I had the end of a giftcard leftover yesterday, and decided to see what I could get on the Nintendo store during their sale:
I probably should've had DooM selected for this screenshot
One of the things I've talked about (mostly on the Star Wars blog) is how different media influenced me, was important in my childhood, etc. Doom is a strong contender for the most important game I played as a kid. It's the first non-kid targeted media I ever consumed. I played coop with my dad for hours. So for $2, I grabbed it on the Switch. I think of "Doom 1" as 3 different products, each of which was released separately, and I'm going to address them as such here.
1. Shareware (Episode 1)
2. Registered (Episodes 2+3)
3. Ultimate (Episode 4)
Besides the weird distribution differences (oh 90s), I think they each have a very different philosophy in terms of how the levels are designed, etc.
I'm going to skip over the whole history of Doom, how it's influential, etc. for now and just focus on Episode 1, which I finished replaying today. Maybe I'll come back on that later.
Doom's first episode Knee-Deep in the Dead was originally released as shareware in 1993. Short version: games at that time were often made as "episodes." Instead of a single game with 30 levels, you might get 3 episodes of 10 each. The first one (with the simplest levels, only half the monsters, guns, etc.) would be a free demo released over the burgeoning internet or on floppies in magazines, trade shows, etc. You could mail off to buy the other two. Somehow iD managed to cram more into a 9 level demo than some complete games do these days.
So to start out, here's all the things Doom's first episode did right:
1. Configurable controls. You gotta go to a separate setup program, but still.
2. Quicksave. Somehow in 2025, at the peak of "accessibility" and "gaming is for everyone" we can't pick our own buttons or save the game to go the bathroom whenever we want.
3. Six different weapons, most of which are actually useful (the pistol is basically defined by its uselessness) and don't overlap. The number of games with 20 guns that're really just upgraded versions of 3 guns is frustrating. What's Doom give us?
Fists: They punch. They do low damage. They are a functionally distinct melee weapon though.
Chainsaw: Like fists, but really fast. And it "grabs" whatever you hit. No ammo!
Pistol: Shoots one wimpy bullet really slowly.
Shotgun: Shoots a burst of low damage shots. Modest rate of fire. One of the most accurate shotguns in gaming.
Machine Gun: Shoots bullets fast.
Rocket Launcher: High damage AND splash.
The chainsaw mostly obsoletes the fists, and the pistol sucks, but the other 4 are all useful and distinct.
4. Six different (and slightly less distinct) enemies:
Former Human/Zombie: Has a giant rifle that slowly shoots pistol bullets. And almost no health.
Former Human Sergeant/Shotgunner: Slightly tougher, and with a shotgun.
Both of these are hitscan (instant hit with no dodgeable projectile) which makes them different from the demons, and still somewhat threatening even in the later levels.
Imps: Brown spikey demons with fireballs. The defacto mediocre grunt.
Pinkie Demon: Big pink and melee. Actually a modest threat in Doom 1, unlike some of the other games (more on that later).
Spectre: Semi-invisible versions of the above. Weirdly, show up before the original on higher difficulties.
Baron of Hell: Baphomet looking boss. Fights similar to an Imp, but much stronger.
Again, how many games today just use 10 different variants of "dude with gun" as their only enemy?
5. A varied pickup system with basic stuff like ammo, slightly more complicated ones like health and armor (do you pick up the little health now, or wait to combine it with a big health later?), and powerups like invisibility. Maybe invisibility is a touch unrealistic, but items like radiation suits give level designers a lot of flexibility compared to "follow the hallway" murder games.
6. Levels with mostly reasonable secret areas that start easy and work up to reasonably hard. Why don't games have secrets to find anymore? I play on the second highest difficulty level and this is how I wound up at the end of one fight. And freedom to wander and back track as you see fit. Some of the levels are like 50% optional. No rails for Doomguy.
That's a lot of damage!
7. An interface that includes: Health/armor, ammo for ALL your guns, which guns you have, and the FACE (which give a secondary health and damage indicator). Why do I not have access to all this info at all time in most games today? There's a niche case for "no ammo count, it's realistic" but that's only a few games.
Also, a working map. Why don't games have maps (and why do so many of them suck so bad)?
It's kind of depressing that a 30 year old game has more features than a lot of modern $60 ones.
Which isn't to say everything is perfect. There's a few too many "tripwire" secrets, that you find just by dashing towards the sound of the door when you cross a magic line of pixels. The level theming is a little flat (it never really makes it out of toxic waste dump/military base). It's only sort of 3D, so you get weird issues if you're right in front of (or on top of) a monster on a different level. Not much of a plot (although the final level ends with a 90s approximation of a scripted sequence to take you to literal Hell).
All in all, still plays great. Well worth the afternoon it'll take to shoot through. It does a great job of introducing the basic functions of the game. These are mostly slower, simpler levels. Doom is pretty slow on the "Boomer Shooter" (a term I find overly broad and not super useful) scale at this point. It'll pick up in the later episodes (and change substantially by Doom 2).
So I think that's this week's project. Ramblin' about Doom and video games. It's pretty classic. Certainly theme adjacent at least. And the whole last episode is Dante's Inferno with guns.