(Originally published to Glitchwave on 10/4/2025)
[Image from glitchwave.com]
Doom
Developer: id Software
Publisher: id Software
Genre(s): First-Person Shooter
Platforms: PC, SNES, 32X, Jaguar
Release Date: December 10, 1993
Regarding the aforementioned “minimalism” of Wolfenstein 3D, nothing screams basic building blocks of gaming more than traversing through cramped mazes with a muted color scheme slathered on the walls by Microsoft Paint. Killing Nazis should always be an exciting objective, but Wolfenstein 3D cannot inherently coast on its premise when the thrills of it are muddled by ugly claustrophobia. Ironically, Doom’s visuals are strikingly better than Wolfenstein 3D’s because they pronounce the primitive pixels instead of making another sad attempt at masking them with a collection of splotchy, digitized Crayola crayons. Doom’s pixelated sheen is refined to a glorious, satisfying crisp. We can still detect some grainy edges in both the backgrounds and in our immediate surroundings, but I doubt that the player will mind too much when the graphical appearance exudes more depth and character than most of its contemporaries. Add some situational lighting to specific settings and some much-needed elevation to broaden the foregrounds, and all of the presentational bells and whistles might be enough to distract from the fact that it isn’t quite of the advanced third-dimensional spatial plane that would soon emerge (the lack of a jump function notwithstanding). It certainly puts the Mode 7 system of the SNES to shame. Speaking of the quasi-3D plane at play here, it should also surprise everyone that, despite the countless peaks, ledges, and tall obstructions that require elevators to reach and or climb over, all of Doom is still composed entirely in a two-dimensional rendering. That’s some video game magic that only a wizard like John Carmack is capable of casting to a delightfully perception-warping degree. I’d argue that the protagonist whose visage we see from a visor located front and center in the HUD has also been significantly improved. The “Doom Guy” gesticulates his health status through his protective helmet more emphatically and looks the part of someone masculine or madcap enough to operate as a lone wolf in battle, instead of a cartoony goober newly making corporal status while seemingly bearing an inability to register pain. He doesn’t exactly supersede the flat avatar level of characterization, but his added layer of facial personality compels the player to salute his badassery.
Doom’s presentation has also aged far more gracefully than that of Wolfenstein 3D because Doom’s conceptual core was far more defined and inspired. Alongside Midway’s fatality-facilitating arcade fighting classic, Mortal Kombat, Doom was another game whose graphic content was provocative enough to draw ire from the PTA boards across America and provoke the birth of the ESRB rating system. The crux of my review is defending Doom’s salient grey hairs, but it taps into such a specific facet of an early 1990s subculture so uncannily that I can’t deny its datedness. Essentially, Doom is an interactive externalization of the arcane, horrific, and satanic iconography surrounding the death metal subgenre that was blossoming in the extreme music underground at the time. When Doom’s setting isn’t the fiery catacombs of Hell, the legions of the eternally damned are still plaguing the uncolonized moons of Mars. Therefore, the game’s entirety must maintain the chaotic, otherworldly terror of Hell through its atmosphere and aesthetic. The red planet’s orbiting bodies are more cold and mechanical than outright garish, with a lack of sufficient lighting in the more enclosed areas evoking a tense and ominous tone and dimly obscuring the industrial, cybernetic setpieces. When the player descends to the depths of Hell in the third chapter, however, illuminating the environment reveals setpieces startling enough to scare the player into wishing they had remained in the dark. This is where the death metal aesthetic comparisons are as clear as the skies on a summer day in Tampa, Florida. At the very entrance of Hell, an elevator composed of what appears to be dorsal meat, given its spinal cord skeletal support, raises the player to an arena where the unnatural cracks in the ground vaguely look like a dehydrated brain. More fleshy, gaudily pink foregrounds supporting the player’s feet in Hell will see a scroll of screaming souls that greatly resemble the twisted gestures on the front cover of Morbid Angel’s “Altars of Madness.” While we’re at it, the mix of organic viscera with the hellscape background is also reminiscent of the cover of their follow-up album, “Blessed are the Sick.” The lake of lava at the center of “Mt. Erebus” immediately reminded me of Dismember’s “Like an Everflowing Stream,” where the enclosure on an island glows a flashing red and blue that suggests there is heat radiating off of it so scorching that it could melt sheet metal in seconds upon contact. Eviscerated bodies of unfortunate space marines dangle from chains like the Hellraiser-esque album art of Autopsy’s “Severed Survival,” and the occasional sightings of crucified humans here evoke the flippancy of popular religious imagery featured on too many death metal album covers to count. All the while, a blaze of crimson red engulfs the backgrounds to overwhelm the player with an enveloping hostility. In a just world, id Software would be paying royalties to Dan Seagrave for borrowing a heaping amount of his sublime, hellish landscapes that piqued the interests of 90’s metalheads and evidently, gamers alike. To be clear, even though I’ve associated a negative adjective with Doom’s presentation, I don’t mean it disparagingly. Encapsulating the most visually and tonally intense subsection of metal music in a video game converges two of my niche interests wonderfully. As for the gaming normies who do not see Doom’s environments as macabre eye candy, I’d still argue that the pixels dilute the ghastliness of Hell and Mars to a point of palatability.
