Game #51 Complete - Doom II

Doom was one of the earliest first person shooters, released in 1993 for MS-DOS on the IBM PC. Pretty much all modern FPS games can trace a lineage back to Doom and its predecessor Wolfenstein 3D, both produced by id Software.

Doom II, unsurprisingly, is the sequel to Doom released in 1994. It's not revolutionary sequel and doesn't add much to the original Doom. Instead it's more of an incremental improvement and level pack. Both Doom and Doom 2 got remakes for the GBA, and both are going to be featured in the challenge. D2 came up first, so this will be the more detailed review.

Now the first thing that stands out about D2 is the controls. The GBA of course lacks any kind of twin analogue sticks or mouse and keyboard setup for moving and aiming. This turns out not to be an issue as Doom was originally designed to be played on just a keyboard and doesn't require aiming vertically. To shoot at enemies above or below you, you simply aim in their general direction and the game adjusts for you. Something else to note about Doom is that the game is not fully 3D as such. Levels cannot have spaces that overlap above and below each other.

So, the controls actually work OK on the GBA, although there aren't quite enough buttons to go around. There are a few options to choose from, but you always end up with something being awkward. I played with strafe on the shoulder buttons, but change weapons was an awkward shoulder + A combo. Aiming can be difficult however.

The game then plays like a classic shooter. Walk around, blast demons, find the exit in each level. Often you have to press switches, find colour coded keys, and as you explore you can find secrets with extra health and ammo. All of this works pretty well, there aren't a ton of weapons, but each one feels unique and has a purpose (although I never went back to the pistol after the very beginning).

New in Doom 2 are the chainsaw, super shotgun (which I used a lot), and a few enemy types. The main problem in D2 is that it's a sequel without a major difference from the original. So the level design tries to compensate by just being bigger and more filled with enemies. The difficulty curve is fairly steep (I guess they were designing with D1 players in mind), and you find all the weapons pretty early on. There are quite a few levels, and I got a bit fed up of it by the end.

I also have gripes about the level design. On the one hand, it's impressive how much variety they got out of the (by modern standards) simplistic level layout and design tools. On the other hand, the game relies a lot on bullshit surprises (oh no, a wall opened up behind you with 50 guys behind it), cryptic switches which you can't work out what just happened, and blank walls you have to hump. The map helps a lot as it show which walls are different and may be actiavatable. Also a very small number of walls need to be shot instead of activated, and this got me stuck for a long time late in the game.

Graphically, the game looks about as good as you can get with 3D on the GBA. Up close, things look ok, but they get blurry very fast at a distance. This can make it hard to spot across wide open spaces which feature heavily in some levels. Also, the frame rate noticeably struggles when a lot of level geometry is on screen. This can have a strange slingshotting effect as you are slowed down passing some feature of the level, and end up overshooting where you were trying to move when you get to a faster part of the level.

Overall, Doom 2 is a reasonable port, and its flaws and the limtations of the GBA don't stop it from being fun most of the time.

Final Rating: 4/5

Next up is Boktai 2: Solar Boy Django.