So, I’ve been playing some Doom lately.
Strangely enough, the last time I played Doom was also on a Nintendo handheld (2001’s Gameboy Advance port). Playing a first-person shooter on your morning commute was an impressive novelty back then, whereas nowadays the Nintendo Switch can play pretty much any genre and pump out mind-blowing graphics, leaving a game like Doom looking old-fashioned. All that power is at least put to some use, however, as this is a version of Doom with very little compromise. It runs full-screen at 60 frames per second, has multiple control options (including modern twin sticks and gyro aiming – though I strongly recommend turning the sensitivity down), and it includes the challenging extra episode from Final Doom.
Shooters may have evolved a lot since Doom, but in many ways they’ve also devolved. Doom may not be a particularly complicated game – you run around samey-looking levels, shooting demonic monsters and zombies with a variety of weapons – but it’s from an era where exploring 3D space was a new concept and every corner of the map was important. There’s a wonderful meme that perfectly encapsulates the differences between level design back in 1993 and ‘modern’ first-person shooters, and playing this game again made me laugh at how true it is.
But Doom isn’t even in 3D – not really. In this era, 3D graphics were being faked in a variety of ways, and Doom’s levels are technically two-dimensional, which makes their complexity even more impressive. They have elevation, but you can’t go under or over things, nor can you aim up or down. If you fire at an enemy in front of you, even if they’re fifty feet higher or lower, you will still hit them – and vice versa. This is particularly weird as this version of Doom has a crosshair in the middle of your view, which changes colour when it’s ‘over’ something you can shoot, even if it’s not actually over it. And of course all of the enemies, items and even some scenery in the game are ‘flat’ sprites, like billboards that constantly rotate to face your direction.
Doom gets into a rhythm of quiet and frantic moments. Usually, you’ll find a seemingly empty room with something important in the middle, go to pick it up, and suddenly be surrounded by monsters that have emerged from hidden doors around the room. Something in front of you? Better look behind you as well, because there’s almost certainly something there. It’s a template that can grow a little stale, and as the game is pretty simple at the best of times, it can only fall back on its satisfying gunplay. Fortunately, its gunplay is pretty satisfying. Shooting pixelly bullets at pixelly demons and seeing pixelly blood spurt out, all to a clunky retro soundscape, with a satisfying bob up and down as you move – it’s not bad at all. The shotgun is particularly pleasurable to fire, and that’s something they doubled down on for the sequel…
Doom II (originally released a year later in 1994) offers more of the same but cranks everything up a notch. Its one new weapon is the Super Shotgun, a double-barrel of death with a pleasingly clunky reloading animation – still one of the genre’s most satisfying weapons to this day. The extra firepower is necessary to fight off the stronger hordes of monsters, which now regularly throw boss and mini-boss creatures in the middle of regular levels.
Levels are larger and more complicated, often comprising vast open arenas and taller buildings, which begin to show up the limitations of the old engine. It’s a harder and longer game, with a wider variety of enemies and a need to rely on power-ups (such as invincibility), which feature more prominently. By the end, the game is very hard and starting to wear thin. More enjoyable, though badly presented, are the extra Master Levels, 20 self contained individual episodes made by different creators back in 1995. These offer a surprising variety of settings and themes, and make interesting use of the level design tools, lighting and effects.
Doom and Doom II on Switch are very comprehensive and ideal for anyone looking to get back into oldschool shooters with simple but satisfying gameplay – however they are both let down by their log-in screens. The publisher sensibly removed an earlier requirement for the game to be connected to the internet before it would let you play, however even with the requirement removed, it still attempts to log in whenever you return to the main menu, scans for access points and hangs for a long time before letting you cancel and carry on playing. This is probably not a concern if you’re playing at home, but the Switch is a portable console too and this sort of thing shouldn’t happen.
There’s a lot more Doom available on the Switch, but that will have to wait for another time…
A Dan In The Life 