonist’s face at the bottom of the screen, getting bloodier as he took more damage, or smiling with glee when I picked up a good weapon. His triumphant smirk upon picking up a shotgun often mirrored my own. There are still moments that will make you jump, like having an imp follow you in an elevator and appear out of nowhere behind you. The panic felt when your health percentage gets low, accompanied by a frantic search for health packs, is all too familiar and appreciated. Although the PS1 port left out the Nightmare difficulty, there are still four levels to choose from. The game also allows the option for co-op or deathmatch play—assuming you have two PlayStations linked up and two copies of the game handy. Okay, that’s probably a pretty stupid thing to do in this day and age, but I’m sure it was awesome in 1995.

Like I said before, Doom has shown its age, but not as badly as I would have thought. For a thirteen-year-old port of a fifteen-year-old game, this was a pretty enjoyable experience. It’s not superior to the version currently available on the Xbox Live Arcade in any way, but in my case, it was certainly $1.75 well spent. First-person shooters have come a long, long way since Doom first started invading computers in the early 90s, but that doesn’t mean we should forget about it completely.