The unknown reaches beyond our benevolent Earth are disquieting on their own merits, but ultimately, it’s what lurks in these unfathomable realms that poses any real danger. Of course, I am speaking of the demonic forces that run rampant throughout every conceivable nook, cranny, and corridor across the outer limits. Doom’s enemy roster consists of a diverse army of hellspawn with an equal precedence in the Doom playbook as the mute space marine who takes them all back to Hell from whence they came, in a manner of speaking. The varying offensive output and defensive constitution per breed suggest that there is a hierarchy within the federation of satanic soldiers, like any military organization. The weakest in body and ostensibly mind are the human soldiers who have been reanimated and or possessed by demonic magic. They still use the human weaponry of handguns and shotguns they brandished when they were fully conscious, and the player can euthanize these poor bastards with one or two bullets from their array of firearms. In the actual ranks, the lowest grunts seem to be the brown, fireball-tossing imps, followed by the beefy, bull-charging “Pinky” beasts whose bodies are almost entirely muscle mass. Some variants of “Pinkies” even have the power of invisibility at their disposal, which can only be visually discerned by their moving, transparent outlines. The demons whose anatomy strays away from anthropoid structures tend to be the more formidable ones, such as the demonic Madballs of the “Cacodemons” and the airborne “Lost Souls,” who irritatingly smack into the player’s blind spots like someone has thrown an eraser at the back of their heads. Controlling the common enemy chain of command are the “Barons of Hell,” imposing mirror images of Satan himself if the dark lord got prison ripped. While these hooved, lobster-red Hell bouncers are glorified minibosses, Doom will eventually pit the player against the strikingly strong “Cyberdemon” and “Spider Mastermind,” whose machine-like enhancements suggest that even the scariest creatures imaginable still need some space-age armor and artillery to boost their dauntingness. Even though the scourge of the underworld is a bunch of ugly, putrid monsters, they still exude a surprising amount of personality. Upon pumping the last bullet into them, the way in which they die somewhat reveals a layer of vulnerability. Each of them utters a uniquely pained, pathetic death cry when their last defenses cave in, as if the player were putting down a bear, wolf, or other earthly animal. Not to mention, the mess of gory entrails they are reduced to upon death will almost make the player feel remorseful for pulverizing them into disgusting paste (I said almost). Their bodies also won’t disappear upon their defeat, so the faint hints of guilt can resonate with the player upon retreading the levels. There must be a sound reason as to why mowing down the unholy hordes of demons never loses its “oomph factor” despite how the game absolutely bombards the player with them in every frame of the level, and it can likely be attributed to the subtle hints of detail that accent every encounter.
Of course, the “Doom Guy” can only transform every level into a graveyard with his eclectic roulette of weaponry. To summarize the protagonist’s arsenal on the whole, one half is a selection of common FPS guns, while the rarer half that becomes obtainable later in the game is a slew of super-deadly gizmos that take advantage of Doom’s science-fiction thematic overtones. A pistol serves as the “Doom Guy’s” default weapon, the one tool he carries automatically and will not be stripped away from him as a penalty for dying. The Chaingun’s range of fire and automatic spray of ammunition should be ideal for dispatching demons by the barrelful, but I always found myself using the single-blasting shotgun in most instances of heated, outnumbered combat. Hell, the shotgun became such a reliable, steadfast tool in fighting Hell’s forces that I almost felt compelled to refer to it by a woman’s name, like a man does his car or any other expensive, inanimate piece of property he takes pride in keeping. Alas, even though the shotgun took up the most amount of screen time (that is, being the most common object in the first-person viewpoint), the more durable demons that appear more frequently as the game progresses require firepower of a colossal caliber to exterminate. Sure, rocket launchers exist on Earth, but this particular one in Doom comes with a maximum of fifty shells and the perk of not having to be reloaded for a reason. Energy cell ammunition will fuel both the electric “plasma gun” and the game’s ultimate juggernaut weapon: The BFG. No, Roald Dahl fans, there is nothing “friendly” about this weapon, although it does satisfy the two other redundant descriptors. The acronym stands for “Big Fucking Gun” because seeing how one concentrated blast of energy from this hulking monstrosity will annihilate every enemy in its general direction might generate shouting of enthusiastic swear words from the player. It certainly gives the “Metal Blade” some stiff competition for the title of “most bodacious video game weapon,” but it still falls short because the BFG isn’t exactly energy efficient. Then again, ammo for every gun in Doom feels like it depletes quickly on account of the constant swarms of demons testing their might against humanity’s ballsiest warrior. To further complement the “Doom Guy’s” big brass stugots, if he ever finds that all of his artillery has been exhausted, the man will resort to brutally indenting his spiked ring into demons' faces with his fists. If that won’t earn you the Presidential Medal of Freedom, I don’t know what will. A chainsaw is also available as an alternative melee weapon for drastic circumstances, but I found the stationary sawing of a single enemy at a time to be rather impractical in most combat scenarios.
Ideally, the player shouldn't find themselves between an ammunitionless rock and a hard place with growling and roaring demons all too often. While the unholy hordes are bound to drain entire rounds of bullets with one sizable swarm, replenishment for every weapon can be found scattered around each level. Doom’s level design revels in the inconspicuous. Never will any of the levels coordinate progress door by door, like the game is moving on a linear rail. Describing Doom’s level design as labyrinthian might not even do it justice, as its abstractions are too asymmetrical to fall under the charted maze-like connotations of the phrase. This is why using the level map as a frame of reference in guiding the player is not recommended, but this doesn’t mean that the player is guaranteed to be haphazardly scurrying about like a chicken with its head chopped off. Rather, Doom persuades the player to embrace curiosity, using it in a practical manner to discover all of the secret goodies hidden in every crevice across Hell and the moons of Mars. Restocking on ammo and health items should definitely entice the player to put on their explorer hats, but they might also find one of the many temporary enhancements that will boost their confidence in battle, including double health, armor, “berserk mode,” and a brief window of total invincibility. If only this godly perk didn’t come with the caveat of handicapping the player with a blindingly white light filling the entire screen! If none of this provides enough incentive to scrounge around each level meticulously, tough titties. The developers would be damned if they allowed the player to casually skip to each level’s goal like the hare in a footrace, so they cleverly implemented three different keys that lock doors of their coinciding color. Some players argue that constantly veering off the beaten path due to the task of key collecting conflicts with the straightforward objective of killing demons, but how else will the players come to acknowledge the sheer depth showcased in these levels without forced bouts of circuity?
Unfortunately, despite all of the positive qualities the game has retained, I’m still going to have to knock Doom down a few pegs for upholding some archaic difficulty conditions. Surprise, surprise; an aged game that exhibits the harshness of Hell is a bit austere in the gameplay department. Specifically, the game isn’t very merciful towards those who can’t overcome the overwhelming odds of smiting dozens of demons simultaneously. If the space marine protagonist screams his anguished cry and falls to his death when his health is expended, the player will be resurrected at square one of the current level with only the pistol in hand. Is it necessary to elaborate on why getting stuck with the simple pea shooter sucks? A lack of skill is one thing, but there are also a myriad of instances where Doom sticks the player in situations where survival becomes a relevant element to level progression. For instance, in the third chapter’s second mission, “Slough of Despair,” I struggled immensely with the onslaught of enemies in close quarters without having accumulated enough of the guns and their ammunition to withstand their aggressions. The statistics page at the end of the previous level noted that I had uncovered most of its items, so my unpreparedness was not due to any carelessness on my part. Many Doom levels also require the player to (literally) dip their toes in hazardous pools of lava, blood, and an unspecified green goop en route to clear the level. Unless the player happens to find a hazmat suit, their health will plummet like the current housing market. Sometimes, enemy activity will be far too unchecked to handle, especially in the extra chapter of “Thy Flesh Consumed.” Yes, I think that “Perfect Hatred” is an apt title of a level in which the game crams so many enemies down the player’s throat that they’re guaranteed to figuratively choke. One particular level in this post-game addendum, “Against Thee Wickedly,” exemplifies every possible unfair condition coalescing into an absolute nightmare. Minibosses upon minibosses stand around several elevated islands with an elevator surrounded by lava at its center that the player must constantly visit. When I die and undoubtedly go to Hell, I’ll probably be experiencing this godforsaken level for eternity. For now, the two Johns are my grand punishers who seem to derive as much sadistic pleasure in my failures as Satan himself.
John Carmack and John Romero might be unscrupulous bastards if Doom’s difficulty stipulations are any indication. Still, the magic these two men made for the gaming medium remains invigorating all these years later, despite the hurdles present that many modern gamers might try to avoid. At the end of the day, the premise of shooting monsters with a vast array of weapons will never grow out of style, like a pair of blue jeans. In the mix of this fun, simple concept, Doom still excels with its FPS successors because of its complexities. Disintegrating demons into piles of mush may have become boring if not for the serpentine progression patterns in environments that come as close as possible to graphical verisimilitude in the early 1990s. On top of all of this, its presentation is still bitchin’ enough to make me unironically do the devil horns for the first time since I was fifteen years old. Underestimating Doom is like downplaying the awesomeness of elderly Chuck Norris, which might result in him knocking you out with a swift roundhouse swing. Doom will kick your ass, and you will fucking love it, you young gaming grasshoppers.
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